“You saw . . .”
“Yes.”
“I was stupid.” David was glad she had brought up the subject even though he was almost too ashamed to talk about it. “I didn’t mean to do it.” He sighed. “But I couldn’t let him win. I just couldn’t. I don’t know why.”
“You don’t like him.”
“No.”
“But why not? Vincent’s bright. He’s popular. And he’s very good-looking.”
“That’s why I don’t like him,” David said. He thought for a minute. “He’s too perfect altogether. If you ask me, there’s something funny about him.”
“And if you ask me,” Jill said, “you’re just jealous.”
“Jealous?” David picked up a loose stone and threw it into the sea. He waited until it had disappeared, then reached out with one hand. The stone rocketed out of the water and slapped itself back into his palm. He handed it to Jill.
“Very clever,” she muttered sourly.
“Why should I be jealous of Vincent?” David said. “If you’re talking about the Unholy Grail, he hasn’t got a chance.”
“He’s only thirty points behind you. He could still catch up.”
There were just two weeks until October 31—Halloween—the most important day in the school’s calendar. For this was when the Unholy Grail would be presented to the new Student Master. Throughout the year, all the marks from all the exams had been added up and published on a standings list that hung on a wall outside the heads’ study. David had been top of the list from the start.
But Vincent had risen so fast that his name was now only one below David’s, and although everyone agreed the distance between them was too great, nothing was ever certain, particularly in a school like Groosham Grange. There was, after all, one exam still to go—Advanced Cursing. And David had to remember, it was also possible to lose points. You could have them deducted for bad behavior, for being late . . . and for being caught cheating in a Sports Day race.
“Do you like him?” David asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you have a crush on him?”
“That’s none of your business.” Jill sighed. “Why are you so bothered about him?”
“I don’t know.” David shivered. The waves were whispering to him, he was sure of it. But he couldn’t understand what they were saying. His hand felt cold where it had touched the stone. “There’s something wrong about him,” he said. “Something phony. I can feel it.”
In the distance, a bell rang. It was a quarter to four, almost time for the last two classes of the day: French with Monsieur Leloup, then general witchcraft with Mrs. Windergast. David wasn’t looking forward to French. He was almost fluent in Latin and spoke passable Ancient Egyptian, but he couldn’t understand the point of learning modern languages. “After all,” he often said, “I can summon up fourteen demons and two demigods in Egyptian, but what can I ask for in French? A plate of cheese!” Nonetheless, Groosham Grange insisted on teaching the full range of academic and college-prep subjects as well as its own more specialized ones. And there were serious punishments if you traveled forward in time just to miss the next class.
“We’d better move,” he said.
Jill took hold of his arm. “David,” she said. “Promise me you won’t cheat again. I mean, it’s not like you . . .”
David looked straight into her eyes. “I promise.”
Ahead of them, Groosham Grange rose into sight. Even after a year on the island, David still found the school building rather grim. Sometimes it looked like a castle, sometimes more like a haunted house. At night, with the moon sinking behind its great towers to the east and west, it could have been an asylum for the criminally insane. The windows were barred, the doors so thick that when they slammed you could hear them a mile away. And yet David liked it—that was the strange thing. Once it had been new and strange and frightening. Now it was his home.
“Are your parents coming?” Jill asked.
“What?”
“In two weeks’ time. For prize-giving.”
David had hardly seen Edward and Eileen Eliot since the day he had started at Groosham Grange. Parents very rarely came to the school. But as it happened, he had received a letter from his father just a few days before:Dear David,
This is to inform you that your mother and I will be visiting Groosham Grange for prize-giving on October 31. We will also be bringing my sister, your aunt Mildred, and will then drive her home to Margate. This means that I will be spending only half the day at the school. To save time, I am also sending you only half a letter.
And that was where it ended. The page had been torn neatly in two.
“Yes. They’re coming,” David said. “How about yours?”
“No.” Jill shook her head. Her father was a diplomat and her mother an actress, so she hardly ever saw either of them. “Dad’s in Argentina and Mom’s acting in The Cherry Orchard.”
“Has she got a good part?”
“She’s playing one of the cherries.”
They had reached the school now. Jill glanced at her watch. “It’s two minutes to four,” she said. “We’re going to be late.”
“You go ahead,” David muttered.
“Cheer up, David.” Jill started forward, then turned her head. “You’re probably right. You’ll win the Grail. There’s nothing to worry about.”
David watched her go, then turned off, making his way around the East Tower and on through the school’s own private cemetery. It was a shortcut he often used. But now, just as he reached the first grave, he stopped. Before he knew what he was doing, he had crouched down behind a gravestone, all other thoughts having emptied out of his head.
Slowly, he peered over the top. A door had opened at the side of the school. There was nothing strange about that except that the door was always locked. It led into a small antechamber in the East Tower. From there, a stone staircase spiraled more than five hundred feet up to a completely circular room at the top. Nobody ever went into the East Tower. There was nothing downstairs and the old, crumbling stairway was supposedly too dangerous to climb. The whole place was off-limits. But somebody was about to come out. Who?
A few seconds later the question was answered as a boy stepped out, looking cautiously about him. David recognized him at once: his blond hair thrown back in a fancy wave across his forehead and his piercing blue eyes, which were now narrow and guarded. Vincent King had been up to something in the East Tower and he didn’t want anyone to know about it. Without turning back, he pulled the door shut behind him, then hurried away in the direction of the school.
David waited a few moments before rising from behind the gravestone. He was going to be late for his French class and he knew it would get him into trouble, but his curiosity had gotten the better of him. What had Vincent been doing inside? He started forward. The tower rose up in front of him, half strangled by the ivy that twisted around it. He could just make out the slit of a window beneath the battlements. Was it just a trick of the light or was something moving behind it? Had Vincent been meeting someone high up in the circular room?
He reached out for the door.
But then a hand clamped down on his shoulder, spinning him around as somebody lurched at him, appearing from nowhere. David caught his breath. Then he relaxed. It was only Gregor, the school porter.
Even so, anyone else being stopped by such a creature on the edge of a cemetery would probably have had a heart attack. Gregor was like something out of a horror film, his neck broken and his skin like moldy cheese. At least the javelin had been removed from his back, although he evidently hadn’t changed his shirt. David could still see the hole where the javelin had gone in.
“Vareyoo goink, young master?” Gregor asked in his strange, gurgling voice. Gregor chewed on his words like raw meat. He also chewed raw meat. His table manners were so disgusting that he was usually made to eat under the table.
“I was just . . .” David wasn’t sure what to say.
&
nbsp; “Butzee classes, young master. Yoom issink zee lovely classes. You shoot be hurrink in.” Gregor moved so that he stood between David and the door to the tower.
“Hold on, Gregor,” David began. “I just need a few minutes—”
“No minutes.” Gregor lurched from one foot to the other, his hands hanging down to his knees. “Is bad marks for missink classes. And too many bad marks and there izno Unnerly Grail for the young master. Yes! Gregor knows . . .”
“What do you know, Gregor?” Suddenly David was suspicious. It was almost as if Gregor had been waiting for him at the tower. Had he seen Vincent coming out? And why had he suddenly mentioned the Grail? There was certainly more to this than met the eye . . . which, in Gregor’s case, was about an inch below his other eye.
“Hurry, young master,” Gregor insisted.
“All right,” David said. “I’m going.” He turned his back on the porter and walked quickly toward his classroom. But now he was certain. He had been listening to the voice of his sixth sense when he was down on the rocks—and hadn’t Groosham Grange taught him that the sixth sense was much more important than the other five?
Something was going on at the school. In some way it was connected to the Unholy Grail. And whatever it was, David was going to find out.
Flying Lesson
David opened the classroom door nervously. He was ten minutes late, which was bad enough, but this was French with Monsieur Leloup, which was worse. Monsieur Leloup had a bad temper—hardly surprising considering he was a werewolf. Even on a good day he had been known to rip a French dictionary to pieces with his teeth. On a bad day, when there was going to be a full moon, he had to be chained to his desk in case he did the same to his class.
Fortunately, the full moon had come and gone, but even so, David walked gingerly into the room. His empty desk stared accusingly at him in the middle of all the others. Just as he reached it, Monsieur Leloup turned from the blackboard.
“You are late, Monsieur Eliot,” he snapped.
“I’m sorry, sir . . .” David said.
“Ten minutes late. Can you tell me where you have been?”
David opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He could see Vincent out of the corner of his eye. Vincent had the desk behind his. He was pretending to read his book, but there was a half smile on his lips, as if he knew what was going to happen. “I was just out walking,” David said.
“Walking?” Monsieur Leloup sniffed. “I shall deduct three points from the standings list. Now will you please take your seat. We are discussing the future perfect . . .”
David sat down and opened his book. He had gotten off lightly and he knew it. Three points deducted still left him twenty-seven ahead. There was no way Vincent could catch up, no matter what happened in the last exam. He was fine.
Even so, David concentrated more than usual for the next fifty minutes just in case he was asked something, and he was relieved when the bell rang at five o’clock and the class was over.
He joined the general stream out of the class and down the corridor to the last lesson of the day. He found this one a lot more interesting: general witchcraft, taught by Mrs. Windergast. Even after a year at the school, David still hadn’t quite gotten used to the matron’s methods. Only a week before, he had gone to her with a headache and she had given him not an aspirin but an asp. She had fished the small, slithering snake out of a glass jar and held it against his head . . . an example of what she called sympathetic magic. David had found it a rather unnerving experience—although he’d been forced to admit that it worked.
Today she was discussing the power of flight. And she wasn’t talking about airplanes.
“The broomstick was always the favored vehicle of the sisterhood,” she was saying. “Can anyone tell me what it was made of?”
A girl in the front row put up her hand. “Hazelwood?”
“Quite right, Linda. Hazelwood is the correct answer. Now, who can tell me why some people believe that witches used to keep cats?”
The same girl put up her hand. “Because cat was the old word for broomstick,” she volunteered.
“Right again, Linda.” Mrs. Windergast muttered a few words. There was a flash of light, and with a little shriek, Linda exploded. All that was left of her was a puddle of slime and a few strands of hair. “It is never wise to know all the answers,” Mrs. Windergast remarked acidly. “To answer once is fine. To answer twice is showing off. I hope Linda will have learned that now.”
Mrs. Windergast smiled. She was a small, round woman who looked like the perfect grandmother. But in fact she was lethal. She had been burned at the stake in 1214 (during the reign of King John) and again in 1336. Not surprisingly, she now tended to keep herself to herself and she never went to barbecues.
“Linda was, however, quite right,” she continued. She pulled a broomstick out from behind the blackboard. “Witches never had cats. It was just a misunderstanding. This is my own ‘cat’ and today I want to show you how difficult it is to control. Would anyone like to try it?”
Nobody moved. All eyes were on Linda’s empty desk and the green smoke still curling above it.
Mrs. Windergast pointed. “Vincent King . . .”
Vincent stood up and moved to the front of the classroom. David’s eyes narrowed. Mrs. Windergast was obviously in a bad mood today. Maybe Vincent would say something to annoy her and go the same way as Linda. Or was that too much to hope?
“My broomstick is very precious to me,” Mrs. Windergast was saying. “I normally keep it very close to me—as do all witches. So this is very much an honor, young man. Do you think you could ride it?”
“Yeah—I think so.”
“Then try.”
Vincent took hold of the broomstick and muttered some words of power. At once the stick sprang to attention and hovered in the air, several feet above the ground. Gracefully, he climbed onto it, swinging one leg over it as if it were a horse. David watched, annoyed and showing it. It seemed there was nothing Vincent couldn’t do well. He had both feet off the ground now, hovering in space as if he had been born to it.
“Try moving,” Mrs. Windergast suggested.
Vincent concentrated and slowly rose into the air, perfectly balanced on the broomstick. Gently he curved round and headed over the blackboard, the handle ahead of him, the twigs trailing behind. He was smiling, growing in confidence, and David was half tempted to whisper the spell that would summon up a minor wind demon and knock him off balance.
But in the end there was no need. When things went wrong, they all went wrong at once. The broomstick wobbled, the end pitched up, Vincent cried out and the next moment he fell off and crashed to the floor with the broom on top of him.
“As you can see,” Mrs. Windergast trilled, “it’s not as easy as it looks. Is there any damage, Vincent dear?”
Vincent got stiffly to his feet, rubbing his shoulder. “I’m all right,” he said.
“I meant the broomstick.” Mrs. Windergast picked it up and cast a fond eye over it. “I never let anyone ride it as a rule,” she went on. “But it seems undamaged. Well done, Vincent. You may return to your seat. And now”—she turned to the blackboard—“let me try to explain the curious mixture of magic and basic aerodynamics that makes flight possible.”
For the next forty-five minutes, Mrs. Windergast explained her technique. David was sorry when the final bell went. He had enjoyed the lesson—Vincent’s fall in particular—and he was still smiling as he left the classroom. Linda followed him out. She had been reconstituted by Mrs. Windergast, but she was looking very pale and sickly. David doubted if she would ever make a decent black magician. She’d probably end up as nothing worse than a crossing guard.
There was a knot of people outside in the corridor. As David came out he saw that one of them was Vincent.
“That was bad luck,” Vincent said.
“What?” Maybe it was just an innocent remark, but already David felt his hackles rise.
&
nbsp; “Losing three points in French. That narrows the gap.”
“You’re still a long way behind.” It was Jill who had spoken. David hadn’t seen her arrive, but he was glad that she seemed to have taken his side.
“The exams aren’t over yet.” Vincent shrugged and once again David was irritated without knowing why. Did he dislike Vincent just because he was his closest rival or was there something more? Looking at his easy smile, the way Vincent slouched against the wall—always so superior—he felt something snap inside.
“You looked pretty stupid just now,” he said.
“When?”
“Falling off the broomstick.”
“You think you could have done better?”
“Sure.” David wasn’t thinking. All he knew was that he wanted to goad the other boy, just to get a reaction. “You’re going to have to get used to coming in second,” he went on. “Just like in the race . . .”
Vincent’s eyes narrowed. He took a step forward. “There was only one reason I came in second . . .” he began.
He knew what David had done. He had felt the web slipping over his foot. And he was going to say it, now, in front of everyone. David couldn’t let that happen. He had to stop him. And before he knew what he was doing, he suddenly reached out and pushed Vincent hard with the heel of his hand. Vincent was caught off balance and cried out as his bruised shoulder hit the wall behind him.
“David!” Jill cried out.
She was too late. Without hesitating, Vincent bounced back, throwing himself onto David. David’s books and papers were torn out of his hands and scattered across the floor. Vincent was taller, heavier and stronger than David. But even as he felt the other boy’s hand on his throat, he couldn’t help feeling pleased with himself. He had wanted to get past Vincent’s defenses and he’d done it. He’d taken the upper hand.
Right now, though, Vincent’s upper hand was slowly strangling him. David brought up his knee, felt it sink into Vincent’s stomach. Vincent grunted and twisted hard. David’s head cracked against the paneling.