“So is his family staying in Wyldcliffe?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure. There’s still so much rumor and gossip about them—all those horrible animal killings that Mrs. Hartle was behind.” I halted and looked at him steadily. “That is, if you believe what Sarah told you.”
Josh rested his hand lightly on mine. “I believe you, Evie. I know this valley. I know it hides many secrets. Besides, I knew you were in trouble all along. And so this guy, Sebastian…he’s…”
“He’s dead,” I said briefly. “It’s all over.” There was a yawning hole where my heart had been, but I wouldn’t cry. Sebastian wouldn’t want that. When I am dead, my dearest, sing no sad songs for me….
Josh tightened his hold on my hand. “Evie, I know you won’t want to hear this yet, but you know that I…I can’t help wondering if there’ll ever be any hope for me.”
I felt a wave of panic rise up in me. “I can’t; it’s too soon. I don’t think I can ever…love…again. What you’re saying…it scares me.”
“I’m not asking for love. It’s just that I really like you, Evie.”
“And I like you,” I said, feeling awkward.
“Well, that’s a start, isn’t it? We can be friends. Love doesn’t have to be painful, Evie. It doesn’t have to be this big, tormented passion. It can be easy and simple, like sunshine in the morning, or like walking on the beach and listening to the waves.”
There was a lump in my throat. Sebastian and I had never made it to that beach, to that place of warmth and sunshine. We would never see the dawn rise over the ocean. Sebastian had given himself to the night, but he had finally escaped from the darkness, and I could too.
“I’d like…I’d like to be friends.”
“Then let’s be the best of friends,” Josh answered. “Let’s live one day, and then another and another. And maybe in time, the sun will smile on us.”
I pressed his hand gratefully. “You’re so good, Josh.”
“No, I’m not. I’m just crazy about you.” He lifted my hand and kissed it gently, then stepped back and smiled up at me. “There. That wasn’t so terrifying, was it?”
I looked into his face, full of life and hope and courage. I had no idea what the future held, but I realized that I was no longer frightened. No, I wasn’t frightened at all.
Fifty
There were still a few weeks left before the end of term. We had exams to look forward to, and concerts and the handing out of class prizes and awards. But first there was one other ritual we had to get through.
The funeral was a rather grand, pompous affair. Students, parents, mistresses and school governors, the local mayor, and other dignitaries were all crammed into the little stone church to bid farewell to Mrs. Celia Hartle, the High Mistress of Wyldcliffe. I sat at the back with Sarah. I didn’t want to look at the coffin, piled high with costly lilies. Instead I focused on where Helen sat with her head bowed at the front of the church, flanked on one side by Miss Scratton, and on the other by a tall, blond man, who kept glancing down at Helen’s pale face in wonder. Every ending was also a beginning….
The vicar spoke of loss, and of hope. The words rolled over me like a cleansing wave.
“‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ saith the Lord; ‘he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die…’”
I stood up quietly and slipped unnoticed out of the church. It was still early in the morning and there was somewhere I had to go. As I climbed above the sleepy village on the familiar path over the hills, someone came to join me. We walked in silence, stopping only to collect a few early wildflowers that were growing in the shelter of the hedgerows. A bird sang high overhead, and the lambs called for their mothers.
As we walked over the brow of the ridge toward the old hall, I knew I would never be that innocent young girl who had arrived in Wyldcliffe so many months ago. I had seen the darkness and I would never be able to forget it. But I had also known love, and it had taught me that knowing another person’s heart was the greatest adventure life had to offer. I had known what it was like to get up in the morning and rejoice, simply because Sebastian walked upon the earth. I had looked up at the wide blue sky and seen the sun shining especially for me, because I loved him.
And now, finally, I was ready to say good-bye.
I knelt at Sebastian’s grave. Soon, the mound by the headstone would be no longer bare, but threaded with tender green roots and moss. I gently traced the outline of his name on the stone with my fingers. In Memory of a Beloved Son, Sebastian James Fairfax…
My beloved.
I would always love him. My first, my dearest love.
The wind whistled over the hills like the distant echo of the sea. I placed my simple flowers against the headstone and stood up. There was no need to say anything, no need for words or promises. I had been true to Sebastian. There had been no betrayal between us. When I saw him again—and I knew that one day I would—we would meet as creatures of eternal light. There would be no trace of shadow left. The darkness was over. He was free.
And I was free too. Free to grieve and free to live. I had to live, for Sebastian’s sake as well as my own. My heart had to be big enough for whatever was waiting; I couldn’t allow it to be broken. I was Evie Johnson, I was sixteen years old, and life hadn’t finished for me yet. It was just beginning.
“Time to go, Evie,” said Josh quietly.
I turned to him and smiled.
“Yes,” I said. “Let’s go.”
We walked down the hill together, back to the school where my sisters would be waiting for me. It was a new day, and our faces were toward the sun, and we didn’t look back.
Acknowledgments
With thanks to Henry Elliott at the Romany Life Centre, Cranbrook, Kent, England
About the Author
GILLIAN SHIELDS is the author of IMMORTAL, the first book about Evie and the Mystic Way, as well as many other books for young readers. She spent her childhood roaming over the Yorkshire moors and dreaming of the Brontë sisters. After studying in Cambridge, London, and Paris, she became a teacher. She has taught in a girls’ boarding school and also in a drama school where it was rumored that the ghost of a young girl could be heard crying in the night. Gillian was inspired to write IMMORTAL and BETRAYAL in celebration of the power of first love, the strength of female friendship, and the haunting mystery of the past.
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ALSO BY Gillian Shields
The Actual Real Reality of Jennifer James
Immortal
Credits
Jacket photographs © 2010 by Jamie Chung
Jacket design by Amy Ryan
Copyright
BETRAYAL. Copyright © 2010 by Gillian Shields. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shields, Gillian.
Betrayal / by Gillian Shields.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Prompted by her love for the seemingly doomed Sebastian, sixteen-year-old Evie Johnson returns for another term at the strangely sinister Wyldcliffe Abbey School, where she and two close friends try to develop and combine their newly discovered powers to save Sebastian and themselves from the encroaching forces of evil.
ISBN 978-0-06-137584-2
[1. Boarding schools—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Witches—Fiction. 4. Love?
??Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. England—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.S55478Bet 2010 2009023430
[Fic]—dc22 CIP
AC
ePub Edition © July 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200564-9
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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Gillian Shields, Betrayal - BK 2
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