First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2018

Published in this ebook edition in 2018

HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

HarperCollins Publishers

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Text copyright © Sophie Cleverly, 2018

Illustration copyright © Manuel Šumberac, 2018

Cover illustration © Kate Forrester

Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Sophie Cleverly asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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 ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, 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.

Source ISBN: 9780008218317

Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008218270

Version: 2017-12-07

Praise for

“This is one of the best books I have ever read. It was exciting, funny, warm and mysterious.” Lily, aged 9

“The whole book was brilliant … after the first paragraph it was as though Ivy was my best friend.” Ciara, aged 10

“This book is full of excitement and adventure – a masterpiece!” Jennifer, aged 9

“This is a page-turning mystery adventure with puzzles that keep you guessing.” Felicity, aged 11

“A brilliant and exciting book.” Evie, aged 8

“The story shone with excitement, secrets and bonds of friendship … If I had to mark this book out of 10, I would give it 11!” Sidney, aged 11

For Theo and Willow, who are tiny and new

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise

Dedication

Chapter One: Scarlet

Chapter Two: Ivy

Chapter Three: Scarlet

Chapter Four: Ivy

Chapter Five: Scarlet

Chapter Six: Ivy

Chapter Seven: Scarlet

Chapter Eight: Ivy

Chapter Nine: Scarlet

Chapter Ten: Ivy

Chapter Eleven: Scarlet

Chapter Twelve: Ivy

Chapter Thirteen: Scarlet

Chapter Fourteen: Ivy

Chapter Fifteen: Scarlet

Chapter Sixteen: Ivy

Chapter Seventeen: Scarlet

Chapter Eighteen: Ivy

Chapter Nineteen: Scarlet

Chapter Twenty: Ivy

Chapter Twenty-one: Scarlet

Chapter Twenty-two: Ivy

Chapter Twenty-three: Scarlet

Chapter Twenty-four: Ivy

Chapter Twenty-five: Scarlet

Chapter Twenty-six: Ivy

Chapter Twenty-seven: Scarlet

Chapter Twenty-eight: Ivy

Chapter Twenty-nine: Scarlet

Chapter Thirty: Ivy

Chapter Thirty-one: Scarlet

Chapter Thirty-two: Ivy

Chapter Thirty-three: Scarlet

Chapter Thirty-four: Ivy

Chapter Thirty-five: Scarlet

Chapter Thirty-six: Ivy

Chapter Thirty-seven: Scarlet

Chapter Thirty-eight: Ivy

Chapter Thirty-nine: Scarlet

Chapter Forty: Ivy

Acknowledgements

Have you read them all?

About the Author

Books by Sophie Cleverly

About the Publisher

Chapter One
SCARLET

t was the worst birthday I could remember. And considering I had spent my last birthday locked up in an asylum, that was really saying something.

I ran into what had once been our bedroom, slamming the door shut behind me. I flung myself down on the dusty sheets and beat the pillow with my fists, sending clouds billowing into the air.

It wasn’t long until I heard light footsteps gently treading the stairs, and the creak of someone pushing the door open. I knew it was my twin, Ivy.

“Scarlet,” she whispered, somewhere near my ear.

“No,” I said, my face still in the pillow.

“No what?” she asked.

I pushed myself up and stared at her, my arms folded. “No, I’m not going back in there. And no, I’m not going to apologise!”

She sat down on the bed beside me. “I wasn’t going to say that. I don’t blame you at all. I think she should apologise. But I know she never will.”

We hadn’t wanted to go to our father’s house that summer in the first place. We’d spent most of the holidays with our scatterbrained Aunt Phoebe, in her cosy cottage. It meant cleaning and tidying and cooking because our aunt could barely remember to do that for herself, let alone us as well, but we didn’t mind. Aunt Phoebe’s house was always filled with love.

Father’s house, on the other hand, was filled with the stepmother who hated us, and our three hideous stepbrothers. I couldn’t bear it. I missed Father sometimes – or maybe I just missed the way he had been. The rest of them were a nightmare. I hadn’t wanted to go back.

But in a rare moment of remembering that we existed, Father had turned up at Aunt Phoebe’s the day before our birthday, asking to bring us home. Aunt Phoebe had thought this was a “lovely surprise” and so here we were now. I would rather have caught the plague, to be quite honest.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t had a choice in the matter. We had waved goodbye to our aunt and sat bundled in the back of Father’s motor car, dreading what would lie ahead at the end of the journey.

Our stepmother, Edith, had greeted Father warmly, and given us a greeting colder than ice. That was typical. Ivy had tried to say hello to our stepbrothers, but they had just ignored her and carried on playing with their model trains.

Dinner hadn’t gone any better. Our stepmother had given us the smallest helpings of everything, and then called me greedy when I had asked if there was any more. Her boys got portions the size of mountains, and she gave them seconds. I glared at them one by one, but they were too busy stuffing their faces to notice.

We’d spent a chilly night in our old twin beds. I spent most of it staring through the crack in the curtains at the black night sky, hoping that if I stayed awake long enough it would delay the arrival of morning. But soon my eyes slipped shut, and I woke up to the weak, watery sun rising on our fourteenth birthday.

Ivy rolled over sleepily in her bed. “Happy birthday,” she mumbled to me.

“Happy birthday,” I said back, without much feeling. I peered over at her, through the dust spiralling in the light. She was smiling. “What?”

“Well …” She sat up and hugged her knees. “You have no idea how much it means to hear you say that.”

“Sorry,” I said to the ceiling. “I know I should be more grateful not to be ‘dead’, but I’m not. I still hate that I was left there.” The time I’d spent locked in an asylum while our nasty headmistress had told the world that I’d died was never far from my mind. “And I just have a bad feeling about this birthday too.”

The bad feeling was sitting in my stomach, weighing me down. I climbed out of bed, my bare feet heavy on the old wooden floorboards.

Ivy sighed. “It can’t possibly be worse than last year.”

I hoped she was right, but I still wasn’t convinced.

We got dressed, putting on matching dark blue dresses that were some of the few clothes we owned, and headed downstairs. It was early in the morning and the house still hadn’t warmed up, even though it was the last day of August.

“I suppose a birthday breakfast is too much to hope for,” Ivy whispered.

It was. We arrived in the chilly kitchen to find our stepmother lazing in a chair, a glass of something pale and unappetising in her hand.

“Oh,” she said when we walked in. “You’re up. Well, make yourselves useful, then. Get the fire swept and lit.”

I looked at her in disbelief. “I’m not your servant,” I muttered under my breath.

Ivy gave me a wary look.

Edith stood up and slammed her glass down on the empty table, sending the drink splashing from the sides. She must have heard me. “When you’re in my house,” she said, pointing a finger at us, “you live by my rules – understood?”

I was about to protest further, but that was when Father walked in. “Good morning,” he said, rubbing his eyes with one hand, the other tugging on his tie. “Everything all right?”

It was like someone had flicked a light switch. The murderous expression evaporated from our stepmother’s face and was replaced with a calm, serene look. “Quite wonderful, dear. The girls had just volunteered to make a fire for us, hadn’t you, girls?”

I had a good mind to set fire to her pinafore just to spite her, but that definitely wouldn’t have gone down well with Father. Ivy obviously didn’t fancy getting into trouble either, because she went over to the fireplace without a word and began sweeping it out. I muttered a few choice words under my breath and went over to help her.

When we’d finished, Edith told Father that we’d also volunteered to make everyone breakfast. Father just yawned and smiled, his eyes staring somewhere into the past.

I couldn’t take much more of this. “You know it’s our birthday, don’t you?” I said. “After all, isn’t that why you brought us here?”

There was a cloud over his expression for a moment, and his eyes shut. Our mother, Ida, had died just after we were born. I could almost see her image painted on the back of his eyelids. Our birthday was a painful reminder.

But then his eyes opened again, as if nothing had happened. “Of course I know that, Scarlet. And you’re very kind to offer to make breakfast on your birthday.”

So we made breakfast while Edith just sat in her chair by the now-roaring fire and smirked. When the bacon and eggs were done, she jumped up and pushed us out of the way. “You’ve done enough now,” she said. “Go and sit down.”

Reluctantly, I let go of the frying pan and sat down at the table.

“BOYS!” Edith yelled. “BREAKFAST!”

There was a sound like a stampeding herd as our stepbrothers came pelting down the stairs and into the kitchen. All neatly dressed, I noticed, in clothes that were shiny and new, not covered in ash and cooking grease like ours.

I watched, open-mouthed, as Edith, once again, gave them the biggest helpings. She dished out plates that were nearly as full for herself and Father, and then for us …? Well, we were given the burnt scraps from the bottom of the dish. Father didn’t even seem to notice.

I was hungry, and even scraps of burnt bacon and scrambled egg were better than nothing, so I ate it. But I could still feel the anger burning in my stomach.

“Good boys,” Edith said, as they devoured their food. “You can go out to play now. Your sisters will wash up.”

One of them, Harry – the youngest – just started laughing. And that was when I snapped.

I stood up, my chair scraping the floor loudly. “Really? Do you want us to mop the floors and make the beds, too? Happy birthday to us!”

“Don’t talk to your stepmother that way,” Father said, tracing his fork around his empty plate without even looking at me.

Ivy grabbed my dress and tugged me back down to my seat. I knew how much she hated conflict, but I couldn’t put up with this for a moment longer. It was so unfair!

“You’re making a scene again, Scarlet,” Edith said, swirling the drink in her glass. She seemed to have refilled it.

“Oh, this isn’t a scene,” I muttered. I tied my dress in angry knots round my fingers. “You should see me make a scene.”

Ivy decided to take that moment to make a desperate attempt at limiting the damage. “Father,” she said. “Do we have any presents?”

“Oh, of course,” he replied. He stood up and brushed some invisible dirt from his trousers. “I’ll get them from my study while you wash up.”

I sat and seethed until Ivy dragged me and an armful of plates over to the sink. I just knew that our stepmother was smiling smugly behind our heads.

“Here you go,” Father said as he returned. He laid two small packages wrapped in brown paper on to the table. “Now, I’m afraid I have a lot of work that I need to be getting on with. I’ll see you in a few hours.” And with that, he wandered away again, whistling something that wasn’t even a tune, but that sounded absent-minded and sad. I’d always thought that Father and Aunt Phoebe couldn’t be more different, even though they were brother and sister, but now I was beginning to see the similarities. Neither of them seemed to be on quite the same planet as the rest of us.

“See you later, darling,” Edith called after him. She stood up and went to the doorway. “I’m going for a lie-down,” she said in our direction. “Sort yourselves out.”

I slammed a pile of soapy plates on to the sideboard, making Ivy jump, but Edith had already gone.

“Could they be any more unwelcoming if they tried?” I asked.

Ivy didn’t answer but just stared down into the dirty water. I could see a tiny tear in the corner of her eye, so I put my arm round her shoulder and led her over to the presents …

She quickly cheered up, and together we eagerly ripped off the paper. I reached into the box and … oh.

Socks.

I pulled them out. They were our school regulation ones – dark blue and made of fairly soft wool that was only slightly itchy to the touch. But still. Socks.

Ivy held up her pair in front of her face. “Oh. Rookwood socks,” she said, echoing my thoughts.

I put them back down, curled together like little fluffy rats.

“Well, it’s better than nothing,” she said.

A suspicion was starting to build inside me. I went out into the hallway and down towards Father’s office where I knocked on the door.

“Busy!” came the reply.

I ignored him and walked in anyway to find him sitting at his desk, scrawling on forms and doing calculations.

“Father,” I said. “Thank you for the … uh … lovely socks. I don’t suppose Aunt Phoebe gave you any presents for us from her, or from Aunt Sara, did she?” Our aunts were the best family we had, and I couldn’t quite believe that they’d forget our birthday.

Father didn’t look up. He shuffled a piece of paper from one pile to another, and chewed on his pipe. “Phoebe gave me something,” he muttered. “A few packages in shiny paper. But as to where I put them …” He laid down his pipe and stared around the roomas if it would answer his question. “Hmm. I could have sworn they were in here. Perhaps Edith tidied them away.”

My fists clenched. Of course she did.

“Never mind, Scarlet,” he said, standing up and ushering me back out into the hall. “We’ll find them another time. Why don’t you run along and play with your brothers?”

And with that, he shut the door in my face.

“I’d rather eat worms,” I told the door.

I spun round to find Ivy standing behind me. “Did you hear that?” I asked. “She’s taken them, hasn’t she.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Ivy said, her eyes trailing to the floor.

The sight of her sad expression only stoked my fire even further. “Right,” I said. I turned on my heels and marched up the stairs. Ivy must have quickly realised what I was up to, and started running after me.

“Scarlet, we can’t …” she said.

But it was too late for that. I went straight across the landing to the master bedroom, and hammered on the door as loudly as I could. Of course, I didn’t wait for an answer. I just wrenched at the handle and pushed it open.

And there was our stepmother, lounging in the four-poster bed, munching on chocolates, and surrounded by shreds of shiny wrapping paper.

Chapter Two
IVY

honestly thought Scarlet was going to explode. I was just considering whether to fetch the fire brigade when Edith looked up at her.

“What are you doing in here?” our stepmother demanded. “Aren’t you supposed to be cleaning up?”

Scarlet stared at her for a moment, her face as scarlet as her name, speechless with anger. And then it all came pouring out in a raging torrent. “Who do you think you are? You can’t order us around like servants! You can’t treat us like dirt to be swept under the carpet! You … you can’t take our only birthday presents for yourself!”

Edith dragged herself off the bed and stalked over to Scarlet, the familiar grimace (and a smidge of cocoa) back on her face. “I’m your mother now, and I can do what I want, you insolent little brat!”

“YOU’RE NOT OUR MOTHER AND YOU NEVER WILL BE!” Scarlet shouted.

There was a breath, an instant of heavy silence. And then Edith swung out and slapped Scarlet round the face.

I gasped, and dragged my twin backwards. There was a mark across her cheek, a ghost of our stepmother’s hand.

“Girls?” Father’s voice drifted up the stairs. “Keep it down, will you! I’m trying to work.” There was the sound of the study door pulling shut again.

Edith just stood there, her chest heaving, her face flushed, wiry hair sticking up from its usual careful curls.

Scarlet broke away from me, tears flashing in her eyes, and ran across the landing. Even school had to be better than this.

I looked up at our stepmother, watching her expression turn triumphant. It made me feel sick. “She’s right,” I said quietly. “You won’t ever be our mother. Our mother was worth ten of you.”

And with that, I turned and went after my twin.

I put my arm round Scarlet and comforted her until she’d calmed down just enough to simply be angry, and then we stayed in our room for most of the day. I didn’t particularly want Scarlet and Edith anywhere near each other again, and Scarlet wasn’t exactly keen to face up to her either.

I wasn’t quite as disappointed as Scarlet about the awfulness of our birthday. It was never a particularly joyous occasion, so why would this year be any different? I thought that, deep down, Scarlet felt that the world ought to treat her better than it did. She could never understand why it didn’t happen. I, however, had much lower expectations.

Of course it goes without saying that Father didn’t come upstairs to see if we were all right. If our stepmother had told him anything about what had just happened, it would have been that Scarlet had attacked her for no reason. She always painted herself as the victim and Father always believed her.

As we wallowed in our misery, I finished reading my book. Then I unpacked and repacked my bag about three times until it was neater than neat. As horrible as Rookwood School could be, I found myself wanting to go back, which was certainly a surprise. I missed our friends – Ariadne and Rose – and the other girls too. Rookwood had improved a lot since its former headmistress and headmaster had been taken off in a police van – even with the grey porridge, the cold and the bullies, it could still be a good place sometimes.

Around lunchtime, there was a click from the doorway. Curious, I wandered over and tried the handle, only to find I couldn’t pull it open.

Scarlet sat up straight on her bed. “Did someone just lock us in?”

I nodded. “Looks like it.” Scarlet had always had a habit of kicking doors (and walls, and furniture) that I had never understood, but at that moment I was tempted to try it. Instead, I bent down and peered through the keyhole. I could see right through it – so she’d taken the key away again. No chance of pushing it out to free ourselves.

My twin put her head in her hands. “Could it be any worse?” she asked.

I heard the sound of the door unlocking just before dinner time. It opened to reveal Edith with her familiar scowl.

“Your father’s asking where you are,” she said, in a voice that implied she couldn’t be less interested and was hoping she could forget about us forever. “I said you were messing around up here. I suppose you’d better come down.”

Scarlet went over to the door and stared up at her defiantly, though I could see her hands were shaking. “You locked us in,” she said.

Edith put her nose in the air. “And? That’s beside the point. Get down there and see your father.”

I went over to stand beside Scarlet. For a moment I thought she was just going to do as she was told, but no – she was Scarlet. That wasn’t how she worked.

“He’s going to see through you one day,” she said quietly. “He’s going to realise how you treat us and –” she took a deep breath – “and what you did.”

Edith stepped closer, looming over Scarlet. “Did? I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

I knew, and I knew she knew. We were almost certain that Edith had accepted a bribe from the old headmistress, Miss Fox, to pretend that Scarlet was dead. Scarlet had found out Miss Fox’s deepest secret, and went to terrible lengths to keep it.

Scarlet just glared at our stepmother, her arms folded tightly.

Edith glared back. “Fine. Be like that. But here’s a warning for you.” She leant forward, coming face to face with us. “You’re going back to that school soon, and this time you’re staying there for good. Your father isn’t going to rescue you and neither are your crazy aunts. You’re going to get an education and learn some respect, and you’re not going to bother us again.”

I frowned. I had to speak up. “What do you mean by ‘for good’?”

“I mean,” she said, holding a calloused finger up to my face, “that I don’t want you back here. You think your life is a misery now? Just you wait.” She straightened up and stalked back to the hallway. “Just you wait,” she repeated, only now there was a flicker of glee in her mud-brown eyes. “Downstairs. NOW.”

We ate dinner in silence. I watched as Scarlet stabbed every one of her scraps of meat much harder than was necessary. I knew that she wanted to shout and scream in frustration, but it wouldn’t do any good. We just had to put up with the rest of this miserable day.

Father had looked at Edith with a sort of blank, distracted happiness when she’d handed him his dinner. I wondered if he even saw her at all. Sometimes I imagined that his mind had painted the memory of our mother over Edith, and he never quite noticed that it didn’t fit.

As soon as dinner was over, Scarlet and I headed up the stairs, brushed our teeth and went to bed early. “This birthday can’t be over soon enough,” Scarlet said.

I agreed.

Tomorrow would be the first of September. A new year at Rookwood. As I lay under the dusty sheets and stared up at the dappled ceiling, I tried to forget about everything that had just happened and imagined what it would be like being a third year. New lessons, new teachers, new students to make friends with. We’d had so many new starts, but maybe this would be the one that went right …

I smiled up into the dark, and my eyes slipped shut.

We avoided saying goodbye to Edith the next morning. (She had disappeared. I didn’t know where to, but Scarlet was sure she was up to something.) Father was going to be the one driving us back to Rookwood. The boys were playing football in the garden. I tried waving goodbye to them, only to be met with jeers.

“Boys,” Scarlet said simply, rolling her eyes.

We climbed into the back of Father’s motor car with our bags, breathing in that familiar smell of leather and petrol.

I watched sadly as the cottage faded from view. It had been our home once, after all. But Edith had made it very clear that we were no longer welcome there.

“Bye, house,” Scarlet called out of the window. “It was nice knowing you.”

“You’ll be back soon enough,” Father said, his hands loose on the wheel.

I shared a look with my twin. “I’m not so sure,” I said warily.

He tapped his fingers. “It’s only school, girls. They let you out sometimes.” He sighed as he stared out at the village. “Thirteen years old, eh? Where does the time go?”

“We’re fourteen, Father,” Scarlet said.

He just blinked. “Fourteen, really? Hmm.”

My twin rolled her eyes. I didn’t blame her. Father seemed to be paying less attention to our lives than ever. We were lucky, I supposed – lucky to have Rookwood to go to; who’d have thought I’d be saying that? It wasn’t as though we had a choice anyway – our stepmother didn’t want us there, and she didn’t want us living with our aunts either (not that they really had the room). I just had to hope that we could stay out of trouble for as long as possible. If Rookwood found any reason to expel us, well … where would we go?

The journey passed in a blur of silver skies, green leaves and grey tarmac. The route was familiar to me now, but I still remembered how strange it felt that first time, with Miss Fox and her driver. The thought made me take Scarlet’s hand and squeeze it tight.

She was writing in her diary again – a new paper journal with a green jacket that she’d found at school. Her initials, SG, were written proudly on the cover. She also seemed to have acquired a new fountain pen, which was unusual since we normally used pens you had to dip in ink. I decided it was better not to ask where she had got it from.

“Don’t jog me,” she teased, poking me in the leg. “It’s hard enough to write in this bumpy old thing as it is.”

“It’s always good to see you writing in there,” I said.

“Well,” my twin replied. “You never know when a diary might come in handy …”

Chapter Three
SCARLET

ather’s motor car pulled up on the gravel drive of Rookwood in the shadow of the enormous building, behind a queue of others and a bus. Everywhere girls were leaping out, lugging suitcases, waving to their parents. There were first years crying, clinging to mothers. But most of the older girls seemed eager to get going.

As we climbed out with our bags, I saw a familiar car arriving behind us. It came so close to ours that it almost hit the bumper, and then a familiar man who looked like a bespectacled owl got out. “Sorry!” he said.

I dropped my bag on the floor and ran over to the car, just as the door swung open and our best friend appeared behind the man. “ARIADNE!” I yelled, and jumped on her.

“Oof!” she said. “Steady on, Scarlet.”

I stepped back and grinned. “Never!”

Ivy came up beside me and gave Ariadne a hug. “We missed you so much.”

“Good morning, Sally and Irene,” Ariadne’s father said, tipping his hat at us.

“Morning, Mr Flitworth,” I replied. There was no point in correcting him now. It was what he’d always called us. We’d have to be Sally and Irene forever.

We said goodbye to Father, while Ariadne said goodbye to hers. I could hear him giving her a long lecture about safety and the importance of staying away from windows and potentially poisoned food. I half wished our father cared so much. Instead he’d just said, “Off you go then, see you soon,” and waved us towards the front entrance.

Ivy and I picked up some of Ariadne’s suitcases (she had a little convoy of them, as usual) and together we headed inside for the first day of our new year at Rookwood.

Mrs Knight was waiting in the foyer, greeting everyone. She was the head of our house – Richmond – and as of last year had become the headmistress as well, sort of by default. She was thankfully a lot less murderous than previous occupants of the position, and had a tendency towards being annoyingly cheerful.

“Welcome, welcome!” she was saying. “Everyone head to the hall, please! Carry your bags with you!”

I looked around the foyer, taking in the faces: there were some familiar ones – Nadia and Meena standing beside their very expensive luggage, even … ugh, our worst enemy, Penny, was there, chatting to some of her gang. But there were plenty of unfamiliar ones too. New girls. Mostly they looked like first years, with pristine uniforms. But there were some older girls among them, as well. Mrs Knight’s efforts to restore the school’s reputation had clearly had an effect.

We headed for the hall where the noise was deafening. Everyone was talking at once, greeting friends who they hadn’t seen all summer. We managed to find a seat, just.

“I got you these!” Ariadne said. She pulled one of her suitcases open a crack and took out two envelopes, then handed one to each of us. I tore mine open eagerly.

It was a birthday card showing a girl striding happily along while she held hands with a cat, a dog and a bird. It said, May you have a string of smiles for your birthday. I laughed. “Thanks, Ariadne.”

Ivy grinned, and waved hers at me. It was completely identical.

I tucked mine away in my bag. At least our stepmother couldn’t take these from us.

When everyone had filtered into the hall, the sound of chatter was broken by an ear-splitting whistle from the stage. The talking died away as all of the girls stared up at the swimming instructor and games teacher, Miss Bowler. She had the loudest voice in probably the entire world; she also seemed to have been given the job of ordering everyone about. “SIT DOWN, ALL OF YOU!” she boomed.

When we had all done as she said, she stepped aside, leaving Mrs Knight in full view.

“Welcome, girls!” she said, her expression as bright and cheery as ever. “Welcome to a brand-new year at Rookwood! We will be having a completely fresh start. I’m sure if we all work together, this will be the best year yet.”

She did a sort of fist-pump, clearly expecting people to cheer. Nobody did. Except Ariadne.

“First things first,” she shuffled all of the papers in front of her. “I want to announce that as I am officially the headmistress of the school, I am stepping down as the head of Richmond House. Your new house mistress will be Madame Zelda.”

Well, that was an odd choice, considering that Madame Zelda hadn’t been at the school very long and she wasn’t exactly normal. Everyone looked around to see the silver-haired ballet teacher, who was tapping her long fingernails against her arm and smiling. She gave a small nod, and a flurry of whispers began.

“So now,” Mrs Knight continued, “the first thing we need to do is get everyone lined up in alphabetical order in their house groups, then your teachers will give out room assignments and make sure that everyone knows where they’re going. Then we will give out the lesson timetables, and the lists of rules and maps of the school for the new pupils.” She took a deep breath, “And then—”

She was interrupted by the doors at the back of the hall flying open.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” came a voice.

Everyone turned in their seats to look.

It was a girl, about our age, with incredibly long jet-black hair. She was dressed in Rookwood uniform, but instead of the regulation shoes, she was wearing a pair of black pointed boots. There was a suitcase in her hand (black too, and very battered). She stood there, chin raised, as if the fact that she had just walked in late in front of the entire school was nothing at all.

Miss Bowler strode towards her. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“I’m Ebony McCloud,” said the girl. “Who are you?”

Everyone gasped and Miss Bowler spluttered. “I am your games teacher, Miss Bowler,” she said, “and you are in trouble unless you sit down right this minute!”

“All right, then,” said Ebony with a twitch of a smile, wandering over to a seat and sitting down.

She had a Scottish accent, and a voice that made me think of mist and mountains. There was a strange darkness to it.

“Ahem,” said Mrs Knight from the stage. “Everyone! Back to me, please!”

We all turned round again, but Ebony stayed stuck in my mind. She was … interesting. She reminded me a little of Violet, my former arch-nemesis. Speaking of which, I wondered if Violet had returned. I scanned the hall, but I couldn’t see her. But I did see her friend Rose – now our friend Rose – who had proved herself to be truly magnificent in the summer when she’d overcome her shyness to stand up to her evil relatives. I gave her an enthusiastic wave, and she grinned back at me.

“Now for a few notices,” Mrs Knight was saying, “and then we’ll all line up. Firstly, the library is up and running again and will be open from nine o’clock each morning for anyone who wants to read …”

I tuned out, and my mind wandered to the room assignments. Would Ivy and I get our old room back, my lucky number thirteen? I wasn’t sure how it worked. First years always had bigger dorms, but everyone else was in twos. Hopefully we’d get to keep the same one. If we didn’t, well … I hoped the new occupants wouldn’t notice the hole in the mattress where I’d hidden my diary.

“Right then,” Mrs Knight said when she’d finished reading her seemingly endless list. She waved her hands about in the air. “I repeat – line up in your houses, everyone! Richmond down the left, Mayhew in the middle, Evergreen on the right! You should have been assigned your house in your welcome letter! Alphabetical by surname, please!”

I don’t think our headmistress quite anticipated the chaos that ensued. There was a huge amount of scrambling as everyone tried to pick up their luggage and head in the right direction, climbing over seats and in some cases the other students!

“Carefully!” I heard Mrs Knight call out.

“Calm down, the lot of you!” Miss Bowler yelled. “It’s not a race!”

I picked up my bag (though we left Ariadne’s in a heap), and tried to head for the Richmond line. It wasn’t easy, given that a large amount of people were trying to head the other way.

“Watch it!” I called out to one girl who nearly swung her bag into my face. She stuck her tongue out at me as she passed.

Finally, after a lot of jostling, the three of us made it to the other side of the room and into the line. Then there was yet more jostling as we tried to figure out the order we were supposed to stand in. Ariadne’s surname was Flitworth, so she had to go further up.

Ivy nudged me. “Look,” she said. “Rose is near Ariadne.”

I realised what she meant and smiled. Rose had had to hide her identity for a long time when she’d first arrived, but now she could tell the world that she was from the wealthy Fitzwarren family.

Ivy and I slotted in next to a first year who informed us she was named Abigail Greenwich. I peered to the front and saw that Madame Zelda was up by the stage handing out sheaves of paper and clipboards, and that she was talking to Miss Finch. It made me smile to see my favourite teacher, Miss Finch, again, and to see that she and Madame Zelda were getting on all right. Or at least, passably. That was really something, considering that Madame Zelda had admitted to pushing Miss Finch off the stage when they were at ballet school, leaving her with an injured leg for life.

I was less pleased to see Penny at the head of the line, still wearing her shiny prefect badge. Would we ever get rid of her?

The teachers started at different parts of the very long line that went all the way to the end of the hall, walking along with clipboards. It wasn’t long before one of them reached us – Miss Pepper, the slightly eccentric art teacher.

“Name?” she asked.

“Ivy Grey,” my twin replied.

She nodded and ticked off the name on her register. “Of course, I taught you last year. Here’s your timetable and some forms to fill out for elective lessons and such.” She leant forward. “I hear art is very popular,” she said with a wink at the first year behind us.

Ivy took the papers and rifled through them.

“All right …” Miss Pepper ran her finger down the register. “You are assigned room thirteen on the second floor. Aaaand …”

“Scarlet Grey,” I said.

“You too, Little Miss Twin!” she said. “Room thirteen. Unlucky for some.” She handed me the same bits of paper she’d just handed Ivy, and then moved on to the next person.

“Phew!” Ivy said. “Same room again. And together.”

“Yes!” I cheered. Everything was going to plan. “I’ll just see who Ariadne got. Maybe she’ll be sharing with Rose?”

I was pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to leave the line, but considering I had everything I needed, I didn’t think it mattered. I stepped out and wandered forward to find …

“Ariadne?”

She was leaning against the window, holding her papers. But her face was white and her hands were shaking.

“Ariadne?” I asked again, waving my hand in front of her face. “What’s wrong? Who did you get?”

My friend turned to me, her eyes glazed and distant. “I can’t … I can’t …” she said.

And then she fainted.

Chapter Four
IVY

ran over to Ariadne immediately. Her legs had gone from underneath her, and Scarlet was trying to hold her up. “What on earth happened?” I asked.

Everyone was staring now.

“SOMEONE GET THE SMELLING SALTS!” Miss Bowler boomed.

Ariadne’s eyelids fluttered. “I’m f-fine,” she mumbled. “Isn’t it hot in here?”

It wasn’t particularly hot at all, but I fanned Ariadne anyway. “Are you all right?” I took her arm. She didn’t feel that warm.

“I’m fine,” she said again, standing upright and brushing herself down, but her face looked drawn and she was breathing a bit too heavily for my liking. “Perfectly fine.”

Suddenly, I got the feeling that whatever the matter was, it was something she didn’t want to talk about in front of the staring eyes of the whole school.

“She’s all right,” I called.

“Nothing to see here!” Scarlet yelled, waving people away.

“Crisis averted!” Miss Bowler shouted. Her voice drowned out everyone else’s. “Carry on!”

There was the usual low mumbling of gossip, but slowly everyone went back to what they’d been doing.

Scarlet and I went into a huddle with Ariadne. “What is it?” Scarlet hissed. “What’s really the matter?”

Ariadne gulped. “It’s my room assignment,” she said.

“Not Violet again?” Scarlet asked. I didn’t think that was likely. Violet had left last term. I wasn’t sure if she was ever coming back.

“Worse,” Ariadne replied. “It’s … it’s Muriel Witherspoon.”

Scarlet and I looked at each other, and then asked in unison, “Who?”

“Muriel Witherspoon,” she repeated.

Whoever this person was, Ariadne seemed terrified of her.

“She was the bully from my old school,” Ariadne explained. “The really awful one. The one who ran the secret club in the shed that I burned down.”

“Oh …” I looked around, remembering the story of Ariadne’s past and how she had happened to come to Rookwood. I wondered if this girl was someone I’d already seen. “Are you sure it’s the same person? Why would she be here?”

“I heard the name,” Ariadne said desperately. “How many Muriel Witherspoons can there be? Oh, this is a disaster!”

“It’ll be all right,” I said. “We’ll protect you. We won’t let her pick on you again.”

But Ariadne didn’t look reassured. She shuffled her feet about on the hall floor. “But we’re sharing a room! You won’t be there at night. What if she’s nasty to me then?”

“I’ll give her a good punching the next morning,” Scarlet offered.

I shot my twin a look. “No punching, Scarlet. We’ll just … we’ll tell her not to. We’ll tell the teachers. We’ll do something.”

“I’ll go and look for her,” my twin said suddenly.

“Scarlet, don’t!” Ariadne tried to hold her back, but Scarlet was already striding down the line towards the Ws. Ariadne gave me a panicked look, and then we both set off after her.

Madame Zelda was at that part of the line, checking through the names. Scarlet lurked behind her, obviously hoping to overhear. I noticed that Josephine Wilcox didn’t seem to have come back to school – which was probably no surprise, given that Miss Fox had pushed her out of a window last year.

Madame Zelda had just handed a timetable to a fourth year named Harriet Wilson, so this Muriel had to be nearby. When Ariadne froze, I knew she must have seen her. She spun round and looked the other way.

“Which one?” I whispered.

“The one with the felt cap and the blonde curls,” she said out of the side of her mouth.

I tried to have a look without being too obvious, but Scarlet was already ruining that because she was standing by the line and clearly staring at everyone. I soon saw who Ariadne was talking about – near to Harriet.

I had to admit that, at first glance, this girl didn’t look like a terrible bully. She didn’t have a permanent sneer like Penny’s. In fact her eyes were glued to the floor, as though she was trying to make herself as small as possible.

“Muriel … Witherspoon?” Madame Zelda said, the name unfamiliar on her tongue.

The girl nodded. Ariadne squeezed my hand.

“Here you go.” Madame Zelda gave her the little sheaf of papers. “Now, you’ll be in room fifteen, with Ariadne Flitworth.” She moved on to the next girl, revealing Muriel’s stunned expression.

I turned back. “She looks almost as shocked as you did,” I said. “But she didn’t faint.”

Ariadne gripped the back of the seat she was leaning on. “She’s probably just waiting so she can humiliate me in front of everyone.”

I felt a tap on my shoulder – it was Scarlet. “I don’t want to worry you …” she said, “but Muriel Witherspoon’s coming this way.”

I turned round to see where Scarlet was pointing. I thought Ariadne was about to start hyperventilating.

“Oh no,” she said quietly. “Oh no, oh no, oh—”

But she didn’t get a final oh in because Muriel had appeared beside us. She tipped her hat back away from her face and looked down. “Ariadne?”

Ariadne appeared to be trying to sink into the floor, but eventually she looked up. “Hello, Muriel,” she said softly.

There was a tense moment, like a little bubble of silence in the middle of the hall chaos, then Muriel spoke again. “It’s good to see you.” She paused. “Look, I’m really sorry about all that bother at our old school. I hope we can put it behind us. I’ve turned over a new leaf.”

“Oh,” Ariadne said, but I could tell by the tone of her voice that she wasn’t the slightest bit convinced. “Well. That’s good. Very nice.”

“I’ll see you in our room,” Muriel said with a small smile. She nodded at Scarlet and me and then walked away.

“Well, that didn’t seem so bad,” I said.

“So bad?” Ariadne shook her head. “She’s just pretending. She has to be. She was so horrible, Ivy! You wouldn’t believe it.”

Scarlet shrugged. “I know how horrible some people can be – we’ve met Penny. And Miss Fox. And—”

“All right,” Ariadne replied, “I get the idea. But she’s as bad as all of them. Worse!”

I wasn’t sure I could believe that, especially not since the Muriel I’d seen in front of me had just been so polite. We had to reassure Ariadne somehow, or she was never going to stop worrying about it. “Don’t panic,” I told her. “Perhaps you just need to give her a chance? She might really have changed.”

Ariadne said nothing, just bit her lip and blinked at me.

“And if she hasn’t …” Scarlet said, “then she’ll be sorry.”

“Scarlet …” I warned.

“What? I didn’t say I’d hit her this time …”

Finally, the time came for Mrs Knight to send us all to our rooms to get unpacked. The first lessons wouldn’t be starting until after lunch, according to the timetable.

“All these maps and timetables would certainly have been useful to help me find my way around when I had to pretend to be you,” I muttered to Scarlet as we climbed the stairs, lugging all the bags.

“I had mine,” Ariadne said. “I think Miss Fox just didn’t give them to you.”

“Well, at least Mrs Knight is more organised,” I said.

“And less murderous,” added Scarlet.

Ariadne came to a halt at the top of the stairs, as if her feet had just stopped working. A bunch of other girls pushed round her, with a draught of angry mumbling.

“I don’t want to go in there,” she said, staring down the hallway.

“It’ll be fine.” Scarlet squeezed her arm. “Just leave the door open. You can come back to our room if she’s awful.”

“All right,” Ariadne sighed. “Thank you.”

Scarlet and I trudged down the corridor together and dropped Ariadne’s suitcases off at her door.

“Wish me luck,” she said, pulling a face.

“Luck,” Scarlet said.

Ariadne took a deep breath and went inside.

When we didn’t hear any shouting or screaming, we assumed things were all right. I truly hoped for Ariadne’s sake that this Muriel girl really had turned over a new leaf.

We headed for room thirteen, and stopped outside the familiar door. In a strange way, it was good to see it again. Scarlet smiled up at her lucky number and then let us in. The room was just as we’d left it: the twin beds, the desk, the wardrobe, the same old threadbare carpet, the same smell of dusty air and freshly washed sheets.

I laid my bag down on my bed. “Do you think Ariadne will really be all right?” I asked, doubt beginning to creep into my mind.

“She’ll be fine,” Scarlet sighed. “By the end of the week Ariadne and Muriel will probably be having midnight feasts and knitting each other scarves.”

I laughed. “I hope so.”

Scarlet took out her timetable and squinted at it. “It’s not too different from last year, although there are some new lessons on there. Some new teachers too.”

“And new pupils,” I said, thinking of all the girls I’d seen that I hadn’t recognised. And then there was Muriel, and the mysterious Ebony …

“You’ve got your worried face on,” Scarlet said. She had thrown her bag on the floor and was already pulling things out of it.

“It’s nothing,” I said with a sigh, and then remembered that we’d promised not to keep things from each other any more. “It’s … it’s just all this. Starting a new term again. I feel a little lost.”

My twin stood up. “I was lost once. And you know what happened?”

“What?” I asked, turning to face her.

“You found me,” she said with a grin.

And somehow, that was enough to make me feel better.

Chapter Five
SCARLET

he first class of the year was art with Miss Pepper. I’d never been very good at the subject – I preferred writing – and I didn’t like not being able to do things.

We met Ariadne waiting in the hallway outside the art room, obviously trying to stand as far away from her new roommate as possible.

“Was it all right?” I asked.

Ariadne nodded. “She didn’t really say very much in the room,” she whispered. “But I’m sure she’s just saving up her meanness.”

Muriel was leaning against the wall, her nose in a book. She didn’t seem like she was about to start bullying anyone. There were a couple of other girls I didn’t recognise as well in amongst the crowd of our class that was forming, two of them huddled together and whispering.

And then there was Ebony McCloud. She swanned down the hallway and suddenly everyone was silent and staring at her. She acted like she didn’t even notice, and instead just walked up to the art-room door. She really was fascinating.

Dot Campbell leant forward and said, “Um, Miss said we weren’t allowed in until …”

But Ebony just completely ignored her and went straight into the room.

“Well then,” I shrugged. If she was going in, I was going in. And it didn’t take long for everyone else to follow me.

Noisily, everyone found a seat, Muriel going right to the back as we made our way to the front. The desks were bigger and messier in art and there was no seating plan. At that moment, the bell rang, and not long after that, Miss Pepper walked in.

She pushed her red glasses down her nose and stared around at us. “I thought I’d told you not to come in before the bell, girls?”

Everyone looked at the new girl, but no one said a word. Ebony just smiled.

Miss Pepper didn’t seem to know what to do. “Right then,” she said. “Onwards and upwards. Art to be made. Still life!” She pulled a cloth off her desk, revealing a bowl of fruit of all shapes and sizes.

Anna Santos raised her hand. “Can we eat the fruit, Miss?”

Miss Pepper stared at her. “Where would be the art in that exactly, Miss Santos?”

Anna just blinked. She had always been a few bananas short of a fruit bowl.

“Moving swiftly on,” the art teacher continued, “let’s start by looking at the light and shade …”

By the end of the lesson, I had drawn something that at least vaguely resembled a bunch of fruit. I peered over at Ivy’s – it was slightly better than mine, but she was left-handed and had smudged some of her pencil as she’d leant over the page. She made a face at it.

“Leave them on my desk, please, artists,” Miss Pepper said.

One by one, we all left our masterpieces for her to mark. But when Ebony went up, Miss Pepper stopped bustling around and peered down at Ebony’s sheet of paper through her glasses. “You, girl,” she called out after her. “What’s your name?”

Ebony stopped and turned back slowly. “Ebony McCloud,” she answered.

Miss Pepper reached down, picked up the drawing and stared at it. “What is the meaning of this?” she asked. There was an undercurrent of something in her voice that might have been anger, or perhaps it was fear.

Ebony just stared at her. “I drew what I wanted,” she said. “Isn’t that okay?” And then she sat down.

I waited, holding my breath. If she had said that when Miss Fox was around, she’d have been in for a caning. Thankfully, Miss Pepper was a lot less violent, but she still didn’t usually take any nonsense from her students.

Any moment now, I thought, she’s going to launch into her speech about how you have to follow the rules of art before you can break the rules.

But something unexpected happened. Miss Pepper just stood there silently for a moment and then said, “Right. Well, that’s enough for today, ladies. You need to head to the hall now to pick your sports.” She put Ebony’s drawing back on the pile and blinked at it. “Right,” she repeated. And then she left the room. The bell hadn’t even rung yet.

I looked around at the class, but everyone was just sitting there. I had to see what was going on. So I got out of my seat and went over to look at Ebony’s drawing.

In amongst the many drawings of the colourful bowl of fruit, there was a picture that stood out. It was black and white, and it was of a castle. There was a silhouette of a lady standing in the window, and bats flying from the tower. The lady was weeping white tears, her hair streaming out behind her. She was staring at a row of fresh graves, marked with crosses in the dirt. It was beautiful in a strange and dark way.

I picked it up and waved it at the new girl in disbelief. “I can’t believe you drew this instead of the fruit!” A murmur started up around the class as everyone stood up to leave, all of them casting nervous glances at Ebony as they went.

She just smiled at me. “Why? Don’t you like it?” she asked.

“It’s very … artistic,” Ariadne piped up.

Ivy was blinking at it, as if she were wondering whether it would transform into a fruit bowl before her eyes.

I didn’t know what to say. I settled for, “You’re a strange one, aren’t you?”

It wasn’t meant to be an insult, and Ebony didn’t seem to take it that way. In fact quite the opposite. “Why, thank you,” she said as she stood up. She flashed me a brilliant white smile, swung her black satchel over her shoulder and walked out like she was floating on air.

“There’s something about that girl,” Ivy said, once her eyes had followed Ebony out of the room. “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s definitely something.”

My mind was elsewhere. “Why did Miss Pepper act like that?” I said out loud. “Why did she just let it go? How come the new girl doesn’t get a lecture? I painted a tree the wrong colour once and she said I was ‘insulting Turner’s legacy’!”

“It was most peculiar,” Ariadne replied. “She—” Ariadne paused mid-sentence as Muriel came to stand right next to her.

“What do you do for games, Ariadne?” Muriel asked, as if they were the best of chums.

Ariadne gaped for a moment. “Um,” she said, “I quite like chess.”

Muriel brushed her blonde hair back from her face. “I meant … what sport do you like?”

“Hockey,” Ariadne said, when she’d recovered enough from the fact that her former bully was trying to make small talk.

“Oh, right,” said Muriel. “That sounds good. See you at the next lesson, then.” She smiled shyly and headed out of the art room.

Ariadne still looked horrified. I went over and shook her shoulder gently. “Come on,” I said. “We’d better get going.”

“Is she going to pick hockey too?” Ariadne wailed.

Ivy looked up at me. “Would that be so terrible?”

“I manage to score enough bruises on my own without her getting involved,” our friend replied sadly. “She’ll probably knock me into the goal on purpose. Or try to hit my legs out from under me. Or shoot the ball into my face. Or …”

“She won’t,” I said. “I told you that I’ll see to her if she does anything like that to you.”

Ariadne’s head sank on to the desk, her hair narrowly missing a pot of paint. “Perhaps I should just take up swimming instead.”

I think the same thoughts ran through all of our heads. Miss Bowler. The freezing-cold swimming pool. The lake from the school trip, where Ariadne had felt something grabbing her leg …

“Perhaps not,” we all said in unison.

We made our way to the hall, where the sign-up sheets for the different sports were pinned on the boards. Of course, there was no question of what Ivy and I were going to pick. We’d loved ballet for years, even if it had got us into trouble in the past. Although that was usually more my fault than the ballet’s.

Ariadne had gone from hating hockey to enjoying it. I saw her face fall as she watched Muriel sign her name on the sheet. Still, she went over and added her name below it. I gave her a reassuring pat on the back as I walked past.

“It’ll be fine,” I said.

“Fine for you, maybe,” Ariadne grumbled.

Miss Bowler was marching around like an army sergeant, as usual. She seemed to be relishing the extra power she’d been given now that Mrs Knight was headmistress. “Girls!” she barked periodically. “Sign up and get in your groups!”

We were amongst the usual ballet crowd, minus the girls who had left the school. Madame Zelda was standing beside us, waving an incense stick (which was something she liked to do for no apparent reason).

After a lot of hustle and bustle, everyone was finally in their groups.

Everyone except Ebony.

She was standing in the middle of the hall, her boots firmly planted, her arms folded, her black hair tumbling over her sleeves.

Miss Bowler strode over to her. “What exactly do you think you’re doing, Miss McCloud?”

“I won’t be picking a sport,” said Ebony matter-of-factly.

Miss Bowler looked flabbergasted. “Excuse me? And why ever not, missy?”

Ebony’s lip curled with the ghost of a satisfied smile. “Because I don’t want to.”

Everyone gasped. I couldn’t help but feel a little impressed. This girl had some nerve. You didn’t speak to a teacher like that – and certainly not the strict games teacher – unless you wanted to receive a deafening lecture and then be forced to clean all the green gunk out of the swimming pool.

But as we all braced ourselves for the impact … nothing happened. Miss Bowler just blinked at her and then said, “Fine. But you’ll be writing essays this hour every week. Understand?” Then she stormed away, muttering under her breath.

Ebony nodded, turned on her heel and left the hall. She was still smiling.

“What exactly just happened back there?” Nadia asked.

“I wouldn’t get away with that,” Penny grumbled.

Ivy looked at me. “You have to admit, that was strange,” she said. “That’s the second time today that she’s just been let off the hook.”

“I know.” I shuffled my feet on the floor. I was itching to get back into my ballet shoes. “It’s like …”

“Like she’s got the teachers under a spell,” said Nadia from behind us, her eyes wide.

Chapter Six
IVY

t was wonderful to be back in the ballet studio again. Madame Zelda had taken us down to where Miss Finch was waiting.

“You’re older now, girls,” Miss Finch said. “Things are going to get harder. We’ll need you all to be on your best behaviour.”

Madame Zelda nodded, tapping her long fingernails on her arm. “Discipline, discipline, discipline,” she said in her unusual accent. “Work hard, and you will reap the rewards.”

It was harder. The two teachers pushed us to do moves that were more difficult than we’d ever done before. I could feel my muscles stretching to their limits, my joints clicking as I pulled them into unfamiliar positions.

By the end of it, when we went into reverence and bowed and curtseyed to the teachers, I was exhausted. Scarlet and I sat down to unlace our shoes, breathless.

I stared at my face in the mirror, my hair already falling out of my tight bun. Madame Zelda walked past. “Well done, Ivy,” she said, “and Scarlet. Both of you did your best today.”

I smiled, but something about the sight of Madame Zelda made my thoughts return to Ebony and what Nadia had said. She did seem to have some sort of power over the teachers. But what that could be, I had no idea.

Feeling drained after the long day, we made our way to Rookwood’s dining hall for supper. I hated to say it, but I was actually looking forward to the food. The air was filled with chatter, as always.

We met Ariadne in the queue. Thankfully, she didn’t look any more bruised than usual so Muriel couldn’t have hurt her.

“Nothing happened,” she said with a shrug. “Muriel just played hockey. I couldn’t believe it!”

“I told you so,” Scarlet said. “I think she must have really changed. Nothing to worry about.”

“Until she murders me in my sleep,” said Ariadne with a theatrical shudder. But I was pretty certain she was joking.

I looked around at the rows of long tables. Both Muriel and Ebony appeared to have been placed in Mayhew House, judging by where they were sitting, and other new students were scattered about all over the place. At one end of all the tables, first years were gathering, trying their first-ever helpings of Rookwood’s mystery stew, their uniforms perfect and shiny and straight.

We got our bowls and carried them on trays over to our table, where Madame Zelda was now sitting as the new head of Richmond House. I wasn’t surprised to see that she appeared to have brought her own food. Whatever she was eating certainly seemed to involve far more fresh vegetables than we were ever given.

As we passed where the girls from Mayhew were sitting, I saw Ebony daintily scooping the stew with her spoon. She even managed to make eating look glamorous and faintly mysterious. I noticed that the first and second years were all staring at her, wide-eyed and whispering.

Muriel, on the other hand, was drawing no attention at all. She was sitting alone, not talking to anyone. She waved at Ariadne as we walked by, and then went back to her dinner.

“It seems so strange to think that she bullied you. What did she actually do?” Scarlet asked as we got to our table.

“Scarlet!” I said. “Ariadne probably doesn’t want to talk about that.”

Ariadne sighed. “No, it’s all right. I haven’t explained much about it, really.”

Scarlet waved a fork at her. “Go on,” she said. We were sitting far enough away from any of the teachers, so we could speak freely.

“She was truly horrible,” Ariadne began. “Everyone at Hightower was afraid of her. Except for her gang, of course.”

“Hightower?” I asked, in between mouthfuls.

“Hightower School for Girls. Where I was before.” Her eyes glazed over with thoughts of the past. “I loved it there, at first. Before I met Muriel Witherspoon.” She took a deep breath. “It only took her a day to give me a whole list of nasty nicknames. And then she just wouldn’t stop picking on me. She would take my things and try to hurt me any time she got a chance.”

“Sounds like a few people I know,” Scarlet said through a mouthful of stew.

“Oh yes,” said Ariadne, “but that was just the start of it. She formed this secret club called the Crow Club that met in this shed out by the playing fields. It was a bit like the Whispers, except it only existed so she could be horrible to people.” The Whispers was the secret society of past pupils that our mother had belonged to. It had been quite the opposite of this Crow Club, though – they had actually tried to expose the corruption in the school and protect the other students.

Ariadne frowned at the table as she continued explaining. “They spread rumours all the time. They wouldn’t let me into the club because they said I was a ‘goody two-shoes’. And then they told everyone … well, I don’t want to say because it was just too horrible.”

“And that’s when you burned down the shed?” I asked, remembering how Ariadne had been expelled.

She nodded slowly. “I was just so sick of it. They were making my life a misery!”

“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” said Scarlet. “I’m not exactly the queen of self-restraint when it comes to bullies, am I?” She grinned, and we grinned back at her.

“Freaks!” I heard a quiet voice say by my ear. But … it sounded friendly. And familiar.

I turned to see Rose standing beside me, with her empty tray.

“Oh yes!” Scarlet said with a grin. “Freaks together! That’s us, isn’t it?”

Rose grinned. When we’d had quite the adventure in the summer, we’d reassured Rose that she wasn’t alone in being an outsider. She may have been locked in an asylum and plagued by nasty relatives, but we knew all about that too.

“Nice to see you again, Rose,” I said.

She nodded. She didn’t talk a lot and she chose her words carefully.

“Everything all right?” Scarlet asked. “No more rogue relatives bothering you?” I shuddered. Rose’s cousin had nearly got us killed in the process of trying to steal her inheritance.

Rose nodded again. “I got a lawyer,” she said in her voice that was barely above a whisper. There was a mischievous sparkle in her eyes.

At that point, Mrs Knight appeared and began hovering around our table. “Good evening, girls,” she said. “Is all well over here in Richmond?”

“Wonderful, thank you,” said Madame Zelda, twirling a lettuce leaf with her fork. And it was true – everyone did seem to be behaving so far, which was quite unusual for our table. Madame Zelda was certainly a bit more intimidating than Mrs Knight, which helped. I got the impression she wanted the headmistress to go away.

“Oh good, good,” Mrs Knight said. She walked over to where we were sitting. “Staying out of trouble, girls?”

“Of course,” said Scarlet, batting her eyelashes comically. I nearly snorted my drink out of my nose. Rose laughed and walked away to join the back of the dinner queue.

“Ah,” said the headmistress. “I hope you will continue to keep an eye on Rose.”

“Is she allowed to stay now, Miss?” Ariadne asked. After all, Rose hadn’t always been a pupil at Rookwood.

Mrs Knight smiled and rubbed her sleeves. “Oh yes. We were able to secure some of Rose’s inheritance to pay for her to be here full time. She’ll be joining some lessons as well. Not all of them straight away, mind. That might be too much. She’s had a tough time.”

“That’s so kind of you, Miss,” I said, and I meant it. I couldn’t imagine our former headteachers showing any sort of compassion for a student.

Mrs Knight blushed. “Oh, it’s nothing. Right, girls, I mean it – you’ll stay out of trouble this term, won’t you?”

“Yes, Miss,” we chorused. I hoped we meant that.

When we’d finished (and Ariadne had gone back for a second helping of tinned peaches in custard, which was admittedly unusually nice for Rookwood), we picked up our trays to take them away.

We passed Ariadne’s former roommates, who were from the year below us, and were all sitting together.

They all waved. “Hello, Ariadne!” they called out in unison.

I recognised the girl who had become the unofficial leader of the group; she was Agatha, who had a bird’s nest of frizzy brown hair and loved to be in charge. “Psst,” she hissed, leaning forward. “Have you seen that new girl, Ebony McCloud?”

“Oh yes,” Scarlet replied.

“She’s certainly … interesting,” Ariadne said politely.

Agatha’s eyes slid across the room, as if she were checking for spies. Then she leant across the table again. “We heard she’s a witch!”

The other girls all nodded, wide-eyed and serious.

Ariadne paused. “Really?”

Scarlet looked at them incredulously. “A witch? As in … pointy hats and broomsticks and cauldrons?”

“Oh yes,” said Evelyn, the red-haired one. “All of that. And she can do spells.”

“Isn’t it exciting?” said another of them, Bonnie, her bright eyes sparkling. “Do you think she’ll teach us?”

“She can probably teach you how to be even more weird than you lot already are,” Scarlet said, but they didn’t seem to notice. The rumour mill was in full flow.

“Do you think she can make potions? Maybe she’d make a love potion for me …”

“I bet she can see the future!”

“If we look in her window at night we can see if she transforms into a bat!”

Wordlessly, we backed away. Ariadne’s old roommates were a little intense once they got an idea in their heads.

“Ebony’s certainly strange,” I said, as I scraped my bowl clean. “But where can they have got this idea from?”

Ariadne wrinkled her nose, though whether it was at the food slops or at her friends’ gossip I wasn’t sure. “Who knows?” she said.

Scarlet frowned. “I think they believe anything anyone tells them. I think she’s just eccentric, that’s all.”

I nodded in agreement. It wasn’t surprising that Ebony was a little strange – who wasn’t, at Rookwood?

But as I walked past her, with her hair the colour of the night sky and her eyes grey as storm clouds, I began to wonder if perhaps there was more to her than met the eye.

Chapter Seven
SCARLET

t was our first night back at Rookwood, and it didn’t take long for trouble to find us.

We’d unpacked and were heading to the bathrooms to get ready for bed. An hour or so earlier, Ariadne had sloped off to her dorm with Muriel.

The lavatories were packed, filled with girls jostling to get to the mirrors and brush their teeth. As we waited at the back, Matron came in and whistled. “One at a time, you lot! The sinks aren’t going anywhere!” She left again, but the chaos didn’t improve by much. Some sort of queue began to form behind each sink, but it was messy.

We waved to Ariadne, who was on the other side of the crush. Muriel was there too, her beanpole legs making her stand head and shoulders above most of the other girls. She was staring at her Rookwood regulation toothbrush, looking unimpressed.

But everything changed when Ebony walked in.

The crowds parted like she was Moses. She had that enigmatic smile on her face as she glided along. She walked straight up to where Muriel was standing and said, “I’m going to use this mirror.”

Muriel stopped, the toothbrush still in her mouth, and turned to look down at Ebony. Despite being smaller than Muriel, Ebony gave the impression she was eight feet tall.

“Mmscuse me?” Muriel said around the toothbrush.

“I said I’m going to use this one.” Ebony didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. Everyone had gone silent and was staring at her. “Or …”

Muriel spat a foamy mouthful into the sink. “Or what?”

“Or you’ll regret getting in my way,” said Ebony. She tipped her head on one side. That smile wasn’t going anywhere. “The world has a way of punishing people who don’t do what I want.”

Now, having heard about the fearsome Muriel from Ariadne, I assumed we were about to witness something dramatic. So of course I stood on tiptoe to get a better look.

But to my surprise, Muriel just looked hurt. “Why?” she said. “I waited my turn. I’ll be done in a moment.”

And then, as I watched, she turned, slipped on something and fell backwards into a heap on the floor. There were gasps. But no one moved.

Ebony looked down at her. “I told you so,” she said. She stepped over Muriel and began brushing her silky hair in the mirror and humming something. It was a tune I didn’t recognise. It sounded almost like a nursery rhyme.

I didn’t like what I had seen one bit.

How did that happen? I wondered. There was a moment when there was no sound in the bathroom but the strange humming. And then a second later, Muriel sat up and choked back a sob. It was as if there had been a spell that had just been broken, and everyone started talking again.

I frowned and began shoving my way over to the sinks. “Come on,” I said “Are none of you going to help her up?” I reached down. Muriel reluctantly took my hand and climbed up unsteadily. She rubbed her bruised legs and glared at Ebony. And without a word, she ran into the corridor.

I didn’t know what Ebony was playing at, but she was reminding me uncomfortably of our old enemy Violet – or at least, how vile Violet had been in our first year. The sort of person who thought they were better than everyone else and ordered them around. And people were just letting her get away with it!

I stood beside her, hands on my hips, while she preened. “What did you do that for, Ebony?” I asked.

She just blinked at me, and then she leant forward and whispered one word: “Power.”

“What?” I looked around at the other girls to see if they were listening, but everyone had moved on to something else. It was as though the events of the past few minutes had evaporated from their minds.

“Power,” she repeated. “Some of us have it …” She looked towards the door. “Some of us don’t.” And then she turned back to the mirror and carried on humming that same song.

“Right, well,” I muttered. “Perhaps you could use some of that power to stop being a nasty piece of work.”

She ignored me.

Ariadne pushed through and stood next to me. “I should … I should go and see if Muriel’s all right,” she said.

I was a little surprised, but not completely. No matter what Muriel had done to Ariadne in the past, they’d been getting on better and Ariadne was very forgiving – a good person at heart.

I didn’t think I’d be able to say the same about Ebony.

Ivy and I eventually managed to reach the sinks and get ourselves ready for bed, and then we headed back to room thirteen. I had to admit I was a little relieved not to run into Ebony again. Something about her just wasn’t quite right.

Getting under the sheets was the strangest feeling after being away from Rookwood for so long. Our beds had been made with hospital corners as usual, meaning I had to untuck the whole thing before I could actually climb into it. But once I was lying down, I had to admit … it almost felt like home. More than anywhere else did, anyway.

I thought briefly about hiding my new diary in the mattress, but that wouldn’t be much of a hiding place, since everyone knew about it now. Do I need to hide it? I thought. I didn’t have so many secrets these days.

But then I thought of what had just happened in the lavatories. I was no longer faced with Miss Fox or Violet, and Penny seemed to have mellowed a little, but then there were people like Ebony.

I decided to put the diary inside my pillow, just for now. I’d have to find a better place, though, or it could get tossed into the laundry.

Ivy yawned in the bed across the room. “Back at Rookwood,” she sighed.

“Everything’s different, but …” I took a deep breath. “There’s more of the same. Bullies and secrets and—”

“Stew,” Ivy finished for me. “Lots and lots of stew.”

We smiled at each other in the darkness.

“Night, Scarlet,” she said.

“Night, Ivy.”

It was chilly and the sheets were a little scratchy against my skin. But only a few moments passed before I slipped into a deep and dreamless sleep.

I woke to a loud clanging, and almost panicked before I realised it was Rookwood’s regular morning bell.

I sat up, stretched and looked around to find Ivy already sitting at the desk, brushing her hair with our mother’s brush.

“How are you awake already?” I asked.

She shrugged happily. “I slept well.”

“Me too,” I said. I unfolded myself from the covers and got up. A glance out of our window with its threadbare curtains revealed a bright day outside. The leaves were rustling in the trees, waving gently like green fingers.

“I wonder how Ariadne got on,” Ivy said. “With her first night sharing with Muriel, I mean.”

Once we were dressed and ready, we went to investigate. We knocked on their door and Ariadne’s mousy face peered out. “Morning,” she whispered, slipping into the corridor.

“So … did you survive?” Ivy asked, even though it was plainly obvious that she had.

Ariadne’s brow wrinkled. “Nothing happened. She seemed upset after that incident with Ebony, and I asked if she was all right. That cheered her up a little. Then she just said she was going to read a book and didn’t speak another word.”

“See?” I poked her gently. “I told you it would be fine.”

“Scarlet, stop poking people,” Ivy said.

I poked her in the arm, just to prove a point.

Ariadne still didn’t look very reassured. I noticed there were bags under her eyes, and her hair was a bit of a tangle. “So you didn’t sleep as well as we did?”

She shuffled her feet. “Well, I know it’s silly, but I couldn’t relax knowing she was in the room. It was like … being haunted or something. I can’t forget what she was like before.”

As if on cue, the door opened and Muriel appeared. We all looked up – and Ariadne went a bit white. But she didn’t seem to have heard what we’d been saying. She just smiled at us. “Morning,” she said. “What do they do for breakfast around here?”

“Porridge,” I said.

“Oh.” She didn’t seem too disappointed. For someone who had apparently been the worst bully since Penny, she appeared to be quite cheerful. “Well, see you down there.” She strode away towards the stairs.

We both looked at Ariadne without saying anything. I raised my eyebrows, as if to say: A bully? Really?

“I’m serious!” she squeaked. “She was awful!”

“It’s all right,” said Ivy. “We believe you. It’s just that … she seems different now.”

I nodded in agreement. “I think it’s Ebony we need to worry about.”

In the dining hall, the familiar thick smell of porridge greeted us, but I could see something was different straight away.

Ebony had gained a following.

It was only a small one, but it was still a following. She was up at the serving hatch and there was a little group of girls trailing her like kittens round their mother.

As we got closer, I realised that the group mostly consisted of Ariadne’s old roommates, as well as some of the other younger girls.

“What’s that about?” I hissed, gesturing over to them as we joined the back of the queue.

Ariadne’s eyes were wide. “I think she has a fan club.”

We watched as two of the girls fought over who was going to carry Ebony’s tray for her, which was eventually solved by Ebony handing one of them her mug of tea. They went over to one of the tables and all gathered round her. She was talking. I had no idea what she was saying, since it just faded into all the surrounding noise, but they were all leaning in and hanging on her every word. She waved a hand at one point and all their eyes followed it, as if she were drawing something in the air.

“Now that’s just odd,” I said. “She can’t be that interesting, surely?”

One of the new teachers went over – by the looks of it, she was telling some of them off for not sitting at their house table. But they didn’t pay her any attention, and she walked off looking red-faced and flustered.

When we’d picked up our helpings of porridge, we headed for our table. I couldn’t help taking a sneaky detour past where they were sitting. Pieces of their conversation floated to my ears.

“Is it true?” I heard one of the younger girls say.

“Teach me, Ebony, please!”

“Show us what you can do!”

I rolled my eyes. They were so unbelievably desperate for her attention.

But the last exchange I caught as I walked past them was more interesting.

“Can you really do magic?” I heard Agatha say, her voice glittering with awe.

For a moment, Ebony said nothing. I stopped in my tracks. She was looking straight at me, and her stormy eyes seemed to crackle with lightning.

“Yes,” said Ebony. “Yes, I can.”

Chapter Eight
IVY

e managed to finish breakfast without incident, but the first lesson of the day was to be a different matter altogether.

I’d studied the new timetable carefully. It was a relief to actually have been given one, and not just to have to trail after Ariadne like I’d done when I’d started at Rookwood, pretending that I knew what was happening. The first lesson was history, with Madame Lovelace – a teacher so old that she appeared to have acquired cobwebs.

“Anywhere you like, girls,” she was saying in her creaky voice as we filed into the room. “It’s a new year, after all.”

Scarlet and I darted to get desks side by side. I only realised once I’d got there that it meant Ariadne would have to go behind us. “Sorry,” I whispered.

“It’s all right,” she said, finding a desk a few rows back.

Madame Lovelace sat down at her desk. “Right then, everyone,” she said. “Open your books at page one hundred and fifty-three. And make sure you memorise those dates.” She waggled her finger at us all.

And while we were pulling out the books and finding the pages, she bowed her head and began to snore.

“Did she just fall asleep?” I heard Muriel say.

“That’s normal,” Scarlet remarked. We didn’t even need to whisper. Madame Lovelace was rather deaf at the best of times. I didn’t think even a speeding train could wake her up once she’d nodded off.

“So what do we do now, then?” another new girl asked.

“I have an idea.” A voice came from behind me.

I gulped. That Scottish accent was becoming familiar to me now. The way Ebony spoke … it was like she was inviting you into a dream.

Or a nightmare.

“Why don’t I demonstrate something for you?” she said. Before anyone could say a word, she was striding to the front of the class. She turned to face us. There was a strange, far-off look in her stormy eyes.

“Just ignore her,” Scarlet muttered, looking for the page in her textbook. “Then maybe she’ll go away.”

“I’ll need a volunteer,” said Ebony, raising her voice. Madame Lovelace continued to snore in the chair.

Ebony looked around the room slowly, her eyes falling on each of us in turn, holding our gaze for just a little too long.

“You!” she said suddenly, pointing a long, white finger at Muriel Witherspoon.

Muriel pointed at herself. “Me? What do you want with me?”

“I want you to come up to the front,” said Ebony in a singsong voice.

Muriel sat back and folded her arms. “Why should I get involved with this, exactly?”

There was a hush, broken only by Madame Lovelace, who occasionally snorted in her sleep.

Ebony was staring at Muriel, giving nothing away. “We wouldn’t want you to have another accident, now, would we?”

Muriel’s face paled. She seemed to be trying to hide the fact that Ebony scared her, but she was no longer doing a very good job of it. She stood up slowly and then rolled her eyes, bringing down the curtain of false bravado again. “Right,” she said. “If you insist.”

She approached the desk and Ebony waved her hands over it. And then suddenly, as if from nowhere, a deck of cards appeared in her palm.

Muriel blinked down at it. “I … what?”

Ebony held up the deck in her long, thin fingers and displayed it to all of us. The back of each card was black, with an intricate pattern etched into it. Then she flipped it to show us the front, and I saw that each suit was decorated with skulls, and the Kings and Queens and Jacks were all skeletons. How cheerful.

“Pick a card,” Ebony ordered.

Muriel reached down gingerly, as if she thought the cards might singe her fingers. The look on Ebony’s face was expectant, almost hungry.

Muriel’s hand came to rest on one of the cards. She didn’t meet Ebony’s eye.

“Show the class,” said Ebony, with a flicker of her eyelashes.

Muriel slipped the card from the pack and then held it out to all of us, so that only we could see. The three of Hearts. I shared a look with Scarlet. What was this about?

“Now, return the card.” Ebony watched as Muriel turned the card face down and put it back.

In the corner, Madame Lovelace snorted in her sleep and a cloud of chalk dust floated up from her dress.

A slow smile crept across Ebony’s face. She shuffled the cards, her hands moving in a blur. “Open your palms,” she instructed.

“I really don’t see why—” Muriel started, but faltered under Ebony’s gaze. She sighed and did as she was told.

The entire class seemed to be holding their breath. Everyone had leant forward in their seats. I expected Scarlet to tell them to sit down and shut up, but even she appeared to be fascinated.

With a strange grace, Ebony started moving her hands over the deck of cards, her fingers curling. She kept doing it, over and over, in a circular motion.

“Nothing’s happening,” someone whispered, but everyone shushed her. Because just then, the cards began to move – at a snail’s pace, but moving nonetheless. The deck began to slice in two, the two halves shifting apart, leaving a card in the middle.

And then … the card shot out of the deck.

Everyone gasped. I blinked. Had that really just happened?

Muriel was clutching her arm. “Ow!” she said. “You cut me!” She pulled her hand away and there was indeed a small flash of blood on her skin – a paper cut.

Ebony just laughed, and her laugh was like a misty mountain stream. “Never mind that,” she said. “Pick up the card. Show them.”

Scowling, Muriel bent down and picked up the card from the floor. I watched as she cautiously turned it over and then picked it up. She held it out to the class.

The three of Hearts.

There was a hush, followed by a ripple of hesitant applause. But Madame Lovelace chose that moment to wake up, and the spell was broken.

“Hmm?” she said loudly, one rheumy eye shooting open before the other. She looked around and wrenched herself up straight. “You two! What are you up to? Back to your seats, this instant!” She picked a ruler up off her desk and waved it at them threateningly.

Muriel dashed back to her seat, still frowning and clutching her arm. Ebony just swept up her cards and sauntered back, as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Madame Lovelace coughed and then fixed us with a steely gaze. “Have you even got your books out? Anyone would think you didn’t have a teacher! Get on with it!”

It was lunchtime before we finally got a chance to talk about what had happened. I knew, as soon as I stepped into the dining hall, that everyone was talking about it. The new girl did magic in class. She made cards move all by themselves. How did she do it?

The whispers rushed past us like the wind. And the moment Ebony entered the hall, all eyes were on her. She smiled. I knew then that it was exactly what she’d wanted. She was relishing the attention.

“That was quite a trick,” said Ariadne as we sat at the table.

“You think it was a trick?” Scarlet asked. She hadn’t even bothered to touch her food. This was too exciting.

“As opposed to what?” I turned to my twin.

“Real magic,” Scarlet said. “I mean, did you see her touch those cards? I didn’t.”

Ariadne put her thinking face on, the one where you could almost see the cogs turning. “She probably had the cards up her sleeve to start with,” she said.

“But after that?” Scarlet shook her head. I had to admit, I hadn’t seen her touch the cards either, and I’d been concentrating hard. “It was too weird. And did you see the way everyone just stared?”

“It was creepy,” I admitted. It wasn’t the Rookwood I knew, where show-offs were usually quickly dispatched by bullies. People had just sat and watched. Ebony was like a ticking time bomb, it seemed, and you felt like you had to keep an eye on her in case she went off.

And why had she involved Muriel in her prank? She seemed determined to single her out. “Where’s Muriel?” I wondered aloud.

“She ran off.” Someone from further down the table spoke. I looked up to see Penny, who looked distinctly fed up. She was poking her sandwiches – Mrs Knight had altered the menu somewhat, and we had cheese and ham sandwiches instead of the usual stew. “I saw her,” she said in a flat tone. “She got her food, took one look at Miss Mystic over there and headed outside.”

“Is something wrong, Penny?” Scarlet asked, although there was no real concern in her voice. Penny had always been the school’s worst bully. “Are you not getting all the attention for once?”

“Ha!” Penny laughed drily. “That’s rich coming from you.” I could tell her heart wasn’t in the insult, though. “I’m just … tired, that’s all.” She smiled a weak smile. “Tired of all this.”

Although talking to Penny was usually the last thing I wanted to do, I felt a little intrigued – she wasn’t being actively horrible. “What do you mean?” I asked.

Penny hesitated for a moment, as if she wasn’t sure whether to set the words free. She ran a hand through her copper hair and sighed. “Violet’s gone. Josie’s gone. I don’t think Nadia likes me. And my parents, well …”

“I’m sorry,” I said. And I meant it. It must be tough for her, not having her friends around.

Penny just shrugged.

But Scarlet wasn’t going to be as soft on her. “Thinking of giving up the bullying business, then?” she asked.

I expected Penny to get angry at that, but there was no explosion – just a quiet resignation. “Maybe I just can’t count on things being the same any more,” she said as she picked up her sandwich and began to chew thoughtfully.

I hated to admit it, but I thought I knew how she felt. I turned to my twin. “Things are certainly changing around here,” I said.

“But we’ll always have each other.” She grinned.

Ariadne was silent for a moment, her cogs still spinning. Then she stood up. “I … I’m going to see if Muriel is all right,” she said, “… again.” She took her plate and wandered off outside.

I watched her go. “Do you think Ariadne’s starting to forgive Muriel?”

“It’s Rookwood School,” said Scarlet. “Anything could happen.”

Chapter Nine
SCARLET

he rumours about Ebony were flying around the school faster than I could follow them. I heard someone swearing that they’d seen a black cat coming out of her dorm room, followed by someone else insisting they’d seen her turn into a black cat.

It was ridiculous. Her magic had been convincing, and maybe, maybe

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