Shadows of perl, p.11
Shadows of Perl, page 11
The woman tosses the blade in the air and I catch it.
“See you in there,” she says as the pool re-forms and the glimpse of stairway disappears.
“I take it she doesn’t like surprise visitors.” I swallow.
“Blood from an invited guest is all it needs.” He pricks himself, reopens the passageway, and disappears down the steps. I study the knife, the girl’s blood still wet on its tip. If it notifies her who is crossing the threshold into her property, she’ll know I’m coming. Will the magic know if my blood is bound to toushana?
I twist the blade, its metal gleaming in the moonlight, and an idea strikes me. He never said a person couldn’t enter twice. Without enough blood on the metal to drip, I dip the blade into the pool and wait. Please work. If I lose this knife, that’s it—I’m not getting in here. And this was the last place my mom was seen. The black pool thins, then shifts, bending in steady rhythm until there are stairs once again. I tuck the weapon in my sleeve and descend.
The ground closes above me. Ahead is a stone passageway. I follow it to an intersection, keep straight, and then listen for the footsteps. I reach a set of stairs to the ground above. I climb but freeze when I hear voices.
“I’m cold. She’ll be fine. Maybe she chickened out.” The girl from the car. I press against the stone. Her beau agrees. When the world above-ground is silent, I emerge from the tunnel beside a lush, winding water garden so tall I can’t see beyond it. Beaulah is either very paranoid or extremely clever. The path through the garden meanders through a maze of low-lying pools wreathed in bursts of colorful foliage. When I clear them, the grounds finally open up. And there is Hartsboro, the training ground for House of Perl, tucked away like a secret.
The old mansion’s brick is the color of midnight. It sits on a small hill, reached by an expanse of steps like I imagine I’d find at a fancy government building or museum. Black Roman-style Corinthian columns line the front, but I’m still too far away to read the words etched into the stone. Two levels form the central house; wings branch off to either side and wrap around a center courtyard, where gardens are arranged in the shape of a sun. The house’s farthest ends disappear into the surrounding trees. Sparkling lights, grand balconies, sweeping windows, and lush manicured lawn—it’s as magnificent as Chateau Soleil, but in its own way.
I bristle with irritation. Jordan grew up here. And he is the last person I should be thinking about.
I scrub the boy I used to love from my mind and step aside, tucking my chin down, as another couple in nice clothes passes. They hustle toward the estate but veer from the grand carved doors and instead detour around the building and disappear.
The main entrance gates are manned by Draguns. I have to find another way in. I hurry in the opposite direction, determined to avoid any more of Beaulah’s guests. I follow the stone walls on the perimeter of the grounds, careful to stay in the pockets of dark. But I stop when I notice, beyond Hartsboro, a blackness of thick, dark woods. The chill in the air deepens and my toushana coils fast, ready to strike. You’re alright. Calm down.
I round the estate’s wing. I’m skimming the side of it for some kind of entrance when laughter cuts through the silence. A voice is coming from beyond a wall of shrubbery. Laughter rings again, louder, closer. Rumors of what’s happened at Chateau Soleil are everywhere. Getting caught could mean death. Ice seizes in my chest, but I keep my hands loose. I won’t be easy prey.
I spot an iron gate in the wall of green when I hear the voice again. This time its familiarity turns my arms to gooseflesh. I lift the gate’s latch silently and ease myself through. Inside is an amphitheater trimmed in what must be a million roses. On a dais crowned in wrought iron is a pair of lovers tangled around each other. The girl rears her head back, hair spun up in an elegant bun at the crown of her head, the silks of her dress puddling on the floor, as a gentleman kisses up and down her neck. It’s too dark to make out either of them well, but I don’t recognize them. Maybe I misheard. I’m sliding a quiet foot backward toward the gate when her diadem glints in the moonlight. Radiant dark jewels intricately worked with gold metal sparkle. I know that showing. I move closer. A twig snaps under my foot.
The girl fumbles with her dress to cover herself, and I step closer for a better look. Her complexion is warm brown and hardly dusted with makeup. As if she’d need it. Her skin is smoother than velvet, and high cheekbones slope around her angular face, making her wide eyes pop. Her back is straight, her neck long, and her shoulders are pressed back, effortlessly elegant, poised despite the compromising moment I’ve found her in. If she wasn’t scrambling to cover herself, I wouldn’t know she was shaken at all. I recognize the sharpness of her jaw and aquiline nose and realize where I know her from. Why her diadem looks so familiar.
“Adola?”
Beaulah’s niece and heir to this House. Jordan’s cousin.
She leans into the light to see me, then gasps. I hold a finger to my lips in warning, darkness dripping from them. Adola gapes at the magic in my grasp, then her shock hardens into something else. Her lover fiddles with the buttons of the pants he just slipped on. That’s when I notice he is in plain clothes. No mask bleeds through his skin. There’s no House color in his wardrobe. This guy has no magic.
“How scandalous.” I join them on the dais to get a better look at the girl I last saw at the Summer Bloom Tea I hosted in my grandmother’s rose garden. She was so measured and poised. Now she’s struggling to re-dress, her earthy complexion pale with embarrassment.
“Quell, how are you?” She slips her arms into her dress, and the fellow with her hastily zips her up. “I’ve heard all kinds of things. I was worried.” She turns to him. “Go,” she urges. “Don’t speak of this to anyone.” His eyes snap to my magic. “Now.”
He darts off.
She smooths her skirt, but she hardly breathes. “Well?”
We’re alone. I could press my magic to her throat and force her to lead me inside. But if there’s another way…The Order wouldn’t bat an eye at getting rid of her little non-magical boyfriend. I stretch my fingers, then tighten them into a fist, calling my toushana back into myself.
“An Unmarked cannot look upon magic and live.”
She swallows.
“Take me to your aunt. I want to talk to Beaulah privately. If you do that, your secret is safe with me.”
For a moment, Adola only blinks. She tosses me her long hooded coat to put on. Then she releases a ragged breath and says, “Fine. Follow me.”
Ten
Quell
Adola leads me out of the amphitheater to a servant’s entrance down a set of steep steps.
“We’re just going to walk in? That’s your plan?”
“The staff was given the night off. This is how I got out.”
I study her for some hint of dishonesty, but there’s no scheme in her eye. Still, this is the House of Perl heir. The same heir who played a humiliating joke on me the first time we met.
“I can cloak,” I insist. “Just tell me where she is on-site.”
“Tutum et perspicuum.”
My brows cinch.
“Cloaking isn’t possible on the grounds. People don’t pop up on Mother,” she says.
“Your aunt, you mean?”
“I didn’t misspeak.” She offers me a hand down the stairs. I follow her inside Hartsboro.
Hartsboro’s grand rooms and tall coffered ceilings remind me of Chateau Soleil. Where my grandmother’s estate glistened with gold and ornately carved accents, the inside of House of Perl has an understated grandness. A confidence. As if it doesn’t need to prove itself. It is statuesque without being overwhelmingly spacious. Luxurious, without being gaudy or glamorous, with sleek fixtures and accents that aren’t gilded or frilly. There is wood, stone, and brick instead of porcelain and marble. Suits of armor instead of sculptures. Plaques of history and portraits of prior Headmistresses line the paneled walls. And beside them is an engraved list of Never Forgotten names.
My heart knocks into my ribs when I spot the names of the two girls who were killed this past summer: Brooke Hamilton and Alison Blakewell. All thanks to my grandmother. My gut swims.
A hall of portraits portraying distinguished members of the House is the fanciest, with an impressive display of diadems, masks, and tiny gold pins. Being in a House again unsteadies me. I did the right thing at my Cotillion. I told the truth. Still, I can’t move, flooded with memories of walking the halls of my old home, certain a different life was on the horizon. Only to realize the little house on the beach, the life Mom and I imagined for ourselves, would be harder to grab hold of than I thought. Adola urges me to keep going.
That’s when I spot it.
A painting of Jordan, an enlarged version of that photo of him from Debs Daily. My fingers feel for the lump in my coat where the copy of the article sits tucked against my chest. His prim suit, cinched at the collar with his coin. His devilishly gorgeous face despite his hollow stare. His green eyes were a sunlit meadow, now they’re a field of ashes. Beneath the frame is a title: Dragunheart of the Brotherhood, followed by a starting year—this year—without an end date. I back away and bump into Adola. She grabs me by the arm, pulling me along. I go with her, but I swear I feel the portrait staring at me, squeezing my throat. My heart races. Every corner we turn sends a cold shiver up my arms, and I have to remind myself why I’m here. My mother was here. At Hartsboro. She could have stood in this very hall. I walk faster.
“Where is your aunt?”
“Her office, usually.” She creeps along, holding her arms tight to her body. “It is in the Dysiis Wing. We can’t risk taking the direct route.”
We pass through a formal dining area that’s longer than any room I’ve ever seen; its chandeliers are made of carved bones that are eerily realistic. Past it, the foyer opens up to a lounge, its furniture arranged around a projection of the Sphere. The matter inside the orb undulates, still blackened like the last time I saw it at Chateau Soleil, but its glassy surface is cracked like a shattered eggshell.
“What happened to the Sphere?” I gathered from skimming issues of the Daily that the Sphere had been attacked, and things in the Order are shaky. But the Order has never done anything but make my life a nightmare. I couldn’t care less what happens to it. The Sphere, on the other hand…I had no idea it’d become so fragile.
“Is it true what they say about if it bleeds out?” I ask.
Adola’s chin slides over her shoulder. “It’s worse.”
“Worse?” But she doesn’t elaborate. Magic gone for lifetimes. I nudge my toushana, and the coldness shifts against my ribs as I try to picture myself without toushana to keep me safe.
Yagrin used me to track the Sphere. He said he’d located it before. No one I know hates the Order more. Suddenly, I know who is responsible for the attack.
We turn down another long corridor and arrive at a room that smells like stale smoke and fresh leather. It is filled with chairs, a bar, and crystal game tables; bookshelves line the walls.
“Are they onto him—um, the person who cracked it?” Could more than Jordan know she had been on the run with him?
“I don’t know.” She runs her hand down the side of a bookcase before her fingers disappear in the seam. “But my cousin will find whoever did it. He’s the sharpest Dragun alive. And he was just promoted to second-in-command of the entire brotherhood.”
“Jordan?” I spit. “I cannot stand your cousin.”
“That’s not what I heard.” Adola pulls and the bookcase swings forward. A sassy retort bites at my lips. I’ve given Jordan Wexton enough of my time. He won’t dominate my thoughts, too.
We step into a secret corridor and pull the fake shelf closed. Jordan. This is where he lived. He walked these halls. He navigated its secret corridors. Nausea rises in my throat. This place made him into an Order-obsessed, backstabbing betrayer. I hate him. But I think I hate myself more for hoping that he would be different than everyone else in the Order. That he actually cared about me. That the girl he shared green candy with was worthy of love.
Dusty air prickles my nose, and I smooth my leaking eyes to focus on the light from tiny peepholes that cuts through the darkness in every direction.
“Each bookcase in the House leads to a different part of the estate. No one uses these but family and…” She tugs at the skirt of her dress. “Please don’t say anything.”
I nod and urge her forward. The hidden interior hallways of Beaulah’s house are a maze of corridors. Adola halts suddenly and I slam into her back. She presses a finger to her lips and points to a tiny hole in the wall. Peeping through it, I see a grand study room sparsely furnished with a fireplace, bookshelves, a desk strewn with papers, and a few pieces of leather furniture. The narrow hole makes it impossible to see the full room.
“She’s in there?”
“Should be.”
I grip Adola’s wrist as she tries to leave, and lean against the trick wall to open it. It swings forward, opening into Beaulah’s office. Everything is glossed wood and dark colors. And suns, so many engraved suns, on every surface, carved into the shutters, on the windows, on ornamented fixtures, on the lamp, and etched into the hard floor. But Beaulah isn’t here.
“You said she’d be here.”
“This was my best guess.”
I circle Beaulah’s desk, checking beneath documents, going through her drawers—looking for what, I’m not sure. “Take me to her bedroom.”
She pales. “I can’t do that.”
“You knew she wasn’t in here.” Toushana thrashes in my chest. “You’re wasting my time.” No one is trustworthy. Everyone is in it for themselves. “What game are you playing?”
“I did what you asked! You agreed you wouldn’t tell if I took you to find her, which I did. It’s not my fault she’s not here.” Adola fidgets.
I march up to her, letting the cold brimming beneath my skin bleed through. Adola’s eyes widen. “You’re lying. Take me to her.”
Adola’s mouth hardens.
“There’s a party or something going on tonight. I saw people dressed up. Is she there?”
Adola blinks one too many times. I pace, considering my options. Then I inhale deeply, awakening my toushana. Maybe I don’t need her. Magic flows through me, and I tighten my center. Blood rushes to my head. My ears are cold, flooded with a symphony of sounds. The faint chatter and clinking of glasses, along with a low melody of music, urge me into motion. I’m back behind the bookcase, tracking a heartbeat until it’s louder, clearer. Until there are many hearts beating at once in a concentrated area. A crowd of people.
“Quell! Please, you can’t—” But Adola’s words are hardly audible as she hustles to keep up with me. Following the sounds of people takes me to a different section of the estate, past rooms full of desks, more than one sprawling ballroom, a honing lab, endless halls of dormitories, and a strange wing of the house with scorched walls and windowless session rooms, empty of tables or chairs. I finally hear the clink of champagne glasses; soft cheers and low music roll around in my head with a chorus of dozens of heartbeats. When I stop, the thudding is a thousand hammers in my head. I peer through a peephole and find a finely dressed crowd. I glare at Adola.
“Please don’t go in there, I’m begging you! Mother will kill me.” Tears well in her eyes at the sight of my arm wedged against the door, ready to shove it open.
“Everyone knows Perls are liars. Should have known you’d be no different.” I push the bookcase forward. We spill out of the corridor into a swanky reception in a dimly lit, windowless room. A chill washes over me, and it takes me a minute to realize it’s not my toushana. It’s a cold hovering in the air like a cloud of death. The music stops. The conversations quiet as every head in the room swivels in our direction. My palms sweat, biting iciness clawing at them. Beaulah moves among the frozen crowd, clutching a fluted glass, her red, shimmery gown dangling over her feet. At first she watches me in confusion, before her narrowed gaze widens in understanding.
“Quell Marionne.”
Low whispers swarm the crowd. My heart knocks into my ribs. Everyone waits for her reaction. I let toushana seep through my skin but hold my hands in tight fists to conceal my secret. Fear got the best of me with Adola, but I don’t need all these people to know. Beaulah strides toward me and the cold slithers around my bones.
“Headmistress Perl, I need to speak with you,” I shout.
But the room suddenly grows colder as familiar dark ripples move through the air. And it startles me. Toushana. I check my own hands to be sure I’m not hallucinating. But the toushana moving through the air isn’t coming toward me at all. It’s disappearing among the crowd. Draguns. I skim for coins at throats, and many are wearing ones with cracked columns. Several do not have coins at all.
I blink, watching dark whiffs of magic coil around wrists of people who have no business drawing on toushana. Several curious gazes move to me as if they can sense my nervousness. I keep staring, waiting for the scene to change. Waiting for any of this to make some bit of sense. When Beaulah Perl reaches me, I am barely breathing. The amber stones in her diadem gleam, a complement to the fur wrapped around her shoulders, pinned with a glittering brooch in the shape of a cracked column. I take all of her in—the dark gems on her knuckles, the pearls pressed to her ears—reading every line in her stoic expression, noticing the way she is the only person in this entire room completely at ease. And though she tries to hide it, there is the slightest glint of satisfaction in her eyes. She studies me up and down, drinking me in, and then reaches for my hand.
