Betrayal (2 page)

D
ad and I traveled together as far as London, where we had decided to say our good-byes on the platform of King’s Cross station.

“Take these to share with your friends,” Dad said, handing over an expensive box of chocolates. I was going to make the journey north to Wyldcliffe on my own, and Dad was returning to his duties in the army. He was still young and fit—well, not so young now, but definitely attractive—and as we waited together in those limbo moments, I wondered why he had never married again. The answer flashed into my head:
Because of you, Evie, because of you….
I felt a quick pain in my heart when I thought of everything he had done for me, and I hugged him tight.

“Have a good term.” He smiled. “And write to me.”

“Of course. Every week.”

“Evie…” Dad hesitated. “Promise me you’ll look after yourself. I worry about you. You’re growing up so quickly.”

“I’m fine, Dad. Honestly.” I climbed aboard and the train began to pull away. I leaned out of the window and waved as the platform was left behind and Dad got smaller, looking somehow diminished and gray in the distance. “I’m fine,” I whispered, then dropped onto a seat, stuffing the chocolates into my bag. At least this time I had friends to share them with: two solitary friends out of the massed ranks of snobby, unwelcoming Wyldcliffe students. When I had taken this train back in September I had been a new girl going into the unknown, but now Sarah and Helen would be waiting for me when I arrived at school.

I was longing to see them both. They were more than my friends; they were my family—my sisters. The three of us were bound by mysterious ties that still astonished me. We had been drawn into a world of beauty and danger, and each of us had a powerful elemental connection.
Water for Evie, earth for Sarah, air for Helen…
There was nothing we couldn’t do, I told myself, if we stayed true to
one another and to our secret sister, Lady Agnes Templeton. She was my distant ancestor, the fourth member of our Circle and the servant of the sacred fire. As the train gathered speed through the dreary suburbs, everything that had happened last term churned around my head like an endless mantra:
Agnes, Sebastian…Fire, water, earth, air…Agnes…Sebastian…Sebastian…

Sebastian. My first, my only love.

I’m coming back,
I tried to tell him.
I’m coming back to Wyldcliffe.
And I seemed to hear an echo in my head:
Come back, come back, come back….

I touched the silver necklace that was hanging on a slender new chain under my shirt. The necklace had been a gift from Frankie before she died, a pretty trinket with a sparkling crystal at its center. It had always been in our family, but if anyone had told me a few months ago that it was known as the Talisman, and that it was an heirloom of the Mystic Way, sealed with elemental forces, I would have laughed. Great joke. I didn’t do weird stuff, paranormal, Wicca, magic—whatever you wanted to call it. I had been the last person on earth who fancied the idea of chanting around a bonfire under the moon.

I wasn’t laughing now, though. Everything that had happened in my first term at Wyldcliffe had changed
me forever. I had a new reality, however incredible it seemed.

Sebastian James Fairfax
, it said on his gravestone.
Born in 1865. It is thought he departed this Life in 1884, by his own hand. God rest his soul.
Sebastian hadn’t died, though. Young, impetuous, and restless, he had been loved by Agnes all those years ago. When they had stumbled across the ancient teachings of the Mystic Way, Sebastian had ignored her warnings and searched too far and too deep, corrupting its sacred powers in a doomed quest for immortality. He had learned to prolong his existence, but ultimately he had only half fulfilled his tormented search for everlasting life. Now he was bound by the terrible masters he had served, the Unconquered, who had cheated death and lived forever in the shadows. They would ensure that Sebastian would pay the price for his failure to join their ranks.

The ugly buildings and sparse trees that flashed past the train looked so real and solid and normal. But my world was not like that anymore. I had left normal behind when I had first met Sebastian in the September twilight. Now I lived in a world of unseen powers and impossibilities.

My dreadful, unimaginable reality was that Sebastian
was doomed to fade, to wither in body and spirit until he was a demon, a slave of the Unconquered, not their equal. His only hope—the one desperate option left to him—was to take the Talisman and use its mystical powers to become one of the Unconquered himself. And the only way he could possess the Talisman was to kill me.

Sometimes, reality was too painful to bear.

I shifted in my seat and rested my aching head on the cool glass of the window. A memory forced itself into my mind; I saw an underground crypt lit by flickering torches and a crowd of hooded women, the coven of Dark Sisters who had once served Sebastian. They were chanting in a wild frenzy, desperate for Sebastian to claim the Talisman and lead them to eternal life. Sarah and Helen and I had been trapped there, and yet—and yet—when it seemed that we were beaten and that Sebastian would tear the Talisman from me, he had refused to hurt me.
I love you…I love you, girl from the sea.
His love had given me the courage to reach out to my elemental powers, and I had raised a storm that had swept the coven away. But when it was all over, Sebastian had disappeared. His black horse had been found wandering over the moors, and all trace of its rider had vanished.

I had to see him again, though. Dreams weren’t enough.
Memories weren’t enough. I was going back to Wyldcliffe to find Sebastian, but I didn’t know what would be waiting for me. All I could do was ask myself the same unanswerable questions for the hundredth time. What was Sebastian’s reality—his love for me or his need for the Talisman? Would he stay true to his brief words of love? Or would he, in the end, betray me in order to save himself?

“Come on, come on, hurry up,” I muttered under my breath to the train. I had to get to Wyldcliffe. I had to know the truth.

FROM THE PRIVATE PAPERS OF
S
EBASTIAN
J
AMES
F
AIRFAX

It’s because I love you that I had to tell you the truth.

You know everything now, Evie. You know that these were my failings: greed, ambition, selfishness, madness, destruction.

I did not mean to do wrong. I wanted to stride across the world like a great explorer, flying near the sun, soaring in thought and time and space.

I wanted to live forever.

Now my grave lies empty and I shall never find rest there. That is the inescapable fact, the dreadful truth. That is my reality.

But there is another truth, even here in the darkness.
This memory is true. I must hold on to it and not let go.

This is what happened. I was in the crypt under the ruins at Wyldcliffe. You were there too—I saw your bright hair and your pale face—and there were women baying for your blood, screaming with fear and hatred. The coven. The Dark Sisters. They were trying to hurt you, trying to turn me against you. You were afraid. And then, beyond my own fear and my own need, I remembered something. I remembered that I loved you.

I called to you, my girl from the sea. I called out my love for you. I remember it so clearly.

You were transformed, like an angel. You summoned your powers against the High Mistress and her women: I saw the waters rise; I saw a vision of Agnes. I remember that you were close to me, and I wanted you so much, and then you were gone. Then there was only darkness and pain, and I forced myself to crawl to this hiding place.

Here, in this secret corner, I am surrounded by the tattered remnants of my former studies. I have no need of food or companionship, or light or warmth. I have pen and ink and my memories of you. I scratch out these words in order to try to reach you.

It is because I love you that I have to tell you the truth.

I am leaving this world, Evie.

Soon I will close my eyes and awake not in your arms but into everlasting night. And then there will be no waking from that deepest, darkest dream.

I
woke suddenly from a deep dream. Someone was talking to me.

“Um, excuse me—are you going to Wyldcliffe?”

A girl, about eleven or twelve years old, was hovering nervously near my seat on the train. She was dressed in the dark gray and red Wyldcliffe uniform, all new and stiff and slightly too big for her. I was still in jeans and casual clothes.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up,” she said apologetically.

“No—um, of course not, it’s okay.” I shook myself from sleep. “I’d just drifted off. Silly of me.”

“So you are going to Wyldcliffe?” The girl pointed at my luggage on the rack over my head. My suitcase had an address label tied on the handle, printed in Dad’s firm
handwriting:
Wyldcliffe Abbey School
.

“I guess that gives me away.” I smiled up at her, trying to be friendly. “Yes, I am.”

“Can I sit with you?” She had a nasal kind of voice, as though she had a permanent head cold. “I’ve been wandering up and down the train, trying to find another Wyldcliffe girl.”

“Sure. Of course you can.” I moved some magazines from where I had chucked them on the opposite seat and she sat down. “Is this your first term?”

“I was supposed to start in September, but I was ill,” the girl said with a kind of suppressed excitement—or was it fear? She was dark and thin, with a sickly complexion and dull black eyes that seemed to fix themselves onto my face. “Do you like Wyldcliffe?”

I hesitated. I wasn’t going to tell her what I really felt about Wyldcliffe, or what I really knew about the place. “It’s an amazing building,” I began brightly. “Like a castle in the middle of the moors. The teachers are, well, a bit old-fashioned, but they know their stuff. There’s a choir and orchestra, if you like music. And most girls ride on the weekend. Even I’m going to learn.”

It sounded like something I was parroting from the school’s prospectus:

Wyldcliffe is England’s premier traditional boarding school for girls. Located in the stunningly beautiful Wylde Valley, we pride ourselves on the highest academic and social standards….

What the prospectus didn’t say was that Celia Hartle, the High Mistress of Wyldcliffe, had disappeared in strange circumstances at the end of last term. It didn’t say that she was High Mistress not only of the school, but of the deadly coven of Dark Sisters. The authorities had been baffled by Mrs. Hartle’s disappearance, but Sarah, Helen, and I knew that she had vanished after the battle in the crypt. Part of me hoped that she was dead, and yet part of me was sickened by the idea. Either way, whatever had happened to Celia Hartle, the coven would be waiting for me and my Talisman when I got back.

“But horses are unpredictable, aren’t they? It must be really frightening.”

“Oh…um…” I hadn’t really been listening, lost in my own thoughts. “Sorry?”

“Horses,” the girl repeated, looking more scared than ever. “You can get hurt. You know, thrown off and all that. It’s dangerous.”

I laughed shortly. After everything I had faced at Wyldcliffe I wasn’t going to get too worked up about sitting on the back of a well-fed pony. “I don’t suppose I’ll be
going very fast,” I said. “So you’re not going to ride then?”

“My mom can’t afford to pay for extras like that.”

“Oh, yeah, of course…” I tried to cover my blunder. “Anyway, Wyldcliffe is a good place to study, though I expect you’ll be a bit homesick to start with—”

“I won’t,” she said abruptly. “There’s nothing for me at home. My dad lives in America and my mom is always working.”

Poor kid
, I thought,
poor sad kid
. She looked so young to be going off to boarding school all on her own. “Couldn’t your mother have traveled with you to Wyldcliffe, you know, on your first day?” I asked.

The girl flushed scarlet and I immediately wished that I hadn’t said anything. It was none of my business if her mother couldn’t be bothered with her, and now I had put my foot in it again. “Mom came to the station, but she couldn’t spare the time to come all the way with me. She said I’d be okay, that there would be other Wyldcliffe students on the train.” The girl frowned for a moment before looking up at me with her disconcerting, hungry eyes. “Anyway, she was right. I’ve got you now, haven’t I?”

I smiled uncomfortably, feeling sorry for her, yet somehow repelled at the same time. There was something needy about this girl, something that would condemn
her to being a bit of a misfit. Well, I knew all about that. The Wyldcliffe students had made it clear that I didn’t fit in. I wasn’t a blond, carefree English rose with a nice little trust fund and a pedigree going back to William the Conqueror. I didn’t belong, and I had a funny feeling she wouldn’t either.

Silence fell between us. I didn’t know what else to say, so I took a book from my bag and pretended to read. After a few minutes, she interrupted me with another question.

“Is there a teacher called Miss Scratton?”

“Yes. Why?”

“She taught my mother at Wyldcliffe, years ago. Mom says she was a good teacher but a bit weird. Always on about the past.”

“Well, Miss Scratton’s a history teacher, so I guess that’s natural.”

The past.
I can never get away from the past, wherever I go….
Sebastian had said that, and now it was true for me too.

“What are the other teachers like?” the girl asked nervously. “Are they all like her?”

The faces of the Wyldcliffe teachers, or mistresses, flashed in front of my eyes. I let the book fall onto my lap. There were plenty who were a whole lot weirder than
Miss Scratton. Miss Dalrymple, for instance, the plump geography mistress, with her bright blond curls and little-girl laugh. Or Miss Raglan, stiff and awkward and angry, who taught math. It wasn’t the love of teaching that kept those two at Wyldcliffe; I was sure of that.

“Well, they tend to be kind of strict,” I said. “There are lots of rules at Wyldcliffe, so you have to be careful, or you’ll end up with a pile of demerits and detentions.”

The girl rummaged in her bag and pulled out a faded booklet. “Have you seen this before?”

My heart thudded as I recognized it. Of course I had seen it before. I had devoured every word of that little book a hundred times over, searching for clues, searching for the truth….

“Yeah, I think so,” I said evasively, taking it from her. The title was printed in gold letters on the blue cover:
A Short History of Wyldcliffe Abbey School, by Rev. A. J. Flower-dew.
“There’s a copy in the library at school,” I said. “Where did you get this?”

“I told you that my mother was at the school. She’s into all this kind of thing, and I’ve read tons of stuff about Wyldcliffe.” The girl snatched the book back from me, flipping through its pages, searching for something. “Have you seen this picture? Do you know who it is?”

As I looked down at the page, my heart seemed to explode in my chest. Yes, I knew who was in that painting.

“It’s Lady Agnes Templeton,” the girl went on. “Her family owned the Abbey before it became a school. It says here that Lady Agnes died in a riding accident.” She looked up and added confidentially, “But it’s not true. She ran away.”

“What?” I stared at her, utterly astonished.

“All I know is that she went off to London and that it wasn’t her parents who went looking for her. It was a young neighbor of hers, a distant relation. Have you heard about him? His name was Sebastian Fairfax.”

“Um…no…” I lied. But the blood was racing in my head:
Sebastian…Sebastian…Sebastian…
I switched the girl’s voice off and plunged back into my own private world.

Right now, at this very minute, Sebastian would be fading. The frightening, supernatural process had already begun last term. I remembered his pale face, his weakened voice, his reddened eyes, and his horror at the idea of becoming a demon spirit. Second by second, drop by drop, Sebastian’s existence was draining into the shadow world. Time was running out. Perhaps—the thought tormented
me—perhaps it had already happened. Perhaps when I got back to Wyldcliffe I would discover that he had already left this world and vanished into the darkness.

I wouldn’t think that. I wouldn’t let that be true.

There was a way out of this nightmare, and I was going to make it happen. Somehow, I had vowed, I would master every secret of the Talisman that Agnes had bequeathed me and wrench Sebastian’s destiny into my hands. I would not let him fade in torment for my sake. I had to find him, before it was too late. The train rattled out an endless, grinding song:
Come back…too late…come back…too late…too late….

“Sebastian Fairfax was crazy.” The girl leaned closer and touched my arm to get my attention. “They say Wyldcliffe is cursed because of him.”

I recoiled from her touch, suddenly furiously angry. This girl knew nothing about the reality behind her stupid tittle-tattle. How dared she drag Sebastian’s life out to be picked over like some cheap newspaper gossip?

“I don’t believe in all that nonsense,” I said coldly.

“Well, everybody says Wyldcliffe is haunted.” The girl slumped against her seat again, looking small and skinny in her badly fitting uniform. “And my mom said that when she was at Wyldcliffe the students were always daring one
another to look for Agnes’s ghost after dark. Mom never saw her, though. Have you?”

I stood up abruptly. “I’m going to get some coffee in the buffet car.” As I dug my purse out of my bag, I tried to calm down. After all, she was just a kid going to boarding school for the first time, excited by what she had heard about the old Abbey and its long history. It wasn’t her fault she was awkward and plain and tactless. I tried to force myself to sound friendly, even if I didn’t feel it. “Well, I won’t be long then…um…what is your name?”

“Harriet.” She smiled faintly. “Harriet Templeton. Enjoy your coffee.”

I jumped, as though someone had fired a pistol.

Templeton. Harriet Templeton. Could she…Was she related to Agnes in some way? If so, was she related to me? And why was she so interested in Sebastian?

The train swerved on the track and I stumbled along to the next carriage, where the drinks and snacks were served, my head whirling. I paid for my drink, but I didn’t go back to my seat. I found an empty corner in the corridor and stared out of the window, letting my coffee grow cold as we sped farther and farther from London, and into the far, wild north.