Kiss of Death (10 page)

I know a flock of ravens is called an unkindness of ravens,
I think,
because it’s the title of a mystery book I read. But what do you call a group of crows? I’m sure I’ve heard the name for it
.…

I’m shivering from the inside out now, but at least I’ve come up with a reason for why I’m feeling so weird. I’ve remembered that my period’s due in a few days. I don’t usually get much period pain, just enough sometimes to make me take a couple of ibuprofen, but sometimes I do feel a bit dozy just beforehand, a bit sluggish. I sit around and stuff down carbs and drink hot chocolate for forty-eight hours; and then, when it does arrive, I get a burst of energy, as if in compensation, and find myself going for salads and fruit instead. I haven’t hit the carb craving yet, but maybe the dizziness I’m feeling is because I’m actually hungry.…

This is such a good theory that it cheers me up hugely. The worst part of this dizziness is the panic that I’m losing control of my body and I don’t know why. Managing to come up with a reason, a good, solid, logical reason, reassures me enough to get me hoisting myself to my feet, looking around. Forget sports drinks; maybe someone’ll have something to eat up here. A sandwich or something, a sports bar—

“Scarlett! Come over here!” Taylor’s calling.

I scramble over to where she’s standing, right on the top of the very tallest part of the peak, shading her eyes from the sun that’s come out from behind the passing clouds. Beside her is a sundial—or I think it’s a sundial. It’s a huge, smooth metal disk like a table, set onto a rough stone base, lines radiating out from the center with writing along each one.

“Hey, we’re two hundred and fifty meters high,” Taylor says, reading off the disk. “These must be all the highest hills in the country or something. Allermuir … Lammer Law … Carberry Hill … Traprain Law … North Berwick Law … Wow, why are there so many Laws?”

“It means ‘grave mound,’ lassie,” a nice older lady bundled up in a dark blue padded jacket and woolly scarf informs her. “We do have a lot of them in Scotland, I suppose.”

“Cool! Grave mounds! That’s so dark!” Taylor says, leaning farther over the disk.

“Your friend doesn’t seem too well,” says the lady, looking over at me. “Does she mebbe need to have a wee sit-down?”

Damn. I didn’t think it was that obvious. I’ve got both palms of my hands flat on the disk now to steady myself, but maybe I’m rocking back and forth a little bit. I don’t feel that the ground is a hundred percent stable beneath my feet.

“Crap!” Taylor says, staring at me hard. “Uh, excuse me,” she says politely to the lady. Swiftly, she picks her way round the radius of the disk to my side. “Scarlett?” she says, right next to me; I can feel her breath on my ear. “What’s up? You look really weird.”

“I think I’m getting my period,” I say, having a hard time making my lips work properly. “I feel all wobbly.”

“You feel wobbly cause you’re getting your period?” she says, frowning. “That’s new.”

“I think maybe I need to eat something,” I manage to say.

She’s still frowning, but she nods.

“Stay here,” she says. “I’ll see if anyone’s got something to eat. Do you have any pain?”

“No—I’m not due for a few days—”

“I don’t get this,” Taylor mutters. “Look. Sit down, okay?”

She puts her hands on my shoulders, helping me to an outcropping, where I sink gratefully back to my bum again.

“Whoo,” I hear myself say as Taylor disappears. I tilt my head and find myself looking down at Edinburgh, stretched out directly below me. Wide green velvety swathes of grass wrap around the base of Arthur’s Seat, and beyond them the city rises away, the hills it’s built on so steep that I can’t see the streets, just the elegant lines of gray buildings. Blocks of them, stacked at weird angles because of the way they cling to the sides of the hills. The shapes they make look like train carriages piled up, crashed into each other. Children’s toys, dropped from a great height.

I uncap my bottle and finish my water. It’s freezing cold by now and feels great going down, so good that on a sudden whim I upend the bottle over my head, the last few drops dripping icily down the back of my neck. I gasp in shock: it’s exactly the wake-up call I need. I heave myself to my feet, embarrassed that I’m making this fuss about something as silly as a bit of pre-period wobbliness. Walking past the disk, I start picking my way down the rocks to where most of the Wakefield Hall group is standing. Taylor’s taken Miss Carter and Jane aside, tactfully, to explain to them what’s going on with me; Jane’s already riffling through her backpack.

I’m doing fine. I’m really pleased with myself. I can walk over to them like someone who may not be feeling at her very best, but isn’t collapsed on a pile of rocks making a whiny fuss about something really minor.…

And then the crow swoops past me, cawing loudly, its sleek black body so close I think I could reach out and touch its wing. I jump in shock, my heart pounding so fast that my chest hurts with the effort of containing it.

“God, what’s up with Scarlett?” I hear Plum comment. “She looks like she’s been hitting the cocktails! Is there a
bar
up here?”

Lizzie titters with laughter, and so does Luce; my vision’s blurred, but I’d recognize Luce’s high, girlish laugh anywhere.

I want to retort, but my lips can’t maneuver around the words. The icy water on my scalp is clammy; I’m sweating suddenly, hot and cold at the same time. The crow turns on the thermal it’s riding, making another pass, and I panic, thinking it’s coming straight for me. My vision blurs further as I put up a hand to try to block the crow, stumbling away from its path.

My foot turns under me, the molded rubber heel of my trainer catching on a rock and slipping sideways. I’m falling, the edge of the cliff coming up to meet me. And this isn’t like it was in the stairwell, when my brain and my body snapped into action together to save my life. Now my brain and body are as fuzzy as they were alert two nights ago. I can’t jump out of danger; I can’t rely on my quick-fire reflexes. Below me the rocks are an open mouth full of sharp teeth, and though I’ve put out my hands to protect my face, I know that when I hit them I’ll be tumbling down the side of the cliff.

I’ll get torn to pieces. And though that knowledge should make me scream in panic, I can barely connect with it. My skull might as well be packed with cotton wool. Even as I fall, I’m passing out.

The crow caws again, a weird, high-pitched, screaming cry, and my last thought before everything goes dark is:

It’s a murder: that’s what you call a group of crows. A murder of crows.

nine
“THIS ISN’T A COINCIDENCE”

I’m shivering all over. There’s water running down my face, and it’s hard to open my eyes. I try to raise a hand, meaning to wipe them, but my arm’s as heavy as a sandbag and I barely manage to lift it an inch.

Someone exclaims loudly:

“She’s moving! Look! Miss Carter, she’s moving!”

Inexpertly, they dab at my face with a wodge of cloth that momentarily blocks my nose. I gulp for breath, turn my head away, and knock it on a sharp edge.

“Ow!” I say, or mean to: it comes out as a moan.

“She said something!” the same voice cries, and I wince at how high it is. I start wriggling, trying to sit up.

Oh. I’m lying down. I didn’t even realize that, I was so spaced-out
.…

Hands in my back help me sit up, holding me as I open my eyes. The first thing I see, blinking, is Luce, leaning forward, staring at me intently.

“Her pupils look fine,” she comments seriously. Holding up one finger, she asks: “Can you follow this, Scarlett?” as she moves it back and forth. I swivel my eyeballs obediently. Luce nods as she watches me.

“No concussion, Miss Carter,” Luce announces.

“Well, I didn’t think she’d be concussed,” Miss Carter says, sounding amused, “because she didn’t hit her head. But thank you—Lucy, is it? That was a very professional job of checking.”

“It’s from gymnastics,” Luce informs her. “Lots of girls crack their heads on the beams.”

I think I can sit up now without being held, and I turn my head to tell Taylor so. I get a real shock when I see that the person kneeling behind me, propping me up, is actually Alison. I start, my upper body jerking forward, away from her supporting hands, in a way that I realize, too late, could be misinterpreted. It’s as if I’m telling her I don’t want her to touch me.

Alison goes red and jumps to her feet. I start to mumble an explanation but it’s too late, and I’m still pretty dazed; I barely get a word out before she snaps:

“I caught you! You’d have smashed your head in if it wasn’t for me!”

My eyebrows shoot up so high it hurts. I look around for Taylor and see that she’s standing next to Miss Carter and Jane, talking urgently to them.

“Alison could have been hurt herself,” Luce adds coldly, pushing herself away from me and standing up too. “She did a whacking great jump to grab you before you went over face-first. You should thank her.”

“Thanks,” I start to say as best I can, but I don’t think anyone hears me. It’s very noisy up here with the wind whipping round us, snatching the words out of our mouths, and although I apparently didn’t hit my head, I still feel as dizzy as ever. I’m at eye level with everyone’s knees; they’re all standing around me, perched on the rock outcroppings like—well, a murder of crows. I get a flash of memory of what it’s like to be a child in a world of giant grown-ups.

Bizarrely, although this should make me feel vulnerable, I find it strangely reassuring. They’re all discussing how to take care of me; for once, looking out for myself isn’t a hundred percent my responsibility. I close my eyes so I can’t see Alison and Luce glaring at me, and wait for a few minutes, teeth chattering with the cold, till Taylor ducks down next to me and says:

“Okay, Scarlett. Me and Jane are going to help you back down to the bottom of the hill, and then we’ll find the coach and take you back to school to see the nurse and figure out what’s going on with you.”

She shoves one hand into my armpit and heaves me to my feet. I wobble dangerously, but Jane is right there on my other side, taking my elbow firmly.

“I’ll ring Gwen,” Miss Carter says, her phone in her hand. “She’s Scarlett’s aunt, after all. She’ll want to take Scarlett back to Fetters.”

I cast an agonized glance at Taylor.

“You come too!” I plead, and though my mouth still isn’t working very well she understands completely what I’m saying and nods repeatedly.

“I’m
totally
not leaving you alone with your aunt while you’re sick,” she reassured me. “Don’t worry.”

Jane shoots Taylor a frown, but doesn’t question this; she’s probably known Aunt Gwen long enough to guess that Aunt Gwen has the empathy and bedside manner of Hannibal Lecter.

“Does she have any allergies?” Jane asks Taylor as they start to walk me over to the cleft that’s the first descent we have to make.

“Nope,” Taylor says. “This is totally weird. I’ve never seen her like this before.”

Jane clears her throat.

“I know young people”—she starts—“um, sometimes experiment with things … like cough mixture, or cold medication.… Is there any possibility that she was doing something like that this morning? I’ll be discreet,” she adds quickly. “It’s just that the nurse should know if Scarlett’s on anything.”

“We’re not that dumb,” Taylor says flatly. “We’re not like that anyway, and we’re
especially
not dumb enough to do anything that would make us trippy before we come out to
climb
a
mountain
.”

I feel Jane nod beside me.

“Fine,” she says equably. “I know you’re both sporty girls. It makes sense that you’d respect your bodies and wouldn’t do something so stupid.”

Even in my debilitated state, I wince at being called sporty: it gives me an instant picture of Sharon Persaud, school hockey star, with her grim expression and enormous muscly thighs.

“Scarlett,” Taylor says to me, “we’re going to take you down this narrow bit now. Remember it when we came up? I’m going to go in front of you. I’ll have one hand out to brace you the whole time. Just take it super slowly and you’ll be fine.”

If anything, my dizziness is increasing, and I’m so busy concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other, flat to the ground so I don’t trip, that I don’t lift my head to look around me. I register that two guys, whippet thin, pass us coming up; they’re actually running up the steep ascent, shiny and sweaty in tight black Lycra. For a moment I think I’m hallucinating, because they go by so fast, and my grip on Taylor tightens; then Jane says,

“Hill running is
terribly
hard on the knees,” and I relax in the knowledge that they’re real.

Miss Carter must have got hold of Aunt Gwen, because she’s waiting at the base of the stone steps cut into the hillside, her hands on her hips, eyes bulging furiously. The first words out of her mouth are:

“So she’s managed to get herself into trouble
again
! What on earth is it this time?”

I flinch back, cannoning into Jane. She says carefully:

“Miss Wakefield—Scarlett’s had some sort of a turn. She’s not well.”

“Really,”
Aunt Gwen says disbelievingly.

“She’s just had a collapse,” Jane says slowly, as if she’s speaking to a child. “Did Clemency not tell you that when she rang you?”

Aunt Gwen shrugs.

“It’s one thing after another with Scarlett,” she mutters crossly. “I simply can’t keep up.”

I feel Jane take a deep breath.

“You know what?” she says overbrightly. “Taylor and I will take Scarlett back to Fetters. Sorry to have bothered you, Miss Wakefield. Come on, Scarlett. It’s not far now to the coach.”

Aunt Gwen turns away without saying another word, striding back down a deep grassy slope, presumably to rejoin the St. Tabby’s group. A pheasant’s hopping across the slope, a cock pheasant, his head bright green and red, his chestnut-colored body shiny and plump; he takes one look at Aunt Gwen stamping toward him and rises into the air, his wings whirring, getting out of her way as fast as he can.

“Uh, Scarlett and her aunt don’t get on too well,” Taylor says.

“Yes, I’m rather picking that up,” Jane mutters, pulling her phone out of her pocket. “Clemency, it’s me,” she says when her call’s answered. “I’m taking Scarlett back myself. Her aunt was, er—yes—
yes
—my God, she’s not exactly—yes, we’ll talk about this later. Let’s just say I think I should take Scarlett to the school nurse myself. Taylor McGovern will come with me. Can you get the other girls down all right? Those two—Alison and Lucy, is it?—seem very capable, I’m sure they’ll help—good—all right, darling, I’ll see you back at the school—my
goodness,
what a morning!”

I get to lie down on the backseat of the coach going back, and the warm upholstery and rumbling of the wheels lull me into a doze; Taylor has to shake me awake when we arrive at Fetters, and I uncurl my limbs from the happy ball I’ve been snuggled in. To my embarrassment, I need to hold on to the tops of the seats for balance as I walk down the central aisle, and I’m unsteady going into the school building. All I want to do is sleep.

Jane and Taylor get me to the nurse’s office, and while we’re waiting for her to come back from wherever she is, I lie down on the narrow, green-plastic-upholstered examination table against the wall and pass out. I literally can’t keep my eyes open a moment longer. Not even the bright fluorescent light strips of the infirmary can stop me from going to sleep. I hear bustling around me. Someone prises open one of my eyelids and shines a light onto my eyeball, and I whine in protest. Fingers close around my wrist, taking my pulse. My sweater’s unzipped, my T-shirt pulled up, and the metal circle of a stethoscope is pressed to my bare chest; I whimper, because it’s cold, but soon it goes away, my clothes are pulled down again, and someone tucks a pillow under my head and a blanket around my body. The voices fade away, the lights go out. I turn my head in to the pillow and go out like the lights just did.

I don’t know how long I was unconscious, but when I eventually wake up, I’m cramped, my muscles tight and painful. I assume it’s because, in my sleep, I’ve been squashing myself up, automatically making sure I don’t turn over and fall off the high, narrow table. The paper covering of the pillow is damp where I’ve been drooling on it with an open mouth.

Nice, Scarlett. Very elegant.
Embarrassed, I rip off the paper pillowcase, ball it up, and throw it into the wastebasket. I pull off the blanket and lever myself off the table, stretching as high as I can with both arms, working out the cramps in my muscles. Then I roll my head from side to side. I’m myself again. Any lingering wisps of drowsiness are fading away like mist in the dawn, burning off with the adrenaline that’s racing through me as I look back over the events of this morning and realize, with growing horror, that what happened to me was very bad indeed.

That wasn’t because I was getting my period.
I know it now that I have my clarity back.
And I would never even have assumed it was for two seconds, if I hadn’t been so trippy I could barely put one foot in front of the other.

Not only have I never felt anything like that before when my period’s nearly due, I’ve never heard of
anyone
getting a reaction like that just from being premenstrual. Feeling so weak, fainting … it’s like something out of a Charlotte Brontë novel. We’re doing
Villette
for English A-level, and the heroine spends half her time thinking she’s hallucinating visions of a nun who was murdered for having an affair, or wandering through the town completely spaced-out after the villainess has drugged her with opium.

As you can tell even from that short summary, it’s a brilliant book. A bit mad, but completely brilliant. But frankly, you read books precisely because you want to go through experiences in them that you’d run a mile from if you met them in real life. And though Lucy Snowe, the heroine of
Villette,
found herself walking through a carnival tripping on laudanum (which is actually a mix of opium and booze—the Victorians drank it to help them go to sleep. Mad, eh?), at least if you fall over at a carnival, you’ll probably just topple onto a nice patch of grass and maybe go to sleep.

Whereas I was up a very steep mountain with rocks in every direction. My faint could have had really serious consequences.

I’m shying away from the truth. Which is that it could have killed me.

Which makes twice in forty-eight hours that I could have died from a fall. And both times, it would have seemed like an accident.

I sit back down on the table, feeling very cold indeed. Sweat pools at the small of my back. I shiver as if someone’s dropped an ice cube down my shoulder blades. Even though, in the last year, a lot of truly awful things have happened to me, I’ve never been targeted like this. I’ve been caught up in other people’s drama, and it’s turned nasty and dangerous. But I’ve never been the intended victim. I’ve never felt that someone else had me in their sights.

I’ve never been this scared in my life.

The infirmary door opens and I jump almost off the table. Even when I see that it’s Taylor coming in, I don’t completely relax. And that’s an even worse shock, because in that split second, I’ve realized that I don’t quite trust anyone a hundred percent. Not even Taylor.

Taylor wasn’t there to catch me when I took that tumble earlier today. She’d gone off to get help from Miss Carter. And she did tell me to stay sitting down and to wait for her. But she called me up to a particularly steep place—by the sundial—and then she left me there.