Immortal (25 page)

I tore the ribbon from my neck and held up the innocent-looking necklace. “I’ll stop wearing this thing. I’ll send it away, back to Frankie….”

“And put her in the same danger?”

“Then I’ll just get rid of it! I’ll…I’ll throw it in the lake, or chuck it down one of those old mine shafts on the top of the moors.”

“So that they can pick it up at their convenience? You can’t abandon the Talisman, and it will be impossible to destroy.” Her pale face looked more ethereal than ever as she stood in front of me, urging me to believe her. “Just open your mind, Evie. Learn how to use it.”

“But I don’t know how!”

Helen placed her hand on mine. A flash of blue light flamed out of the Talisman and lit up the cave, making the mosaics spring to life with a thousand reflections.

“You see? The Talisman is ready to awaken, if you’ll let it.”

“But I haven’t got any powers,” I argued. “I’m not like you.”

“You saw Lady Agnes, though,” said Sarah. “And you could see Sebastian.”

I couldn’t deny it. I looked down at the Talisman, lying there in my hand. What would it demand of me? Agnes had died because of the Mystic Way, and it had lured Sebastian to his doom…. Would I be able to do any better? Helen and Sarah were looking at me expectantly. I was standing on a precipice, hovering between two worlds.

“Can you really teach me what to do?”

“I can try,” Helen replied. “Some things I have learned since being at Wyldcliffe; others I just kind of knew from the beginning. But I think that everyone has a voice inside them, telling them the story of their own power; it’s just that they just don’t bother to listen to it. Look at the girls here at Wyldcliffe. All they care about is being popular and getting invited to the right parties at the holidays. They don’t listen to what’s really going on inside them. Some people are naturally more sensitive, though, like you and Sarah.”

“How do you mean?” asked Sarah.

“I’ve often felt your mind reaching out to mine. I had to work hard to keep you out sometimes. No one has taught you how to develop your instincts into power, but I know you could do it. And, Evie, you can’t deny what you have experienced. You both have huge potential to awaken your real selves. And the Mystic Way is a sort of key that can unlock that potential.”

“But not everyone can do this weird magic stuff, levitation and healing and all that,” I said.

“It’s not magic!” She laughed. “This isn’t a fairy tale, Evie. The stuff I can do, and what Agnes could do—it’s all part of the mystery of nature. We think we have all the answers, but our very existence is a miracle. What do you really understand about the universe and the stars and the ocean, and, oh, I don’t know…electricity and magnetism and string theory and quantum physics? Isn’t all that ‘unbelievable’?”

“That’s different,” I objected.

“Is it? When people first taught that the earth went around the sun, and not the other way around, they were regarded as dangerous lunatics. But now it’s accepted. And it’s the same with this. People will understand it one day.” She fell silent, then shrugged. “This isn’t about some philosophical theory, Evie; it’s about survival. How else are you going to protect yourself? Agnes left you the Talisman. She must have wanted you to use it.”

“That’s why she has been trying to contact you,” said Sarah seriously. “I’m sure Helen’s right. You’ve got to do this, Evie. Just open your mind to it.”

You can do it, Evie; you can do anything you want.
I seemed to hear another faint echo of my mother’s voice, and the thought flashed through my mind that if I could use the Talisman to help myself, then maybe I could use it to help Sebastian. It was the tiniest chance, but it was enough.

“Okay,” I muttered. “I’ll give it a go.”

“What about you, Sarah? Evie needs all the support she can get.”

“Sure.” Sarah quickly squeezed my hand. “I believe in the unseen world. Count me in.”

Helen’s beautiful smile lit up her face. “Great. We’ll need to start from the very beginning, with the Circle. And we’ll need some candles.”

I groped in an alcove behind the statue of Pan, remembering my last visit. The candles and matches that Sebastian had used were still there.

“That’s perfect,” said Helen. She lit the candles, and their warm yellow light danced across the grotto’s walls. Then she fumbled in her bag and found a piece of chalk in her art supplies.

“Put the Talisman on the ground.”

I did as Helen asked. Sarah placed the flickering candles around it. Then Helen drew with the chalk on the floor, marking a circle to surround the three of us, with the Talisman in the center.

“Don’t step out of the Circle, whatever you do. Now hold hands.”

We linked our hands. I felt silly, like a child at a birthday party waiting for the magician to pull a rabbit out of his hat. But Helen looked deadly serious.

“Try to empty your minds,” she said. “Concentrate on the Elements that we come from: the air of our breath, the water of our veins, the earth of our bodies, and the fire of our desires.”

She began to chant it over and over, and we copied her: “The water of our veins…the fire of our desires…”

Then she raised her arms and face, just as we had seen her standing on the roof, and spoke in a low, clear voice: “We stand here, pure in intention, courageous of heart, young in spirit, united of purpose. We ask that the powers within us might awake. We ask Agnes to show us the truth of her Talisman. We call on our sisters: the wind, the earth, and the seas. We invoke the fire of life.”

Even then part of me was saying,
Nothing will happen; I can’t really do this
…. I wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

The lights flickered to a ghostly glow. A wind sprang up, wrapping itself around us, blowing our hair, taking my breath away.

“Hold out your hands.”

Shaking, I held them out in front of me, and Sarah did the same. A column of bright white fire shot up from the Talisman, and tiny flames danced around the circle that Helen had drawn on the floor. I gasped. Water was flowing from my hands, spilling to the ground like a waterfall. I looked across at Sarah. Fine dust was pouring out of hers. Earth, water, air, fire…Then I saw a girl in white at the heart of the column of fire. “
Agnes!
” I cried as I went spinning out of control, falling into another world….

Everything was black. It was over.

“Don’t step out of the circle!”

I blinked and opened my eyes. The only light came from the candles, which were burning steadily. The Talisman lay cool and unharmed on the floor. I bent down and picked it up, and heard Agnes whisper,
I am with you always….

Helen quickly rubbed the chalk markings away with her foot. Then she turned to us with flushed cheeks. “The Elements have spoken. Earth for Sarah, water for Evie. I thought it would be like that.” She smiled. “So now we are complete. Four friends, four Elements, four corners of the circle.”

“But there are only three of us,” said Sarah.

“No, there aren’t,” I said, looking up slowly. “Don’t forget Agnes. She’s in this too.”

Now I had glimpsed her world, and I could never go back to being the girl I used to be.

Forty-six

A

gnes.

I was aware of her every day. She was by my side as I walked down the long, echoing corridors of Wyldcliffe. Sometimes she was as vivid and real as any other girl, sometimes just a shadow, like a sigh. I was afraid of what Sebastian had told me and of the things that Helen had shown us, but Agnes somehow gave me the courage to keep going in that place of twisted secrets. She even gave me the strength to deal with Celeste, who seemed more determined than ever to land me in trouble.

She must have had plenty of time lying in her hospital bed to dream up her pathetic campaign—stupid stuff like tearing pages from my books, or hiding my gym clothes, anything to make life uncomfortable. It wasn’t enough for her to dislike me personally; she wanted India and Sophie and the whole of her crowd to hate me too. Sophie looked a bit awkward, but she was too weak to say anything, and soon fell back under Celeste’s control. I didn’t care. I knew who my friends were.

“Do you really think you’re going to get me expelled by doing all this childish stuff?” I asked Celeste wearily as I came into the dorm and found my clothes scattered on the floor for the third time that week.

“Not for this, Johnson,” she replied. “This is just to wind you up. It’s kind of fun, though.”

“You’re sick, you know, Celeste.”

“Really? How kind of you to tell me,” she drawled. Then she laughed. “You’re the one who’s going to be sick when you’re packing your bags to leave.”

I walked out without speaking. I had to get away from her before I lost my temper. I mustn’t draw attention to myself—hadn’t Miss Scratton said that once? I ran down the marble stairs heading anywhere—the stables, the library, it didn’t matter.

“No running on the stairs!”

I stopped and looked behind me. It was Miss Dalrymple.

“Where are you dashing to like that?” She looked smiling and cheerful, but she watched me unblinkingly, like a snake. She came closer to me and I started to feel sick. Lights seemed to press on my eyes until I saw a bright patch hovering in front of me. It was in the shape of a cross—no, a kind of sword, and then for split second I saw Sebastian as though faraway, his beautiful face taut with concentration, as he cut the air with swift movements, a silver dagger flashing in his hand. The silver dagger…

I tried to speak: “Sorry.”

“Remember that running on the stairs can be dangerous,” she said blandly. “We wouldn’t want anything to happen, would we? Why, Evie, you look so pale. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“But so untidy, dear.” Her eyes were darting all over me. “Make sure your hair is tied back in the future. And you’re not wearing jewelry, are you?”

Jewelry. My heart was big and loud in my chest. The blood sang in my head.

“N-no…no…of course not.”

Was she an overzealous teacher searching for rule breakers, or a member of the coven searching for the Talisman? Either way I was trapped. She was standing so close to me now that I could see the fine veins in her cheeks, could smell the heavy, hypnotic perfume that she wore. I had to get away. I panicked and pulled open the first two buttons of my shirt, showing my bare neck.

“I don’t have any jewelry,” I stammered. “I don’t have anything.”

Miss Dalrymple’s face fell as she stepped back; then she smiled again.

“Of course not. Why would you?”

She let me go. I was shaking, but safe. Miss Dalrymple couldn’t have known that seconds before I had run down the marble steps, I had obeyed a blind impulse and hidden my necklace in a dark crack on the old servants’ staircase. But I couldn’t hide it forever.

“You have to make progress in the Rites, Evie,” urged Helen. “Look at what happened with Dalrymple. She could be involved. I’m sure she is. If the coven finds out that you are hiding the Talisman, they’ll close in on you. And Sebastian might attack any day.”

“He won’t!”

“Evie, you can’t be sure about that.” Helen sighed. “It’s desperately important for you to be prepared.”

“I’m trying! I’ve been practicing the Rites with you and Sarah every day. It’s just that I…”

“What?” asked Sarah.

“I can’t make anything happen,” I said. “Not since that first time.”

I don’t know what I had expected. Perhaps I imagined that I would be able to wave a wand and perform miracles, turn back the clocks and make everything all right by magic. It wasn’t like that, though. I couldn’t dance on the wind like Helen or heal people like Agnes. I couldn’t do anything.

I had brooded over the Talisman, called to it, turned it over in my hands, and hung it around my neck once again, but I had not been able to awaken it from its long sleep. And when Helen drew the Circle in our secret meetings, nothing happened to me. Sarah, on the other hand, was leaving me far behind. She knew how to perform the incantations, and when she placed her hands over a mound of earth that had been ritually scattered inside the Circle, a tiny green shoot would spring up from it before our eyes, like a fast-forwarded film. But I was completely useless.

So here we all were again, down in the grotto, trying everything one more time.

“You just need to trust yourself,” Sarah said. “It will come.”

They watched me anxiously as I waved my hands like an idiot over a bowl of water, trying to make it turn into steam, or create waves in it, or make it turn pink, or whatever I was supposed to be doing….

“Open your mind,” Helen urged. “Feel your Element calling you; harness its powers—” “I can’t!”

She looked up at me thoughtfully. “Or you don’t want to.”

“I do, I do,” I cried. “I know it’s important.”

“It’s not a question of knowing, Evie. You have to
feel.
”

Perhaps that was the problem. I didn’t want to feel anything. My mother’s death all those years ago had shut something down inside me. I had grown up kidding myself that I was strong and independent, not needing anyone, but I saw now that I had simply been afraid to love, in case the person I loved vanished, as she had. And then Sebastian had come along, and I had stepped out of my protective armor. I had thrown myself headfirst into loving Sebastian, but he had gone, leaving me even more painfully alone than before. The boy I loved was a murderer, a wandering spirit, one of the doomed, and he was out there somewhere, beginning to fade. He was my enemy.

I was so unhappy that it hurt, like being cut with a knife. Of course I couldn’t feel anything; I didn’t want to, ever again.

“Evie, are you paying attention?” Helen’s voice jerked me back from my thoughts.

“Try again, Evie,” Sarah pleaded. “They’re getting closer; I’m sure they are. You’ve got to be able to defend yourself!”

And another distant voice echoed across the years in my head, as light and quick as silver:
Find your powers, my sister, find yourself.

“I am trying,” I lied. Stretching my hands over the bowl of water, I closed my eyes and began to chant.