Witch Fire (10 page)

Please rank in order of likelihood, with 1 being the most likely, and 5 the least.

a) Afraid

b) Embarrassed

c) Disgusted

d) Pitying

e) Supportive

If your enemies found out about your condition, would they be more likely to:

a) Fear your capabilities

or

b) Rejoice at your disability?

And so on. Assessments complete, Glory was taken off for her meeting with the therapist, while Lucas went on a campus tour.

‘Whatever your interests,’ Lucas was told, ‘we do our best to accommodate them.’ But none of the facilities looked as if they saw much use. His route took in the science lab, art studio, library, music suite, cinema, gym, swimming pool and tennis courts . . . All this for a mere seven students, when the building could have accommodated seventy.

He rejoined the others for lunch in the dining room, where a single table was set up in the middle of a cavernous wood-panelled hall. The food was good, accessorised with silver cutlery and served by maids. But the meal was a subdued one.

Mrs Heggie, the matron, presided at the head of the table and chivvied her neighbours into making stilted small talk. Lucas managed to make eye contact with Glory once, when she passed the salt. He would have been glad to finish the meal, except for the fact that his psychological assessment came afterwards.

Dr Flavia Caron had been working at Wildings for two years. She was a forty-something French-Canadian with a neat brown bob and a long, rather melancholy face. Her clothes were plain and her only adornment was a large tarnished ring on her left hand. Lucas expected her tower room to be similarly austere. However, there were modern-art posters on the wall, and a bunch of wild flowers brightened the mantelpiece.

Lucas sat down on the chair set out for him. There was a small table next to the chair, with a plastic tray of sand on it.

‘Have you ever had any kind of therapy before?’ Dr Caron asked him, after the introductions were over. Behind her unfashionable spectacles, her eyes were large and mild.

‘No.’

‘Do you know what to expect?’

‘ “The talking cure” – isn’t that what you call it?’ Lucas’s tone was dismissive. He was careful to sit upright, not relax into his chair.

‘Pyschoanalysis is a cooperative process. It should be a journey of discovery between therapist and client. I don’t look on you as a patient with disabilities to treat.’

He almost laughed. ‘But I
do
have a disability. A disability I’m not allowed to talk about – that’s the whole reason I’ve been sent to this place. So you can understand,’ he said with exaggerated politeness, ‘why I don’t quite see the point of our meetings.’

‘
These sessions are about tackling blocks to your personal development, whatever their origin or cause. Your condition is only one part of who you are.’ Dr Caron looked at him enquiringly. ‘Or do you, in fact, believe it defines you?’

‘It defines my life choices. Or lack of them.’

‘You have the choice here to talk about whatever you want.’

‘What if I chose to say nothing?’

She smiled a little.
‘
Then we can sit in silence for the next hour.’

Lucas mustn’t be too obstructive, however. Glory was the designated troublemaker. He was supposed to be the dutiful one.
Just be yourselves,
Rawdon had told them.
No cover could be more convincing
.

‘All right. What’s the sand for?’

‘Well, talk therapy isn’t for everyone. Sandplay is an alternative therapeutic technique. I invite my clients to use the sand however they wish. Some people like to dig, others to build. Some create landscapes, others abstract patterns. Either way, the world that a person makes in the tray can represent aspects of their feelings and experiences. It’s a tool for self-expression that doesn’t require speech.’

Lucas touched the sand experimentally. It was granular like sugar, but cool and slightly damp. ‘You don’t have to do anything with it if you don’t want to,’ Dr Caron told him. ‘It’s relaxing just to fiddle about with.’

He noticed she had a disability of sorts too. The top joint of her right index finger was missing. She saw him looking. ‘I was in a car accident last year,’ she said. ‘It took several months in hospital before I recovered.’

‘Oh. Um . . . I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Healing the mind is no easier than healing the body. Both processes take time, and patience.’

He sighed. ‘OK. Fine. Where do you want me to start? Should I dredge up a childhood trauma or something?’

‘Do you consider your childhood traumatic?’

‘Not at all. It was a very happy one.’ He wondered about the file she’d been given, and what it said about his mother. Idly, he began to trail his fingers through the sand.

‘You must miss your family.’

‘Obviously. But I have to accept I’m here for my own good.’

‘Is that what your father told you? He’s an inquisitor, I gather.’

‘He used to be. Now he works in government.’

‘You don’t have a problem with the work he does or has done?’

‘Why would I? It’s important. Admirable.’

‘So you are proud of him.’

‘Yes.’

‘And is he proud of you?’

‘Yes,’ Lucas told Dr Caron. ‘Yes, he is.’ But he couldn’t quite meet her eye.

Chapter 10

The session with the shrink was every bit as bogus as Glory expected. Dr Caron droned on about new pathways and positive thinking – the sort of junk you’d find in a third-rate horoscope. Invited to play with the sand, Glory amused herself with writing rude words and sculpting even ruder body parts.

‘I know I ain’t disabled,’ she told the therapist. ‘Or wrong in the head. And nothing you can say will make me think different.’

‘I can understand why the terminology used at Wildings would make you uncomfortable,’ Dr Caron said tranquilly.
‘
The other students I see often choose to give their disability a name, as if it were an actual person. This allows them to address the issue, while keeping within the rules.’

‘I don’t get it.’

‘Well, if you were to call your condition “Anna”, for example, then we could talk about the effect “she” has on your life. What your family and friends think of “her” and so on.’

Glory considered this. ‘All right. But I ain’t going for a lame name like Anna. How about Esmerelda Thunderpants?’

Dr Caron pursed her lips.

Good. If the nosy cow was recruiting for Endor, then so much the better.

After being shown the academy sights, Glory was told she had an hour’s free time before supper. Her guardian left her at the door to the student common room – not that there was anything common about it. Dark wooden arches converged in the centre of the ceiling, and giant leather armchairs were set out on acres of rugs. The only person there was Mei-fen, playing solitaire. Dwarfed by her oversize surroundings, she looked tinier than ever. She glanced at Glory with indifference before returning to her game. Maybe Glory should have stuck around, casually interrogated the kid, but she wanted to find Lucas.

Glory set off in what she thought was the direction of Dr Caron’s lair, hoping she’d meet Lucas on his way back. However, the plush hallways and stairwells were confusingly alike. Most of the doors she tried were locked. She knew the outer ones were alarmed. If you wanted to go outside – to walk in the gardens or use the sports facilities – you had to get one of the guardians to escort you. Similarly, if you wanted to use the art studio or library or whatever, a member of staff had to open it up for you first.

‘Hey, are you lost?’

It was the American, Jenna. Even in the dimly lit corridor she seemed to glow. Shiny teeth, shiny eyes, shiny hair.

‘Sorta. I was having a nose about. Trying to get me bearings.’

‘It’s crazy, right? I keep expecting to bump into Frankenstein’s Monster on the stairs.’ Jenna looked down at the cardboard box she was carrying. ‘Look . . . my mom’s sent me a care package. You wanna hang out, help me eat some candy?’

In the normal course of things, there was no way a girl like Jenna White would come within spitting distance of a girl like Glory Wilde. Not in the ordinary world. But here they were, outcasts alike. Glory sized Jenna up, wondering about the strength of her fae, and what, if anything, she’d done with it. Where the Devil had left his mark.

‘OK,’ she said.

Jenna’s room had the same basic furnishings as Glory’s, but there the similarity ended. There was a Stars and Stripes flag on the wall, a fluffy pink carpet on the floor and a butterfly mobile dangling from the ceiling. Posters of American athletes and celebrities jostled with snapshots of Jenna and her friends at football games, parties and on the beach. It appeared Jenna was one of those girls who photograph better than they look in the flesh. Not that she wasn’t pretty, with her big blue eyes, perky nose and swinging hair. But the photographic version was even brighter than life.

‘You been in Brat Camp for a while, then?’ Glory asked.

‘Brat –? Oh, I get it.
Too
funny! I’ve only been here a few weeks, actually.’ Jenna opened her package and began to rummage through its contents. ‘Here,’ she said, tossing Glory a bag of chocolate drops. ‘I figure there isn’t much else to do in this place but get fat.’

Glory obediently ate some chalky-tasting chocolate. What were they going to do next? Brush each other’s hair and paint their nails? At school, Glory had been at the centre of an admiring crowd, but there was nobody she was particularly close to. The Starling name, her coven home and connections with the Morgans meant that other kids were a little wary of her. She realised she wasn’t quite sure how to get the whole girly bonding thing started.

Jenna sat on the bed, hugging a heart-shaped cushion to her chest. ‘So,’ she said. ‘You’re from England, huh?’

‘Yeah. London.’

‘Awesome.’

‘You’ve been?’

‘No, but I
love
all that ye olde England stuff. Cucumber sandwiches, the Royal family, James Bond . . . and the accents, of course. Are you a cockney?’ Jenna didn’t wait for an answer, immediately launching into, ‘Cor blimey, me old china. Lor luvva duck!’

Glory cracked a smile. ‘I should’ve brought some jellied eels.’

Jenna clearly didn’t get the reference, but laughed anyway. ‘I don’t know why it’s so hot when English guys talk snobby. Like that boy who came with you – Luke or whatever.’

‘Yeah, Lucas is from the cream of society, all right. Rich and thick . . . What about the rest of the gang here?’

Jenna wrinkled her snub little nose. ‘Freaks and geeks, mostly. I don’t know if that’s because of their – our – trouble, or if it’s because they’re, like, foreign. The South American, Raffi?
Total
sleaze. And the Russian boy’s just plain scary.

‘Anjuli’s sister is some kinda actress, but in India, so it’s not like she’s a real celebrity. Anyways. Anjuli’s got this whole weird eating issue thing going on. I reckon she’d be in rehab, and Yuri’d be in juvie, if they weren’t here. Mei’s sweet, though. She’s been in this place since she was, like, ten. It’s practically home.’

Interesting. That hadn’t been in the file. Teenage witches were rare, child witches almost unheard of. Mei-fen was potentially very powerful.

Aware that her expression had perhaps turned a little too serious, Glory turned to the photographic display. A bronzed hunk loomed large in the nearest one. ‘Who’s the talent?’

‘
That’s my boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, I guess. He thinks I’ve gone to Europe to learn French.’

‘So he don’t know?’

‘No
way
. He’d totally freak out. I wouldn’t blame him either. The whole thing . . . it’s just . . . it’s
so gross
.’ Jenna gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘And what about you?’

‘What about me?’

‘Any boys pining for you back home?’

‘Hundreds,’ she said airily. ‘I’m glad to be rid of ’em.’ Growing up in a coven, Glory was used to male attention of all kinds, good and bad. She knew how to turn on the charm, if it was going to be useful to her, but romance to her was Lily Starling sashaying into a smoky bar to the sound of low whistles and drawn-in breaths. Or Cora, caught by a policeman in the act of stealing a mink coat, and knocking him dead with a wink of her wicked black eyes.

‘Well, how ’bout your family and friends? Won’t they start to wonder what’s become of you?’

‘
Tell the truth, this ain’t my first disappearing act. And it ain’t the only “trouble” I’ve gotten into neither.’

Jenna widened her already wide blue eyes. ‘No kidding.’

Glory shrugged insouciantly.
‘
There’s more than one reason I’m best off here, not home. Still, I’ll have to go back eventually. Face the music.’