“Dr. Mignon is supposed to send those directly to me, Miss Moss,” Mr. Penworthy said from the doorway of his office. “I've told you that before.”
The Trinity High School principal wore high heeled boots, a Western belt with a silver buckle, and a string tie. Madison glanced down at her own fancy boots and shrugged. It was all about scale and context. That's what she told herself, anyway.
Madison paused before she spoke, afraid of what would leak out. “I … I'm sorry, sir,” Madison said. “She insisted I give this to you. Said she wanted me to be in the loop. Said to call her if you had any questions.”
The principal hadn't liked the idea of supervising Madison's post-secondary program from the start, even though all he had to do was handle the paperwork.
Mr. Penworthy snatched the envelope away from his secretary and waved it at Madison. “How do I know your grades haven't been tampered with?”
Madison bit back the first words that came to mind. “Well. Um. I guess you could call her. Sir.” She practically curtsied as she backed out of the office.
You can't afford to get into any more trouble, she said to herself. You came up here to make a fresh start.
It had started at Coal Grove High School, with notes left on her locker and slipped into her backpack, and text messages flying around. Stories that claimed Madison Moss was a witch. Not the white witch or granny woman traditional in those parts. No. Maddie was an evil, diabolical harpy who would suck your soul out through your ear and hex your garden or ensnare your boyfriend.
She had no clue where it was coming from, but the gossip was widespread and persistent. Kids made signs against the evil eye in the hallway when she passed. Girls tried to get a lock of her hair to use for love charms. Boys dared each other to ask her out.
It wasn't even like people still believed in that kind of thing. It was more like everybody was moonstruck or something. Madison tried to ignore it, hoping it would wear off or that some other scandal would come up to talk about.
Then the fires started. At first, it was tumbledown barns, sheds, and haystacks that went up like tinder, all around the county. Later, it was occupied barns and hunting cabins and country churches. There was no putting the fires out. Everything burned to the dirt. The perpetrators marked each site with a witchcraft symbol—a pentacle, an elven cross, a chalice. Madison didn't even know what they meant until she looked them up at the library.
Fear swept across the county, and suspicion focused on Booker Mountain, fed by the rumors that had gone round before. The police came out and looked for clues, though they didn't seem sure what to look for. Someone left a cauldron filled with blood in the barnyard. People left threatening messages on their phone (when they had a phone.) Someone sneaked into the family graveyard on Booker Mountain and broke some of the headstones, scribbled threats and profanity on others. A delegation from the Foursquare Church performed an exorcism in front of their gate until Madison brought out Jordie's shotgun and waved it at them.
That didn't help.
It was a nightmare that got worse and worse. Carloads of thrill seekers started following her around, hoping to catch her in the act. People refused to serve her in restaurants, and refused to be served by Carlene. What friends she had melted away.
Carlene was finally moved to action when it looked like she'd lose her job. She called Rachel, and Rachel offered Madison room and board and a job in Trinity. And her art teacher, Ms. McGregor, told Madison how she could use college credit to graduate from high school. Madison left Coalton County at the end of her junior year.
And just like that, the fires stopped. Which confirmed her guilt, some said.
Her gut twisted up and she shoved the memory away. She was done with that.
The hallways had cleared by the time she left the office, and the busses were gone. She eyed the students hanging out on the front steps, thinking she might see Seph's tall, spare form among them. But no. He'd said he'd meet her at Corcoran's and she was already late. Luckily, it was just down the block. She crossed the parking lot and headed up the street.
She stamped the snow off her boots in front of Corcoran's Diner, glaring at the plastic reindeer mounted on the door, its lighted nose glowing cheerfully in the waning afternoon light. The bells mounted on its collar jangled as she pushed the door open.
Corcoran's was jammed with the usual after-school crowd. Madison scanned the room—the red leatherette booths along the side, the battered stools at the soda fountain.
No Seph.
Madison checked her watch. She was twenty minutes late. Maybe he'd come and gone? She flipped open her cell phone. No messages.
Harmon Fitch and his girlfriend, Rosie, were huddled over Fitch's laptop at their usual table in the front window.
Fitch looked up. “Hey, Maddie. Pull up a chair.”
He turned the laptop toward Rosie, who flung back her long dreadlocks and began typing furiously. Probably hacking into the Pentagon.
Madison shook her head. “Thanks. I can't stay. I have to get to work.” She shifted from one foot to the other.
Rosie passed the notebook back to Fitch. He studied the screen and grinned savagely. “Brilliant. Let's try this.” His fingers flickered over the keyboard, entering strings of letters and numbers.
“Um. Have you seen Seph?” She tilted the portfolio toward Fitch. “He was supposed to meet me here. I have something for him.”Fitch's fingers never stopped moving. “Last I saw him was second period, sleeping through class, as usual. He cut Calculus this afternoon.”
“He what?”
Fitch left off typing and leaned back in his chair, regarding her thoughtfully. “He didn't show for Math, and he wasn't on the absent list. You been keeping him up late or what?”
Madison flinched, feeling the blood rush to her face. “Wasn't me.” Then who? She fought back a wave of jealousy. She'd been avoiding Seph, making excuses. She couldn't complain if he hung out with someone else.
Fitch shrugged and leaned over his computer again. “Anyway, he's in trouble. Garrity was pissed. It's the third time this semester.”
Fear pricked at her, warring with guilt. It wasn't like him to miss class.
Maybe he was sick.
Even worse, maybe he was sick because of her.
But how could that be, when she hadn't seen him in days? He'd texted her yesterday, asking for help with an art project. He wouldn't ask unless he was desperate. She couldn't say no.
“Well, if he comes in, could you tell him to call me?”
She tried his cell phone, but it went to voice mail. She left a message.
Where else could he be? Could he have forgotten?
In desperation, she walked all the way to Perry Park, though it was little used in the wintertime. Seph was nowhere to be seen, but she came upon the warriors Jack Swift and Ellen Stephenson, drilling their ghost army in a secluded clearing in the woods.
She found them by following the sounds of combat. Jack had put up one of those wizard enclosures to keep nosy people away, in the unlikely event that nosy people were out walking in the woods in mid-December. But Madison was an elicitor. Magic and its illusions didn't work on her. She just sponged it up, then it dribbled back out, totally out of her control.
There in the meadow was Jack Swift, his long gold-red hair tied back with a leather strip, leading two dozen warriors across the snowy field in a howling charge. To be met by Ellen Stephenson and her two dozen, a bristling wall of swords and shields.
There was no sign of Seph.
It was a motley collection of soldiers, with armor and weaponry drawn from two centuries of warfare. Their weapons glittered in the frail winter sun, their breath was pluming into the cold air. The warriors collided with a bone-shattering thud into a melee of arms and legs and deadly weapons. Blood splattered across the snow, and vintage curses and challenges in a half-dozen languages rang through the trees as individual warriors tried to free themselves from the press of bodies so they could use their swords.
Jack extricated himself, clearing a great space around him with his sword, Shadowslayer. The blade flickered like a flame in the gloom under the trees. Ellen spun in under his reach, her sword somehow finding an opening in his defenses. The flat of her blade slammed into his ribs, raising a spray of snow.
“A hit!” she crowed. “A palpable hit. Do you yield?”
“Barely palpable,” Jack growled, driving her back furiously. Sparks flew as their blades collided and their heated bodies steamed in the frigid air. Their boots churned the meadow into a thick pudding of mud and ice.
Madison was fascinated in spite of herself. Tall, muscular Jack was a pleasure to watch any time. He and Ellen were longtime dancing partners whose bodies moved to a savage melody no one else heard.
It was like a lifesize video game, a gut-wrenching bout between the living and the dead. They might be injured— even mortally during these skirmishes—but everyone rose whole at the end of the day, if not without aches and pains.
Finally, Jack pivoted and struck Ellen's sword a massive, two-handed blow, sending it flying out of her hands. Jack came on, grinning, sword extended, backing Ellen into a tree. “So, Warrior, do you yiel…hey!” he yelped as Ellen let fly with her sling, and a fist-size rock struck him on the shoulder.
Ellen hated to lose.
Jack finally noticed Madison, lurking in the fringes of the trees. “Madison! Where'd you come from?” Side-stepping a tall warrior in buckskins who lunged at him with a hatchet, he raised his hand. “Hold!” he shouted.
The fighting dwindled into late hits and skirmishes, then subsided.
The spell was broken. Madison jammed her hat down over her ears. “Don't let me interrupt.”
Jack and Ellen looked at one another, as if each hoped the other would speak. Madison didn't approve of any of the frenetic preparations going on in Trinity, and they knew it. The gifted were a club from which Madison was excluded.
Jack cleared his throat. “We're, you know, drilling. In case the other Wizard Houses try to break into the sanctuary.”