The other girls all nodded, wide-eyed and serious.
Ariadne paused. “Really?”
Scarlet looked at them incredulously. “A witch? As in … pointy hats and broomsticks and cauldrons?”
“Oh yes,” said Evelyn, the red-haired one. “All of that. And she can do spells.”
“Isn’t it exciting?” said another of them, Bonnie, her bright eyes sparkling. “Do you think she’ll teach us?”
“She can probably teach you how to be even more weird than you lot already are,” Scarlet said, but they didn’t seem to notice. The rumour mill was in full flow.
“Do you think she can make potions? Maybe she’d make a love potion for me …”
“I bet she can see the future!”
“If we look in her window at night we can see if she transforms into a bat!”
Wordlessly, we backed away. Ariadne’s old roommates were a little intense once they got an idea in their heads.
“Ebony’s certainly strange,” I said, as I scraped my bowl clean. “But where can they have got this idea from?”
Ariadne wrinkled her nose, though whether it was at the food slops or at her friends’ gossip I wasn’t sure. “Who knows?” she said.
Scarlet frowned. “I think they believe anything anyone tells them. I think she’s just eccentric, that’s all.”
I nodded in agreement. It wasn’t surprising that Ebony was a little strange – who wasn’t, at Rookwood?
But as I walked past her, with her hair the colour of the night sky and her eyes grey as storm clouds, I began to wonder if perhaps there was more to her than met the eye.
We’d unpacked and were heading to the bathrooms to get ready for bed. An hour or so earlier, Ariadne had sloped off to her dorm with Muriel.
The lavatories were packed, filled with girls jostling to get to the mirrors and brush their teeth. As we waited at the back, Matron came in and whistled. “One at a time, you lot! The sinks aren’t going anywhere!” She left again, but the chaos didn’t improve by much. Some sort of queue began to form behind each sink, but it was messy.
We waved to Ariadne, who was on the other side of the crush. Muriel was there too, her beanpole legs making her stand head and shoulders above most of the other girls. She was staring at her Rookwood regulation toothbrush, looking unimpressed.
But everything changed when Ebony walked in.
The crowds parted like she was Moses. She had that enigmatic smile on her face as she glided along. She walked straight up to where Muriel was standing and said, “I’m going to use this mirror.”
Muriel stopped, the toothbrush still in her mouth, and turned to look down at Ebony. Despite being smaller than Muriel, Ebony gave the impression she was eight feet tall.
“Mmscuse me?” Muriel said around the toothbrush.
“I said I’m going to use this one.” Ebony didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to. Everyone had gone silent and was staring at her. “Or …”
Muriel spat a foamy mouthful into the sink. “Or what?”
“Or you’ll regret getting in my way,” said Ebony. She tipped her head on one side. That smile wasn’t going anywhere. “The world has a way of punishing people who don’t do what I want.”
Now, having heard about the fearsome Muriel from Ariadne, I assumed we were about to witness something dramatic. So of course I stood on tiptoe to get a better look.
But to my surprise, Muriel just looked hurt. “Why?” she said. “I waited my turn. I’ll be done in a moment.”
And then, as I watched, she turned, slipped on something and fell backwards into a heap on the floor. There were gasps. But no one moved.
Ebony looked down at her. “I told you so,” she said. She stepped over Muriel and began brushing her silky hair in the mirror and humming something. It was a tune I didn’t recognise. It sounded almost like a nursery rhyme.
I didn’t like what I had seen one bit.
How did that happen? I wondered. There was a moment when there was no sound in the bathroom but the strange humming. And then a second later, Muriel sat up and choked back a sob. It was as if there had been a spell that had just been broken, and everyone started talking again.
I frowned and began shoving my way over to the sinks. “Come on,” I said “Are none of you going to help her up?” I reached down. Muriel reluctantly took my hand and climbed up unsteadily. She rubbed her bruised legs and glared at Ebony. And without a word, she ran into the corridor.
I didn’t know what Ebony was playing at, but she was reminding me uncomfortably of our old enemy Violet – or at least, how vile Violet had been in our first year. The sort of person who thought they were better than everyone else and ordered them around. And people were just letting her get away with it!
I stood beside her, hands on my hips, while she preened. “What did you do that for, Ebony?” I asked.
She just blinked at me, and then she leant forward and whispered one word: “Power.”
“What?” I looked around at the other girls to see if they were listening, but everyone had moved on to something else. It was as though the events of the past few minutes had evaporated from their minds.
“Power,” she repeated. “Some of us have it …” She looked towards the door. “Some of us don’t.” And then she turned back to the mirror and carried on humming that same song.
“Right, well,” I muttered. “Perhaps you could use some of that power to stop being a nasty piece of work.”
She ignored me.
Ariadne pushed through and stood next to me. “I should … I should go and see if Muriel’s all right,” she said.
I was a little surprised, but not completely. No matter what Muriel had done to Ariadne in the past, they’d been getting on better and Ariadne was very forgiving
