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BELLA
Ihad never been in a horse-drawn carriage before. Though what we were riding in honestly seemed more like a cart.
We bumped our way up a treacherous mountainside, as the sun dipped below the horizon, bathing us in twilight and taking the winding road from picturesque to terrifying.
My pathetic solitary suitcase banged around in the back of the cart while I sat beside Eve, white-knuckled and unable to believe what I had just done.
I had just walked away from everything - employment, school, and an apartment of my own, such as it was, to accompany a witch I’d met less than twenty-four hours ago to a so-called school for magic.
“Everything alright?” Eve asked. “If you have to be sick, say something. Don’t get it in the carriage.”
She looked amazing, just as good as yesterday, better, really. Today’s pantsuit was the silvery grey of a summer sky before a rainstorm. Not one hair was out of place.
I was pretty sure all my hairs were out of place, plastered against the nervous sweat on my face and neck. I wore my favorite jeans and one of Jon’s old marching band t-shirts from high school for good luck. The sweater I had put on was too thin and the cold wind chilling my sweat made me feel almost feverish.
I shook my head. I wasn’t going to throw up, at least not yet. I hadn’t eaten anything since yesterday at lunch. After dropping my dinner in the chase, I never got around to grabbing anything else. For once, my mind had been moving too fast for my stomach to keep up.
It occurred to me that the styrofoam box in the cemetery was practically the only evidence I’d ever been in Pottsboro at all.
“Good,” she said crisply. “It won’t be much longer.”
I nodded again, then turned to the mountainside to avoid conversation.
Mist danced between the trees that were brave or foolish enough to cling to the steep cliffs. The air tasted thin, though I was sure we couldn’t have climbed high enough for all that.
The horse snorted, his breath pluming in the air. It was a big draft horse, dapple gray and verging on elderly.
The driver was even more elderly and gray. Eve had introduced him as Silas Brake, the Primrose Academy groundskeeper.
Above us, the sky roiled with clouds. My mind went to every horror story I’d ever read. What would happen if we were still out here, plodding up the hill when darkness came? Would there be wolves, or murderers, or worse in the trees, waiting for us?
I shivered and wrapped my arms around myself.
I was being ridiculous. I was just scared because all of this was so new, that was all. There was no way a professional woman in a gorgeous pantsuit would drag me up a mountain to get murdered.
My mind went back to the creature and the vines. It was real. It had to be. And it was going to give me exactly the power I needed.
For Jon.
I closed my eyes and pictured his face - smiling eyes, one dimple on his right cheek, dark hair falling over his forehead - just like he was, before a series of mistakes and luckless turns put us where we were now.
I’ll find a way to make you smile again.
The cart bumped again, and I opened my eyes to see we were turning a final corner.
The trees opened up before us, revealing a wide-open lawn.
A stone path led to the front door. The walkway was interrupted at the halfway mark by a marble fountain full of angry looking mermaid statues, surrounding a horse that appeared to be rearing up out of the water. Whether it was supposed to be standing in chest-deep water or being birthed out of the sea was impossible to say.
Near the base, in the shadow of the overhanging stone, someone had hastily painted a raven taking flight. It would have been almost impossible to see from any other angle than the one I had. Beneath the bird were the words,HE IS COMING.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Eve said pleasantly, as if she already knew the answer.
I wasn’t sure if she meant the creepy fountain or the granite expanse of the school itself.
Primrose Academy was massive, stretching across the whole meadow, the east and west wings plunging into the forest on each side. It was easily four stories tall, with interconnecting slate roofs that seemed almost ethereal in the light of the newly risen full moon.
Odd little porches and porticoes extended out over nothing at intervals, as if the school were a giant host and they were its symbiotic hangers-on, perched at odd angles to keep an eye on the trees and sky.
