It's him. I know it.
"What's the matter?" Ann asks, seeing that I've stopped.
"I've a pebble in my boot," I say. "You carry on. I won't be a moment."
For a second, I stand perfectly still, wanting to see him, wanting to be sure he is no haunt of my mind. The owl sound comes again, making me jump. Behind me, Reverend Waite closes the chapel's oak doors with a boom, cutting off the light. One by one, the girls disappear into the fog ahead, their voices growing faint. Ann turns around, half swallowed by gray.
"Gemma, come along!" Her voice drifts over the mist in echoes before it is gobbled completely.
. . . ma . . . come , . . long . . . ong . . . ong . . .
The owl's call comes from the trees, more insistent this time. The dark has come down hard in the last few minutes. There is only the glow from Spence and this one lonely light in the woods. I am alone on the path. In a flash, I pull up my skirt hem and rush headlong after Ann with a most unladylike shout. "Wait for me! I'm coming!"
CHAPTER FOUR
THIS IS WHAT I KNOW OF THE STORY OF THE ORDER.
They were once the most powerful women imaginable, for they were the keepers of the magical power that ruled the realms. There, where most mortals came only during dreams or after death, it was the Order who helped spirits cross over the river into the world beyond all worlds. It was the Order who helped them complete their souls' tasks, if need be, so that they could move on. And it was the Order who could wield that formidable power in this world to cast illusions, to shape lives, and to influence the course of history. But that was before two initiates who were attending Spence, Mary Dowd and Sarah Rees-Toome, brought destruction to the Order.
Sarah, who called herself Circe after the powerful Greek sorceress, was Mary's dearest friend. While Mary's power continued to grow, Sarah's began to fade. The realms had not chosen her to continue on the path.
Desperate to hold on to the power she craved, Sarah made a pact with one of the dark spirits of the realms in a forbidden place called the Winterlands. In exchange for the power to enter the realms at will, she promised it a sacrifice--a little Gypsy girl--and she convinced Mary to go along with her plan. With that one act, they bound themselves to the dark spirit and destroyed the power of the Order. To keep the spirits from entering this world, Eugenia Spence, the founder of Spence and a high priestess of the Order, stayed behind, sacrificing herself to the creature, and the Order lost their leader. Her last act was to toss her amulet--the crescent eye--to Mary and bid her to close the realms for good so that nothing could escape. Mary did, but she struggled with Sarah over the amulet, knocking over a candle. A terrible fire raged through the East Wing of Spence, and indeed, the damaged wing is still locked and unused today. It was assumed that both girls died in the fire, along with Eugenia. No one knew that as the fire raged, Mary escaped into the caves behind the school, leaving behind the diary we would eventually discover. Sarah was never found. Mary went into hiding in India, where she married John Doyle and was reborn as Virginia Doyle, my mother. Unable to enter the realms, the members of the Order scattered, looking and waiting for a time when they could claim their magical world and their power once more.
For twenty years, nothing happened. The story of the Order faded from legend to myth--until June 21, 1895, my sixteenth birthday. That is the day that the magic of the Order began to come alive again--in me. That is the day that Sarah Rees-Toome, Circe, finally came for us. She had not died in that horrible fire after all, and she had been using her corrupt bond with that dark spirit of the Winterlands to plot her revenge. One by one, she hunted down the members of the Order, looking for the daughter who was being whispered about, the girl who could enter the realms and bring back the glory and the power. That is the day that I had my first vision, when I saw my mother die, hunted by Circe's assassin--that supernatural creature who also brutally murdered Amar of the Rakshana, a cult of men who both protect and fear the power of the Order. It was the day I first met Kartik, Amar's younger brother, who would become my guardian and tormentor, bound to me by duty and sorrow.
It was the day that would come to shape the rest of my life. For afterward, I was sent here to Spence. My visions led me to enter the realms with my friends, where I was reunited with my mother and learned of my birthright to the Order; where my friends and I used the magic of the runes to change our lives; where I fought Circe's assassin and smashed the Runes of the Oracle--those stones that hold magic; where my mother died at last, and our friend Pippa, also. I watched her choose to stay, watched her walk hand in hand with a handsome knight into a place of no return. Pippa, my friend.