“Neither are you. Don’t get above yourself,” Maura snaps, and Vi’s shoulders buck and bow, her black hair graying, perfect skin wrinkling, mouth puckering around missing teeth, until she’s a crone. The girls gasp, horrified, while Alice cackles. Even I take a step back, startled by the vividness of the illusion.
“Maura,” I groan, “you’re not helping.”
Maura smirks at me. “Break it—if you can.”
I want to—not only because I’m on Vi’s side in this, but because Maura’s thrown it down like a challenge, and I’ve never been one to turn away from a challenge. I reach for my magic and find it hovering, ready, stirred up by my mingled fear and anger. But I hesitate. If I can’t break Maura’s illusion, she’ll never let me forget it. And if I can, if I show her up in front of a dozen witnesses—will she ever forgive me?
“What did you do to me?” Vi demands, her fingers exploring her wizened face.
“Made you as ugly on the outside as you are on the inside,” Alice taunts.
“Enough!” I bark. I focus on Vi first, knowing Maura’s illusion will be the more difficult to crack. As always in times of stress, I revert to casting aloud. “Acclaro!”
It’s not easy. When I tap the illusion with my magic, it resists, stubborn. I push, and it wavers. Maura is watching me, a self-satisfied look on her pretty face. I shove, and the spell breaks, returning Vi to her elegant sixteen-year-old self.
“What about me?” Alice stomps toward me, enormous and angry, knocking desks aside in her wake. “You can’t just leave me like this!”
Maura waves a hand, and Alice shrinks to her normal size, horns disappearing, skin lightening.
Mei looks anxiously toward the hall. “Sister Inez’ll have a fit if she catches us.”
“It was only a bit of fun. Don’t be such a killjoy,” Maura snaps.
Alice combs her fingers through her mussed golden hair, sniffing. “Vi started it.”
“You provoked her,” I point out.
“Who are you to tell me what to do? You’re not a teacher, you—”
I cast silently, and she clutches at her throat, glaring, mute.
“I’m the strongest witch in this room, that’s who.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them. Maura flinches as though I’ve struck her, but Rilla and Mei twist in their chairs to grin at me. “Things are getting worse. The Brothers came here, to our home, where we’re supposed to be safe, and took Hope away from us. I know you’re angry about it. I’m angry, too. But we’ve got to stick together. We can’t start fighting each other, and we can’t go off on mad schemes without thinking them through and giving everyone a chance to weigh in.”
“What a pretty speech.” Sister Inez strides to the front of the room, her heels ringing out with every step. “But may I remind you, you’re not in charge here yet, Miss Cahill.”
Neither are you, I think, and my suspicion of her hardens into something colder.
“Release your spell on Miss Auclair.”
I comply, swallowing a smile, lowering my eyes so she can’t see the triumph in them. If Inez has to ask me to do it, that means the spell is too strong for her to break. “I didn’t mean to overreach. You weren’t here,” I say.
It’s as close to an apology as she’s likely to get.
“You’re not to do magic on each other without a teacher present, as you all well know,” Sister Inez says. “As you can’t occupy yourselves properly, I’m assigning you three pages in your copybooks on the National Council’s progressively restrictive measures over the last fifty years. Perhaps you’d like to get started on that now, before I make it five.”
The girls scatter. “That was spectacular,” Rilla whispers, bouncing along next to me.
“The look on Alice’s face when you shut her up was brilliant,” Rory adds.
Pearl gives me a smile so big it shows her teeth.
“Pardon me. I’d like to speak with my sister for a moment.” Maura grabs my elbow and tows me across the hall into the empty literature classroom.
“How dare you,” she spits, whirling on me as she slams the door.
I collapse into a desk. All that spellwork in quick succession has left me exhausted, and frankly I’m in no mood to fight with her. “How dare I what? Disagree with you and Alice? She might be a harpy, but she thinks you really like her, you know.”
“You just can’t stand that I’m more popular than you!”
Oh, not this again. “I don’t care if you have a hundred new friends. It’s the quality of them that concerns me. You haven’t shown the best judgment in the past.”
“You would throw that in my face.” Maura’s cheeks go pink. “Elena did care for me. She admitted it later. She lied to pacify you and get you to the Sisterhood, and to please her stupid precious Sister Cora.”
“I’m sorry,” I say truthfully. “I’m sorry she hurt you and that I was part of the reason why. But I don’t like the way you were acting in there. Lately it’s as though you’re a different person, Maura. Like you’ll do anything to prove yourself to Sister Inez.”
“Maybe I want to be a different person! I’m tired of being one of the Cahill girls—the silly romantic one, the pretty one, the one who needs looking after because she might do something rash.” Maura throws up her hands, exasperated. “What earthly good is being pretty if I don’t have any say in anything?”
I clench my jaw, stung despite myself. “I wouldn’t know. You’ve always been the pretty one.”
My sister paces up and down the aisles, weaving around the desks. “You did everything you could to discredit my ideas in there. And if that’s not bad enough, you went and said you’re the strongest witch in the room as though it’s a proven fact! I want to lead the Sisterhood when I come of age. You want marriage and babies and a pretty little house with a garden. Why are you fighting me for this?”
Because I don’t trust her to be careful with people the way she should. Because I’m starting to suspect that the only person I trust to lead the Sisterhood for Tess until she comes of age is me.
“Perhaps I could do both,” I say, my eyes falling to the scuffed wooden floor.
“You’re so damned selfish!” Maura shouts. She closes her eyes, struggling for control. “You won’t even take the mind-magic test. How will you govern without using compulsion?”
I think of Brother Ishida. Should I tell her about that? No, she’ll only throw it in my face that I did it because of Finn, as if I’m some love-muddled fool. “I can use it when I have to.”
“Could you? Or would you hem and haw about it until the time was past? Alice and I came up with an idea to get those girls out of Harwood, and because it wasn’t your idea and it doesn’t fit with your fine principles, you swayed everyone against it!”
“I wasn’t the only one who had doubts,” I protest, shivering. This room hasn’t been used today and the hearth is full of cold ashes.
Maura groans, throwing up her hands again. She’s already taken to wearing a thin silver ring on her right ring finger. Though it isn’t engraved with the Sisters’ motto yet, it’s a clear sign of her commitment. “If Brenna gets anyone else killed while you’re thinking, that will be on your head.”