The Curse in the Candlelight. Sophie Cleverly

carried them on trays over to our table, where Madame Zelda was now sitting as the new head of Richmond House. I wasn’t surprised to see that she appeared to have brought her own food. Whatever she was eating certainly seemed to involve far more fresh vegetables than we were ever given.

      As we passed where the girls from Mayhew were sitting, I saw Ebony daintily scooping the stew with her spoon. She even managed to make eating look glamorous and faintly mysterious. I noticed that the first and second years were all staring at her, wide-eyed and whispering.

      Muriel, on the other hand, was drawing no attention at all. She was sitting alone, not talking to anyone. She waved at Ariadne as we walked by, and then went back to her dinner.

      “It seems so strange to think that she bullied you. What did she actually do?” Scarlet asked as we got to our table.

      “Scarlet!” I said. “Ariadne probably doesn’t want to talk about that.”

      Ariadne sighed. “No, it’s all right. I haven’t explained much about it, really.”

      Scarlet waved a fork at her. “Go on,” she said. We were sitting far enough away from any of the teachers, so we could speak freely.

      “She was truly horrible,” Ariadne began. “Everyone at Hightower was afraid of her. Except for her gang, of course.”

      “Hightower?” I asked, in between mouthfuls.

      “Hightower School for Girls. Where I was before.” Her eyes glazed over with thoughts of the past. “I loved it there, at first. Before I met Muriel Witherspoon.” She took a deep breath. “It only took her a day to give me a whole list of nasty nicknames. And then she just wouldn’t stop picking on me. She would take my things and try to hurt me any time she got a chance.”

      “Sounds like a few people I know,” Scarlet said through a mouthful of stew.

      “Oh yes,” said Ariadne, “but that was just the start of it. She formed this secret club called the Crow Club that met in this shed out by the playing fields. It was a bit like the Whispers, except it only existed so she could be horrible to people.” The Whispers was the secret society of past pupils that our mother had belonged to. It had been quite the opposite of this Crow Club, though – they had actually tried to expose the corruption in the school and protect the other students.

      Ariadne frowned at the table as she continued explaining. “They spread rumours all the time. They wouldn’t let me into the club because they said I was a ‘goody two-shoes’. And then they told everyone … well, I don’t want to say because it was just too horrible.”

      “And that’s when you burned down the shed?” I asked, remembering how Ariadne had been expelled.

      She nodded slowly. “I was just so sick of it. They were making my life a misery!”

      “You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” said Scarlet. “I’m not exactly the queen of self-restraint when it comes to bullies, am I?” She grinned, and we grinned back at her.

      “Freaks!” I heard a quiet voice say by my ear. But … it sounded friendly. And familiar.

      I turned to see Rose standing beside me, with her empty tray.

      “Oh yes!” Scarlet said with a grin. “Freaks together! That’s us, isn’t it?”

      Rose grinned. When we’d had quite the adventure in the summer, we’d reassured Rose that she wasn’t alone in being an outsider. She may have been locked in an asylum and plagued by nasty relatives, but we knew all about that too.

      “Nice to see you again, Rose,” I said.

      She nodded. She didn’t talk a lot and she chose her words carefully.

      “Everything all right?” Scarlet asked. “No more rogue relatives bothering you?” I shuddered. Rose’s cousin had nearly got us killed in the process of trying to steal her inheritance.

      Rose nodded again. “I got a lawyer,” she said in her voice that was barely above a whisper. There was a mischievous sparkle in her eyes.

      At that point, Mrs Knight appeared and began hovering around our table. “Good evening, girls,” she said. “Is all well over here in Richmond?”

      “Wonderful, thank you,” said Madame Zelda, twirling a lettuce leaf with her fork. And it was true – everyone did seem to be behaving so far, which was quite unusual for our table. Madame Zelda was certainly a bit more intimidating than Mrs Knight, which helped. I got the impression she wanted the headmistress to go away.

      “Oh good, good,” Mrs Knight said. She walked over to where we were sitting. “Staying out of trouble, girls?”

      “Of course,” said Scarlet, batting her eyelashes comically. I nearly snorted my drink out of my nose. Rose laughed and walked away to join the back of the dinner queue.

      “Ah,” said the headmistress. “I hope you will continue to keep an eye on Rose.”

      “Is she allowed to stay now, Miss?” Ariadne asked. After all, Rose hadn’t always been a pupil at Rookwood.

      Mrs Knight smiled and rubbed her sleeves. “Oh yes. We were able to secure some of Rose’s inheritance to pay for her to be here full time. She’ll be joining some lessons as well. Not all of them straight away, mind. That might be too much. She’s had a tough time.”

      “That’s so kind of you, Miss,” I said, and I meant it. I couldn’t imagine our former headteachers showing any sort of compassion for a student.

      Mrs Knight blushed. “Oh, it’s nothing. Right, girls, I mean it – you’ll stay out of trouble this term, won’t you?”

      “Yes, Miss,” we chorused. I hoped we meant that.

      When we’d finished (and Ariadne had gone back for a second helping of tinned peaches in custard, which was admittedly unusually nice for Rookwood), we picked up our trays to take them away.

      We passed Ariadne’s former roommates, who were from the year below us, and were all sitting together.

      They all waved. “Hello, Ariadne!” they called out in unison.

      I recognised the girl who had become the unofficial leader of the group; she was Agatha, who had a bird’s nest of frizzy brown hair and loved to be in charge. “Psst,” she hissed, leaning forward. “Have you seen that new girl, Ebony McCloud?”

      “Oh yes,” Scarlet replied.

      “She’s certainly … interesting,” Ariadne said politely.

      Agatha’s eyes slid across the room, as if she were checking for spies. Then she leant across the table again. “We heard she’s a witch!”

      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.