Star Cursed

Page 56

“No. Oh, no. This is all my fault.” Tess sinks right to the floor, her gray taffeta skirts puddling around her.
“Tess,” I warn, jumping up to pull the door closed behind her, “don’t be silly. You had nothing to do with this!”
“I thought I changed it,” Tess mutters, tears gathering in her eyes. “I thought it worked. They were free. Cate, this means—”
“I know,” I interrupt, kneeling next to her. We no longer have an example of a vision that hasn’t come to pass, a prophecy that was proven false.
I can’t think about that now. I shove it to the back of my mind, filing it away for later. Right now I have to help Tess through this. She’s so clever, and she’s been so careful, surely she won’t—
“I’m sorry. I am so sorry,” she says to Mei.
Sometimes I forget she’s also twelve.
Mei isn’t stupid. “Yang said witches released the prisoners yesterday. That was you? Is that why you were asking me all the questions about where they were being kept?”
Tess nods, and I want to clap a hand over her mouth to keep her from talking about prophecies, but I daresay that would be suspicious in itself. “I was only trying to help. It was freezing in there, and they were cold and hungry, and it was an old slaughterhouse.” She sniffles. “What if I made it happen?”
I let out a little laugh. “Tess, you’re not making any sense. You couldn’t have known.” I stand, trying to pull her to her feet, but she doesn’t budge. “You’re upset. Let me take you upstairs.”
She stares across the room, gazing out the frosty window. “The sky was gray like this, with big fat snowflakes. Just like when a snowstorm starts—or ends, perhaps. I saw the sky yesterday, and I thought, Now. This is my chance. I can change things. I was arrogant.”
I glance nervously at Mei. “Come on, Tess. Let’s go upstairs.”
“I failed them.” Tess buries her face in her hands.
Mei is staring at us both. She gets up, and I think she’s going to storm away, but instead she stands on tiptoe and pulls the copper grate shut. Even then, she comes and crouches on the floor with us.
“Tess, you’re the oracle?” she whispers.
Tess raises her tearstained face. “Please forgive me.”
“No one knows, Mei,” I warn. “Not even Maura. No one.”
“I won’t tell. I swear it.” Mei is looking at Tess with sudden reverence, like she’s a god instead of a girl. Like she hasn’t seen Tess spill tea all over herself or beaten her at chess or teased her over awful Chinese pronunciations. “I thought perhaps—yesterday, when you went all funny during our lesson—”
“I’m sorry.” Tess is sobbing, her whole body trembling. “I wanted to save them. I never thought the Brothers would have recorded all their names and where they lived.”
“Shhh. Shhh, we know.” I look to Mei, praying that she’ll help Tess forgive herself. “Yesterday at breakfast, when she had that dizzy spell—she had a vision of the prisoners being put onto the ship. She wanted to stop it.”
Mei puts a tentative hand on Tess’s knee. “I bet some of them got away. Yang said if the guards had come an hour later, Li and Hua would have been gone to our cousin’s. I bet a lot of the prisoners weren’t home or gave false addresses, or something.”
“I couldn’t change it. It was always going to happen like this.” Tess wipes away tears with the backs of both hands. “The books say the oracles are infallible, but there’s never been a witch who was an oracle before, so I thought—but I was wrong. No matter how many awful things I see, I’ll never be able to stop them.”
I look helplessly at Mei. This isn’t as simple as a bruise to kiss, a tangled lace to straighten, or a missing necklace to find. This is a waking nightmare, and I don’t know how to fix it.
“You were brave to try,” Mei says. “That’s all we can do, isn’t it?”
“Can you ever forgive me?” Tess’s voice is small.
“Nothing to forgive.” Mei pats her again. “And you needn’t worry—your secret’s safe with me.”
• • •
We talk a bit, until Tess is sufficiently calm, and then I take her upstairs and see her snuggled back into bed with Cyclops and one of Maura’s romance novels. Strange bedfellows, but both seem to comfort her, and it serves to remind me again that she is a strange mix of woman and child, carrying a burden far too heavy for her.
I’ve got to do everything I can to help her. Even if it means making a deal with the devil.
“Come in,” Elena says when I knock at her door. Her bedroom is smaller than the double rooms students share, but big enough for a canopy bed draped in gauzy pink and a settee covered in soft yellow chintz. There’s a satchel lying open on the bed, as though she was just unpacking.
She gestures for me to sit on the settee. “How was your trip?” I ask.
“You noticed I was gone? I’m flattered, Cate.” Elena sits at her dressing table. “I was visiting my aunt on the other side of town. Inez told me to go off and clear my head, with the understanding that I’d return cured of any romantic feelings for a student.”
I gasp at her frankness. “Romantic feelings for a—for Maura, you mean?”
“For a clever girl, you can be utterly obtuse about people.” Elena’s words are mild, without bite, but I bristle anyway. She has that effect on me.
“Well, you did say—”
“That she misunderstood my feelings. That I didn’t return her affections. That kissing her was a mistake,” Elena recites. She rubs a weary hand over her face. “I am well aware of what I said. I lied.”
I wince. “Why?”
“Because I was foolish and ambitious, and I thought I could forget my feelings for her.” Elena sighs. “My purpose in that house was to procure you for the Sisterhood, not to dally with your sister. And you said quite plainly that you would not cooperate with me, ever, unless I told her I’d only been using her. Lying seemed—prudent at the time.”
It’s true, then. Maura’s heartbreak was my fault. “I never dreamed you actually cared for her.”
“Why?” Elena’s dark eyes snap at me. “She’s beautiful, you know. And bright and fierce, and that smile of hers—who could help but fall in love with her?”
“You threatened her and Tess, repeatedly!”
“They were the only leverage we had over you until we discovered your romance with the gardener.” Elena waves a hand dismissively, and anger flares through me. “I tried to make amends, you know. Or perhaps you don’t. Your sister is many things, but quick to forgive a slight? She’s better at holding grudges than anyone I’ve ever met.”
“True.” I feel an odd, unexpected sympathy for Elena. “Perhaps, in time—”
“I don’t think so.” Elena shrugs, but her voice cracks just a little. “Perhaps she could get beyond me lying to her, making her think I didn’t care, even humiliating her in front of you and Tess. But choosing you over her? I don’t think she’ll ever forgive that.”