7

7

T hings changed between the four of us after that. The puzzle pieces that had been hovering cautiously above the board, waiting to see if they fit, snapped into place. We were working together on a project, exactly as Camford scholars should, in defiance of the Faculty, and we were invincible. It was like having the most private of inside jokes, or being in our own secret rebellion. In the dining hall the evening after, the vice-chancellor himself came in to deliver the grave reminder that the archives were strictly out-of-bounds to all undergraduates, and we looked at one another and glowed .

Even before coming to Camford, I had been focused on counter-curses. I hadn't thought to research Amiens itself, much less present an argument for lifting the Accord, and I wouldn't have known where to start if I had. But Hero and Alden were directing their attention to what had gone wrong on that day, and Eddie and I quickly fell in line. Hero's passion was spellcraft linguistics, and she spent hours poring over German runespells to see how they might have been affected by the battlefield. Eddie threw himself into superstitions and old wives' tales around dryads. Alden was a wealth of information there as well—his interests ranged widely, but more often than not they settled along the thorny paths of folklore, and he had a seemingly endless supply of fairy tales and old rhymes at his fingertips.

By contrast, I was keenly aware of how little I had to contribute. My background knowledge was sketchy at best, and my unmagical blood was sluggish when it came to the practical spellwork I loved. All I had was determination, the ability to read a very great number of very old books, and a certain skill in plucking out information from multiple pages and drawing them together to make something new. I was good at it, though, and what was more, I loved it. I would spend hours late at night in my room after my own assignments were done, poring over the tiny print in a Middle English spellbook until my eyes grew heavy and I would wake in the thin dawn light with my glasses askew and my face buried in the pages.

"You know, you were right at the lecture," I said to Alden one afternoon in the library. We were in our chosen room on the seventh floor, books scattered between us. He was leaning against the window sill, smoking by the half-open window that led out to the roof. (For Eddie's benefit—Hero smoked like a chimney, and I had learned from my brother after he came home, but the smell of cigarettes gave Eddie a blinding headache.) It was a stormy day outside, and the wind brought the cold smell of rain and pine into the room.

"I often am," Alden agreed modestly. "About what?"

"The real mystery isn't why the spell failed. It's what happened afterwards. I've read through all the documented accounts of the fae breaking through circles that I can find. It happens for many reasons—a lot of different mistakes on the part of the spell-caster. None have ever been so violent. The faeries possess the spell-caster; they don't murder hundreds of people."

"Except in this case they did. I don't suppose your brother could shed any light on it?"

"He won't talk about that day." I tried to say it normally and not as though my insides had twisted into a ball. "Anyway, he isn't a mage. He wouldn't know what he'd seen."

"I see." Alden sounded far from happy about it. There had been an edge of frustration to him that week, as we moved closer to the term break. "That's fair, of course."

"We know one new thing about Amiens, thanks to Clover's brother and thanks to Eddie," Hero pointed out. I suspected she'd noticed his mood, too, and was trying in her matter-of-fact way to pull him out of it. "We know the kind of fae that was summoned. A dryad."

"A dryad of a silver birch tree," Eddie clarified. "We think." I had gone through Eddie's books and confirmed that the bark matched, although it was still difficult to be sure.

"Exactly. I'd never heard that reported before. And that makes what happened even more unusual. Dryads don't want to come into our world. Their roots are in faerie country. Why would one want to break through enough to kill on such a scale?"

Alden straightened restlessly, stubbing his cigarette out on the window sill. I would have told him off, had the sill not been already well mottled with such marks. "Well, Larkin strongly implied there might be an answer in the archives. The trouble is, Grimoire will be watching us like a hawk from now on. He knows perfectly well that I was the one who tried to break in that night."

I had to admit Grimoire had been keeping a very close watch over us since the break-in. Alden had swapped the ring back the following morning, as he'd promised ("Just as well," Hero had pointed out, "or you'd accidentally become ward of Camford Library if he died"), and as he'd predicted Grimoire had given him a very shrewd look and let it pass. They were distant relations, which meant something to the Families, and as far as Grimoire knew the attempt on the archives had been nothing more than student mischief. Still, he was far from stupid. Any indication that it was anything more serious would come down on us fast and heavy.

"We're not going to give him anything to see," Hero reminded him. "No more archives. You promised."

"Well, we'd better come up with another source of information, then," Alden said tightly. "It's all very well Eddie knowing the botanical classification of the dryad at Amiens, we can address it by its tree if we ever meet it at a party, but that isn't going to help us bind it, is it?"

I felt rather than saw Eddie go quiet beside me, and felt a corresponding flash of irritation. Alden had a tendency to swipe at Eddie sideways when he was frustrated, not wanting a fight with Hero and knowing that Eddie wouldn't fight back. I flicked a glance at Hero; she caught it and answered with an expressive roll of her eyes.

"Alden," she said calmly, "you're being a prat."

"I'm not being a prat, I am a prat. You're seeing my natural form." The light had come back to his voice, though, and he gave us a rueful smile. "Sorry, Eddie. Don't listen to me. It's the weather or lack of coffee or impending Christmas or something. I just hoped to be further along than this by the end of term."

I couldn't fault him for that. I had hoped the same, with what I couldn't help but think was far more cause.

"You know, there's a possibility we haven't discussed," Hero said. She had put down her book, and the serious note to her voice made me sit up and take notice. Hero was frequently serious, I had learned by now. She rarely let it show unless it was very late at night or very important. "I suspect we've all thought it. And that's the possibility that the Board and the Faculty know exactly why and how that spell failed at Amiens, and that's exactly why we've all been forbidden from looking into it."

"But…" I spoke before I could stop myself. "Why would they hide that?"

The others were kind enough not to laugh. The truth was, I'm ashamed to say, I hadn't thought it at all. I was still so new to the Families. They frustrated me, even angered me, they had imprisoned my brother and scorned me for my upbringing and my blood, but I was also in love with them. They had built Camford, they had written the books of spellcraft that I pored over every day, they navigated magic with the light, playful ease of a bird through air or a fish through water. I didn't want to believe that anyone could do that and not be trusted.

"Who knows?" Alden said. "Who knows why the Board does half of what it does? Either way, I don't see that we can do anything about it except press on our own. If it takes us there, we'll deal with it then. We're only reading books. What's the worst they can do to us?"

I thought at once of Dr. Larkin. Alden had tried to talk to him, the week after his lecture on Amiens. When he knocked on the door, however, Larkin's office was dark and empty, all his belongings gone. Word got around that he had been suspended from all teaching and placed on research leave effective immediately. It seemed a stretch to imagine it had anything to do with the lecture, much less the break-in to the archives that followed it. Now I wondered if I knew Camford as well as I thought.

Hero was evidently thinking the same thing. "If we start to get anywhere close to there, Alden, we're going to back away. Do you understand?"

"Of course," Alden said. "What do you take me for? All I said was that we needed another source of information."

"Such as?" Hero sounded mollified but sceptical.

"I'll think of something," Alden said, and of course we believed him.

The term passed in a dizzying whirl. Soon, the four of us were firmly established around the university as a tight-knit group who did things together, just in time to have little opportunity to do much at all except work. The cold weather set in, and with it the assignments and readings due before the Christmas holidays. Luncheons and parties began to empty of all but the most committed hedonists; even the richest students started to look worn around the edges. They spoke to me a little by then, those rich students. At least, most of them would nod at me if our paths crossed, only slightly less cautiously friendly than if I were Hero or Eddie. They thought we were all strange, of course, even Alden. But it was a glamorous kind of strange now—something other, not something lesser.

I turned eighteen at the end of November, as the term was drawing to an end. I hadn't expected the others to know—I hadn't told them, worried that they'd either feel obligated to do something or that they wouldn't bother, either of which would be embarrassing. I had planned to wake early, to open the presents my family had sent, and sit reading for an hour or so by the fire before going down to breakfast. It was a Saturday, and I wanted to luxuriate in a short time without study. Instead, I was woken by a loud rapping on the door.

Hero stood there, dressed in a spectacular dark green coat with a fur ruff and high boots, every bit as though she were expected.

"Rise and shine, darling," she said. "Happy birthday."

I blinked, dazed, aware for the first time in a while that my dressing gown was threadbare and my hair was in a sleepy fuzz around my head. "What…? How did you know?"

"If you want to conceal your birthday, you really do need to refrain from opening your cards the night before." I had, it was true—the card from my family was perched on the mantel of the fireplace, a drawing from Holly adorning its cover. Hero had been in last night, very briefly, just to borrow a book. I'd had no idea she'd noticed it, much less clearly read it when my back was turned. "And if you don't want to conceal your birthday, please do have the courtesy to reveal it a little earlier. A few hours' notice is not a good deal of time to make plans, especially when those plans involve wrangling Alden and Eddie."

"What plans?"

"Get dressed," Hero said, "and you'll find out. Oh, be sure to dress for London."

London. My heart spiked in what was either excitement or fear or both. The four of us had walked into Oxford plenty of times, and I had grown to appreciate its stately beauty and bursts of student mischief. I had never been to London. I had nothing to wear to London, not in the company of someone like Hero. I should say no. I had assignments due—we all did.

"I'll be right there," I said.

The rest of my life, I'll never forget that day. London was grey and dirty, still struggling out of wartime hardship, but I barely saw it. What I saw were the signs of recovery bursting like stars from the grime. I looked in wonder at the playbills, the restaurants, the men and women in their glittering clothes. It was a vision of the modern world and everything it could be. Hero instructed Alden and Eddie to amuse themselves for a few hours and whisked me to a small shop along the dazzling curve of Regent Street, where a brisk, middle-aged woman had me try on outfit after outfit until I couldn't see straight. The one I liked best was soft blue grey, drop-waisted with tiny pearl buttons on the sleeves.

"That's definitely you," Hero agreed. "We'll take it. And the gold one, too, I think—you'll need it for this evening."

"This evening?"

"Well, I should think so. We're going to the Illusion."

My head swam as though at altitude. The Illusion was the most exclusive of the clubs in London for Families, and even I knew that it was very fashionable, very glamourous, and very, very expensive. "We are?"

"We certainly are, darling. We're doing this properly. So you see, you'll need that dress. Consider it my birthday present."

"I couldn't," I protested, even as my hand had clutched the skirt as if someone were about to steal it. I had never much minded about clothes before. This was different. This was as though I was being told I belonged. "It's too much."

"I assure you it isn't," Hero said, and something in her voice told me she understood perfectly. "It's your birthday. Admittedly, I would have found another excuse if it wasn't—I love dressing people up, and we're in a university filled with adolescent boys, for God's sake. But the fact remains that I've bought you these things for your birthday, and you have no say in the matter if you want to be polite."

Hero, I had noticed, was very good at pressuring people to do what they wanted to do anyway. I had no words to resist, so I just nodded tightly and gave her a quick, impulsive hug. It was the first time I had dared to do so, but she only laughed as she returned it.

"After all," she added, with a wicked grin, "we can't have you looking shabby and interesting and showing the rest of us up, can we? Now come on. You'll need new boots to go with those."

By the afternoon, our feet were sore and our arms laden with shopping, so we went to meet Alden and Eddie for lunch and then to the cinema to see Treasure Island . It was my first glossy Hollywood epic, and in that new luxurious theatre it was a different kind of magic, the mundane kind that had animated the artillery and tear gas of the Great War, now being used to flicker an imaginary world in front of us.

And then, the Illusion.

I had heard the name swirled around the Camford students' gossip: Like the restaurant in Manchester where Sam Wells had taken me, it was accessible only by magic, a spell performed at a doorway that opened to reveal the top of a long flight of stairs. That, though, was where the similarity between the two places ended. The Illusion was a nightclub, underground and smoky and vibrating with early jazz, and magic was very much on display. The chairs and tables undulated as if on gentle waves; globes of light whirled about the room in time with the music, entwining with the dancers on the floor.

I was thrilled and petrified in equal measures. I had no idea what I was supposed to do or who I was supposed to be. My gold dress and feathered bandeau felt like fancy dress, flimsy and transparent. Fortunately, Alden turned to me before the doubt could grow.

"Care to dance?" he shouted over the blare of the music.

"With you?" I asked stupidly.

"Well, I should hope so," Hero shouted back. "Why else do you think we brought him along?"

He stuck his tongue out at her in a perfunctory fashion, then extended his arm to me.

I had gone to a dance at my school once, to be rotated in a slow circle by one of the village lads; my little sisters, much more fashionable, had shown me the basics of the foxtrot up in our room only months before I came to Camford. I had never truly danced. It didn't matter. Alden could dance well enough for both of us. I needed only to watch him, to move with him and let his hand on my lower back gently move me, and if I put a foot wrong and we tripped and collided, it didn't seem to matter at all. We just laughed, spun, kept going, while the music thrummed in my ears and in my blood and nobody could tell in the smoky darkness that I wasn't meant to be there.

That night seemed to take no time at all and yet to stretch out forever, its own little world. I remember lights flashing; I remember dancing with Eddie, then Hero, then Alden again. I remember collapsing at a table next to Hero and Alden, breathless and exhausted and dizzy, some kind of blue potion in my hand with possibly more alcohol than I had ever held in my life.

"How are you finding your brush with the modern world?" Hero asked me.

I shook my head, not sure how to answer. "I didn't expect it to be so…"

"Modern? Exciting? Loud?"

"Underground."

Hero laughed. "It was a bunker during the war. The Families brought treasures here to keep them from being damaged in air raids—they brought themselves here once or twice too, when things looked risky. Then the war ended, and the Ravenscar brothers bought it and turned it into this. Nice, isn't it?"

I wished, somehow, she hadn't explained. I imagined the ceiling shuddering with the impact of bombs, dust raining down on Families huddled under the tables, and shivered in my new gold dress.

"Clover." Alden raised his voice to get my attention over the music. "This library where you studied Agrippa. Where was it?"

Hero sighed dramatically. "Oh, I'm sorry, were we talking about something other than bloody Agrippa for five minutes?"

"Lady Winter's house," I answered. I didn't mind talking about Agrippa. In the flurry of new sensations, it was something solid to cling to. "She taught me magic. Why?"

"Because most houses threw out their books on faerie magic after the Accord, or pretended to. Ours did. Is it possible she didn't?"

I hesitated, thinking of that assortment of old books that didn't look as though anyone had sorted them for generations. In light of what we had just been discussing, they suddenly seemed more precious and more dangerous. "I wouldn't want to get her into trouble…"

"God no. She has nothing to fear from me. I was just wondering if, when you get home next week, you could look through them."

When I got home. A confusion of feelings swamped me, too fast for me to sift through. I did want to go home. I missed my family, I was wretchedly guilty at being so long away from the farm, and Hero had found a new counter-curse that I was eager to try on Matthew. But I didn't want to leave Camford, and I already couldn't imagine being without the other three. They wouldn't even be with one another for once: Hero's family were spending Christmas in London, and Eddie's family were going to his elder sister's house in Scotland.

"Of course I will. And if I find anything, I'll write to you all."

"You'd better all write to me anyway," Alden warned. "I don't know how I'm going to survive Christmas in that house otherwise."

"God, you're sentimental when you're drunk," Hero said.

"I'm not, actually. I'm sentimental when I'm sober. A few more of these and I won't care if any of you live or die."

"Charming. Speaking of, did you see where Eddie got to?"

"Outside," Alden said, with a nod to the back door. "He never lasts long in places like this. Too many people."

"I'll go find him," I said, pushing my drink aside and getting to my feet. My head was spinning, from the music or the cocktail or the dancing, and since Hero had explained it, the concrete ceiling seemed just a little too low. "I wouldn't mind some fresh air too."

"We'll try not to talk too much about Agrippa without you," Hero promised.

The back of the club opened to a narrow alley off Fleet Street, littered with old packing crates and broken glass. After the heat of all those dancing bodies, the midnight frost outside was like a splash of ice water to my face. Eddie was sitting on the steps—his shoulders tensed when he heard the door open, then relaxed when he turned and saw it was me.

"Sorry," he said, with his shy, off-centre smile. "I didn't want to leave your birthday. I just couldn't breathe in there."

"No, it's fine." I folded my bare arms against the chill. "I'm not sure I could, after a while. Aren't you cold, though?"

"Freezing," he agreed, without moving. "It might be a white Christmas at home."

I sat down beside him, heedless of the icy step, careful of my dress. The stars were crisp overhead, and I could feel the faint warmth of Eddie's shoulder against mine. I felt guilty, not for the first time, at how I let Eddie fade into the background when the four of us were together. I wondered what on earth was in the blue potion I had drunk, and whether I would feel the cold more when it wore off.

"Here," Eddie said, and I turned to see him digging into his satchel. "I was going to give you this anyway, before I knew it was your birthday. I bought a ribbon for it while you and Hero were shopping, so…" He shrugged as he pulled out a small blue box tied with a white ribbon. "Something to take home with you."

It was a rose, deep scarlet with just a shimmer of purple at the tips. Not a dead rose, of course. It grew in a small pot, surrounded by a wreath of dark green leaves. Something in my heart unfurled at the sight of it.

"It's beautiful. Truly. Thank you."

"I found it growing by the wall at Camford," Eddie said. He drew his long legs to his chest and wrapped his arms around his knees. "Took me a while to get the soil right. The funny thing is, I don't know what kind of rose it is. It's not in any of my books."

I looked at the shimmering tips with even deeper interest. "Do you think it came from over the wall? Does that mean that Camford isn't in Wales after all?"

Eddie gave me a curious look. "You really want to know where Camford is, don't you?"

I was startled that he had noticed, when as far as I could remember I had raised the question only once before, on the rooftop. I shouldn't have been. The mistake people made with Eddie in those days was thinking that his thoughts and feelings were simple. The way he dealt with people always was—at least, it was always kind, and kindness is usually simple enough. Really, Eddie only showed a tiny sliver of what he felt at any moment, and his understanding of the currents of human behaviour ran deep. He was a prey animal, at heart—watchful and wary, curious and shy. Like most prey animals, he wouldn't have survived to adulthood without being very observant.

"Not really ," I said unconvincingly. "It's just—odd. I've been looking at a lot of old books lately, and there's almost nothing about the formation of the university. I know we split off from Oxford, but where did we go? How were the doors set up, for that matter? When Sam took me through them, I assumed they were common to mages, but there's nothing like them anywhere else, is there?"

"No," Eddie agreed. "That knowledge was lost, they say. The other old universities have them too—I've seen the one in Paris, when we visited my cousins there. Maybe we should rediscover it. We'd be able to study, step through a door, and go home every night."

I laughed, though the possibility was thrilling. Why not, after all? "There are hundreds of students at Camford. That would be a lot of doors. Besides, not all of us want to go home."

I don't know why I said that last part. Probably it was the blue drink.

Eddie only smiled. "Well, I wouldn't try to find Camford based on that rose. Camford has a flora all to itself—the plants are similar to what you'd get here or Wales, but odd colours, and a little more awake. You want to know what I think?"

"What?"

"I think the magic in the air changes them." Enthusiasm warmed his voice. "I've seen that flower respond to magic, you know. Just out of the corner of my eye, when I've been doing homework in my room. It turns toward it the way sunflowers do to sunlight."

I stroked the glittering petals with one fingertip. I was just drunk enough to have the melodramatic thought that I, too, felt myself turning toward magic and Camford and these people like a flower, and not quite drunk enough to voice it out loud. But I decided then and there that I didn't care where Camford was. I looked up at the stars, high above the alley in that smoky London sky, and knew that I, at least, was exactly where I wanted to be.