The Crone's Stone Read online

Mallory regarded me with a hateful expression. Her mouth resembled a couple of inflated leeches. I stifled a laugh, breaking from the herd for the stage. The crow willed me closer with a hooked finger, trapping me within the overpowering radius of her Red Door perfume.

  “Account for your whereabouts last night, Miss Light. Preferably, the truth.”

  When would she prefer a lie? Adults – experts at stating the totally obvious, yet missing the point entirely. “I was sleeping. I have a witness.” Mallory wasn’t the only one who could act.

  “A witness?”

  “Yes, proof of my innocence.”

  “Please explain.”

  “You know, evidence. Confirmation that Mallory is puking the standard pile.” Yet again, my mouth operated outside the control of my brain. Claps and whistles echoed the hall.

  “You are on perilous ground, young lady,” she threatened, thin-lipped. “Your great-aunt Beatrice is but a phone call away.”

  Actually, Aunt Bea was several oceans and a few continents away with me exiled in arctic Austria. Only a thirty-hour journey to Sydney, Australia in her jet. Except for the last six blessed years, we’d been global nomads. I’d been to so many schools in so many countries that I no longer nurtured relationships with my fellow students. What was the point if I was never able to return social invites, which made for a very one-sided exchange.

  But surely a little moral support right now wasn’t too much to ask? I used to believe teens stuck together. A bugger, that foolish optimism! Sometimes, no matter what I told myself, it really did matter.

  “Chablis,” I mumbled.

  Drilling my hands deep inside my jacket pockets, I wished my alibi hinged on someone other than my roomy. And on something other than blackmail. The only reason Chablis was poised to jump to my defence were the photos I had of her and handsome Professor Ramsteed, both bombed and taking his name far too literally. But as her favourite pastime was posting selfies on any digital medium, she may still change her mind and consider their release on Instagram as flattering.

  “Chablis Getty! Come up here, please.”

  The crowd divided as if Moses himself issued the command. Chablis’ family were prime contributors of money to the school. Werner finally triumphed and Chad stretched in his boxer shorts, gazing around with the keenness of a sloth. Tape abrasions and bleeding nicks patterned his naked torso. Werner wielded the scalpel in Mallory’s direction. She whimpered convincingly.

  “Yes, Principal Bird?”

  Chablis – or ‘Shabby’ to me – flicked champagne hair extensions. She fluttered in knees socks and a blazer, sponging every drop of attention from admirers in the front row. With the crow distracted shushing students, Shabby turned to grin at me. Then I knew for certain the dirt I had on her wasn’t enough.

  “Can you corroborate Miss Light’s whereabouts, Chablis?” The principal’s doubt was louder than any answer.

  I searched the audience for the tiny blond boy who trembled alone to one side of the assembly hall, his face pale and troubled. His name was Jaime. I’d met him early this morning on my parkour run, which finished with a stolen snack from the kitchens. No amount of hassle for my current jam matched what he’d suffered. I caught his eye and winked, hoping to convey confidence. His chin raised a notch.

  “Her story is …” Chablis began, while I didn’t dare breathe. “True. Winsome was asleep in her bed. All night. We were woken before the alarm this morning by the noise of trampling feet and kids shouting to come and see this.”

  Chablis gestured at Mallory and Chad a few metres away, struggling to hold back her obvious amusement. Both the captives were now liberated from their bindings, upright on rubbery legs. To my astonishment, Chablis gave a five-star performance.

  “How do you know Winsome did not slip out during the night?” The crow didn’t bother to hide her disappointment.

  “Lately, she’s been screaming and gibbering in her sleep. I can hear her through my earplugs. Some rubbish about someone called Raphaela and devils and strings and stench. Couple of other names …” She wore her thinking face, the same open-mouthed one she used to catch lobbed M&M’s. “Billie, I think?” She couldn’t help herself and turned to me. “Is he hot?”

  Everyone laughed again and shabby lost a few stars. On her mention of stench, a petroleum reek wafted into the hall. It had the undercurrent of rot. I scrunched my nose. Had someone neglected the garbage?

  “That’s quite enough! Thank you, Chablis. Mr Werner, kindly fetch the school nurse for these two. Mr Jenkins, may I have a word?”

  The principal and the counsellor moved off to the back of the stage and put their heads together, finally managing a whole useful brain. Their murmured voices rang too clear above the student babble, which was gaining volume. I’d never really appreciated how acute my hearing was until coming here, where it became increasingly obvious I was privy to things said that others weren’t.

  Suddenly, another voice competed with Bird and Jenkins. A familiar one from my nightmares, causing a tingle of fear up my spine and a lurch in my belly.

  “Who but the devil pulls our waking-strings! Abominations lure us to their side …”

  The night-time dread leached into daylight, out in the open for all to see. I blinked back panic. Was this only in my head? Waves of stink accosted my nostrils. I glanced around at the students below and confirmed my worst fears. They looked the same as every other occasion, jaws slack and faces sullen – all clearly oblivious to the poetic taunts.

  “Each day we take another step to hell, Descending through the stench, unhorrified …”

  A translation from the poet Baudelaire. The Flowers of Evil. I’d seen poetry drive students mad before, but not this literally. And I’d developed two psychiatric symptoms too many: voices in my head and smelling the cesspit. I imagined IV lockdown with concerned elderly faces looming to smother me in care. Did they still use padded cells on mental patients nowadays?

  “Mallory and Chad were drugged when you found them?” Bird asked Jenkins, dragging me back to reality.

  “Yes. The perpetrator used ether to knock them out. It’s fast acting, fades quickly and leaves no symptoms. Easily obtained and used. We’ve only had a brief chance to inventory the labs, but it seems a small quantity may be missing.”

  The side effects were vomiting and dizziness. Mrs Paget had taught me this in home-school medicinal chemistry when I was seven. And I’d had to scale four storeys of the Science wing and prise a window open from outside to steal it. Technically, it was quite the challenge to obtain. Especially on short notice. It had been a very busy night. I waited, hyper-vigilant, but a couple of fantasy sentences seemed to be the limit of my addled brain right now.

  “I do not believe her story, Mr Jenkins,” Bird said.

  “Mallory’s accusations are wild, indeed. She’d have no idea of her attacker if she was unconscious.”

  “Not Mallory,” Birdbrain squawked. “I’m certain Winsome has coerced Chablis into providing an alibi. Is there some way we can swab her fingers or match the handwriting on those signs. Confirm her guilt? You say the theft occurred last night? There’d be ether residue all over her.”

  “Really, Ms Bird! Don’t you mean confirm Winsome’s innocence? How could a lone assailant possibly achieve a theft after hours? And then take not one, but two students hostage, in the dark, without alerting a patrolling supervisor? Surely given Winsome’s diminutive size, she lacks the physical ability to lug someone of Chad’s stature from his bed, onto a chair, down several flights of stairs and so on. I feel this is the act of a group.”

  How indeed! I was amazed myself that it had been so easy. But I’d discovered the teachers’ private elevator early in my second term here. After lifting Jenkins’ pass code during one of our completely pointless counselling sessions, it was a small matter to ferry the worms downstairs and wheel them into the dining hall. The only part that proved challenging was negotiating the couple of stairs to the platform.

 
“Yes, yes! So it seems. Nonetheless, I do not trust her. Her reputation speaks for itself, and not in kind words.”

  “But what is Winsome’s motive for an attack on these two? She is barely seventeen, certainly not the criminal mastermind you imply. She has been perfectly behaved since that initial incident in the laundry room two years ago. We’re making rapid progress in therapy.”

  “The incident whereby Winsome blackened Mallory’s eye? As Student Counsellor, you see no connection between then and now?”

  “Do you doubt my professional opinion …?”

  Bird and Jenkins yammered on. His question about motive was the smartest ever to make the long journey from his solitary neuron to his flapping gums. Even though discounting my criminal genius was kind of insulting, I was grateful he had so little faith in me.

  The toxic cadaver smell faded once the creepy voice in my head had vanished. I mentally clung to the peace of 3 am this morning, the best part of my stretch here, while the student collective hung around, watching me with unfriendly eyes. Parkour practice at that hour felt special, like tumbling in nothingness. The dark had an indigo tint, moonlight shafts flashing through arched windows as I sprinted by. I often wished running away was so easy. Even though I’d only lived in Sydney for six short years, forgetting periods in this prison, it was my home and I missed it.

  The Academy didn’t come close, nested in an