It had to.
Just ahead of them, Zoe reappeared from around a corner and beckoned with short, impatient motions. ‘What’s taking you so long?’
Nicole and Allie hurried to where Zoe waited in the stone-floored entrance hall. Sylvain stood near the door talking to a guard. A stained glass window set high in the wall sent shards of gold and red flying across the room.
Nicole and Zoe headed for the front door and Allie began to follow them but Sylvain reached for her arm, pulling her back.
With an apologetic grimace, he said, ‘I have to go. Zelazny wants me to meet with the guards for a full debrief.’
‘Oh.’ Allie tried to hide her disappointment. She felt so lost right now. She needed him or Rachel around to feel normal, and Rachel was nowhere to be seen. But she couldn’t say that.
‘No worries.’ She gave a shrug to show how little she minded.
‘I’ll come find you later,’ he promised.
As he turned back down the hallway, Zoe knocked on the dark wood of the front door. A guard in black opened it from outside. Through the doorway, Cimmeria’s lush, green lawns beckoned.
‘We’ll stay in sight,’ Zoe told the guard, then she dashed out into the sun.
Allie’s eyebrows winged up.
Since when do we have to ask permission to go outside?
The guard stepped back to let them pass. His expression was pure icy professionalism but his gaze lingered on Allie’s face a little too long and she realised he knew who she was. He’d probably talk about her later.
‘I saw her. The one Nathaniel wants …’
Forcing herself to pretend she hadn’t noticed, she walked down the front steps with her head held high.
Outside, the smooth lawns sprawled in all directions before fading into dark forests. It was sunny but cool – nothing like the brutal heat in southern France – and Allie pulled her blazer tighter around her.
A few other students sat elsewhere on the lawn. At the far edge, some were kicking a ball around.
Nicole and Zoe chose a spot in full sunlight near a flower bed and stretched out on the soft grass. Allie sat down next to them feeling oddly foreign as they chattered about classes she hadn’t been to and people whose names she didn’t recognise.
‘Has either of you seen Rachel?’ she asked, when their conversation lulled. ‘I haven’t seen her since we got back.’
‘She went home with her dad.’ Nicole gave her a look that said she was surprised she didn’t know this already. ‘She’ll be back tomorrow.’
Rachel hadn’t seen her family in months – it made perfect sense. But Allie felt lonelier knowing she was gone.
The others didn’t seem to notice her darkening mood. Nicole leaned back on her elbows. Zoe pulled up a blade of glass and blew on it, trying to make it whistle. It just sounded like loud air.
‘I’m so happy to feel the sun.’ Nicole tilted her head so the light fell on the delicate curves of her face, turning her fair skin to gold. ‘All it’s done for weeks is rain, rain, rain.’
‘Did it?’ Allie was surprised. ‘It’s been sunny every day in France.’
‘Don’t.’ Laughing, Nicole held up her hand. ‘I don’t want to hear how glorious French summers are, I already know. English summers are so horrible. They shouldn’t call them summers at all. It’s a lie.’
Remembering something she’d meant to ask, Allie turned to Zoe, who was searching the lawn for more likely grass whistles. ‘Hey. Why did you tell the guard we’d stay within sight?’
‘New rules.’ Zoe’s tone was matter-of-fact. ‘Guards have to know where students are at all times. Can’t go into the forest without permission.’
Allie was stunned. Most of the grounds were forested. The students had always had freedom to roam wherever they wished.
‘How’s everyone taking that?’ Looking around, for the first time she noticed all the students were staying on the grass. No one was wandering off down the many forest paths.
‘It’s OK.’ Nicole shrugged and her dark hair shimmered in the light. ‘You get used to it.’ Opening her eyes, she glanced over at Allie. ‘Now that we have some privacy, could you tell us where you’ve been?’
Allie was surprised. ‘You don’t know?’
The girls shook their heads.
‘We know you ended up in France at Sylvain’s place and that’s where Nathaniel found you, but that’s it,’ Nicole said.
‘No one would tell us anything,’ Zoe’s tone was accusing. ‘You just disappeared. We came down to breakfast that day and you were just gone. Isabelle wouldn’t say where you were. It was all top secret. Were you in France the whole time?’
‘No,’ Allie said. ‘We kept moving.’
‘Really?’ Nicole’s eyes reflected a mix of curiosity and envy. ‘That must have been so exciting.’
Allie didn’t really know how to explain what it had been like never to know where you were going. To be constantly taken places you hadn’t chosen for yourself and knew nothing about. To be held in grand houses you couldn’t leave. So she just told them the basics.
When Nathaniel kidnapped Rachel and attacked the school, a number of students were injured. It was clear the stakes had been raised. Nathaniel would stop at nothing in his effort to take control of the Orion Society – the secret organisation that effectively controlled much of the British government – from Allie’s grandmother, Lucinda Meldrum, who had overseen it for years.