I peeked into the library, seeing nothing unusual. Cautiously, I stepped into the room and approached the bookcase. The temperature in the room dropped suddenly to below freezing. I could see my breath as I gasped.
“I am not here to hurt you,” I whispered, trying to remain calm. “I only want to help you. But I will need to know your name to do that.”
I heard a low hiss behind me as several books flew off the shelves toward me. I threw up my arms to shield myself—a few of the books were heavy. “Mon Dieu!” I screamed.
The gloom and malice all came flooding back to me, and I started to regret throwing away Sucre’s muffins. I could feel the ghost trying to hurt me. My chest tightened, making it difficult to breathe. Why was she so full of hatred? And why did she haunt the library?
Goethe’s Faust was one of the books that had fallen from the shelves. I grabbed it quickly and retreated to my room, leaving the other books open on the floor. The ghost could clean up her own mess. The dark feelings had passed as soon as I crossed the threshold into the hallway, and by the time I returned to my room and sat down on my cot, I could breathe easily again. I pushed up my sleeves to look at the bruises on my arms from the books hitting me. At least they would be hidden under my long sleeves, so Madame Tomilov and Sister Anna would not see. Hopefully, Elena and Aurora would not see them either.
I was already changed into my long-sleeved nightgown and tucked under my covers, reading Faust, when the girls returned to our room sometime later that night.
They were giggling and out of breath. “Katiya, why did you leave the dining hall? You missed all the fun!” Elena gushed.
Aurora flopped back on her cot. “We wanted to dance all night, but Madame would not let us!”
Elena shook her head. “I think Madame would have let us, if Sister Anna had not reminded her we needed to go to sleep.”
“Are all of you ready for our German exam tomorrow?” I asked. “Madame Orbellani sagte dass es schwierig sein würde.”
Aurora rolled her eyes. “Of course I’m ready. I don’t care how difficult Madame Orbellani believes she’s made it. I grew up with a German nanny.”
“And I grew up in Germany,” Alix said.
“I plan to copy off of Alix,” Aurora said.
“And I plan to copy off of Aurora,” Elena said, still twirling around the room.
Aurora laughed as she got ready for bed. “Then I shall mark every answer wrong on purpose.”
Elena stuck her tongue out at Aurora playfully.
Alix smiled at them, looking more animated than she had in months.
I was glad the three of them had warmed up to each other, even if it was only because of some enchanted pastries. Still, I couldn’t help feeling a little bit left out. Which was ridiculous. Elena and I weren’t really friends. She’d tried to poison me, and had cast a charm on me. We could never have a true friendship, like the kind Dariya and I shared. I would never be able to trust any of the Montenegrins. And pastry or no pastry, I wasn’t sure I trusted Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt either.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
On the first sunny day, Madame Tomilov allowed Sister Anna to take our class out for a walk in the courtyard. The sister had argued that we needed fresh air and exercise to keep us strong and healthy during the winter months, and the headmistress had agreed. She sent along a picnic basket full of Sucre’s apple and cinnamon muffins.
Elena seemed to be acting more like her normal wicked and conniving self, however. She grabbed my arm and we hung back behind the others, allowing Aurora and the rest of the girls to hurry ahead.
“What is it?” I whispered. “They’ll never let us out again if you do something horrible.”
“I just wanted to speak with you, Katerina Alexandrovna. Without Alix listening. I found something mysterious under her bed last night.”
“What were you up to?”
Elena shrugged. “I needed to put something there. I did not expect to see witchcraft already in place.”
“Witchcraft?”
“The box she keeps tucked under her bed. It has a red ribbon coiled up inside.”
“And what makes you think that it is witchcraft? You had no right to search the princess’s things, Elena.”
“There was a protective symbol scratched inside the box’s lid. A German hex symbol.”
“How do you know?” But I already could guess. I shook my head. “Never mind. Your sisters.”
Elena smiled. “They are extremely well educated, Katerina. Not only did they finish at the tops of their classes here at Smolny, they also were tutored during the summers at home in Greek and Persian. We have quite a large occult library at home in Cetinje.”
Briefly, I regretted missing out on this library when I was in Montenegro last spring. “Perhaps it is something a superstitious servant gave her.”
“Anyway, I wonder what the ribbon is for.”
I looked at Elena. “And I wonder what you were planning on putting under her bed.”
Elena took my arm in hers as she looked up at the sky and smiled. “Oh, just a little something to keep her from looking her best.”
I shook my head again and sighed. I realized nothing magical would work under the empress’s spell, so Alix was safe for the moment from Elena’s creepy trinkets. But whatever magic was in that box would not be able to work either. What was the German princess hiding?
I wished that Alix and I had become closer friends during the school year, but she kept mostly to herself. She definitely had her own strange secrets.
“What is that?” Elena asked, stopping just before we reached the archway leading to the outer courtyard. In the snow, under a barren hedge, there was a pile of dark cloth. Just beyond the empress’s enchanted barrier.
Aurora and the Bavarian princesses were walking back to join us. They spotted the cloth at the same time. Aurora reached out and picked it up, shaking the snow off.
Her hands passed easily through the empress’s wards. It was good to know I had one roommate with no supernatural abilities.
“It looks like a woman’s shawl,” I said. “Someone must be very cold.”
Aurora held it up. The black wool was fringed and dotted with tiny pearls. “It’s beautiful. I’m keeping it.”
“It’s dirty,” I said. “Not only has it been lying here in the snow, it also looks valuable. Someone will be looking for it.”
Aurora wrapped herself up in it and spun around. “Ugh, it smells horrible!” She unwrapped it and threw it toward me, but it fell to the ground.
I sighed and picked it back up, folding it carefully. “We should give it to Sister Anna. Maybe she can clean it up and find its owner.”
The shawl did have a peculiar smell to it. An earthy smell of decay. My heart pounded in my ears and I felt dizzy. It smelled of a tomb.
“Katerina?” Elena was staring at me.
I took a deep breath. There was a logical explanation. I was certainly mistaken. The shawl had probably been lying under that shrub all winter. It probably just smelled because it had been outside in the damp for so long, not because a dead person had been wearing it.
“Katerina Alexandrovna! What is wrong with you? You look pale as a ghost!”
I looked at Elena and tried to shrug nonchalantly. “I just felt a chill all of a sudden. Let’s hurry and catch up with the others.”
“Should we take the shawl or not?” Elena looked doubtful.
I sighed and hesitated. “It would be the right thing to do.”
“Well, come on, then. I’m starting to lose feeling in my hands out here.”
“Perhaps the cook will make hot cocoa for us when we return,” Augusta said hopefully.