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responsible, dammit

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I almost didn't get away at lunch to talk to Minerva, but I did manage to have a few words with her after Colette and Aurélien left the table and it looked like Liane was going to be all right, and at least I've managed to get the point across that I'm not upset with her about Laurie. I want to find out how Laurie managed to get himself in trouble, but unfortunately I've been a little busy, because right after lunch I had Charms and right after Charms I had tea, which was...more exhausting than Charms.

Liane is sacked out on my bed with the latest billet-doux right next to her on the pillow. (I'm just glad he used a drying charm on the ink.) I have the distinct impression she isn't going to be here long, and I suppose I can live with that. This room is too damned small for me to share with two other girls. I suppose Liane and Moruith could sleep in Estrid Frealaf's old bed (I'm not sure the one they're bringing in here is not her old bed) but I don't think Liane will get much sleep in the same room with Cynthia Vieira and Felicity Greengrass, the latter of whom I normally rather like, but not today.

I'll let her sleep until supper. I know she's got a headache the size of all outdoors and she desperately needs to get some sleep, but she has to show her face again at supper tonight so Colette and Aurélien and Rasputin don't think they got to her. Just in case Prince Charming is not as reliable as she thinks he is.

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confused

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I didn't like Liane when I first saw her. There was something about her that just bothered me. I felt that she didn't belong here, that she was going to make trouble for Mother, that she should go someplace else. I tell myself now that it wasn't her at all, it has to have been her father, you can tell just from the things that she doesn't say that he was an evil piece of work. But I like her now and I didn't before. I even wanted her to like me better than Bella, which I don't suppose is even possible (unless I were Michel Rosenthal), but she does like me. And I shouldn't care so much about her liking me. (I really should also not think about her kissing Isabella Malaspina.)

And I don't like Isabella Malaspina. I have never liked Isabella Malaspina. But she makes us get along and then Isabella Malaspina says things, like that thing about the altar-cloths, that make me think. Liane has an art for making people get along. I am afraid that maybe she could even make me get along with Trashwood. Who adores her. The way he does. Trashwood is worse than Vieira for collecting platonic girlfriends.

Still, I think Douglas deserves a second chance. I understand that in wartime we have to be careful, but he really is eleven, not eleven like Florian is or Liane and Yvon must have been once. He can't have known what he was doing, not really. And if he did send that letter about Alastor, then he deserves a good thrashing, which I will be pleased to administer personally, but it means that he doesn't know about me, and he needs to be given the chance to know about me. To see if that makes a difference. And maybe it won't, in which case I don't know. I know better than to bring this up to Mother right now, though.

I miss Minerva. I wonder if she misses me. I've written her two letters now, but Kyteler wrote to Trashwood and I hear they're awfully busy there, so I shouldn't be moping about it.

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homesick at home

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There's so much about blood that's completely unfair. I wish I could go back to school, to help Tom and James, and Kyteler could stay, because even if Dashwood doesn't deserve him, he loves Dashwood. Yvon and I aren't close at all, but he needs me anyway. And the same for Dashwood. Even though it's Kyteler who actually knows him, has known him since he was a child.

I suppose we could become close. Yvon and I, that is. I know he doesn't judge me for my blood (he was in love with Magistra Allison once, they say, or at least thought that he was), and I certainly understand what it's like to believe as he does and have to admit what he is, what we are. If what we were taught is true, then we're damned--damned for loving. He makes more sense to me than Florian does. Or Mother, whom I love even though I don't understand her at all.

I miss Dougie so badly. But I know it's only a matter of time till he learns the truth about me, and he probably will reject me because of it.

I miss Minerva. But I shouldn't tell her how much, because it's much too soon. I want to. I want to get the rejection over with, if it's going to happen at all, and yet I know that the things I want to do to avoid it could well bring it on. It's so hard to be patient.

And it's harder here. I don't know why I even care what's fair and what's not. The world isn't fair. Who am I to demand of the whole world to change?

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aggravated

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This shared dormitory business is going to be problematic to say the least. I really don’t like the idea of Asher Greengrass being right across the hall from my brother, and Dougie and Florian need to be kept as far apart as humanly possible. This morning I had to give Pelby fifty-odd demerits (and Avalon four, because the firsties have bad habits) because of the mess in the common room. I also had to tell Claire Jeannot not to walk naked from the third-year dormitory to the showers and remind her that even though we are all girls here, some of us are Lesbians. I would have given her a demerit or five, but I couldn’t, because having your brother die in the war is distracting even for Claire.

When I told him what his sister had done, Aurélien Jeannot told me at breakfast that he gave Pelby five because he caught Robin Nix urinating in the showers. Nix said he didn’t believe that Avalonians never piss in the showers and Jeannot said he didn’t know if they did or not, because if they did, they weren’t stupid enough to get caught doing it. Then he took another five for cheek. This didn’t sound so terrible when Bettony brought it up on the train. But it is.

I still don’t know what I am going to say to Dougie. And now I’m going to be wondering, all day long, if he pisses in the showers, too, and if he ever did it at the Manor.

Don Ercole’s letter was kind, in its way. I wonder what Mother will say.

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exanimate

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I was all set to write about the lovely luncheon I had with Minerva—and it was so very lovely--but now I don't know what the Hell I am going to do. A boy is dead. Claudien de Kernoël--one of Florian’s cousins, though not (I think) of mine.

No, my cousin would be the one who started the fight in which he was killed. By attacking my brother.

When I heard what happened I thought for sure it was Billy Pendry that started it, but when I came back to the dorm and went to help Dougie get settled in, he told me he'd started it. He was proud of himself.

I don't know where to begin to think about how screwed we are. I'm family, I wasn't there, it's not my fault, but he wouldn't have ever even been at the estate if it weren't for me. He took a dislike to Florrie within seconds of meeting him, and now someone's dead because of it. Someone important, even. I don't know what to say to Douglas. I didn't say anything, actually, just turned on my heel and left him there, went up to my room and drank my chartreuse. I'm being a terrible prefect, and I will go down to the common room shortly. And apologise to Florian. It's the least I can do.

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enraged

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What the fuck. Some people are just completely a waste of God’s clay. I don’t always get along with Mother. The way she treats Douglas really annoys me. But I’m starting to think maybe she can’t help it any more than he can, especially when she’s sitting there with her eyes all silver and slitty and the whole room smells like angry honey and I can’t help wanting to go and kill something myself. I don’t especially like that phenomenon, but I don’t think she can help doing it to me any more than I can help reacting to it.

And anyone who wants to call her a traitor can talk to my wand. I was in St Pantaleons when they checked her out. I have an idea what they must have done to her for her to react like that. She almost died for us.

I was having such a good morning, too. Thinking about seeing Minerva again, packing my things, practising with Marco and his Pappa. And now this. This is our last day here before school and those fuckers had to go and ruin it.

I can’t believe Crockford didn’t say anything; he lives less than a block from Kyteler’s house. Was he sitting there all night at the ball watching us all imagining how we were all going to feel today? And Anne Pendry has always been wet and her brother Bill was a standard Caerleon first-year brat who thought with his fists and whose mouth wrote draughts that he had to cash with his arse, until he got ill. I never really thought of them as enemies. Florrie is friends of a sort with the Pendry girl; she’s down for Avalon after all. It will be rough for her.

I ought to care but I don’t. I just want to kill Marcus Pendry. For saying those things about her when he doesn’t know, he can’t, what they did to her.

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glum

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Minerva wasn’t there.

Rasputin was, and he was more obnoxious than ever. I almost felt sorry for Dimity, even though she’s one of those useless bitches who think every word that drops from Bella Malaspina’s lips is a pearl of exotic wisdom. Almost.

Well, maybe. If my creepy necromancer grandmother wanted to marry me to Anton Rasputin, I’d probably kill myself, except with her for a grandmother, even that wouldn’t be an escape.

I guess I do feel sorry for Dimity.

I feel even sorrier for myself though, which is blatantly ridiculous. What is it with me and Old Blood girls? Do I really think that’s a good plan? I bet Laurie would laugh at me for sitting up here like some stupid girl and moping around over someone who’ll never give me the time of day. Again. Well, Laurie wouldn’t. But Francis would, and I’d deserve it too.

Douglas is still at the Mablins’. If he picks up any more crazy, stupid ideas than he’s already got, I told Mother, it’s her fault for letting him stay there so long. (I still can’t believe I’m calling her that.)

SHE MADE HIM HER FOSTER-SON.

Him, and not my cousin.

Words fail me.

On the other hand, Minerva wrote me back.

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stark. raving. MAD.

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I've gone stark raving mad.

I asked Minerva MacAlister to sit with me at the dance. Tonight. She probably has a boyfriend, and I'll be lucky if my note (which, I hope, did not sound too much like a mash note) doesn't end up on a bulletin board in Caerleon somewhere, but I don't think she'd do that, and I like her. A lot, actually.

As in now that I have begun to get over Ghislaine, I have embarrassing thoughts about her at completely the wrong time. And Ghislaine always did throw the most amazing tantrums when I came back from patrols with her laughing and smiling because of all the fun we'd had together.

Ugh! I'm an utter idiot. She's going to think I'm a complete goober. I haven’t even decided what I’m wearing and it’s hours away.

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annoyed

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I'd be so much happier that Forrester and Kyteler were visiting if I didn't know they'd bring Dashwood, too.

Laurie manages to say those things--the things I know all of Avalon's going to be saying when I go back--without making them hurt.

Dashwood won't. And the way he and Kyteler look at each other...

How can Kyteler think we can still be friends, if he's with Dashwood?

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irritated

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I have met my father and she looks just like me. Only a little curvier, with longer hair and a softer voice. She looks more like my sister than my mother and more like my mother than my father. She’s beautiful. No wonder my mother…well, I don’t want to think about that! I don’t know what to think about any of this.

I’ve been eating fried bread instead of sausages with my breakfast six days a week, and they have strawberries here. Strawberries and grapes and apples and pears and even oranges. All the fruit you could ever want. Three different kinds of meat at one meal plus fish. The food all comes from the forest and the conservatory. I asked her why they don’t share what they have, and she says that she would, but I know perfectly well that the mundanes must never know we exist. And that some of the food wouldn’t even be safe for them.

My younger brother thinks it’s his perfect right to have whatever he wants for breakfast. He asked for smoked salmon this morning and they just went and brought it! He doesn’t seem even to realise how lucky he is. I can’t stand it. Douglas asks perfectly reasonable questions, and he behaves as though they’re horribly offensive. I know Douglas is not very tactful, but how’s he supposed to learn without asking? I don’t have the easiest time myself, understanding how that woman can be my father and his. She’s a nice enough woman and I’m appropriately grateful, but I can’t help it if Douglas doesn’t want to wear lace and brocade!

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resigned

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I have not heard from Laurie yet. This is disturbing, but not too terribly much, as he may very well be out of the country on holiday, or perhaps Francis has him tied to a bed somewhere. It has only been three days, and Laurie is lovable, but really not very reliable. Really not.

Rennell was, as is his wont, extremely helpful. I think the Rennells are helpful the way Frealafs are odd or Pendrys have red hair, sometimes; I know he’s got a cousin who practically runs Lovelace Automata. I had almost everything packed up when I got Marco’s note, and was about to write him to see if he’d be open to going with me to look at a place or two.

My father. Sire. Whatever. Is alive. Is a woman. Is receiving her loyalties. Whatever that means; I have an idea but I can’t say I’m sure. I really, really, really hate doing this. Especially since I’ll be walking right into the middle of whatever it is my mother thought she was protecting me from by stealing me away from my…father?

But the fact of the matter is that I have enough money and connections to support myself—but not an eleven-year-old child who is liable to do considerable damage to my social network. I’m awfully fond of Douglas, but I have no idea how well he’s going to adapt to the arcane world. I don’t know whether the Leffoys will even have him; they may not. But if they are supporting me, at least I will be able to take care of him without having to subsist upon duelling fees, or having to worry that something he does will prevent me from being able to earn them.

I don’t know anything about this woman. This woman who somehow sired me. But then, the past few weeks have made it incredibly clear to me that I don’t know anything about my mother, either.

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worried

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Mother's disappeared, and Grandfather is not to be reasoned with. She left the house last night while we were all asleep and she didn't show up to her factory job this morning. She's been keeping company with a Mr Greenwood, and Grandfather thinks that she might have eloped with him (for some reason, that's always his first thought when a woman or girl disappears), but we haven't been able to reach him.

I don't know whether to be more worried or annoyed, or what to tell Dougie. Some men stopped by after supper last night, and I think they must have been arcanes, because one of them set down a copy of the Herald and I nicked it. I thought I recognised one of them--I can see through glamour, after all--but if it was really Dominic Reed, what in the world would he want to do with us, and why wouldn't he speak to me? It must have been someone else.

According to the Herald Dion Fortune is the Minister now, and here I just thought she wrote romance novels and books on Kabbalah. I wonder what's happened to Prue Bainbridge's grandfather? That must be the lady Minister Mr Foggington was complaining so about. I can't remember much of what happened while I was at the Foggingtons!

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scared

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Grandfather is really angry because I woke everyone in the house up last night screaming, and we're all too tired for church, but we have to go anyway. I couldn't help it. It wasn't my fault.

I dreamed the Germans came and cut me open and dropped me out of the sky and Laurie had to kill me because my insides were spilling out all over the place and I couldn't die. Except Laurie is shite at killing things, so he had to get Francis to do it!

I told Mum about it, when she came into my room, and she gave me a potion, but it didn't help, and there was a ferocious storm last night, and one of the trees in our garden was struck by lightning.

Mum's afraid that Grandfather is going to throw us all out. Including Dougie, I suspect, but I won't say anything, because if we're quiet and good, it won't happen.

I really didn't mean to wake them up!