Chapter Seventeen: Uproar

My little stunt at the Winter Festival had far-reaching repercussions, almost none of which blew back onto me... at least not initially. Actually, Headmistress Lily was hit the hardest, followed closely by Simone. Poor Simone - she was in deep shit. There was even talk of refunding her father's money and kicking her out of St. Circe's, her behavior plan abandoned. He was scheduled to come in next week after the Board of Directors had completed their initial assessment of the circumstances leading to the festival debacle. That meant, fortunately, that I had time to run damage control... but not much time, granted, and I'd have to be careful or I might cause more harm than good.

I wouldn't have much help, either. Headmistress Lily wouldn't be much help, of that much I was sure. She'd been placed on administrative leave, effective tomorrow, and might well be getting shitcanned once the investigation was complete. In the meanwhile, joy of joys, Doctor Sauvage was acting Headmistress and Mrs. Bishop was acting assistant... and Mrs. Irons was acting Advanced Best Behavior instructor, and Ms. Rust was doing double-duty as Night Matron for the Beginner and the Advanced Girls. In this case, shit rolled uphill. Lily was being placed on administrative leave, effective midnight tonight, which meant my next shift with her was my last shift as the headmistress's assistant... after that, Sauvage would be in charge, and I very much doubted that she'd want to keep me on. She and I didn't see eye to eye (figuratively - and I hardly saw eye to eye with anybody literally).

I shuffled into Lily's office on Tuesday afternoon after classes, wondering how I might use my next few hours to keep myself out of trouble and, more importantly, shield the others. I'd altered my own behavior plans and those of the four other then-Beginner littles and had managed to corrupt and mitigate all of their plans by various degrees. All well and good - they richly deserved those anti-punishments - but if the Board decided to do a thorough audit, we'd be found out. Who knew what the fallout from that would be? Nothing pretty. I had to do something - only I wasn't sure quite what.

"I'm surprised you showed up," Lily said coolly. "This is my last day, you know. For the foreseeable future, I mean."

"Why wouldn't I show up? Am I excused from my shift?"

She pursed her lips and tapped her rings against the desk. She'd cleared all of the papers off of it and half of her books were boxed - she didn't expect to be coming back. At least not any time soon. "No, I suppose not. I'm just surprised," she said. "I thought you might be reluctant to show up here after your goddamn stunt at the festival."

Simone had caught the flak for it, but Lily was astute enough to know the truth. Simone wasn't nearly sophisticated enough in her witchcraft to have pulled that one off single-handedly. It was borderline unbelievable that I could pull it off, with under two months of official witch training under my belt. Lily knew, Lily knew that I knew that she knew, and so there was no point in denying it.

I shrugged. "Sorry... I was trying to help."

"Yes, well some help it did. Leave it to Natalie Bryce to do something so simultaneously brilliant and foolish. You could have just negated the effects and left us on a level playing field where we belonged. Who could object to such a thing? We'd have eventually exposed the Schwarzwaldakademie and kept our honor intact. No, instead we had to stick it back to them in the most dramatic possible way. I can't fault you for theatrics, Natalie, but I'd like to know what thought was rattling in that pretty head of yours." I hated to admit it, but she was right. I'd been thinking emotionally and not logically.

"I have a long history of not making the wisest possible move," I said eventually. "You made it very clear that you wanted me to do something and that you wanted plausible deniability for it. If you want me to help you keep your job? Done - just tell me what to do and I'll do it. But as for what was rattling around in my 'pretty head'? Revenge. Judge and be judged - we don't just defend ourselves against those who would do us harm... we damn well make sure they don't do it again. Isn't that our way?"

Lily sighed. She slid a notepad across her desk, tapping the paper with a crimson-tipped nail. "I suppose it is," she said. "I'm glad to hear you think of yourself as one of us now, at least... if only you would listen to your common sense, we might make a great witch of you yet. Now... what I want from you, right now, are the names I need to know, starting with your own." She slid a glossy fountain pen across, placing it next to the notepad with a little tap.

I took the pen in my hand, its tip hovering a millimeter over the cream-white paper.

"I'll give you the names, but I'll need something from you in return."

Lily looked cross, her nostrils flaring. "You want something from me? This is for your own bloody good, girl."

"Fine," I shrugged, lifting the pen a bit - an implied threat, to be sure. "Then let's say my favor is for your own good - and we'll just have to trust one another."

+++++

Lily got her names - names that she could have just as easily guessed, but I suppose she wanted confirmation by the culprit's own hand. The five Beginner littles as of two months ago, when my campaign to undermine the behavior plans started: Simone, Michelle, Helena, Emilia, and myself. Those were the plans she needed to know about, altered behavior plans sealed in blood. In order to edit them again, she'd need either the girl or both of that girl's parents to acquiesce - and, in Simone's case, soon even that wouldn't work, for Lily had acquiesced to my request far more readily than I'd expected.

That evening... night, really - it was just past ten o'clock... I helped Lily carry her things out to her car. I was glad I could help, both to show how thankful I was for what she was about to do, and because now I actually could. I wouldn't be competing in strongwoman competitions any time soon, but I could do hand-stands, I could lift Lorelei for our gymnastics tower, and I could do twelve pull-ups (as many as I could do as a man, albeit while weighing a hundred pounds less). I could also carry pretty heavy boxes, to Lily's mild surprise and amusement.

"You've got that?" she asked uncertainly.

"Yeah..." I said with a grunt. The box full of books must have weighed forty pounds, but I was damned if I was going to put it down for a breather. "No... problem."

Everything loaded, Lily got into the driver's seat. She drove a late model Jaguar F-class - shiny black and polished chrome, of course. I hopped into the passenger's seat, my first time in a proper bucket seat since my arrival at St. Circe's, and was amazed at how huge it was on me. For a moment, it occurred to me that Lily could just drive off, with me in the passenger seat, zip out of the St. Circe's campus in that way that all the staff could, and the school might never find me again. But Lily still had some loyalty to the school, even if she might not be in their employ for much longer, and would never allow such a thing. Oh well - one more gambit to figure out myself.

We drove down the south road, the only other road on campus other than the main road, rolling in silence out to the standing stones near the lakefront. There was snow on the ground, close to a foot of it, but the paths were absolutely snow-free, forming dark channels through the moonlit white. Now that it was winter, we were permitted leggings under our school skirts and puffy white coats over our jackets, both of which helped me stave off the cold. The wind skill reddened my face and bit through the fabric of the leggings, but it was tolerable. Despite the cold, I didn't need a hat at all - my mass of hair was thick enough to ward off anything short of gale-force winds. As we stepped out and crunched across the snow, I blew gouts of misty breath. Out near the entrance to the woods, next to the half-buried trail sign, I spotted movement. It was hard to miss: dark skin and dark leggings contrasting against the snow and a silvery white coat.

"It's about time. I'm freezing my ass off," Simone said.

Lily offered a curt nod. "Miss Clayton."

"Oh... headmistress... sorry. I mean... I'm just cold. Sorry, headmistress."

"Headmistress for exactly one hour more," Lily said with a glance at her watch. "So not a moment to lose. Shall we?"

With Lily in the lead and me bringing up the rear, we started along the path. Soon, we were in the woods, moving under cover so thick we could barely see the sky, even with the leaves now gone. I could barely make out the path and instead followed after Simone's white coat as it caught tiny glimmers of light to reflect in the nighttime. Headmistress Lily must have known some night-vision trick because she carried no flashlight and didn't seem to require one. She marched ahead of us with deadsure certainty.

"This is fine, right?" Simone whispered back. I nodded back wordlessly - I trusted Lily.

We crunched along for another five minutes before we reached the clearing, the woods eerily silent beyond the faint clatter of bare branches against one another. The increasingly dense evergreens absorbed any iota of motion in the air, standing utterly still and silent. By the time we got to the clearing, the stars were out and shining. They were nowhere near as bright as they had been at our naming ceremony some weeks back, but still far brighter than a random, frigid December night had any right to be.

"Sister Natalie," Lily said. "You will serve as witness here tonight. Are you prepared to bear true witness?"

"I am," I said, and something in the air shifted about me - I'd just committed to a magical contract. A contract I was eager to keep.

"Good," Lily said. "Simone, I will make this offer once and only once - I am inviting you to our sisterhood, to be trained in our ways." She shot me a pointed look. "You will obey our ways and reveal them to nobody among the uninitiated. Do you accept?"

Simone bit her lip, nodding vigorously. "Yes. Yes, I accept," she said. "Yes," she repeated, as though two times might not be enough.

With a subtle gesture, Lily reached into her lock of silver hair and, for the first time, I realized that it wasn't a silver needle she hid in there. She'd plucked one of her own hairs and turned it into a needle. That made sense - it was far more potent, magically speaking, to make an offering from her own body. She pricked her thumb, smeared the blood across her bottom lip, and handed Simone the needle. She hesitated, the needle's point hovering over her finger, her breath clouding up in the crisp winter air, roiling eddies rolling like fog beneath the starlight. Simone released a deep breath and pricked her finger, allowing Lily to take her hand and spread the blood to her upper lip.

Headmistress Lily held Simone's slim shoulders and turned her around, positioning Simone to face me, her gray eyes now playing with fear and uncertainty. I nodded in encouragement, offering a thumbs-up through gloves. Then Lily parted Simone's dark braids, kissed the back of her neck, and I felt the power of the effect like a static ripple through the silent, snowy wood.

"Welcome to the Sisterhood of the Starry Night, Sister Simone," Lily said. "But do not leave yet, for I have a second offer to you, and Sister Natalie is witness to our compact. I cannot name you a witch - the stars aren't right for it, I haven't the authority, and your training has scarcely begun...

"I cannot name you a witch," she reiterated. "But there is an intermediate rank, seldom used these days, of Accolyte. With it come protections and responsibilities unavailable to Initiates, and with it you take your first step along a path not easily unwound. Will you renounce your old family to embrace the sisterhood? Will you choose your last and most important name?"

Simone knit her brow adorably but gave a vigorous nod. "I will."

"Good. Then place your hands upon the stone and find your name within the Vault of Stars."

I remembered my own experience in doing so, how the stars had pulsed and swirled, how I'd picked out the pattern within them to claim my new name. But the stars above were bright and constant, unmoving and eternal. Presumably, they were not so to Simone, because after five or six seconds, her hands dropped from the stone and she stumbled back - I caught her before she fell and propped her back up with a grunt.

"Now whisper your True Last Name to your Mother Witch to affirm your pact," Lily said.

Simone was close enough and the night was silent enough that I could hear it clearly when she whispered: "Storm."

Simone and I had chosen the same witch last (and most important) name. Did that make us sister witches? Twin witches? Twitchens? I meant to ask Lily, but she left us there in the snowy glade, crunching off down the path, and it was all we could do to keep up with her in the dark of the wood. Back at the road, she got into her Jaguar and rolled down the window - I thought she was about to offer us a ride back.

"Go in peace, sisters," she said, and drove off into the night, leaving Simone and me to walk back to the dormitory.

"I don't feel any different," Simone said, rubbing the back of her neck with a gloved hand. But she didn't sound convinced.

I went to sleep, my little boots dripping a slushy puddle next to my bed, and awoke to the new era of St. Circe's history.

+++++

Acting Headmistress Sauvage started her tenure off with a literal inquisition and witch hunt. She may well have been forced to by the Board of Directors, but make no mistake about it: she relished in the role. I was pulled out of Voice class in the early afternoon, made to wait in an empty upstairs conference room for fifteen or twenty minutes, and then marched into the larger conference room in front of Sauvage and three people I did not recognize. There was a fifth seat along their panel, currently unoccupied.

"I asked Mr. Bryce to step out during your cross-examination," Doctor Sauvage said coolly. "As your grandfather, it would be a conflict of interest."

"He's not my... grandfather?" My statement became a question. Presumably, that member was Amanda Bryce's grandfather and Rowan Bryce's father.

"We aren't here to argue, Miss Bryce," another panel-member said, an older Hispanic woman whom I didn't recognize. From the familial resemblance, she might have been Ms. Azucar's mother.

"Me, either," I said. I smiled weakly, hoping a display of nerves might curry some favor. "What can I answer for you, miss?"

"I am Mother Dulcinea," she said sweetly. She stood from the table and coasted over to me, the skirts of her dress hardly moving. She was scarcely taller than I was, her hands starting to wrinkle and spot from age, but not yet conspicuously, her hair two-thirds of the way toward white. With warm hands, she led me to a chair and had me sit with a gentle downward push on my shoulders. "Can I put the truthfinder's tiara upon your head?"

"It will make me tell the truth?" I asked uncertainly - if so, bad news for me.

"It will let us see what is true to you," she said. "Say what you will, but know that we will not look kindly upon lies and deceit."

So it was a magical polygraph - that I could live with. Good old Cousin Vincent had once shown me one of the things, more a courtroom prop than a diviner of truth. We'd taken turns with it for fun, and I'd been nearly as good as him at evading uncomfortable truths. If modern technology couldn't root out a top-tier fibber, hopefully magic couldn't either. I nodded uncertainly and let her place it atop my head - small and silvery, its outer circumference was engraved with barely-visible symbols. Dulcinea dabbed a bit of activating potion on the single glittering gem on the circlet. I felt its effects activate - it certainly didn't feel like a compulsion... but I could feel gentle fluctuations of energy upon the surface of my mind - a very sophisticated magical polygraph, it would seem.

"Please state your legal age and name," Dulcinea said.

"Natalie Penelope Bryce and seventeen," I said. Nothing from the circlet - my birthday had been just over two weeks ago, the night of my cloaking, in fact.

"That's a lie!" Sauvage snorted. "She is Martin Warner, twenty-seven."

"Not legally, though, correct?" Dulcinea had her there. "Let's try this one. Is your real name Martin Warner?"

"Um. Yes," I said. The circlet on my head flashed red - I could see it reflected in the silvered glasses of one of my interlocutors, a serious-looking woman in Mary Poppins clothes a century out of fashion.

"Are we sure this thing works right?" Sauvage asked. "She is definitely Martin Warner..."

"Was Martin Warner," the silver-spectacled woman said. "Perhaps she no longer identifies as such... which would make the answer a lie. Child..."

"I am actually twenty-seven," I said. No flash from the circlet.

"Natalie, aged twenty-seven, then. Please give us honest answers - not what you think the answer ought to be, but what you feel to be true. If you've done no wrong, you have nothing to fear from us."

That was, of course, the excuse given by police and government for overreach since time immemorial - if you have nothing to hide, what's the harm in our looking? And, of course, I had done something wrong, at least in their eyes. To look at the Board of Directors present, my guess was that they were influential and powerful magic-users. Who knew what they might do to me if they opposed my agenda?

"Okay," I said softly, really milking the fearful waver in my voice. "I'll tell the truth." No flash.

"We know you're friends with Simone and Cassie," Sauvage stated. She shuffled some papers. She adjusted the collar of her coal-gray frock. "We're speaking with both of them, and you will be permitted no contact before then - if you wish to absolve yourself, keep that in mind. If one of them implicates you and we cannot disprove it, then we'll have to act accordingly."

That was the good old Prisoner's Dilemma she'd just floated out - if one of us ratted on the others, we might be spared punishment at the dire expense of the other two. If we all ratted on one another, we'd all be in the same deep shit. If none of us ratted on the others, we'd all likely get mild to middling punishment. Fortunately, I knew that Simone was familiar with the dilemma and was pretty sure that Cassie was. And Cassie was a true friend (with benefits). The smart money said: don't fuck this up, Natalie - your friends got you. Don't tell them anything. The question was: with the truthfinder's tiara on, how much could I get away with not telling. Quite a bit, it turned out. For instance:

"Did you know about Simone Clayton and the cards?" Sauvage asked.

"No," I said - and the circlet flashed red. Fine, that was a lie.

"I mean... I saw her with a card. I knew she was doing something, but I didn't know what," I said. No flash - technically true. I didn't know exactly when she'd pull the trigger or how much feedback she was getting in the cards. "She certainly never gave me any inkling of a plan." Also true - I'd given her the plan.

"Do you know who made the cards?"

I'd made them magical, of course... but I hadn't made the cards, per se. I tried to think back on the manufacture and, thankfully, couldn't come up with a brand or vendor. "No," I said. "I can't think of anyone." No flash.

"What about Cassandra Petersen. Did you see her with any of the cards?"

"Yes," I said. "She said she found it in her shell - that's what they call the crew boats - and seemed confused about it. I don't think she had any clue what was going on." Also all true.

"Is it possible that somebody put one of them under compulsion?"

"Maybe one of the Bigs did to Simone," I said - true. She'd been in the 'March of the littles' under the control of one of the collars. "I know that Asha doesn't like her very much - she's harassed her more than once. And Tiffany Chalmers has tried to control me before, so it's keeping in character." All of that was also true.

"That's very interesting - and worrisome..." one of the Board members said, and on we went.

I like to think I gave them enough plausible, technically-true information to work from to connect the dots. The wrong dots, of course, but dots nonetheless. I certainly didn't give them any cause to suspect any of us in any greater plot, managing to clear myself completely and to implicate Simone only in what they already knew she'd done. Doctor Sauvage, of course, wasn't happy about this in the least. But what could she do? The circlet was working and she'd grilled me to her heart's content. Unfortunately for her, she was a behavioral specialist and not an interrogation expert - one of them would have probably ferreted through my volunteering-a-bit-too-much answers. But she wasn't an interrogation expert, and I came across as scrupulously forthright and happy to divulge all I knew. My interrogation complete, I was sent off to Physical Conditioning with a spring in my step: crisis averted. Well... not exactly.

+++++

Sub-crisis #1: Byron Bryce. I was about twenty steps out from the cross-examination room when an older man fell into step beside me and I felt him reach out magically, giving me enough of a mystical nudge that I couldn't pretend to ignore him. I stopped in my tracks and turned to face him, looking up into ice-blue eyes.

He wasn't an old man, iron-gray hair with a dignified statesman look, his eyes contrasting with the subtle tan of his skin. His face was dead serious and his gaze was intense, as if he could penetrate some aspect of my being just by looking hard enough. Perhaps he could.

"You're Natalie," he said. It was not a question.

I nodded. "You're... um... the elder Bryce," I said.

He nodded back. "We need to talk. Follow me."

He led me to the basement - at first, I was afraid he was going to take me to the ritual chamber, but we proceeded down the hallway to a little closet of a room. The whole time, I wondered if I was about to get murdered in the basement of my own school (yes, I suppose I thought of it as my school now - my hijinx at the festival certainly demonstrated lots of school spirit). My heart thudded in my chest and I went through scenarios in my head of what I might do if things turned violent. Byron Bryce wasn't a massive man, but he was at least a bit above average in height and build, more than a match for little young me.

"Sit," he said.

There were two chairs in the room, old wooden chairs a few decades past their prime. They were the sort of high-backed, lightly-padded chair a classroom teacher might have availed herself of circa the Kennedy administration. I made a show of hopping up on the chair to demonstrate how small I was, sitting as demurely as I could, flashing big emerald eyes at the man. Seeing a young woman do that would have flipped about all the 'protective instinct' switches in my brain in my old life. Byron sat across from me with a sigh, clenching and unclenching his fists.

"I know who you are, and I'm not falling for it," he said uncertainly. "I have only one question for you: did you rape my granddaughter?"

I shook my head. "Not her, not anybody, not ever."

He regarded me carefully, scratching at his rugged chin. It was another minute before he spoke. "You aren't how I expected you to be. I thought you'd be... well, an evil rapist wearing a girl's body like a mask. Tell me... if you didn't do it, why is my son so goddamn sure you did?"

"Because Amanda was traumatized. That was real," I replied. I removed my blazer to show him the tattoos along my arms, intricate vines that moved through dimensions past my skin, past the very space we existed in. "I had a latent magical talent, and I unwittingly used it to nudge Amanda to my home for a very fun and consensual night together. Amanda had a latent magical talent, too, and it counteracted my own by the time she woke up. So, realizing that what she'd done was so out of character for her, she assumed I'd drugged her. Not an unreasonable conclusion, but not what happened. All Rowan knew was that somebody had deeply wounded his little girl, and he took it in the worst possible way. He built me up into some sort of monster and Amanda into a helpless victim, and he twisted both of our lives out of the world in order to get his justice."

Byron Bryce stood, clenched and unclenched his fists, and paced back and forth a few times. "I hope you understand if I don't take your word for it," he said eventually.

"I wouldn't either," I said. My fear hadn't abated much, and I hoped it showed in the quiver of my lip and uncertainty of my gaze. "But look at the court documents..."

"Those can be magically altered," he said quickly.

I shrugged - what couldn't be magically altered? "None of us knew magic. I didn't even know magic was real. The only one who tried to magically tamper with things was Rowan. I don't expect you to believe me, sir. You don't know me. But I hope you'll at least investigate it, because your son..." I took a deep breath. "Your son obviously wants to get his revenge by turning me into a sex slave. I hope you understand that I'm not about to let him..."

"Oh? And what would you do about it?" Byron stopped his pacing to face me, curiosity piqued.

"I haven't decided yet. And if you can get him to let me go after my time at St. Circe's, we can put the whole unfortunate episode behind us. No hard feelings and no righteous retribution from me."

"Yes, I'll be sure to tell him that," Byron said, a smirk crossing his thin lips. "'Beware the fury of the tiny redhead,' I'll tell him. 'She might smother you with her endowments.'"

I hopped from the chair and stood - not all that impressive, even with my picture-perfect posture. "You brought me here to ask if I'd raped your granddaughter. I didn't, full stop, end of discussion. An injustice has been done against me that your son and grandson intend to exploit and amplify at my great expense. See to your house, Mr. Bryce, or somebody else will eventually see to it for you."

"Is that a threat?"

"No, it's an inevitability. Now, if you don't mind, I've got to get to class."

+++++

My experience with the Bryce men was never a positive one. Byron Bryce didn't seem quite so malignant as his progeny, but I didn't have high hopes on his relaying my message. At least he let me go unchallenged and I managed to catch most of Physical Conditioning class. That led to Sub-crisis #2: Advanced Bigs.

During my deposition before the Board of Directors, I'd basically implicated Asha and Tiffany in Simone's actions. Honestly, it was a lot more believable (so far as any of the board knew) than unassuming, little me being the mastermind behind things. I assumed they'd look into it, find nothing worth noting, and that would be the end of it. Call me a foolish optimist if you like, because that was definitely foolishly optimistic. The Bigs got grilled, divulged some things they'd prefer to be kept secret, and deduced that I was at least partly to blame. They were out for blood.

I knew that something was amiss at supper. I did my job as a good little, serving them without complaint. They didn't say or do anything to me - nor to Simone. They hardly spoke at all throughout the meal, and I could feel their eyes upon me. They were unhappy about something, but they were keeping quiet about it. That was a bad sign - usually, minor and even moderate transgressions resulted in hours of eye-rollings, complaints, and comeuppance (in the way of insults, invective, and humiliating demands). Major transgressions took some time to brew revenge for, and the bigs percolated in their anger, letting that concoction of revenge came to a head later that night.

I woke up being swaddled to the point of suffocation by a thousand wrappings of night-black cloth. This wasn't the first or even the second time I'd experienced this. But this was the first time I had enough experience to do anything about it. I was bound, being lifted into the air, unable to scream or move. But I still had enough movement in my fingers to start some symbols, and the urgency of my terror drove their speed. I freed my left arm, my head, my right arm... my left arm again. This went on for about ten seconds before the Bigs gave up and I disincorporated the rest of the fabric and dropped back down to my mattress with a little 'oof' of air.

"What the fuck is this?" I said, hoping I didn't sound too scared.

"You know what the fuck this is," Tiffany said, her expression cold and imperious. "We warned you not to fuck with us... well you fucked with us. We can do this the easy way or the hard way..."

"Hard pass," I said, rolling off my bed to face off against them.

There were three of them and one of me - Tiffany Chalmers, Valerie Trieste, and Marie von Schurr squaring off against little young me. But that wasn't all they had. Tiffany smiled cruelly.

"Oh, it's worse than that," she said. "You had to involve your little friend here, too."

She motioned with her shoulder and Asha Pierce strode into the room carrying a long, slim, black parcel. It took me a moment to realize it was Simone wrapped in the same dark mystical fabric they'd tried to bind me with. She squirmed a bit, but there wasn't much give to be had, and I could now hear muffled sobs through the fabric gag around her mouth.

"Keep her out of this or we'll have real trouble," I said through clenched teeth. "Last warning - let her go and let it drop."

"We already have real trouble, and you've brought it upon yourself," Tiffany said. She raised her hand and, stroking a glittering magical brooch, she traced out symbols. "Natalie Penelope Bryce, I call you by your True Name and exert my will over you..."

"Tough shit," I said. I glanced to Marie and muttered her true name under my breath - unlike the Bigs, I wasn't so callous that I'd broadcast a True Name for all the world to hear. "Marie, I know you're better than this," I said.

She looked uncertain - no doubt, she'd felt something shift as I called her name. Certainly, whatever Tiffany had just tried had unexpectedly and utterly failed to affect me. But she was being socially pressured by the equivalent of tectonic force. "You brought this on yourself," she said uncertainly.

"I suppose I did. Marie, please take this trash out so I can sleep."

Marie didn't ask for clarification. In fact, a moment later she couldn't ask for clarification because she'd just turned into a 300-pound gorilla, her clothes shredded at her hairy feet. With one dinner-plate-sized hand, she lifted Simone from Asha's arms, laying her bound form upon Marie's own mattress. Then she nudged Asha with a shove hard enough to send her reeling. Tiffany and Valerie both started on something magical, but gorilla-Marie quickly knocked them into one another, stunning them. Tiffany's head bumped against Valerie's mouth and Val cried out, her lip now streaming blood. Marie tossed them both into the hallway, bowling over Asha as the tried to re-enter. Then she slammed the door behind her, snorted, and slowly shrank back into herself, naked, shaking, and sobbing at the side of her bed.

"I'm sorry I had to do that," I said.

I disincorporated Simone's bindings and helped her up from the bed. She looked at the sobbing Marie, curled in the fetal position, and then to me, her eyes wide. Her hair was a mess and her cheeks were wet with tears.

"What the hell just happened?" she asked shakily.

"I let the Bigs know that there are worse things than being dressed down by Doctor Sauvage." I turned to Marie and offered my hand. "Are you going to be all right?"

She nodded, sniffing back snot and tears. "How... how did you?" She wrapped a blanket around her naked body and stared numbly at the mess of shredded clothes on her floor. "How?"

"In witchcraft, Marie, knowledge is power. While you and your friends were playing with control collars and introductory texts, I was studying and practicing the hardest magic that I could get my little hands on for five, six, sometimes eight hours a day. I'm not cruel or vindictive in the way that Tiffany and Asha can be, but I'm the most advanced witch you've ever met who doesn't teach classes and drive home in a luxury car at night. And I will hold you to the same standard you've expected me to follow all these weeks: obey your betters. Do not fuck with me, Marie von Schurr, and we will have no problem. Do you understand?"

"Y-yes," she sniffed, eyes downcast.

"Good. I expect you to explain this to the others at your earliest convenience." I wandered over to my study desk and cracked open Ystril's 'Sympathies and Antipathies' volume to my bookmarked spot. "I'm way too worked up to be able to sleep for a bit. Let me know if my light is bothering you. Simone, I'll see you at breakfast?"

+++++

Doctor Sauvage's inquisition continued over the next several days - calling in the other littles, some of the Bigs, and anybody else who might cough up information about the debacle at the festival or any shortcoming on Lily's part leading up to it. I dared hope that the worst of it had passed, that their investigations had come to naught, and that the blowback would be minimal. I still caught glimpses of Byron Bryce, but I don't think he spotted me. But I very much doubted he'd forgotten about me. I rarely left a forgettable impression.

On Thursday morning, I was pulled out of Best Behavior class along with all of the other littles - in fact, Mrs. Bishop turned up to her old classroom and, after brief words with Mrs. Irons, marched us down to the administration building herself. There, we met with Doctor Sauvage and Ms. Sturm. No Byron Bryce - thank the stars.

All of the Beginner littles were there, as well - Michelle, Helena, Emilia, and two new girls - they'd arrived right after Simone was switched over to Advanced. We shuffled in, all of us in our maid's uniforms, and stood before them. Seats were not offered to us, nor were they expected to be. Doctor Sauvage stood, straightened the smoke gray of her dress, and strutted before us, inspecting us as an overparticular drill sergeant might.

"The Board and I have completed our initial investigation, as well as an audit of the behavior plans," she said.

In the corner of my vision, Michelle made a fleeting turn in my direction, but I pretended not to notice. In my mind, the appropriate emotions were: confused, concerned, uncertain... not skittish, fidgety, or guilty. I'd be confused, concerned, uncertain. I remained attentive to Doctor Sauvage, my eyes downcast.

"Do any of you know how the plans could have gotten so badly out-of-sorts? It seems that somebody edited them."

"Like... how?" Emilia asked. "Like... drew in them?"

"Not 'like, drew in them'," the doctor said. She strode up to Simone and put a truthfinder't tiara in her hands. "Put that on," she said. It wasn't a question. Simone did so without hesitation - good. Doctor Sauvage cleared her throat, drawing into her low and commanding register. "Simone, did you adulterate these behavior plans?"

"No," she said. Of course she hadn't.

"Do you know who did?"

"No," she said again - no red flash. I tried not to show my relief at that - she damn well knew that I had altered her behavior plan... but she had no way of knowing which behavior plans were on the table. She hadn't been given a good look. Doc Sauvage needed a crash course in effective interrogation.

The acting headmistress removed the tiara and handed it to me, going through the same rigamole. No, I didn't adulterate those plans (I hadn't - even if they were the ones for me and my fellow littles, I'd 'fixed' them, not adulterated them). No, I didn't know who did adulterate them - I didn't know that they were adulterated at all. I didn't even know that those were ours. And after us two prime suspects, the doctor went down the line to the rest: Did you adulterate the plans? Do you know who did? The others who were in the know - Michelle, Emi, and Helena - might not have had my (or, apparently, Simone's) acumen for evasion. But after we'd successfully plead ignorance, how could they possibly have any confidence in their own suspicions? No, no, no, no... no's all around. Note to interrogators: never cross-examine suspects in one another's presence.

"It seems that none of these littles know who's behind it," Mrs. Bishop said. "Nonetheless, somebody dissociated all of the behavior plans from their respective girls. None of them work any more."

Dissociated? It took me a moment to work out what had happened: then-Headmistress Lily had swapped all of the littles' books out with powerless but convincing replicas. These looked like the originals, with none of my little [sic] edits - and Lily, presumably, had the originals hidden somewhere. She'd hidden my crime with an even more audacious crime - but one that would be just about impossible to resolve.

"No matter," Sauvage said. "I've been meaning to overhaul the system for some time now - we've discussed as much..."

"We have," Mrs. Bishop agreed.

"We're going to make new behavior plans for you girls - ones that aren't so lax and rife with room for creative interpretation - and you will agree to them. Are we clear?"

That was about the worst thing that could happen - whatever edits and corrections I'd made would be stopped... and all the good that I'd accomplished would be for nothing. After all, whatever can be done with magic can be undone with magic. Moreover, for Simone and myself, our behavior plans were bound to our old names, and so had no further power over us (or very little for Simone, having only changed her one name, and none whatsoever for me). But a new plan forged in my own blood by my own will would have the power of my new name...

Doctor Sauvage brought a new plan to each of us, handing out a small, green book to each little with her name on it in careful black script: 'Natalie Bryce Behavior Plan' mine said. I flipped through it - it was through and it was strict. More physical changes, mental compulsions, punishments for any of several dozen infractions - anything that might inconvenience the administration. Or whenever they felt like it, really. Anything that Doctor Sauvage could do to bring me down to Rowan Bryce's expectation. The doctor motioned for me to hold the book open, pricked her own thumb, and blotted it against the page. She handed me the needle, a gleaming golden thing. I held it between my fingers... I dropped it to the floor.

"Fuck that," I said.

Sauvage blinked. "Excuse me, girl?"

"I said: fuck that. Your original blood pact was with our parents - so why aren't you having our parents sign these?" I turned to the other girls. "I'll tell you why: because she's just as complicit in this fuck-up as Lily is, and because she'd have to go to them, groveling and begging forgiveness, to get the new plans made." I turned back to her, waving my new book angrily. "Headmistress, you can only make a blood pact with me of my own volition, and I do not consent. I suggest that none of you do, friends. It is not our responsibility to make it easier for them to warp us against our will." I turned back to the stunned Doctor Sauvage. "In summary: fuck this, fuck that, and fuck you."  I hurled my new behavior plan across the room.

"I'll not tolerate this disrespect!" Sauvage took a big step forward and smacked me across the face. I heard the sound and registered my vision jerking to the side before I felt the pain. I stumbled sideways, clutching my stinging cheek. "Natalie Penelope Bryce, I call you by your true name and exert my will over you. Kneel before me and repent."

Sauvage was a powerful witch - even without my True Name, I could feel her power forcing me down, making my knees tremble and buckle. She held her hand out and forced me to the floor with the power of raw, unadulterated witchcraft. My knees banged against the ground, my hair flopped around me, and I could barely breathe. And there, head down between my knees and reeling from her slap and magical push, I saw a little golden needle on the floor. A needle, no doubt, transmuted from her own hair. Sauvage was a greater witch than me, no doubt. She'd been practicing the craft since before my parents were born. But now I had a part of her being, freely given, and therefore power over her. I grabbed the needle, traced symbols around it, and put all my force into bending it.

Sauvage's assault stopped. Gritting my teeth, I struggled back to my feet, clutching the needle in my hand. I traced more symbols out and bent it again. Sauvage cried out, clutching at her back, bracing herself against a chair. Through the pain, her look was one of pure fury.

"I will defend myself if provoked, doctor," I said. I looked to Ms. Sturm and Mrs. Bishop, both of them looking on in mute disbelief. "Do not subvert free will - that is our law, is it not? I suggest that you find a way to fix those behavior plans without my assistance, because I'm not giving you leave to make another. Until then... I'm going back to class." I dropped Sauvage's pin to the floor. "Natalie out."

+++++

I didn't go back to class. As soon as I left the room, cool and confident, I dashed back to my room and cried. What in the everliving fuck had I just gotten myself into? I'd just assaulted and threatened the fucking headmistress (acting) - provoked and in self-defense, true, but it isn't my impression that witchly courts practice modern jurisprudence. It wasn't until some time later that I noticed the crinkling of paper underneath me - an unaddressed envelope sitting on the bed, right underneath where I'd flung myself, sobbing in frustration and self-pity.

I opened it carefully - something was inside. Two things. A letter, folded up and penned in Lily's meticulous script (any witch worth her stars has meticulous handwriting - otherwise, she'd be shit at symbology - but Lily's gave Helena curly calligraphy a run for her money), and a ring, ruddy gold with a little flower in black onyx and a white crystal at its center.

'Natalie,

'I said I'd contact you at the appropriate time - and so I have. I'm not sure when I'll next return to St. Circe's, if at all. But I'd like to speak with you. From the activation of my false behavior plans, I know that Prudence has noticed something amiss and will, no doubt, be loath to let you leave. To that end, I've enclosed a ring that will grant you passage to my sanctuary - a diagram of the ritual is included. Please bring Simone, as I've a message best heard by both of you. I shall expect you for tea tomorrow afternoon - until then, stay safe.

'Your Mother Witch,

'Bethany Lily'

OvidLemma

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