Villainess 4: Janet’s Haunted Escapade

Red Pill 20: Affinities, Stakes

“Your mother’s expecting you,” Lady Graves said as the pair stepped through the doorway of Marchioness Fleming’s mausoleum into the bluish green luminescence filling the stygian interior. Inside was a raised platform on which stood a marble sarcophagus holding the remains of Janet’s mother, where Janet saw emblazoned over the lid the family crest of her maternal ducal family: the Bartleby house. On that crest, a bend dexter ran diagonally over a shield, a fleur-de-lis on its upper left and a crescent on its lower right. Its design signified the intentions of a foreign ducal family moving after nightfall under the thin sliver of a new crescent moon into a new home.

The symbolism was an apt representation of historical events. Janet knew of the Bartleby house from her studies at Lassen Academy in Viscountess Durham’s class, where she read about the Bartlebys’ participation in the Great War just before the founding of the Kaden Kingdom. In particular, she remembered reading of Duke Wilhelm Bartleby’s role in that war as a double agent, who gave King Lambert Schrader’s army false information that weakened the King’s forces before moving his own family and his followers under nightfall over the Charon Mountains to join up with the allied forces of the future king, Duke Bartholomew Kaden. As such, the allied forces of Duke Bartleby and Duke Kaden were symbolized in the emblazoned crossed swords on the crest of the Blaise royal family, the direct descendants of King Bartholomew Kaden.

Lady Graves bade Janet to put her lamp on top of the lid of the sarcophagus, which Janet did, and the lamplight changed from a bright green to a bluish green that filled the interior with more light. Then she led Janet around the sarcophagus to the other side, where they found a square opening in the floor at the base of the platform with a series of steps yawning at their feet. Whatever was down there in the bluish green haze left the imprint of icicles in Janet’s chest, making her gulp as she squeezed her guide’s hand.

Lady Graves said, “It’s okay, Janet.”

The girl wondered if it really was okay and said, “Do we have to go down there?”

“Do you want to meet your mother?”

“Yeah, I do,” Janet said, “but what if I—”

“It’ll be fine, I promise,” Lady Graves said. “Just stay close and watch your step.”

Janet gulped down her qualms and followed her guide into another plane of existence, the echoing footfalls within this chthonic world conjuring up visions in Janet’s mind. At first, they were just snapshots of her mother’s face flashing across her mind’s eye whenever she blinked, and then they were the blurry afterimages of her mother lingering in the periphery of her eyesight. Yet the longer she noticed her mother’s face, step for step, Janet began to see images of a woman (big with child) in a cell begging to be let out, banging her fists against the bars, and calling out for anyone that could hear her in the gloom of her surroundings . . .

When she said to her guide, “What is it?”

“I said we’re here, Janet,” Lady Graves said and pointed to an open set of double doors left ajar. “She’s inside, so make yourself at home.”

Janet took a few steps towards the doors, then turned and said, “Aren’t you coming?”

“Only if Marchioness Fleming allows it,” Lady Graves said. “Otherwise, I’ll just wait here and—”

“Do come in, both of you,” the Marchioness said. “And I’m not angry at you, Celeste.”

“Thanks, Rowena,” Lady Graves said.

After Janet pushed the doors open and passed the threshold, followed by her guide, she stopped and stared into a moonlit garden patio with the splashing of a fountain filling the night. And beyond the patio out into the square of the garden, standing before that very fountain, was the Marchioness herself in a waisted jacket and tie and a long skirt, her hair hanging down in long wavy curls, her hands raised to her mouth, and her eyes glistening with tears.

“Mom, is that you?” Janet said.

Marchioness Fleming wiped away her tears and said, “Oh my, you’ve grown so much!”

Janet dashed towards her mother and almost tackled the Marchioness into the fountain, clasping onto the woman she had never known outside of her father’s words, tears trailing her cheeks. Amidst the chirping of crickets and the buzzing of fireflies, Janet wanted nothing more than to catch up with her long-lost mother. Yet the same bluish green luminescence clouding up the garden in whips of spectral fog told Janet that this meeting would be a short one.

Once Janet let go of her mother, she gazed at her mother’s face and said, “I know what happened to you.”

Marchioness Fleming looked at an ashen-faced Lady Graves and said, “Did Celeste tell you?”

Janet nodded.

“Not DeeDee?” the Marchioness said.

Janet shook her head, saying, “She couldn’t say.”

“I guess she has her limits,” the Marchioness said and turned towards the fountain. “Did she say why?”

Janet shook her head again.

“Did she say anything else about it?”

“She only asked if I was okay,” Janet said.

“I see. Come here. I’ve got something to show you.”

So Janet halted before the fountain beside Marchioness Fleming and followed her mother’s pointing hand towards the dappled reflection of the splashing waters.

“What is it?” Janet said.

“Look there and tell me what you see.”

She peered at the dappled reflection before her, shimmering like scimitars in the moonlight, and said, “What am I supposed to see?”

The Marchioness then reached into the dappled waters, wetting the sleeves of her jacket up to her elbows, and pulled out a gelatinous slime-looking thing, black in color. There was a faint bluish green glow coming from it as it jiggled in Rowena’s arms, so she said, “Do you know what this is?”

Janet remembered reading about it in Father Robinson’s Magic Studies class and said, “A mana pool?”

“You’re close,” Rowena said. “It’s an affinity pool, which is a subset of one’s mana pool.”

“I haven’t covered that in class yet,” Janet said.

“Then you’ll be ahead of the class after tonight,” her mother said. “My affinity pool helped me manipulate shadows to some extent and improve my mediumship when I was alive,” and she looked back over her shoulder at Lady Graves. “Celeste, pull yours out, too, and show it to her.”

So Lady Graves came up and reached into the dappled splashing of the fountain and pulled out a bigger gelatinous slime-looking thing, also black in color, but there was a faint blue glow coming off of hers. “Mine’s a little bigger than your mother’s,” she said, “but it’s the same thing overall.”

“How did you use yours?” Janet said.

“I mostly used mine for storing books that I read,” she said, “but I’ve also used it for setting up hiding places or for scrying into other places with a mirror.”

“Ew,” Janet said.

“It’s not what you’re thinking!” Lady Graves said. “I only did that to find more hiding places.”

“Geez, were you always that introverted?”

“Yeah, I was,” she said. “It took me almost a century in the afterlife to grow out of it.”

Janet just stared at the woman that had comforted her crying self back in her office, the same woman who gave off big-sister vibes. She tried to imagine this woman as introverted, but the idea seemed impossible, so she looked towards the dappled surface of the water and said to her mother, “Is mine also in there?”

“I’m sure it’s there, but it’s hard to make out,” Rowena said. “Reach in there and try taking it out.”

So Janet waded her arms into the dappled waters up to her elbows and felt something warm and squishy beneath her palms and said, “I feel something.”

“Can you grab it?” Rowena said.

Janet tried hooking her fingers, yet the squishy gelatinous substance kept slipping from her grasp, so she said, “I can’t get a good hold of it.”

Lady Graves leaned over Janet’s shoulder and said, “Maybe it’s too big to grab on your own.”

“Or maybe it’s something else,” Rowena said.

Janet faced her mother, waiting for her to say more.

Then her mother presented her mana pool, saying, “Janet, see if you can hold this for me.”

So Janet cupped her hands, palms up, and felt the weight of her mother’s affinity pool in her hands getting heavier and heavier. Although it felt warm and squishy to the touch, it weighed her arms down as she scrunched up her face keeping it in her grasp, yet it slipped through her fingers and thudded to the ground with a rumbling jolt at her feet.

Yet Marchioness Fleming just bent down and picked it up like it was nothing and said, “Compared to other affinities, the darkness affinity is a heavy burden.”

After that, Lady Graves and Rowena placed their affinity pools on the ledge of the fountain and waded their arms into the water, then bade Janet to try again. Janet did so, reaching in and managing to grab the squishy surface of her own affinity pool, and all three women gritted their teeth, heaving and pulling and managing to lift part of its bulk through the dappled surface of the water. Its black gelatinous sheen gleamed in the moonlight, and beneath its bulk there glowed a deep reddish hue the color of blood seething beneath it like the pulsations of a beating heart.

“My God,” Rowena said under her breath, then turned to Janet and Lady Graves. “Why is it so big?”

Janet whispered to Lady Graves, saying, “Didn’t you tell her before I came here?”

Lady Graves went pale and whispered back, “Not yet. Let’s get it all out before we let her know.”

So the three women continued heaving and pulling and lifting more of its bulk from the water, tugging at it like a game of tug of war, sliding it up and over the fountain’s ledge. The thing just kept growing and expanding out of the fountain like a gigantic slug, till its whole bulk thudded onto the ground and shook the garden square beneath their feet and encompassed almost the entirety of the space between the fountain and the patio. All three women were huffing and puffing, and an ashen-faced Rowena Fleming and a wide-eyed Lady Graves were staring at the massive thing before them.

Then both women faced Janet, and Rowena and crossed her arms over her ample bosom, tapping her foot and saying, “Is there something I should know?”

“It’s hard to explain,” Janet said.

“Try me.”

“I wouldn’t take it lightly,” Lady Graves added.

“Does it look like I’m taking it lightly?” Rowena said, then pointed to the giant pool of darkness next to her. “This thing’s the size of a cabin!” Then she faced Janet again and said, “If I didn’t know this was yours, I would’ve thought it was a slime monster! Now tell me.”

“It’s because of my clones,” Janet said.

“What are you talking about?” Rowena said. “I only gave birth to you. How could there be ‘clones’ of you?”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

Rowena stayed silent for a time, looking at Janet and Lady Graves in turn, then skirted around the gigantic affinity pool towards the fountain and picked up her own affinity pool from its ledge. She then came back and said, “Janet, we share the same affinity, so I can share mine with yours.”

“Wait a minute,” Lady Graves said. “Are you sure you wanna do that? It’s heavy stuff, you know.”

“All the more reason to,” Rowena said and placed her affinity pool onto Janet’s bigger one. The smaller one glowed and sank into the bigger one, and her eyes flashed from blue to red for just a moment, just long enough for her mind to glean the contents of Janet’s past lives, just enough for her mouth to gape open as an involuntary reflex. Rowena then bowled over and covered her mouth in her hands, her eyes aglow with the many deaths of Janet’s clones shrinking her pupils to horrified pinpricks, while more tears trailed her cheeks.

“Mom!” Janet sprinted up to the crying puddle of tears that was her mother as she collapsed to her knees, and Janet hugged the now-hysterical woman to her bosom, saying, “Mom, it’s okay. Really, it’s okay!”

“It’s not okay, my God!” she said, wiping her tears away as her smaller affinity pool manifested at her knees between herself and Janet. “Who is that woman?”

“A bitch,” Janet said.

“I knew her as Lilian Dorian,” Lady Graves said. “She tormented me while I was alive, and now she’s impersonating another girl just to torment your daughter.”

“And who’s this other girl?”

“Rosalie Edgeworth,” Janet said. “I’m just two months into the school year, but this fake Rosalie has already made me into a villainess, stolen my fiancé, and turned most of the students against me. On top of that, she’s killed my clones, and if it wasn’t for them, I would’ve been her next victim.”

Rowena squinted and wiped away more tears, sniffling as she did so, then picked up her affinity pool in her hands and threw it overhand towards the fountain, where it knocked Lady Graves’ affinity pool into the splashing waters.

“Hey!” Lady Graves said.

After that, Rowena patted Janet’s giant affinity pool, making the moonlit sheen of its surface jiggle a bit, and said, “Geez, no wonder yours is so big, but this amount of power is a double-edged sword. Does anyone from the Academy know you have the darkness affinity?”

“Only my friends know about it,” Janet said.

She folded her arms over her ample bosom and said, “Name them for me, one by one.”

Janet looked at Lady Graves, who nodded her head, so the girl said, “Besides Celeste here, there’s DeeDee and the people in her shop. Then there’s Lord Woodberry, Sir Sydney, Lady Kessler, the Ladies Jean and Saraya Drevis, and Baron Underwood. That’s all of them.”

“Does your father know of this?”

Janet shook her head.

“Tell him as soon as possible,” her mother said.

“Are you sure?” Janet said. “Telling him will make things complicated for me.”

“Complicated or not, you need allies,” she said.

“But I’ve already got allies,” Janet said, then noticed the baby blue eyes of her mother flashing like flames from a piercing stare. This made Janet turn from Rowena to Lady Graves, then to Rowena again and then back at Lady Graves. “You didn’t tell her about my clones, did you?”

Lady Graves grimaced and looked away.

“You should’ve told me before we got here, geez!”

Lady Graves winced and said, “It took some convincing, trust me. She almost threw me out when I told her.”

“Are you serious?”

“It’s okay, Janet,” Rowena said.

“Ah, what’s this?” Lady Graves said. “It looks like you’ve changed your mind, Rowena.”

“Do I even have a choice?” Rowena said. “My God, after seeing those deaths, I can’t call myself a good mother anymore!” She then faced Janet and grabbed her shoulders, saying, “Now be honest. Despite everything that’s happened, do you still love that fiancé of yours?”

“Are you kidding?” Janet said. “I’ve already asked Father to break off my engagement with him.”

“Good!” she said. “That boy’s trash, anyway.”

“I know,” Janet said. “Did Celeste tell you what he did to me during lunch?”

“Yes,” Rowena said. “I can’t believe that stupid prince is so smitten with this Rosalie look-alike. Do you remember if the school board or law enforcement got involved after the deaths of your clones?”

“Not that I know of,” Janet said.

Rowena bit down on her lower lip and then said, “Celeste, you’re more experienced with these matters than I am. What are your thoughts?”

Lady Graves paused for a moment, seeming to roll things through her mind, and said, “For one, whatever happens at Lassen Academy doesn’t stay there. Rumors abound, especially when they’re all about you, and from my experience, the Prince won’t do anything to help his fiancée if he thinks she’s bullying someone he loves.”

“Even when he’s cheating?” Janet said.

“I know! Double standards, right?” she said. “Look, I won’t go so far as to say that the royal family is outright overlooking his Highness’s actions against you, but you’ve got to look after yourself. You can’t keep relying on their protection at school. Because if his Highness is that biased against you, if Lady Dorian’s got him wrapped around her finger like that, then you need better allies.”

“What do you mean by that?” Janet said. “I’ve already got my clones and you and DeeDee and also my friends at school. Lord Woodberry and Sir Sydney and Baron Underwood all have my back, and the fathers of Lady Kessler and the Drevis sisters own newspaper companies. They’ll raise hell if that Rosalie look-alike decides to mess with me again.”

Lady Graves shook her head, saying, “You’re misunderstanding my point, dear.”

“They’re not good enough?”

“They’re great allies to have, Janet,” Lady Graves said, “but the families of your friends are all subject to the royal family’s authority. The Woodberry family is a ducal house, the Sydney family is a margravial house, the Kessler family is a count house, the Drevis family is a viscount house, and the Underwood family is a baronial house. They all occupy different parts of the aristocracy, but they’ve got one thing in common. Can you guess what that is?”

Her question deflated Janet’s sails as it hit her, so she said, “They’re loyal to the Blaise royal family.”

“Exactly,” Lady Graves said. “Even if your friends support you at school, their families might not.”

“Conflict of interest?”

Lady Graves nodded. “Do you get it now?”

“So I need allies outside of school,” Janet said. “Wait, what about my father?”

“Marquess Fleming is a special case, dear,” Lady Graves said. “Because he’s your father, and because of his Highness’s outrageous actions against you, the royal family must save face and compensate your father for his Highness’s actions just to keep him on their side. And it’s the same thing with Margrave Sydney for what his Highness did to Sir Sydney, as well. But it’s still a give-and-take between allies.”

Janet sighed. “Another conflict of interest?”

Lady Graves nodded.

“Which means I’m still out of the loop?”

Lady Graves nodded again.

“Who else do you have in mind then?”

Lady Graves looked at Rowena and said, “Now’s your cue.”

“Wait, what ‘cue?’” Janet said, facing the two ladies in turn. “What are you talking about?”

“She’s talking about my family, Janet,” Rowena said. “Your maternal family.”

“The Bartleby house?” Janet said.

“The very same, yes,” Rowena said. “Though they’ve fallen on hard times since my death, and most of my relatives are gone. Well, except for one.”

“Who?”

“The current Duke Bartleby, Astor Bartleby,” Rowena said. “I knew him when he was little, and I’ve heard from DeeDee that he had just become a duke earlier this year. He has yet to find a marriage partner, so he has little political clout beyond his family name, but he’s better than nothing.”

“Who is he, anyway?” Janet said.

“Astor Bartleby is your cousin, Janet,” Rowena said. “He’s the son of my second older brother, Sir Aaron Bartleby. Your father and I managed to find Astor during our honeymoon, and we brought him to our house after our return. He was a frightened little boy back then, so we couldn’t send him back to the Bartlebys right away. Instead, we took care of him at our residence for the next several months, and my parents, Duke and Duchess Bartleby, visited their grandson at least twice a month during that time.”

Yet Janet had a lot of questions on her mind, too many to blurt out all at once, so she just went with the first one on her mind and said, “Mom, when was all this?”

“I was pregnant with you at the time, Janet,” Rowena said and then paused, biting on her lower lip.

“What happened?” Janet said.

“Do you really want to know?” Rowena said.

Janet nodded.

“Your father and I honeymooned for a week at the southern border of the Kaden Kingdom,” Rowena said. “We were married on our first day there, but while we were there, we were also looking for Astor’s whereabouts. On the second-to-last day, we found an orphanage in a nearby town and heard about a boy that had run away the day before, so we split up to help everyone find him. On the last day, I managed to find Astor before we were about to head back, and we had the orphanage transfer him to our care and took him with us to our house later that day. Poor Astor was scared at first, but he eventually got over his fear of strangers within the first week. And a week after that, I found out I had missed my period, and that’s when I knew I was pregnant with you. When I let your father and Aster and the rest of the household know about it, everyone was so ecstatic. In fact, Astor even proclaimed himself as your big brother and lived with us for the next several months, till we began to hear those awful rumors about me,” and she paused.

Janet thought back to today’s hectic afternoon, especially in Elba House where DeeDee had her read the last entry of her mother’s profile book, as well as her conversation with Lady Graves in her office, and said, “About you consorting with witches?”

“Yeah,” she said. “It was all poppycock, but those rumors stuck, and more rumors about me started spreading. We didn’t want Astor’s upbringing to get tainted with rumors, so your father sent the boy to the Bartleby house. And just a month after that . . .”

Rowena paused again, but Janet filled it in and said, “You were arrested on charges of witchcraft?”

“Yes, that too,” Rowena said.

“Wait, what do you mean by that?” Janet said. “What else happened?”

“When they interrogated me,” Rowena said, “they kept asking me about Astor’s whereabouts.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I wish I was, Janet,” Rowena said. “I’m just guessing, okay? Whoever was behind the charges must have infiltrated the High Court with sleeper agents. I mean, sure. I was the Wicked Witch of Bartleby in my Academy days, but those rumors about me consorting with witches were something else entirely. I knew it the moment they questioned me about Astor’s whereabouts, but I gave them nothing.”

Janet was tongue-tied for several moments, till she said, “Why were you looking for him in the first place?”

“The Bartleby family has a lot of political enemies, both domestic and abroad,” Rowena said. “In short, we’re a house of traitors, Janet. We defected away from the Schrader kingdom, and because of that, the Bartleby house has no shortage of enemies wanting to destroy us.”

“Does that include the former viscount house?”

“You mean the Dorians?” Rowena said.

“Yeah, them.”

“I won’t be surprised if they were behind the whole thing,” Rowena said. “God knows they’ve got enough bad blood against us back then.”

“What do you mean?”

Then Lady Graves pitched in and said, “Janet, do you remember our talk in my office? About the Dorians getting arrested before they fled across the border?”

“Yeah,” Janet said.

Lady Graves said, “Guess which family had those Dorians arrested. You might be right.”

Janet gaped, staring at Lady Graves and then at her mother, as she connected all the dots and said, “No way!”

“Did you figure it out?” she said.

“The Bartlebys?”

“Bingo!” Lady Graves said.

“Do you get it now, Janet?” Rowena said.

She did, closing her mouth and nodding her head, yet her mother’s question set her world spinning down a whirlpool from which there was no return. In addition, Celeste and Rowena’s observations pushed Janet onto another line of thinking about her current situation at the Academy, one that gave it a new aspect that hadn’t crossed her mind before. Why would Lady Dorian break into DeeDee’s shop and tamper with the profile books of five students (herself included) at her school? Why would Lady Dorian spread rumors about her and turn the students (especially Prince Blaise) against her? Why would she go to such lengths to get rid of Janet just like she did to her clones? What would she even gain from all that?

She turned from these thoughts when she heard Lady Graves saying, “Janet, DeeDee and the rest are waiting outside. Let’s get this thing up there, so we can wake you up,” and she slapped the big gelatinous blob next to her, jiggling its moonlit surface again.

So the trio of women pushed the gigantic thing onto the patio. Then they heaved it up against the open double doors through which Janet and Lady Graves had entered, forcing the giant object to deform itself into the shape of a square aperture. Janet and Lady Graves and Rowena all gritted their teeth and stepped into the stubborn affinity pool that refused to go through the doorway, like trying to fit a cylinder through a square hole too small for its diameter. Yet try as they might, the thing was too big, and the trio lost their footing and got rebounded back across the patio into the garden square, where they landed on their butts. To outside observers, it was like peering through a kinetoscope and watching a comedy skit about three useless slime tamers failing to get a giant slime monster to follow their orders.

The ladies stood back up, huffing and puffing and rubbing their behinds and wincing. Then they peered over at the giant affinity pool settling its massive bulk over the patio and into part of the garden square.

“The door’s too small,” Rowena said.

“And getting that thing up the stairs is a nightmare,” Lady Graves said. “I think we need DeeDee’s help.”

“Wait, not yet,” Janet said, remembering Lady Graves’ darkness affinity being used for storing things. “Didn’t you use your affinity for storage?”

“Yeah, I said that,” she said, averting her eyes, “but I tend to use it for books, mostly novels. I’m sorry, Janet, but I don’t have much space for that thing,” and she pointed at the giant blob on the patio.

“But what if we take them all out?” Janet said. “Do you think there’s enough space for it?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to check, but . . .”

When Lady Graves paused, Janet said, “What’s wrong?”

That’s when Rowena took her aside and whispered, “Her taste in novels is on the eccentric side.”

“What do you mean by ‘eccentric?’”

“You visited her office, right?” Rowena said.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Then have you seen the books she keeps there?”

“Not really,” Janet said. “I didn’t get a chance to browse while I was there.”

“She keeps a lot of revenge and villainess and gothic romance titles there,” Rowena said, “but for the spicier ones, she keeps those close by.”

Janet stared at her mother, because it meant that Lady Graves used her darkness affinity to store the ‘spicier’ kinds of books for her to read in private. At this, she stole a glance at Lady Graves crossing her arms over her chest and tapping her foot, so she looked at Rowena and wondered how she knew that about the protector of all saintess candidates.

“How did you find out?”

“I walked in on her once while she was reading in her office,” Rowena said, “and playing with herself.”

Janet blushed and gaped at her mother before stealing another glance at the naughty closet-reader, but Lady Graves was nowhere in sight. She looked around the garden square but found no trace of Lady Graves, so mother and daughter turned and turned, looking for her to no avail.

“Where did she go?” Janet said.

“I think she just ghosted us,” Rowena said.

But just as Janet was about to add something to that, the next thing she knew, Janet and her mother fell down up to their necks in a black void of darkness, while Lady Graves was standing over them and tapping her foot, her arms still crossed over her chest. That’s when both mother and daughter looked up at Lady Graves’ figure obscuring a bright full moon, the long locks of her hair writhing like snakes behind her in the moonlight. And the dark purple hue of Lady Graves’ eyes glowed and flashed with the glare of a basilisk menacing two women caught in its trap, a mother and a daughter caught gossiping on a subject too tender for Lady Graves’ sensibilities.

“I like to read what I like to read,” Lady Graves said, her long locks coiling behind her shoulders and staring down at Janet and Rowena. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Janet traded glances with Rowena, and both women shook their heads that they had no problem with her reading preferences. And Janet even added, “We’re not judging you.”

“Are you sure?” Lady Graves said.

“We just need you to take out your books,” Janet said, “so we can put my darkness affinity inside yours and take it back up to the surface. That’s all.”

Only then did Lady Graves relent, crouching and reaching out for Janet and Rowena to grab her hands, and she pulled them up to her level on the ground.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “I’m a little touchy when it comes to my reading preferences.”

“I see that,” Janet said.

“Just stay here,” she said, “and I’ll put my books over there,” and she pointed towards the center of the garden square in front of the fountain, where its splashing waters still glinted in the moonlight. As such, while Janet and Rowena waited, Lady Graves went over to the fountain and crouched and placed her hand on the ground. Then a big circular seal of blue spectral light spread out from the epicenter of her palm, and moments later there appeared several gigantic blocks of stacked books in the square. At least three dozen of these blocks of books took up space in the square, each block the size of a four-poster bed, so that Janet couldn’t see Lady Graves amidst the blocks.

“My God, she’s a bibliomaniac,” Janet said.

“I know,” Rowena said. “Whenever she visits me, she always tells me to read this and that.”

When Lady Graves emerged from the blocks of books, Janet said, “How much did you read out of all that?”

“About a third of it,” Lady Graves said. “My gothic revenge collection and my villainess collection are both five times bigger than this.”

Janet shared another glance with Rowena and said, “Geez, were you that depressed after your death?”

“Yes, I was,” Lady Graves said. “Since my death, reading has become a form of therapy for me. Sometimes I binge-read seven novels a week, but they’re of different genres to keep things fresh for me. Now,” she added, clapping her hands, “let’s get back to the problem at hand.”

With that, Lady Graves positioned herself at one corner of the garden square between Janet's affinity pool occupying the patio and a part of the square on one side and the blocks of books by the fountain on the other. While standing there as an anchor point on which the light of the moon cast her shadow on the ground, she told Janet and Rowena to get behind the giant blob and wait for her command. As they skirted around the affinity pool towards its other side, Lady Graves manipulated her shadow into a black oblivion and expanded it outward into a long oval along the length of the patio, big enough to accept the bulk of Janet’s affinity pool into its depths.

“Are you ready?” she said.

“We’re ready when you are,” they said.

“Okay, she said. “On the count of three: one . . . two . . . three . . . Push!”

And the mother-daughter duo pushed the gigantic thing off the patio, sending it into the void, till it thudded inside and rumbled the grounds beneath their feet. Now the long dark oval of shadow was just the size of a platter within Lady Graves’ shadow, from which the wine-dark shimmer of Janet’s affinity pool glistened like an ocean contained therein. When Janet and Rowena came over and stood with Lady Graves, all three just stared at the glistening aperture before them.

“This is huge,” Lady Graves said.

“I know,” Janet said.

“Janet,” she said, “if the wrong kinds of people get wind of this, whatever happened to me and your mother will be nothing—and I mean nothing—compared to what’s gonna happen to you. Do you understand?”

Janet nodded that she did, thinking back to all the questions she had about her circumstances, till she had a brainwave. She was thinking back to yesterday morning during Homeroom 1 when she confronted Rosalie (a.k.a., Lady Dorian) the day before her transfer to a different homeroom, thinking back to the moment Janet acted out of character in front of her nemesis, the moment when she saw the first traces of fear on Lady Dorian’s face. What made her react like that? Did she think that Janet knew something even she didn’t know? In this world that seemed to revolve around Lady Dorian, where her peers loved her, where Prince Blaise wanted to protect her, was there anything in this world out of her reach?

That’s when Janet realized it, and she kicked herself for not seeing it sooner.

“Celeste,” Janet said, “do you think Lady Dorian is looking for Rosalie’s whereabouts?”

“What makes you say that?” she said.

“Is there something you haven’t told us?” Rowena added.

“No, but think about it,” Janet said and pointed at the pool at their feet. “Is this amount of mana normal?”

“No way,” Lady Graves said. “This amount is comparable to that of a dragon king or a demon lord. On a scale of dangerous to deadly, this is apocalyptic.”

“If you put it that way,” Janet continued, “then that would give Lady Dorian another way to demonize me at school. She’d take full advantage and paint me as a natural disaster, but she doesn’t know of this, does she?”

“Of course not,” Lady Graves said. “In fact, you didn’t even know of this yourself, till you took my magic aptitude test in my office.”

“That’s what I mean,” Janet said.

“And what exactly do you mean?” Lady Graves said.

“What is it, Janet?” Rowena said. “I can tell you’re onto something, so what is it?”

“These are just my thoughts,” Janet said, “but why would Lady Dorian break into DeeDee’s shop? Any guesses?”

Both women shook their heads.

“What if Lady Dorian tampered with those profile books to prevent me from finding her out?” Janet said. “What if Lady Dorian hid her own profile book to cover up her crimes in this world? What if she assumed Rosalie’s identity to find out where the real Rosalie hid herself? What if the real Rosalie took her profile book with her somewhere?”

“Assuming she’s alive,” Lady Graves said.

“Rosalie is alive,” Janet said.

But Rowena said, “How would you even know that when you haven’t met her?”

“Because Lady Dorian stole Rosalie’s identity,” Janet said. “In this world, Lady Dorian is dead, but Rosalie Edgeworth is alive. If Rosalie was already dead, everyone in this world would have known that she’s dead. If you don’t believe me, go ask DeeDee after we’re done here. Have her look over all her profile books. I’m sure she’ll agree with me on this. Hence, if Lady Dorian thought I knew about this, wouldn’t that endanger her standing as Rosalie Edgeworth at school? I mean, if she even suspected that I knew, wouldn’t that explain her actions against me? Wouldn’t she do everything she could to turn the students against me? To turn my own fiancé against me? Wouldn’t she risk the trouble of forging documents and spreading lies and devising ways to kill me off just to shut me up? Am I making sense or am I talking gibberish?”

“You’re making sense,” Lady Graves said.

“But where are you going with this?” Rowena added.

“How many times have you both died?”

“Just once,” Lady Graves said.

“Once,” Rowena added.

“But I’ve died multiple times, as evidenced by my clones,” Janet said and thought back to her telepathic conversation with her suicide clone in Viscountess Durham’s Homeroom 1 earlier this morning. “DeeDee discovered a total of one hundred sixteen clones in my profile book, thirty-one of which she and I have already met, but we don’t know the whereabouts of the other eighty-five. I know this sounds crazy, but their existence points to one thing.”

“And what’s that?” Lady Graves said.

“It’s like playing a game,” Janet said. “You get multiple tries to win a game, right?”

“Right,” Rowena said.

“And all of my clones were just past tries to win previous games, right?”

“Right,” Lady Graves said.

“And in this game, as in those past games,” she continued, “the cards are marked, the dice are loaded, the odds are against me, and I’ve been playing this whole time without knowing it’s been rigged. At least, I was before I met my clones. It was my clones who led me to DeeDee, who then led me to you, Celeste, who then led me to you, Mom, and now you’ve both led me to another potential ally.”

“Then how do you win?” Rowena said.

“By finding the real Rosalie Edgeworth,” Janet said.

“Then does that mean,” Lady Graves added, “that Lady Dorian wins if she kills you off?”

“Yeah,” Janet said, thinking back to Lady Kessler and the Drevis sisters bringing up rumors of masked incognitos, which got her thinking of Lady Kessler’s father writing up newspaper articles about them, which then got her thinking of that strange mask-wearing nun in her dream last night, which then got the wheels of her brain turning on a crazy idea, crazy enough to curl her lips into a slasher’s smile that caught her two listeners off guard.

Janet caught herself in time and said, “Sorry.”

“What was that?” Lady Graves said.

“Sorry,” Janet said.

“What were you thinking?” Rowena said.

“It’s gonna sound nuts, and you’ll think I’m crazy, but I’ve got an idea to mix things up,” Janet said and told them what she had in mind. And what she had in mind made their jaws drop, for it was the stuff of tabloid stories, the stuff of rumors and tall tales, the stuff that nobody would ever take seriously, and Janet counted on it. If Lady Dorian was rigging the game with rumors, then Janet could do it, too—

And do it better.

To Be Continued