Betrayal by Gillian Shields

He’s…well, he’s a nice guy.” She stopped herself, then frowned. “I don’t know how he can put up with the attitude he gets from people like Celeste. He’s not a servant, and she’s not a princess, whatever she might think. He’s worth a million times more than she is.”
    She suddenly urged Starlight on and went ahead over the wet ground. I hadn’t heard Sarah talk like that before. Why hadn’t I noticed before the warmth in her eyes and the light in her face when she spoke to him? I tried to remember the times I had seen her and Josh together last term. He had been down at the stables, I remembered,always with that same laid-back smile and athletic grace under his scruffy riding clothes, but I hadn’t seen him showing any special attention to Sarah. Perhaps he did still think of her as a kid, or perhaps he felt that the Wyldcliffe students were off-limits, too stuck-up and snobby to be interested in a stable boy. Whatever the reason, I could see clearly now that Sarah liked him, and was suffering over it.
    I hoped I had been mistaken about the admiration in his eyes when he had looked at me. I wasn’t interested in Josh and I would hate to upset Sarah. It probably hadn’t meant anything, I told myself. Forget it. Getting to Uppercliffe was all that mattered. I urged my pony to keep up with Sarah, and as I jogged over the wintry hills, the Talisman knocked against my heart.

Eighteen
    U ppercliffe Farm. It was hardly more than a ruined cottage, tucked away on the lonely hillside and overgrown with rough grass and nettles. The wind swirled over the drifts of snow that still lay here and there. It was easy to imagine what it must have been like in the old days: miles away from anywhere, the only sounds coming from the birds and the bleating of sheep. Here at Uppercliffe, Lady Agnes had concealed her greatest treasure—little Effie with the auburn curls, Agnes’s daughter, and my great-great-grandmother.
    Sarah and I slipped off our ponies and walked up to the tumbled remains of the house. The sign of the Talisman, the precious heirloom, had been scratched in the stone above the door many years ago. This seemed a fittingplace to hide it. I prayed that the coven wouldn’t think of searching for it there. I was pretty sure they didn’t know of Agnes’s connection with the old farm.
    “We’ll find a good hiding place inside,” I said.
    “Okay, but be careful; the ceiling has mostly fallen in and there are still some timbers that look a bit dangerous.”
    “I’ll be careful,” I promised. I walked under the door’s stone archway and into the ruined house. All at once a halo of blinding light dazzled me and my stomach heaved as though I were falling from a great height. I blinked and when I opened my eyes again, I was standing in a low parlor. A stout woman in a long skirt was bending over a smoky fire. I knew who she was. It was Martha, Agnes’s old nurse, who had lived at the farm long ago. She wiped her face with her apron and turned to rock a wooden cradle, where a baby with a wisp of bright hair was fast asleep, wrapped in a homespun blanket. Martha sang softly as she rocked the baby; then she looked across to the corner of the simple room, where Agnes was sitting at a small table, writing in a black, leather-bound book. It was her journal. I had read every word of it under Sebastian’s anxious gaze as he had tried to explain the tangled web that connected all of us: Agnes, Sebastian, Effie, and Evie.
    Agnes broke off from her writing and looked straight up at me, and I saw recognition in her eyes.
    “I’m here!” I tried to call out, but the words wouldn’t come. “I’m here!” Then I woke from the spell, moaning, “Here, here, here…”
    “Is this where you want to hide it?” Sarah asked in a worried voice. “Do you mean here?”
    Without realizing it, I had crouched down in the far corner of the crumbling house, where Agnes had been sitting at the table. I was clawing at the cold