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“Miss Cackle?”
“Esmerelda!” Ada starts as her onetime Head Girl pokes her head around the office door. Esmerelda has a thin sheen of sweat on her face and her breathing is a little uneven, as though she’s been running. “This is an unexpected pleasure.”
“I’m not sure you’ll say that when you’ve heard what I have to say, Miss Cackle.”
Ada looks at her with concern. “Do sit down,” she says, and with a gesture pulls a chair up to the desk for Esmerelda to sit in. “And would you mind if I summoned Miss Hardbroom? I can see from your face that something serious has happened.”
“Of course. Thank you,” Esme says, sitting down and twisting her hands together in her lap. Ada notices the tension in her posture as she runs a brief locating-and-summoning spell and Hecate materializes in the room behind her. “Now,” Ada says. “Esmerelda, you wanted to tell us something?”
“Yes.” Esmerelda looks at her straight-on. “I need to warn you… my mother is trying to extract your magic. To give to me.”
Hecate sucks in a soft breath. The corners of Ada’s eyes crinkle in concern.
“Is that so?” she says, her tone mildly curious.
Behind her, Hecate speaks. “There is no extraction spell that will allow a witch to steal magic from another witch to whom she is not related," she says, her tone austere. "Extractions are impossible outside one’s own bloodline. In all other cases, magic must be freely given. Even within a family line, the spell is complicated and difficult to execute.”
“She’s working on a new kind of spell,” Esmerelda says. “She…” And all of a sudden, with no warning, she’s crying.
“Oh, my dear.” Ada gets up, crosses to where Esmerelda sits, and takes her hand. Hecate stands still, eyes trained on the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Esmerelda says through her tears. “It’s just – you don’t know what living with her has been like since I lost my magic.”
“What has it been like?” Ada asks, eyes intent on Esmerelda’s.
“She can’t accept…” Esmerelda takes a deep breath, tries to get a hold on herself. “She can’t accept what’s happened. She’s convinced she’s going to find a way to undo it and everything will go back to the way it was… Miss Cackle, she actually suggested I take Ethel’s magic.”
“She what!” Hecate is startled into speech.
“She says it’s Ethel’s fault that I lost it in the first place. And she says Ethel has never been the witch that I am – I mean, that I was –” Her eyes overflow again. “I’m afraid one of these days she’s going to just take Ethel’s magic without asking me. I think she would have except that she knows I’d just give it back. But she thinks the problem is just that Ethel’s my sister. That I’m not willing to take power from her. She thinks if she takes it from you, I’ll accept it.”
“Which you would not,” Hecate says, and her tone is formal but not ungentle.
“No, I wouldn’t.”
“Well, then,” Ada says, squeezing Esme’s hand. “I don’t see the problem. Even if she managed the considerable feat of finding a brand-new way to extract magic from outside one’s bloodline, you’d only give it back. I do thank you for letting me know, but –”
“The problem is that I can’t live like this anymore!” Esme explodes. Ada startles; Hecate is examining Esmerelda narrowly.
“You cannot live like what?” she asks.
“I – you don’t know what she’s like,” Esmerelda says. “You don’t know what she –”
“I have been long acquainted with your mother, Esmerelda," Ada says.
“But you don’t know what she’s like at home. She’s – now that I’ve lost my magic she’s terrified. She doesn’t allow me out of the house. She says I can’t navigate the ordinary world on my own, that it’s too dangerous. My father wanted me to go to ordinary school next term, but she won’t let me. I had to sneak out to come here. It’s the first time I’ve been out in weeks. The last time I sneaked out I tried taking a bus for the first time and she all but had kittens. She’s put wards all around the house now. I had to steal invisibility powder from her drawer and sneak out when she let the wards down for my father to leave this morning.”
“You are confined to your home?” Hecate says, and Esmerelda doesn’t know how to interpret what’s in her tone at all.
“I don’t know what she’ll do when I get home today –”
“Are you afraid she may harm you?” Ada asks, urgently.
“No,” Esmerelda says, and makes a noise that’s half-laugh and half-sob. “She’d never hurt me. I’m the golden girl. The one who has to always be perfect. Sometimes I wonder if I knew who Agatha was when I gave her my magic, and I just wanted rid of it –”
“Oh, Esmerelda,” Ada says sadly, “don’t torment yourself with such imaginings. I know, if you don’t, that what happened was a mistake.”
“But the way she treats me – I don’t mean to complain, as though I could complain about the fact that my mother is too good to me –”
“I do not think that is your complaint,” Hecate says, and her voice is low.
“But it’s put up such a wall between Ethel and me. When we were small we were close, but Mother’s favoritism has poisoned things, and I worry about what Ethel is becoming. She knew I was giving my magic to Agatha. I worry that she’d do anything to make herself the best and win Mother’s approval. And I don’t think she ever will. Please, Miss Cackle, Miss Hardbroom, I’m begging you – let me come back here.”
Ada opens her mouth, then closes it again.
“I asked before, that first day that I sneaked out, and you said no, but now you know what I’m dealing with,” Esmerelda continues. “I think Mother might just let me come back here. She hasn’t pulled Ethel and Sybil, after all. She knows this would be a safe place for me, not like the ordinary world, where I don’t know how to do anything. And It would take some pressure off Ethel, having me around but without magic, just an ordinary sister, not Head Girl. Maybe we could find our way back to a better relationship again. Truly, MIss Cackle, I could make a contribution here. I could help with grading assignments, with any kind of teaching assistance that didn’t involve performing practical magic. I could –”
“I have no fear that you would be anything but a fine complement to our staff, Esmerelda,” Ada says quietly.
“Then please. Get me out of that house. I’m being treated like a three-year-old. And Mother is so – she’s so unhappy these days, and being under her watch every second of every day – not even being allowed the privacy of a closed bedroom door -- I’m begging you. Let me come back to Cackle’s. I was happy here. I know I could be happy here again. Even without magic.”
Ada studies her for a long time, the fingers of one hand tapping out a steady beat against her thigh, the other enclosing Esmerelda’s. “I need to discuss this with Miss Hardbroom, Esmerelda, if you don’t mind. Please wait out in the hall. In fact –” She makes a gesture, and Esmerelda is sitting out in the hallway at a small, neatly appointed table, set with tea for one and cream cakes. And a bag of lemon drops.
With Esmerelda safely out of the room, Ada turns around to face Hecate. “What do you think?” she says.
“I think we should contact the Great Wizard and have Ursula Hallow brought before the Magic Council for child abuse,” Hecate says, and her voice is strained.
“With her connections? With my name what it is in the witching community right now? I admire your spirit, Hecate, but we need practical solutions. Can we allow her to come back here?”
“I don’t think there’s any chance at all that Ursula Hallow will allow that. I’ve never understood why she hasn’t pulled Ethel and Sybil from the school already.”
“And yet she has not. Which tells me there’s something we don’t understand. At any rate, we don’t have any control over Ursula Hallow’s choice. What we do have control over is our own. What will we tell Esmerelda?”
“The fact that she’s being held captive in that house –” Hecate says, and falls silent.
“You understand,” Ada says quietly.
“Worse." Hecate's voice has a hitch in it. "Esmerelda did nothing to earn this fate. She’s never done anything but be a model pupil. And when she gave up her magic –”
“She gave it up for me, or thought she did,” Ada says with a sigh. “I can’t get away from that either.”
“When I said it would be torture for her to come back here, I didn’t know what she was already going through at home…”
“Then you think we should allow her to come back?”
“I still do not think there is any chance that her mother will allow –”
“Remember, we can only control what we can control. What do we say to Esmerelda?”
“We –” Hecate breaks off, sighing. “Very well,” she says. “Tell her she has our permission to return.”
Ada smiles and flicks her fingers to open the door. Then she starts in surprise. Esmerelda’s tea table and chair are still there, but Esmerelda herself is gone. “That’s strange,” she says. “Where can she have gone?”
In a tower many floors above, Esmerelda is beating on a magical force field while her sister Sybil screams for help from the roof outside. Ethel’s plan is in motion, and Esmerelda is on her way to getting her magic back. The safety of the entire school stands between her and its recovery, but that is of little concern to Ethel and less concern to their mother. Esmerelda will regain her place as the golden child soon enough.
It will take all the joy the practice of magic can bring her to make it worth it.