Ravencliffe (Blythewood series) Read Free Page A

surprise.
    “Quickly!” she cried, pulling me up and wrapping her scarf around my back. “I’ll hide your secret if you protect me. You of all creatures must know what the Order does to our kind.”
    Secret? Creatures?
Our kind?
What was she talking about? I stared at her, but she was looking behind me. Baffled, I reached under the shawl and felt wet, slick skin where my shirtwaist and corset had torn. I must have scraped my back on the roof and started bleeding.
    But as my fingers reached my shoulder blades, I felt something else beneath my torn skin: the soft silk down of newly fledged feathers. The wings that had been growing beneath my skin these past few months had finally broken free.

2

    I’D KNOWN SINCE May, when Raven told me that my real father was a Darkling and the pains in my shoulder blades were fledgling wings, that this day would come. But I had hoped to forestall the moment with tight corsets and will power. I certainly hadn’t meant to reveal my true nature in front of a changeling—or my favorite teacher. Had Miss Sharp seen? A cold wash of horror, as if I’d been dunked into the rank waters of the East River, swept over me.
    But when Miss Sharp reached us, panting, her hair loosened from its bun and whipping around her face, she had eyes only for the changeling. She withdrew the dagger from the sheath at her waist and held it up before the changeling’s face, spitting out words in Latin. The carved runes on the blade floated into the air and hovered over the changeling’s head. The mottled pattern on the changeling’s hairline and throat began to move under her skin, forming into the pattern of the runes. She moaned and writhed, her skin turning greener where it wasn’t covered by the marks.
    “Please make her stop!” she cried, clutching my arm, her eyes pleading—eyes that seemed to be changing color even as I looked into them, into a blue-green that reminded me of my mother’s. Her hair was changing, too, turning the same color red as my mother’s.
    “Let go of her!” Miss Sharp growled, pointing the dagger at the changeling’s throat.
    The changeling’s hand slid off mine. Instantly, her eyes and hair changed back to brown. She had been changing into
me
. Only it had looked like my mother.
    “You look like her,” the changeling said.
    “How . . . ?”
    “She was stealing your memories while she was taking your appearance,” Miss Sharp said. “Just like she stole Ruth Blum’s identity.”
    “Not stealing,” she said, her eyes sliding slyly to mine. “I only borrow. I have not taken your memories away, have I, miss? Your secrets are safe inside you, no?”
    I nodded, guessing at her meaning. “She didn’t harm me,” I said, raising my eyes to Miss Sharp.
    “And what about Ruth?” Miss Sharp demanded. “Does she still have her memories wherever she is? What have you done with her?”
    “I did nothing to her. She disappeared, so I took her place.”
    “You’re lying!” Miss Sharp cried, moving the blade closer to her throat. “You can only assume a human’s appearance by touching them.”
    “I didn’t say I never met her,” she said sulkily. “I brushed up against her on the excursion boat to Coney Island. Her memories of her family were very strong, but only because she was planning to leave them. When I knew she didn’t mean to go back to her family I decided to go back in her place—”
    “That’s a lie!”
    We all turned to see Etta standing in the middle of the roof with Miss Corey. Her hands were curled into fists, her eyes glaring at the changeling.
    “Ruthie would never run away and leave me.”
    “She felt bad about that,” the changeling said, her expression softening at the sight of Etta. “She meant to send for you once she was settled, but I think . . . well, I don’t think things turned out for her the way she’d hoped.”
    “Where did she go?” Miss Sharp asked, pressing the point of the dagger into the changeling’s throat.