Isabella’s smile was strained, and Cassie didn’t think that was only down to nerves. What must go through her best friend’s head now, when she saw Cassie’s unusual Few power deployed? Cassie shook herself as Richard creaked the plane’s door wide and the coastal heat struck them.
‘Thank you for flying Bronco Airways, ladies.’ He grinned, and flung out an arm towards the country beyond. ‘Welcome to Mombasa!’
CHAPTER TWO
Not quite Mombasa, as it turned out; Cassie had been expecting the school to be located in the heart of the ancient coastal town, but the new Darke Academy was a few miles to the south. It felt strange to ride in the air-conditioned car that had been dispatched to collect them, and she rubbed her goose-pimpled arms even as she gazed out through thick glass at equatorial vegetation and turquoise seas. Wanting to feel the air and smell the atmosphere, she surreptitiously leaned a finger on the window control, and it slid down. Warm damp air rushed in.
Gratefully Cassie sucked in the hot scent of oleander and dust, even as Richard shook his head and leaned across her to wind up the window with an impish grin. Marat the porter-cum-general-factotum, who was driving, took no notice of any of them.
Cassie smacked playfully at Richard’s arm, wrestling it away. ‘Come on, Ricardo. Soak up the atmosphere!’
‘I will be soaking,’ he complained, tugging his damp shirt away from his skin. ‘Ugh. Isabella, control this barbarian!’
Isabella seemed not to hear, just went on staring out of the opposite window at spiky plantations of sisal. Once again Cassie and Richard exchanged troubled glances, settling back in their seats.
‘Not much further, I don’t think, anyway,’ he murmured. His face brightened as he leaned forward, pointing. ‘Ah! Thank God. That’s it!’
Cassie too leaned forward eagerly; she couldn’t imagine that she’d ever lose the thrill of spotting the new Academy each term. The building was barely visible as they turned into a long driveway lined and overshadowed by flamboyant trees, but each moment it revealed more of itself. When Marat turned the car out of the trees into a wide circle in front of the house, Cassie gasped.
The other mansions and hotels they’d passed on the road from Mombasa had been white stuccoed Arab-style affairs, but this great house was built of warm stone and roofed with red tiles. Set back from the sea, its gables were draped in vines and bougainvillea. It looked quite old, but ‘It was built in the 1930s,’ said Richard casually. ‘Sort of a holiday house, for a tea planter up near Nairobi.’
‘Holiday house,’ echoed Cassie sarcastically, taking in the size of it. It was a world away from that modern city, the skyscrapers and the sprawling, teeming slums of Kibera. ‘I suppose the whole country was different back then, anyway.’
‘Very different,’ said Richard, ‘but in some ways it’s always the same. Bit like the Academy, really.’
Even Isabella mustered enough interest to lean forward and gaze up at the windows that glinted in sun and sea-light. ‘It is very beautiful,’ she murmured.
And the beauty meant nothing to poor Isabella, thought Cassie sadly, without Jake here to share it. Cassie felt another pang of grief for him too, and chasing after that came unwanted thoughts of Ranjit. He’d been insane, when he killed Jake – insane, and through no fault of his own. It had been the curse of the Pendant that led to that disaster, and he’d only hunted down the Pendant because he wanted to make everything right between him and Cassie. He’d done it for her. Didn’t that make her guilty too, in a way? Didn’t it make her responsible? Yet it really wasn’t her fault, and it wasn’t his. In the truest of senses, Ranjit had been out of his mind.
Not that that made any difference to Jake or his family. Or to Isabella.
Marat was silent as he unloaded their luggage, but that was nothing new for the surly porter, and it didn’t bother Cassie – she was used to his hostility. It gave her time to drink in her new surroundings, to inhale the smell of the ocean and the scent of tropical flowers. She took Isabella’s arm.
‘Let’s go and settle in,’ she said to Isabella, with a wave at Richard, hoping he’d understand and wouldn’t take offence. He didn’t; he’d already spotted Perry Hutton’s eager face among the hubbub of returning students and was strolling towards him with a fresh swagger in his step.
Inside the mansion the atmosphere was cool and colonial, all white linen and mahogany furniture and gently turning ceiling fans, but it was loud with the voices of students pretending not to be excited. Cassie smiled to herself as she steered Isabella through the throng.
Cormac and Ayeesha shouted out greetings, and Cassie waved and grinned in response, noting the warmth of their Few auras hovering around them, Ayeesha’s a little stronger than her boyfriend’s. But Cassie didn’t stop to chat, assuming instead an air of urgent preoccupation as she kept her forward momentum going. She didn’t think Isabella would welcome a social gathering just yet. Other friends, of course, had moved on, having graduated from the Academy – Vassily, India … Cassie wondered where their Few lives would take them now.
In the high-ceilinged, marble-tiled hall she smiled with recognition at the statues that surrounded them. She’d once thought it odd that Achilles and Hector and Clytemnestra and the rest had to come with the school wherever it went; now they seemed like reassuring old friends who’d always be there for her. Even her terrified namesake Cassandra, cringing before the killing-blow, felt welcoming more than alarming.