Free The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School by Kim Newman Page B

Fingers, faster than a nocturnal hummingbird, zig-zagged towards Crowninshield, but stepped into a shadow at the last moment, leaving the whip blinking. Then, swiftly, she came out of the lea of a chimney and tweaked Crowninshield’s nose. She could keep this up all night. Frecks stepped under a bat-slosh from Crowninshield II and punched her square on the nose, staggering her back. She ripped her opponent’s weapon from her hands and sailed it off over the edge of the roof.
    Amy realised she was
floating
. The thrill of the moment had made her lighter. Her feet hung limply, about nine inches from the rooftop. Using her moth-wing cloak, she tried to swim through the air towards an astonished Buller, but found herself flapping in place. The gentle-seeming wind filled her cloak as if it were a sail. She had to resist being borne backwards over the parapet.
    She made herself heavy and landed hard. Her ankles hurt.
    Buller charged her, snorting like a heifer. Amy wished she had persuaded Kali to teach her Kafiristani foot-boxing.
    She held out a hand and floated Buller’s dropped cricket bat, tripping the girl up.
    Then, she took the fight to the Queen Heathen.
    Pushing Buller aside, giving the Sixth enough extra weight to keep her sprawled on the roof, Amy ran at Gryce. The Head Girl was used to delegating the thumping and scratching to her Murdering Heathens. Amy had an idea she was, like all bullies, a coward at heart.
    Amy screeched. This was her moth-cry. She had practised. She knew it set teeth on edge.
    ‘
Filles
,’ shouted Gryce, calling for help. ‘
Beryl…
’
    The trailing mask-wings tickled Amy’s mouth as she kept up her cry. She saw fear in the Head Girl’s eyes. It was welcome.
    In this disguise, the Kentish Glory costume, Amy was not a feeble Third, a new bug who could be shoved around. She was a mystery, a creature, a terror to the wicked, an angel to the well-intentioned. Free of the weaknesses of her person and position. Free to strike!
    She pushed Gryce up against a chimney stack and drummed fists against the girl’s chest and face. She grabbed handfuls of the Head Girl’s unbound hair and tugged. She screeched in the Witch’s face.
    Gryce was helpless.
    Amy kept up the attack.
    Crowninshield did not come to help the Head Girl. She was dancing around the roof with Light Fingers, tossing her voice to throw off her opponent but too slow to avoid swift slaps and cuffs. Having put Crowninshield II down with a bloody nose, Frecks laid into Buller with the prefect’s own hockey stick.
    The Moth Club were giving a good account of themselves.
    Why had Amy been intimidated by the Murdering Heathens? Gryce was blubbing as badly as any Viola First now.
    A hand clasped her shoulder, and a mouth pressed to her ear.
    ‘
Amy Thomsett
,’ whispered Paule, ‘stop this.
Now
!’
    There was a light, and a smell, and the sky changed…

XII: The Real Head Girl
    T HE ROOF WAS bathed in the harsh purple light of three big, shining moons. All was still. Amy’s cloak collar itched. Her new costume felt heavy, the domino tacky against her cheeks.
    She could no longer hear the sea. Far off, something wailed musically. Soft and mournful, but bone-scrapingly
wrong
.
    To Amy’s surprise,
everyone else
was floating. They weren’t drifting ever upwards to be lost in the stratosphere – which Amy was always afraid would happen to her. Frecks, Light Fingers and the Murdering Heathens bobbed gently a few inches above the roof, as if suspended in invisible liquid. To Amy, they looked like waxworks – frozen in mid-air, mouths open, clothes stiff, hair starched. She let go of Gryce and the Head Girl drifted away. Her face was a contorted mask, eyes open but unseeing. Her hands were raised in defensive claws. She looked silly, but Amy wasn’t inclined to laugh.
    She turned,
knowing
this was Prefect Paule’s doing.
    Amy had thought Dora Paule wasn’t quite there. Now, she knew that was the honest truth.
    Paule wasn’t a