Not when the price for violence was so steep. That one was never fully unattended-Mother Alice, the school’s head-mistress-nun-whatever, slept in a room off the chapel, and even if Kate had wanted to burn down that particular building, she wasn’t stupid enough to add murder to arson. The bottles had all fit, save for one, a vintage wine from Sister Merilee’s private store that hung from her fingertips.īells began to chime the hour, soft and low, but they were coming from the larger Chapel of the Saints on the other side of campus. She made her way down the manicured stone path that ran from the dormitories to the Chapel of the Cross, a bag slung over her shoulder, bottles inside clinking together like spurs in rhythm with her steps. Restless spirits, and teenage girls trapped in boarding schools too far from home. The witching hour, people used to call it, that dark time when restless spirits reached for freedom. It was almost midnight when her shoes hit the grass below the dorm window. They saw her as someone to be saved.īut Kate didn’t need salvation she simply needed out. That was the problem with Catholic schools. She was desperate.īurning down the church was really a last resort she’d already broken a girl’s nose, smoked in the dormitories, cheated on her first exam, and verbally harassed three of the nuns. The night Kate Harker decided to burn down the school chapel, she wasn’t angry or drunk. To the strange, and the mad, and the monstrousĪnd plenty of monsters know how to play at being human.

This savage song