Wake Unto Me by Lisa Cach Read Free Book Online Page B

seen them in movies, and read about them in novels; but nothing had prepared her for the wonder of being inside one in real life. Each stone step of the spiral staircase was worn to a bowl by thousands of feet, and her own steps sounded both muffled and loud at once; she could smell the faint, damp, mineral-tinged scent of rock; her skin felt the chill of stone that no modern heating system could vanquish. Her vision spun as they wound higher and higher up the stairs, the rope rail under her hand both rough with fibers and smooth with the oil of hands. She was glad of the weight of the unwieldy duffel bag: its reality kept her tied to earth.
    “I hope Amalia has not gone out,” Greta said over her shoulder. “She can show you where everything is. She’s a charming young woman, a princess of Liechtenstein.”
    “A what?” Caitlyn said, stumbling on a stair.
    “A charming young woman.”
    “No, a princess? A real princess?”
    “Of course.” Greta stopped and tucked in her chin, frowning at Caitlyn as if she were a slow-witted child.
    Caitlyn was too stunned to care. “And she’s from where?”
    “Liechtenstein.”
    “Ah!” Caitlyn had a vague notion of a tiny country somewhere near Germany or Austria. “Is it this princess’s job to show new students around?”
    Greta laughed. “No. But you are special.”
    “I am?”
    Greta smiled. “You’re her new roommate.”
    “Great!” Her eyelid fluttered. No pressure there. Not like a princess was going to notice she’d been stuck with an ignorant peasant for a roommate.
    “Do you ride?” Greta continued.
    “Ride what?”
    Greta chuckled. “Horses.”
    “No.”
    “Ah, too bad. Amalia is a champion equestrienne. But never mind, I am certain you’ll find you have much in common.”
    Oh, sure! Caitlyn’s muscle twitched so hard her eye closed. “We’ll be like peas in a pod.”
    Or like the princess and the pea, Caitlyn thought glumly. And it wasn’t Amalia who was going to be the annoying vegetable stuck under a mattress.

CHAPTER Five
     
    Late that evening, wrapped in the navy blue Fortune School bathrobe she’d found in the armoire on her side of the room, Caitlyn sat crosslegged on her bed and leaned against the dark, carved headboard. She still hadn’t met Amalia, but she had gotten to know the confines of her gothic, vaguely creepy room and its furnishings very well in the past several hours.
    The room was a rectangle, with the door to the hallway centered in the wall on one end, and windows piercing the honey-colored stone wall on the opposite end. The two side walls were richly paneled dark polished wood, like something out of a manor house in a British costume drama. The floors were stone, covered in a worn, dark red Oriental carpet, while the ceiling was high above, crossed by massive beams blackened with age. They’d been charming during the daylight, but now, at night, Caitlyn’s desk lamp couldn’t pierce the darkness above her, giving her the uneasy feeling that anything could be clinging to the beams up in those shadows, watching her.
    She and Amalia each had an antique wood bed, desk, chair, bookcase, and armoire. As she’d been told to expect, she’d found an entire Fortune School wardrobe in her armoire, in her sizes: socks, shoes, skirts, blouses, sweaters, even a wrap dress in a geometric print of the Fortune School colors of navy and burgundy. If she was lucky, maybe no one who mattered would ever see the old, comparatively ratty clothes she’d brought from home. Vintage clothing was daring in Spring Creek, but here her clothes felt like the castoffs they were, instead of a creative expression of her personality.
    The room had two leaded-glass windows, set in deep embrasures that doubled as window seats. Caitlyn had opened one and stuck her head out earlier, before the sun had set, and seen a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to the treetops and rocks below. She’d clung to the edge of the window, absurdly afraid of falling