The Awful Truth About Forgetting (Books of Unexpected Enlightenment Book 4) Read online

  Praise for The Books of Unexpected Enlightenment

  The action is non-stop, with child’s play, schoolwork, and danger all churned together. Lamplighter introduces many imaginative elements in her world that will delight…

  —VOYA

  The British boarding school mystery meets the best imagined of fantasies at breakneck speed and with fully realized characters.

  —Sarah A. Hoyt, author of Darkship Thieves

  L. Jagi Lamplighter, a fantastic new voice and a fabulous new world in the YA market! Rachel Griffin is a hero who never gives up! I cheered her all the way!

  —Faith Hunter, author of the Skinwalker series

  The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, a plucky band of children join forces to fight evil, despite the best efforts of incompetent adults, at a school for wizards. YA fiction really doesn’t get better than that.

  —Jonathan Moeller, author of The Ghosts series

  Rachel Griffin is curious, eager and smart, and ready to begin her new life at Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts, but she didn’t expect to be faced with a mystery as soon as she got there. Fortunately she’s up to the task. Take all the best of the classic girl detective, throw in a good dose of magic and surround it all with entertaining, likeable friends and an intriguing conundrum, and you’ll have The Unexpected Enlightenment of Rachel Griffin, a thrilling adventure tailor-made for the folks who’ve been missing Harry Potter. Exciting, fantastical events draw readers into Rachel’s world and solid storytelling keeps them there.

  —Misty Massey, author of Mad Kestrel

  Published by Wisecraft Publishing

  A publishing company of the Wise

  Copyright © 2017 by L. Jagi Lamplighter

  All rights reserved. No part of the content of this book may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database retrieval system, or copied by any technology yet to be developed without the prior written permission of the author. You may not circulate this book in any format.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental or an Act of God.

  ISBN: 978-0-9976460-3-0 (print)

  ASIN: B076J2MZPX

  First edition

  Edited by Jim Frenkel

  Cover art by Dan Lawlis

  https://danlawlis.wordpress.com

  Interior illustrations by John C. Wright

  Typeset by Joel C. Salomon

  Cover design by Danielle McPhail

  Sidhe na Daire Multimedia

  http://sidhenadaire.com

  Chapter headings are set in RM Ginger © 2009 Ray Meadows, licensed under CC BY-ND 3.0.

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Chapter One: Roanoke in the Snow

  Chapter Two: Too Dangerous To Know

  Chapter Three: Ye Shall Know the Truth

  Chapter Four: He Blinded Her with Science!

  Chapter Five: The Black Bracelet of Dread

  Chapter Six: The Terrible Truth about Familiars

  Chapter Seven: The Lure of Other Worlds

  Chapter Eight: The Art of Falling

  Chapter Nine: The Unfortunate Fate of Zoë Forrest

  Chapter Ten: Playing Hooky With Ogres

  Chapter Eleven: Storm Chasing by Steeplechaser

  Chapter Twelve: Waylaying Peter, Again

  Chapter Thirteen: Training Sequence

  Chapter Fourteen: Discoveries in the Snow

  Chapter Fifteen: This Time I Come as a Lion

  Chapter Sixteen: The Mysteries of Roanoke Island

  Chapter Seventeen: Griping and Giving Thanks

  Chapter Eighteen: The Case of the Burnt Homework

  Chapter Nineteen: Stealth Boyfriends

  Chapter Twenty: Forgotten Gifts at Yuletide

  Chapter Twenty-One: Unhealed Scars

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Defying the Wolf Spider

  Chapter Twenty-Three: Busted

  Chapter Twenty-Four: Dread versus the Agents of the Wisecraft

  Chapter Twenty-Five: A Difficult Interview with the Duke

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Farewell, Sweet Raven

  Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Master of the World

  Chapter Twenty-Eight: The War of Cream and Jam

  Chapter Twenty-Nine: Moving Day

  Chapter Thirty: The Weapon Deep Within Our Heart

  Chapter Thirty-One: For, Lo, I Shall Open a Door

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Anything For a Friend of Valerie’s

  Chapter Thirty-Three: The Most-Favorite Person Contest

  Chapter Thirty-Four: Plunging Pell-Mell Into the Ocean of the Heart

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Sparks in the Dark

  Chapter Thirty-Six: Wilis at the Water’s Edge

  Chapter Thirty-Seven: Spells and Cantrips Against the Lightning

  Chapter Thirty-Eight: Forgiveness in the Snow

  Chapter Thirty-Nine: Forgotten Things

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  Dedication

  To Jane Warner Brown Lamplighter

  Whose stories of wonder lit the lamp.

  Author’s Note:

  This volume follows the revised edition of the first two books.

  There are some differences.

  Most notably, Valerie Foxx is now Valerie Hunt.

  Once there was a world that seemed at first glance much like other worlds you may have lived in or read about, but it wasn’t…

  Chapter One:

  Roanoke in the Snow

  “Hey, cutie.” Gaius Valiant grabbed Rachel Griffin’s hand as she left the dining hall after dinner. The older boy leaned toward her and winked. “We’re going to break some rules. Okay?”

  “Certainly!” Rachel’s pupils widened. “I’m game. What are we going to do?”

  “Come and see.” He grinned, touches of his native Cornish tones coloring his London accent.

  Hummingbirds of happiness fluttering within her, Rachel fastened the toggles of her red wool duffle coat and pulled on a fluffy hat, knitted to look like a snowman. Grasping his hand, she followed her boyfriend outside into the cold darkness.

  Snow was falling, blanketing the campus. Through the dark, bare branches of the trees, windows glowed in the towers of the seven dormitory halls. Tiny flakes danced in the air, lit by the wisp-light from the lamps along the commons. In the glow of this lamplight, students laughed and threw snowballs or lay on their backs, waving their arms to leave snow-fairy impressions in the snow.

  Everything was eerily lovely and strangely hushed.

  It was Wednesday, the fifteenth of November, and the first snow of the year was falling. That morning, Rachel had woken up in London, in the flat of her older sister Sandra. What was supposed to have been a quiet visit—a chance for her to mourn the death of her otherworldly friend, the Elf—had gone spectacularly awry. Rachel, Sandra, and their mother had been kidnapped and dragged to the Temple of Saturn in the ruins of the ancient city of Carthage, where they were nearly sacrificed to the demon Moloch.

  After their return to London, Rachel had spent a day and a half with her family, before returning to Roanoke Academy for the Sorcerous Arts in the late afternoon—which was still early morning here in New York. At lunch, she had found in her postbox an envelope from Detective Hunt with information about the family of Old Thom, the ghost whom Rachel and Gaius had met Halloween night at the Dead Men’s Ball. When she sh
ared the contents of the envelope with the aged shade, Old Thom had become so transfixed with joy that he dissolved into a beam of light. It was on her way back from that strange, uplifting encounter that she had spotted the first dancing flakes of snow.

  Old Thom was not the only ghost under her care. After classes and throughout dinner, she and her blood-brother, Sigfried the Dragonslayer, had talked of nothing except the plans of the Die Horribly Debate Club—as their group of friends now called themselves, to Rachel’s dismay—to return the shade of their late friend, the Elf, to her original home. Since hearing her first fairytale at the age of three, Rachel had longed to travel to some otherworldly place. She could not wait to see Hoddmimir’s Wood, the World Tree, and the forest which grew up from the canopy of another forest that made up the Elf’s home.

  Sigfried was even more gung-ho. He had urged their friend Nastasia Romanov, the Princess of Magical Australia, to cut classes and take the Elf home today. The princess, however, had insisted that they should make the trip over the Thanksgiving holiday, when they were allowed to leave campus. That made sense, but to Rachel and Sigfried, both of whom were impatient to go, the delay came as quite a blow.

  After all the recent drama, the peaceful swirling snow lifted Rachel’s spirits. As she and Gaius walked down one of the paths that ran the length of the commons, she glanced sidelong, through the flakes gathering on her lashes, at her boyfriend. Gaius’s coat was old and worn, with fraying sleeves. His chestnut hair was drawn back into a queue that was tied with a black ribbon at the nape of his neck. She knew he was short for his sixteen years, but he was at least a foot taller than she. As he walked beside her, he gave her a wide, cheerful grin that made her feel simultaneously tiny and beautiful.

  She wondered what he would do if she scooped up an armful of snow and threw it at him, but she was too shy to try.

  They walked along the commons toward the forest path that led to the docks. Powdery coldness landed on Rachel’s nose. From the nearby lily pond that lay between them and the forest came the blare of a tuba.

  “Must be Oonagh,” Gaius chuckled. “No one else plays enchantments with a tuba.”

  “Oo! Cuz!” cried out a high voice with a thick Irish accent. “I’ve caught it!”

  In the light of the wisp-lamps, two girls with red hair, both wearing capelet coats with double rows of brass buttons down the front, scrambled around on the frozen surface of the pond. The girl in navy blue, with dark coppery tresses that fell below her waist, was playing a tuba. Twinkles of indigo light came from the brass instrument’s mouth and drifted out across the pond. The girl in the teal coat, whose hair was shoulder length and closer to the color of a bright new penny, held a large, upside-down glass jar pressed against the ice. Rachel recognized the girls as Oonagh MacDannan and her cousin, Colleen.

  Colleen MacDannan looked up from where she knelt on the ice, face aglow with cold and mirth. “Oh, Gaius, look! My cousin’s summoned an ice sprite, and I’ve caught it!”

  Gaius and Rachel moved forward, hand in hand, to where Colleen crouched beside the topiary fountain in the middle of the pond. The fountain was currently off, but the leaping dolphins cut from living evergreens peeked out from beneath their snowy caps. Coming up beside Colleen, Rachel and Gaius bent over to see what she had captured. Inside the jar, swirls of snow formed a little humanoid shape, its tiny face pert and curious. The figure dissolved into a windy gust of snowy flakes. Upon reaching the far side of the bell-shaped glass jar, it reformed again. Wings like large snowflakes jutted from its shoulders, beating against the glass.

  Rachel’s lips parted. The little creature was both beautiful and mesmerizing. Gazing at it, she felt as if she could hardly breathe.

  Gaius squatted down. “I think it’s a frost jack. Aren’t ice sprites bigger?”

  “Could be a snowkarl,” offered Rachel, peering down in sheer delight.

  “No, you eejit,” laughed Oonagh. She also had a thick Irish accent. “Snowkarls are native to northern Europe. There aren’t any in America.”

  “Oh.” Rachel bit her lip, embarrassed. “It’s nice that they are letting us out in the snow.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” asked Colleen.

  “Siggy told me that during Monday’s rainstorm,” Rachel replied, feeling increasingly more awkward, “they made everyone go back to the dorms and locked the buildings down.”

  “That’s because of the Heer of Dunderberg and his lightning imps,” replied Oonagh, setting her tuba on its case. “The school is afraid, now that the storm goblin’s free, that he’ll seek revenge. They want to keep the students safe.” Looking up into the swirling whiteness, she added cheerfully, “So far no thunder or lightning, so we’re okay.”

  Catching Rachel’s hand, Oonagh pulled. “Come on! I see another one.”

  The two girls raced through the snow toward a spot where flakes were swirling beneath the last few indigo sparks of Oonagh’s summoning enchantment. When they reached it, three tiny frost jacks twirled and danced on the ice. The two girls leapt at them, but without a jar, there was not much they could do to restrain them. The fey dissolved into snow and wind, vanishing out of their hands. Laughter, like tiny ice crystal chimes, rang out, mocking them.

  “Over here!” Oonagh jerked Rachel in another direction. She called solicitously, as one might to a young child. “I see some more! Let’s catch them, shall we?”

  Rachel narrowed her eyes and glanced back at where Colleen stood, her face flushed and pink from more than the cold, gazing up all doe-eyed at Gaius.

  “Oonagh,” Rachel asked dryly. “Do you remember the time that you and my sisters and I all went to Ross Castle together, in Killarney?”

  “Course, I remember!” The older girl laughed. “That trip was the craic!”

  “I was six at the time.”

  Oonagh grinned. “You were such a wee dote!”

  Rachel’s voice became extremely dry, “I’m not six anymore.”

  “Sorry?” the older girl paused and peered at her. Rachel felt as if Oonagh was seeing her for the first time.

  “You’re distracting me.” Rachel pulled her hand away and crossed her arms. “So your cousin can chat up my boyfriend. I know she fancies him. Though why she needs your help, I haven’t a clue. They live in the same dorm. Can’t she try to nick him there? On her own time?”

  “Rachel.” Oonagh gave her an apologetic smile. “You know you’re too young to date a boy like Gaius Valiant. He’s a senior. You’re a freshman—an extra young one at that.”

  “What? Is there an expiration date? Can’t have a boyfriend unless I’m properly ripe, like a pear or something? I’m not jam. Or a pie.”

  “Sweetie, be reasonable.” Oonagh gestured at Rachel’s tiny, boyish figure. “You may not be six any longer, but you still look six. Oh, okay, nine. You’re far too young for…well, the things older boys want to do.”

  “Gaius is very chivalrous,” Rachel raised her chin and spoke quite properly. “He does not do anything we would be ashamed to do in front of Sandra.”

  “Och! That’s hardly fair to the boy, now, is it?” Oonagh put her hands on her hips, her coppery locks flying. “I reckon Gaius is old enough to do quite a few things I wouldn’t do in front of your elder sister, and I’m quite fond of Sandra. Besides,” she leaned toward Rachel, wagging her finger, “everyone knows you’re only waiting around for that Dragonslayer boy to break up with the girl from Dee Hall, so you can date him.”

  “What? Sigfried?” Rachel cried out, outraged, her English accent even more pronounced. “I wouldn’t date him if he were the last boy alive!”

  “Why not?” Oonagh leaned forward, grinning wickedly. “He’s extraordinarily handsome. Sigfried Smith, though young, may be the fairest boy on campus.”

  Rachel murmured, “Other than Vlad.”

  “Who?”

  Rachel’s cold cheeks grew pinker. “The Prince of Bavaria.”

  “You’re on a first name basis with Vladimir Von Dread?”
Oonagh gawked. “Doesn’t matter how easy on the eye that one is. No girl in her right mind would date him!” She shivered. “Far too intimidating.”

  What might Oonagh’s expression might be, Rachel wondered, if she were to announce that Von Dread was dating her sister and wanted to make Sandra Queen of Bavaria? Oonagh thought the world of Rachel’s older sister, whom she had looked up to for years. Rachel pressed her lips together, resisting the impulse to brag.

  No one would learn Sandra and Vlad’s secrets from her!

  Oonagh leaned toward her, smirking. “Are you sure about young Mr. Smith? He’s quite the fair one! Good teeth, too.”

  “There’s more to boys than their teeth,” Rachel replied stolidly. “Siggy is my blood brother. It would be like dating Peter! Or you dating Liam or Conan or Ian.”

  Oonagh made a face, “Yuck!”

  “Exactly. I am very fond of Sigfried Smith, but it’s not that kind of fondness. Besides, spending time with Siggy is like trying to hold onto a fire hose at full throttle. He’s bonkers! Gaius, on the other hand,” Rachel continued seriously, “is a very clever boy. He’s smart and witty and interested in a great many things. He’s a good listener, too. A person you can tell secrets to. Sigfried doesn’t listen to anything.”

  Oonagh’s eyes danced. “So that’s what you want from a boy, eh? Someone who will listen to all those big secrets you little freshmen keep?”

  Rachel Griffin, who knew secrets that could destroy the world, did not reply.

  “Rach, let’s go,” Gaius’s voice called from the pond.

  Rachel rushed back to where he stood by Colleen. Oonagh followed. The four of them looked down at the frost jack trapped under the glass. They watched it form, dissolve, and form again. With the snow falling past the wisp-lamps, landing on their hair and coats, the world around them began to seem distant and dreamlike. Soft icy chimes rang in her thoughts, calling her to…

  A shiver ran through Rachel. She shook her head vigorously. Watching a fey creature was not like watching a pet mouse or a chipmunk. The fey were dangerous, even a little one caught in a jar.