Suit of Crows

Chapter 01

"Katerina!" Kat's head shot up at her name. What did I do this time? Kat thought with an eyeroll. She shuffled the deck of cards in her hand, any other cardmaster would have replaced such a tattered deck by now, there was a very short span between too new and too old in a deck lifespan that made them too stiff or too soft for ease of use, but there was no way no how she was throwing it out. She had just mastered her first card trick with that deck when her mother disappeared, never got the chance to show off what she could do, had taught herself to do, and it hadnt left her side since—despite how worn they had gotten over time. Slowly, Kat stood and walked down the hall as she played with the cards in her hands, how irritatingly inconvenient.

When she reached the door, she stopped shuffling, reluctantly returned the battered deck to her pocket, and knocked on the door. Mrs. Brown didn't like her card tricks very much—or at all. If it was anything else, Kat wouldn't care, but the governess would take her cards if she saw them, and Kat couldn't have that. Mrs. Brown's sharp voice pierced through the solid wood door with a short, "enter."

Kat slipped inside the office and settled herself into one of the too-short chairs across from the small woman. Kat had been in Mrs. Brown's office more times than she cared to remember and knew every nook and cranny of the room down to the grain pattern of her bookshelves and the paint scratches on her metal desk. The small window was high on the wall with bars on the outside, Kat imagined it was similar to a prison cell. It was basically her own personal cage anytime Kat was in the room, her warden spelling out whatever trouble she had managed to get herself into and dishing out punishments accordingly.

Mrs. Brown was small and mean, barely five foot and with a permanent scowl that marred her wrinkled face. She had hard, angry, brown eyes that attempted to stare down at Kat from a chair set to make her look taller and more imposing than she really was. It was hard for Kat to take Mrs. Brown seriously when she was always looking down to the governess, unless she was in her chair, then they were eye-to-eye in a purely literal way. Mrs. Brown attempted to look down through her rectangular glasses set on the end of her nose in disapproval, "this is the fourth time I've been called by the principal about you this month, it is unacceptable behavior, Katerina. Honestly, what would your mother think of you getting yourself in trouble all the time?" Mrs. Brown seemed to think that by invoking the mother that had abandoned her, Kat would roll over and suddenly be a good kid. It hadn't worked that way for the last ten years, why would this year be any different?

"I wouldn't know," Kat sighed, rolling her eyes as she slumped further into the hard chair. She had never known either of her parents and Mrs. Brown had been tasked by her mum—who she had somehow known—to take care of Kat long before she could remember. But Mrs. Brown had always been more of a housekeeper than a guardian, always moping like her cat had died yesterday. "I'm seventeen today, this time next year I'm getting as far from here as I possibly can, I don't care what she would have wanted."

Her mother's legacy always seemed to follow her around, like an unwanted phantom, her mother's wishes thrust upon her without a care for what Kat wanted. But the comparisons to her were a part of everyday life for Kat. Oh, you look so much like your mother, except your eyes, she always had blue eyes. Well too bad, Kat liked her crow black eyes and was grateful for whatever gene had given them to her.

Mrs. Brown assumed her characteristic scowl, "while that is your right once you turn eighteen, I'm still looking after you until then per your mother's request, and this behavior is unacceptable." The unspoken words were left hanging in the air, why can't you be more like your mother? She was always a good student; do you think she did that by breaking the rules? It always seemed to sound more like teacher's pet to Kat.

"What is it that I supposedly did this time?" Kat grumbled, picking at the wood knoll on her chair. Clearly it was one of her more serious stunts, but she wasn't going to admit to anything. Kat knew of several possibilities that the principal might have called Mrs. Brown about but wasn't going to ask anything specific incase it wasn't that particular incident, wouldn't want to incriminate herself twice over, once was bad enough.

"The piano in the swimming pool, the principal wasn't amused."

Kat snickered at the memory of the piano. It had wheels so it wasn't hugely difficult to move, and it hadn't taken much effort to unlock the pool doors with her homemade lockpick set. Then she had set the piano in the very center of the pool at the deep end and grabbed a fake skeleton from the prop room in the theatre department and positioned it to look like it was playing itself to death. It had consequently ruined both pieces, one significantly more expensive than the other, apparently pianos didn't do so well underwater, who knew?

At the muffled noise, Mrs. Brown seemed to grow even more angry, "do you know how much money that cost the school?" The unspoken words there; do you know how much I had to pay the school to brush it off? It came out of Kat's trust fund that Mrs. Brown had sole access to. They had deemed Kat too young and too . . . what was the word they had used? Troublesome, perhaps? No, it was more malicious than that. Reckless? That wasn't quite it either, but that was the justification for why she didn't have access to the money her parents had left her, it being controlled by Mrs. Brown who allotted her an allowance each month after she turned fifteen.

"I don't know anything about that." That was a lie, because Kat had indeed been the perpetrator of that particular incident, it had been fun though time-consuming and just the thought of it urged her to smile, but that would give her away, so she restrained herself from doing so. That wasn't nearly the worst prank that they could blame her for, and certainly not the worst they had proof of—and they most definitely had proof, or the principal would never have called Mrs. Brown, maybe she should have taken the extra minute to disable the security cameras? Thinking back on it, she had been too preoccupied with getting the piano positioned in the pool to think about going back to wipe the drive. It was just a lesson for her next plan. "Am I excused now?"

"Yes—and keep your damn card tricks away from me," Mrs. Brown growled. Kat chuckled under her breath, she found it funny that Mrs. Brown didn't like the one talent she had that hadn't gotten her into trouble, yet—she was still working on it. Kat didn't consider any of her little incidents to be anything more than harmless pranks, and most of them were harmless, except for perhaps the monetary cost of repairs, but Mrs. Brown usually took care of that anyway. Once she made a plan, she executed it flawlessly with no one who could stop her, except maybe Aaron, he had a bad habit of keeping her from getting into too much trouble. Kat was perfectly content to stick with her (mostly) harmless pranks, though dealing with the principal was beginning to get a little tedious and she was tired of tiptoeing around him.

Kat exited the office quietly, making sure to close the door before allowing that small mischievous smirk to slide onto her face. A smirk that was all Kat. It was an expression that those who knew her recognized instantly and knew to get out of her way and those who didn't, well, they were never in her way for very long. When that expression came on, it meant she wanted to do something bad or a little insane or both, whichever came first. This time? She wanted to show that principal exactly who he was dealing with.

But Kat considered herself a fair person—one of the only traits she shared with her mum—so she would give him a warning beforehand as she had before with her other principals. Funny how none of them had quite gotten the hint that if they didn't back off, they were effectively going to war with her until it was too late. Maybe this one would be smarter than the others, but she doubted it. Kat had been through six principals in her lifetime and none of them had been smart enough to see her for what she really was. Not just a troublemaker, but a relentless prankster who was eager to start some mischief-making, and one does not tempt an eager prankster into a prank war, at least, not if they wished to get out of it unscathed.