Disclaimer: I do not own the fabulous characters created by Jill Murphy and rounded out to perfection by Kate Duchêne, Claire Coulter et al...

Note: It's the first of February. You know what this means. The long anticipated sequel to Inferno is here at last. Enjoy...

Pandora's Box

One

Amelia crept around the castle, holding the glowing candle in front of her at arm's length, its flickering flame casting eerie shadows in places where they never normally resided, making her jump at smoky silhouettes, the light doing nothing to alleviate the sharp taste of fear that was already making itself known at the back of her tongue. There was definitely something not right in the school, and she was determined that tonight, she would solve the mystery once and for all.

For the past few weeks, sleep had been slow in coming to Amelia. At first she had thought it the repercussions from too much cheesecake before she went to bed, but in recent evenings she had decided upon its having far more sinister undertones than indigestion. It was almost as if there was a presence in the castle, not necessarily an unwelcome one, but a presence that she had not felt before. It was different to all the other magical entities and forces she had ever felt, because although she called it a presence to herself, it would be better described as an absence. It was as if there was something was missing that should have been there, in effect the opposite of a presence, but still, it was a sudden feeling, one that Amelia knew she had not experienced before. Her unease had continued to mount until she had made the decision there and then to investigate, for her own peace of mind if nothing else.

The presence, or absence – Amelia decided to simply call it a 'force' – was not there all the time. At first, she thought she might only notice it during the hours of darkness because that was when her mind was at its most active and most unoccupied, but having concentrated very hard, she could tell that it was definitely not affecting her during the day.

Amelia knew that magic was a strange being, with a complete life of its own, and that was why she was wandering around the castle wherever the feeling took her, letting her own inherent magic guide her to the source of the disturbance. Suddenly, her mind returned to the present as she saw a dark shape in the corridor in front of her, and her breath caught in her throat, preventing a scream from making its way past her lips. The other figure, however, was not so afflicted and gave a sharp shriek for a split-second before clapping her hand over her mouth. Amelia lifted her candle to illuminate Davina's face.

"Davina?" she hissed. "What are you doing out here?"

"What are you doing out here?" the chanting teacher countered indignantly.

"I was..." Amelia was rather embarrassed to admit that she had been searching for something that wasn't there, and so she waved the question away airily. "Just... going for a stroll."

"Well then, that's what I was doing too."

The two older witches stayed in silence for a few moments before coming to the realisation that they were both on the same mission.

"You can feel it too, can't you?" Davina whispered. "Something's not right. Something's missing."

"But I don't know what it is..." Amelia paused thoughtfully. "Can you miss something that's never been there in the first place?"

"I'm not sure." Davina leaned heavily against the wall and slid down it until she was sitting on the floor, her hands hugging her knees. "I've checked on all the girls, they're all still here, and I double-checked the silver, so it's not a burglary."

Amelia raised her eyes to heaven at Davina's haphazard logic, believing that the reason for their disturbed slumber each night was an ineffectual kleptomaniac slowly depleting the castle's supply of spoons. She sighed as she joined her oldest friend on the cold floor. Why did such an occurrence have to happen now, during the busiest week of the year? If whatever it was could have waited seven short days, then the girls would have gone home for their summer break and Amelia could confront whatever this strange 'force' was. As the situation stood, this confrontation was taking place in the middle of the week leading up to the end of term and the fourth-years' graduation ceremony.

"Do you..." Davina began, but then she tailed off. "No, that's impossible."

"What?" pressed Amelia, now intrigued to hear Davina's theories, however incredible they might be.

"I was going to say, 'do you think it's Agatha?'" said Davina quietly.

"You're right," said Amelia, closing her eyes. "That is impossible." She suppressed a shudder as her mind cast itself back to that fateful event, over seven months ago now, when her twin had defaulted on a compact with the Devil and met her end imprisoned beneath the ice of the ninth circle of hell.

"Well," said Davina after letting Amelia have a few moments of quiet contemplation to herself. "We may as well continue looking." She jumped to her feet with all the grace of a tiny, grey-haired gymnast. Amelia followed at a slightly slower pace, marvelling at how her older friend's joints managed to cope with the exertion. They were both of them getting far too old to be sitting on stone floors in the middle of the night. Amelia traced Davina's dancing steps along the corridor, and somehow, knowing that she was not alone in her strange feeling made it seem easier to cope with. She had to come to her senses suddenly to avoid crashing into Davina, who had stopped without warning in the middle of the corridor and was pointing shrewdly at the door she was standing beside.

"Here," she said, and Amelia knew immediately that they had found the source. The feeling that something was not there that should have been had grown exponentially stronger with each step they took, and Amelia felt her heart sink as she realised just whereabouts in the castle Davina had brought them, looking up at Constance's door with a pleading expression. She should have known really; any kind of magical force that had nasty intentions would station itself with the most powerful witch in the school, and suddenly it all fitted into place. Constance had been looking a little paler than usual recently, a little more sleep-deprived. Davina pressed her ear against the door and her eyes narrowed behind her glasses.

"I can't hear anything," she said, and Amelia breathed a sigh of relief. "No," Davina continued, a worried little line forming in her brow. "I can't hear anything."

Amelia pressed her ear against the door as well, and she agreed with Davina. A ticking clock, a purring cat, sounds from the owls and trees outside... There was nothing, no sounds that should have been there, no sounds at all.

"At least we know what's missing now," said Davina brightly. Satisfied with her discovery, she made to leave, but Amelia's still-puzzled expression caused her smile to falter and fall away. "It's bigger than that, isn't it?"

Amelia nodded, stepping away from the door and running her fingertips around the edge, where the door itself nestled snugly into the frame.

"It's a Containment Shield," she said, more to herself than to Davina, as she felt the magic course through her fingertips.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Davina, her expression the same as if Amelia had been speaking double-dutch.

"A very weak version of the Alchemist's Shield. It's cast on a room, generally at private meetings. It stops things like magic, and indeed sounds, from slipping out through the cracks. As soon as we open the door it will break."

The two witches looked at the door, almost as if they were expecting it to growl and scare them away like a guard dog.

"The question is, of course, whether or not we open the door," said Davina, and Amelia grimaced at the reminder of the dilemma. There could be no doubt that Constance herself had cast the spell, but there had to be a reason why. It was this Containment Shield that was preventing whatever it was from reaching them, causing the absence that both the headmistress and her chanting teacher had felt so acutely. What was in her room that Constance wished to keep from the rest of the school during these hours of darkness? Amelia knew her deputy was a closed, private person, but at the same time, Amelia was responsible for the safety of the entire school, staff included.

"On the count of three," said Amelia, and both witches stood with their fingers raised, ready to cast a spell to open the door and fling magic at whatever might escape. "One, two, three!"

With a spark, the door swung open and there was a faint shimmer in the frame as the enchantment broke. Davina cast a wayward spell, but all that left the room was a piercing scream.

Knowing that such an acute sound would wake the girls almost immediately, Amelia's mind flew into overdrive, pulling Davina into the room behind her and recasting the Containment Shield. She flew over to the bed, where her deputy's shriek was now muffled by pillows. There was nothing else in the room, no magical entity causing the pained sound, nothing except Constance, deep in a terrifying slumber, fist crashing intermittently into the pillows as she thrashed in her nightmare, her screams becoming choked and gulping as tears began to cascade down her cheeks.

"Oh my... Amelia, what are we going to do?" asked Davina, fluttering around the room in high agitation.

Amelia shook her head, only able to pacify one of her staff at a time. She gently took Constance's shoulder and shook it slightly, willing her not to mistake the friendly touch for something untoward in her nightmare and throw her off.

"Constance, wake up, you're scaring us my dear." She remembered the last time she had willed her deputy to open her eyes, during her fainting episodes earlier in the year, when everyone had been fearing for her life and her magic as they raced against time to find a way out of the ninth circle.

Amelia's kind words and gentle nudging didn't seem to be having any effect, and the headmistress sighed, her heart torn by the obvious distress that her younger friend was going through.

"Try this," said Davina's fluting voice, pulling the stopper out of a bottle of Wide-Awake Potion on the bedside table and sprinkling a few drops over the pillow. Almost instantly, Constance jerked into full consciousness, looking around at the other occupants of her room and blinking slowly.

"How..." she began, gesturing at the door.

"Constance, the absence of a scream that should be there can be just as conspicuous as its presence," said Amelia, relief at seeing her potions-mistress physically unharmed causing her to smile despite the serious tone she was desperately trying to put into her words. Gingerly Constance pulled herself into a sitting position, scraping her long hair, now damp with perspiration, out of her face. "How long has this been going on, Constance? No, don't answer. It's been going on for as long as I haven't been able to sleep. That's three weeks." Amelia's mouth set in a firm line. "Why on Earth didn't you say something?"

"I didn't think it important," muttered Constance, unable to meet her superior's eyes. "It's only a nightmare."

"A nightmare that has you screaming so much you cast a spell so that the rest of us won't hear? A nightmare that you know is going to recur every time you sleep without fail?"

"It's just a dream," said Constance stubbornly, but Amelia could see that she was faltering, her shaking hands testament to that alone. She sighed.

"Constance, you of all people know that there is no such thing as 'just a dream'. Look at Mildred as a prime example, and what you told her. We're witches. Our dreams always have significance, even if they are slightly odd at times."

"I had a dream about teaching tap-dancing to porcupines once," said Davina absently. Amelia had almost forgotten that the older witch was in the room with them. "I'm not quite sure what the significance of that was."

Amelia buried her forehead in her palm with a slight moan. Whilst Davina's oddities were amusing, her sense of timing could be absolutely appalling.

"It's the Devil," said Constance eventually, her voice barely above a whisper. The words made Amelia look up sharply, and Davina's contented humming fell silent. "I keep dreaming about that night in hell. Every night, there's something different, something slightly changed – the words, the order of events, the positions we stand and fall in. I don't know what it means exactly, but I have an idea."

Amelia felt her blood freeze as it ran through her veins, making her shiver physically. She too had an idea what these nightmares meant, and it was in no way a reassuring one.

Note2: And your comments on a postcard please...

*Kimmeth writes her address on the back of a cereal packet and waves it around above her head.*