The Hunt Ball Read Online Free PDF

don’t know what’s under their nose, literally.”
Bitsy puffed out her plump breast.
    â€œNow, Bitsy, every creature on earth has figured out what it must do to live. Humans are day hunters, we’re night hunters. Their eyes aren’t too bad in the light. Nothing like ours, naturally, but they’re perfectly serviceable. They can climb trees, build things. They are so successful now that most of them don’t realize how weak they are. Ah, well, it will all come to a bad end,”
Athena said and sighed.
    â€œThat’s what you said about me and that snot, Dragon.”
    â€œReally!”
Bitsy’s huge eyes grew even larger as she listened to Comet. She then turned to her heroine.
“Did you say that?”
    â€œI did. And now, of course, you want to know why.”
Athena raised her right eyebrow.
“Because both of them are too clever by half. Sooner or later, they’ll reach too far.”
    Comet smiled.
“Is that an observation or a prophecy?”
    â€œBoth,”
Athena succinctly replied.
    â€œAny other prophecies?”
He unfurled his long pink tongue.
    â€œHere’s an observation before a prophecy. You’re in Inky’s territory. You’d better reach an accord.”
    Inky, a gray fox whose coat was so dark she shone glistening black, was a beloved friend of most of the other animals as well as Sister and the hounds. Everyone knew Inky. She visited the kennels nightly as she made her rounds. The only animal who didn’t like Inky was Golly.
    â€œThere’s so much game this season. I don’t think Inky will mind.”
He considered Athena’s advice, though.
“But you’re right. No point getting on her bad side. And I can’t take her for granted even though we are littermates.”
    â€œHer cubs are leaving the den. They’re making their way in the world. What if one of them wanted this den?”
Bitsy kept tabs on the neighborhoods.
    â€œI’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.”
Comet had no intention of surrendering his new apartment.
“Athena, your prophecy?”
    â€œWe’re a week from All Hallow’s Eve. Propitiate the dead.”
    â€œSome dead can’t be satisfied.”
Bitsy believed in ghosts. She’d seen them.
    Comet, like most animals, was sensitive to what humans especially couldn’t explain. They often felt spirits around them, but the species was hag-ridden by logic. Few would admit to the experience.
“Not a good time to go to Hangman’s Ridge.”
    Athena’s voice lowered.
“And it will be black as pitch on All Hallow’s Eve, beware.”

C H A P T E R   4
    T he bricks of Custis Hall’s original four buildings around the quad had faded over the two centuries of their existence into a glowing paprika. Mt. Holyoke, founded on November 8, 1837, boasted being the first institution of higher learning for young ladies. But Custis Hall, a preparatory school, predated Mt. Holyoke by twenty-five years. It masqueraded as a finishing school. The girls learned management, mathematics, Latin, French, embroidery (a good hand was considered one of the gracious arts), a smattering of history, and a bit of literature, although the reading of modern novels was discouraged by the administration. Novels were considered racy. A copy of
Moll Flanders
or
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
could park a pretty bottom on a hard bench in front of the headmistress.
    Charlotte Norton smiled to herself thinking about the history of Custis Hall as she eased off the accelerator, turned right onto the campus, passing through the monstrously large wrought-iron gates, the morning sun hitting the buildings so they shimmered. She never tired of seeing the restrained architecture. She loved her work and felt not one pang of jealousy when her former graduate school classmates moved ever closer to becoming presidents of universities, a few already