Last time on Gemma, both Ann and Pippa are a bit twitchy, and Gemma decides to read the diary again.

She comes to the page where the author is talking about turning sixteen. This is not exactly a continuity error, because Gemma said earlier that I discover that Mary Dowd is sixteen in 1871. and this entry says December 31, 1870 Today is my sixteenth birthday. But Gemma claimed she’d been reading the diary from the start, so it would have made more sense to say that the girl in the diary is fifteen than saying she’s “sixteen in 1871” and then going on to describe all Gemma’s learned about her from the first twenty pages that apparently take place when she’s fifteen and in the year 1870.

Anyway, Mary’s friend says that it’s great she’s finally turning sixteen because now she’ll know something about something: you shall know soon enough. And it shall be as a door opening for you

And of course Gemma’s visions start on her sixteenth birthday, so we can guess what that’s about. But this is hardly a universal ability of all women, so how does her friend know it’ll happen to Mary? Can people with the ability tell who’s going to get it? And that still wouldn’t address the coincidence of them being friends well before either of them had powers.

Gemma just thinks this is boring nonsense with nothing to do with her life. Book, no, stupid protagonists are bad.

The next entry is a week later and it’s just “omg omg omg omg I don’t dare tell anyone, not my diary not my friend omg”

The next entry is a month later and she’s explaining she has control of her visions and life is awesome. She says the way of dealing with it is to embrace the visions rather than fighting them.

Gemma continues to be dim and says that while it’s awesome other people have these visions, the description of the girl’s visions after she learned to embrace them sounds nothing like Gemma’s experiences with her visions that she doesn’t want to have, therefore whatever’s going on with her must be totally different, even though the girl is clear that her visions before that point were terrifying.

Anyway, she says Kartik said they were dangerous, but then again he could be lying. Considering he’s also threatened her it could be a bit simpler and by danger he means his knife in her back if she doesn’t knock that shit off.

Anyway three whole entries was too much for Gemma’s attention span so she decides to stop reading.

She wanders off and thinks that if she could control her visions she’d want to just see her mom and not some magic glowing garden. She falls asleep and dreams about her mother, who tells her to find her if she can.

Follow her laugh up the final flight of stairs till I’m standing, alone, at the top, in front of the closed doors to the East Wing. The air is whispering a lullaby to me . . .Come to us, come to us, come to us . Push open the door with the palm of my hand. It’s no longer a scorched ruin. The room is alive with light, golden walls and gleaming floors. My mother is gone.
Instead, I see the little girl huddled over her doll.
Her eyes are large and unblinking. “They promised me my dolly.”

I don’t think this is going anywhere good.

Suddenly they’re in a winter forest and she sees the man who was attacked by the shadow. He’s running from something. And then Gemma wakes up.

So are her dreams visions? Did her mom’s whatever-it-was about the shadow lead to that poor guy being in some hell place or something?

Anyway, she hears the alpha alpha wolf laughing.

The shiny-slick hatred I feel for Felicity and Pippa, and all those who flit through life without a care. They’ve picked the wrong day, the wrong girl for cruel pranks. I’ll show them cruel. I could snap their slender necks like twigs.

What the hell Gemma.

We don’t find out what she might have intended, because when she goes to pounce, she sees that Felicity is making out with a Gypsy. Felicity promptly screams, which is understandable but still pretty stupid, since it’ll just make things worse.

To be found alone with a man is shocking—a reason for a quick and necessary wedding. But to be found with a Gypsy! If I were to tell, Felicity would be ruined for life.

Well yeah. But you do realize that you saying she was with a Gypsy doesn’t actually prove it? I mean, if you wanted, you could go say that without actually needing to find her making out alone with anyone.

Anyway being a Gypsy he can’t speak real English and has a “Romanian” accent. As in, the country. When he’s hanging out around an English boarding school. I think that’s the author getting confused with them being Romani. Dear god was no editor involved here at all?

At this moment the headmistress calls for the girls and Felicity realizes that she’s in danger of getting caught, because apparently it takes an explicit reminder for that to register.

She tells her boyfriend to go, and he says he’s fine with them finding out. Well she obviously isn’t, dumbass, get moving.

At this point he starts going grabby-hands to convince her to come with him instead which I think is supposed to mean that he’s super in love with her and not a colossal asshole, but it’s pretty easy to see as him figuring that she’ll have to marry him if she’s found out and trying to force the issue.

Felicity begs Gemma to help, and she decides to because Gemma flipflops constantly. Of course, help involves shoving her into the lake then ordering the boyfriend off.

At this point Hot Indian Boy arrives, because apparently he speaks Romanian too and so the two talk in Romanian and he goes off. Boy, that was convenient.

Gemma fishes Felicity out right as the headmistress gets there and concocts a story about her falling into the water.

Although Gemma was pretty nasty in her description of Nightwing earlier, she immediately goes into mother-hen mode here.

Pippa wants to know what really happened and Felicity says that was all, elevating Gemma to temporary alpha status.

Her eyes take on that suspicious, wounded look girls get when they know they’ve fallen off the top rung of friendship and someone else has passed them, but they don’t know when or how the change took place.

Gemma how could you possibly know what that looks like. I would accept just being super good at reading people but you’re specifying the exact look schoolgirls get, and there is no way you’ve ever been around schoolchildren before.

Felicity is all “oh we are going to be the best of friends” now and starts talking about how Pippa just doesn’t understand things, not like the two of them…

And then she notices there’s this blue scrap of cloth Gemma has, the same one she grabbed in the dream.

The muddy blue silk is a promise in my hands. My mother was here.I’d choose her. It’s what I said
before I fell asleep. Somehow, I’ve changed things. I’ve brought her back with this strange power of
mine.

Uh. Well, that is definitely an interpretation. Not really the one I’d jump to when it’s not clear if that was actually her mom, but hey, death of a parent can screw up logical thinking even under normal circumstances. This would work a bit better if Gemma wasn’t constantly being perfectly knowledgeable in every other situation.

Next chapter Gemma fakes a headache to get sent to bed and the headmistress not only lets her but gives her a hot water bottle. They really seem like pretty nice people.

Naturally, Hot Indian Boy is waiting in her room, scribbling another probably-threatening note. Gemma’s response? To lock the window so he can’t get out. That is delightful.

They snap at each other over if he deserves credit for helping her out with convincing Hot Gypsy Boy to leave, with Hot Indian Boy finishing up by saying her friend’s life would be ruined if they were caught and she should stop being so stupid and stick with her own kind. He does not appear to notice the irony of saying this in Gemma’s room. (For the sake of sanity we’ll assume he had the same conversation with the boyfriend and isn’t just blaming the girl for leading the guy on.)

Gemma just wants him to explain what’s going on already. Hot Indian Boy lolnos her. She says she’ll scream and he’ll be caught as a thief.

“Do you think you can stop me? I am Rakshana. Our brotherhood has existed for centuries, stretching to the time of the Knights Templar, Arthur, and Charlemagne. We are the guardians of the realms now, and we have no intention of giving it back. The time of the old ways is past. We won’t let you bring it back.”

Well okay then. Doesn’t India have any secret orders you could be referencing? Is this an English thing and they’ve only reached India later on so it’s all built off old white people’s groups?

The problem with this is she has no particular investment in who controls the realms. All she knows is that someone in part of the current system is being a dick to her right now and his brother tried to stab her mom. Also, from how he talks it sounds like she could take over and get control of the realms herself. He’s got to make an argument that either changing the ownership will be bad for any of this to matter to her.

If he’s just going to try to get her to comply because of threats, he doesn’t need to tell her she’s got power and he should really get on with the threats. This could work if he was trying to express how very much they don’t want a change and therefore how far they’ll go to stop it, but that would still need to be followed by telling her that therefore they’re fine with her ending up in pieces in that lake if it means keeping their control.

Instead he keeps going on about how she could open the realms and change everything and people want her.

“The Order.” He spits out the name. “Circe.”

Gemma points out that hello, no idea who that is. Hot Indian Boy just says it doesn’t matter. Then don’t tell her!

Right after he repeats the bit about seriously no more visions she tells him she had another vision :D because as we’ve established she really doesn’t take his threats seriously at all. She says she saw her mom and his brother. I was expecting this to be a bribery thing but actually he flips out and tells her to shut up. But but but! she says. Not real, he snaps.

this is what Circe and the Order do—they’ll use any trickery they have to get what they want. Your mother and my brother are dead. They killed them to get to you. Remember that the next time you are tempted by those visions, Miss Doyle.” There’s pity in his eyes. It’s harder to bear than his hatred. “The realms must stay closed, Miss Doyle. For all our sakes.”

See, what’s a much better answer than “because I am a member of douchebag brotherhood, and all the realms are belong to us.” He does not follow this up by saying that fucking around will cause more deaths, which I think is implied, but apparently not implied enough for Gemma, who only gets that it’s her fault they’re dead.

She asks if he knows about Mary. Nope. She thinks this means he’s not getting told the full story either, but isn’t it possible that they just don’t know about her?

Closing the window behind him, I put my mouth up to the windowpane, watch my breath fog it over with each quiet word. “You may give the Rakshana a message for me, Kartik the messenger. That was my mother in the woods today. And I’m going to find her whether you help me or not.”

I’m really not sure what’s up with that given he can’t hear her. The second and third sentences make sense, but the first? Not so much.

Also, she really seems slow on the uptake, like it doesn’t even occur to her that maybe messing around with visions will lead to even more deaths.

It seems like there’s either a clear good/evil divide here, or at least Kartik thinks there is (or, even if he’s lying, it’s not like he’d expect Gemma to know the difference). So why be mysterious in the first place? She wants info, just give her a lecture on why the visions are evil and she’d probably be convinced. For example, if instead of insisting that her mom was fake because he said so, he explained that objects can be conjured in that realm but it’s as much her mom as if she makes a statue in her mom’s likeness. Bear in mind her mom didn’t actually act at all like her mom, so that’s actually plausible, and even if it isn’t true Gemma wouldn’t know. He could go on to bond with her about how he really misses his brother too, and he would totally okay her ripping the realms open and screwing over his whole group if there was the slightest chance of rescuing his brother in the process but he knows that his brother simply isn’t there.

After all, Gemma’s a sixteen year old girl who lost her mom. No matter how convincing he is, it’s still possible she’ll try anyway. For example:

Maybe they’re wrong.
Maybe that’s just what they told Kartik so he wouldn’t mess with the realms either.
Maybe Kartik is going to go rescue his brother later and just doesn’t care about her mom.
Maybe if she makes an imaginary body real for her mom it’d really bring her mom back.
Maybe nobody else has because they just didn’t try hard enough.
Maybe she has special powers no one else had and she can do it.

Instead, he’s not really explaining his side of things and he’s just expecting her to do what he says, even though she’s made it clear she doesn’t even register him as the threat since her first action is to lock him in her room for a chat.