“Oh my god,” Veronica said when she saw them. “What are you doing here? I thought you were dead!”
“Wait,” Loch said. “You know who we are?”
Veronica frowned. “Of course I do. Oh god, I hope this isn’t some kind of a trap. I’ve been playing along since the Dance.…”
“It isn’t,” Spirit said quickly. “But what do you mean, you’ve been ‘playing along’?”
Veronica beckoned them inside and pulled the door shut. The hut was stuffy and dark, but at least it got them out of sight.
“You guys ran off from the Dance,” she said. “Nobody knew what was going on. Your friend in the black dress … she looked really sick. Is she…?”
“She’s dead,” Addie said harshly. Veronica winced.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I.… After the last Dance Committee meeting, when you were all so scared, we thought there had to be something weird about Oakhurst. But it didn’t seem.… Well, everyone thought we’d better go anyway.” She shrugged.
“So what happened after we left?” Burke asked.
“About half an hour later, the Headmaster guy, Ambrosius, came and said everything was fine, but it would be better if everyone went home. He sent all the Oakhurst kids back to their rooms, and when they were gone he said he was sorry our evening had been spoiled, but he had presents for us to make up for it. They wheeled in this big cart with a bunch of little bags on it—you know, like wedding favors or something? And everybody had to take one. Then we all left. A lot of guys just tossed theirs out the car windows on the way back to town. I threw mine out as soon as I got home. I had nightmares that night, and when I woke up … everything was gone. My house. The town. And everybody was acting crazy.” She looked at Brenda. “I went to you. I tried to talk to you. But it was like you’d turned into somebody else. I got scared.” She looked back at Burke and continued her story. “A few people were still normal. It was horrible. They, you know, they tried to wake up the others, or leave. But anybody who didn’t play along got stomped. I saw them—the Breakthrough guys, all dressed up like knights or something—round up everyone who was fighting back. They had these, I don’t know, clubs or truncheons or something. If you resisted, you got hit.…”
“Do you think anyone else escaped?” Loch asked.
Veronica shook her head. Her eyes filled with tears. “A few of the people they took away came back, and then they were happy little RenFaire zombies. Most of them … didn’t.”
“It’s like some kind of a weird play, and everybody got assigned parts,” Loch said blankly.
“Yes!” Veronica agreed eagerly. “That’s exactly it. And no matter what we saw, everyone else acted like it was all normal.…”
She glanced toward Brenda, and Brenda shuddered. “I didn’t used to believe in monsters,” she said softly.
“Yeah, well, welcome to our world,” Loch said.
“Why didn’t it affect me? What is it? What’s going on?” Veronica demanded.
Burke gave her a version of the same speech Spirit had given to Brenda. “It’s mind-control magic, I guess,” he finished. “At Oakhurst, we’re taught that some people are harder to affect than others. If you hadn’t played along, they’d just have hit you with a bigger whammy.”
Or you would have just vanished, Spirit thought.
“Lucky me,” Veronica said bitterly. “But what do we do now?”
“We’ve got to rescue the others,” Brenda said strongly. “Maybe some of them are just playing along—or maybe you can wake them up like you did me.”
Spirit looked at Burke. The more time they spent here, the more dangerous it would be. On the other hand, she really wanted to test whatever power she had before she went to Oakhurst. What if everyone there had been overshadowed somehow?
“You can’t just leave everyone here!” Brenda said desperately, when nobody said anything.
“No,” Spirit said. “Of course we can’t. And we’re going to fix what Mordred did to them. But right now we need to get up to the school. We need to find out what’s going on there.”
“And save your friends first,” Brenda said bitterly.
“Haven’t you been paying attention?” Loch demanded. “Nobody has friends at Oakhurst if they’re smart.”
There was an awkward silence, since it was obvious the four of them were friends. And what did that make them?
Maybe not that smart, Spirit admitted.
“We really need to get out of here,” Addie said.
“Brett and Juliette,” Brenda said insistently. “We have to try to save them. You owe it to them. They were at the Library. And they’re the only other ones left from the Committee.”
Burke sighed faintly.
“Okay,” Spirit said. “But we aren’t going to go walking around this place. Can you bring them here?”
“I know where they are,” Veronica said. “Wait here.” She opened the door to the hut and looked nervously around, then hurried out.
“What if.… What if she’s going to tell the overseers?” Brenda said nervously, voicing the same thought all of them had. “She said the thing, the spell thing, didn’t affect her, but what if…?”
“We’re trusting all of you,” Spirit said firmly. “We have to.” But what if she’s right?
It was a long, tense wait before Veronica returned. They could hear Brett and Juliette arguing with her; the two of them were worried about not completing their assigned tasks in time.
The door of the hut opened.
Brett and Juliette had been the king and the queen of Macalister High. Two weeks spent as medieval serfs had changed both of them far more than even Mordred could have imagined. Juliette’s nails were chipped and broken and her long blonde hair was lank and greasy. Brett had a bruise on one cheekbone. Both of them had lost weight. They stopped dead at the sight of Spirit and the others, their eyes wild with fear. Then they dropped into clumsy obeisances.
Whatever Mordred did to everyone, he must have given them the ability to sense magic, Spirit realized. That’s why everyone under his spell thinks we’re lords and ladies. Even thought Spirit knew she wasn’t one, it was hard to remember with Guinevere’s memories so strong in her mind.
“You’re Brett and Juliette Weber,” Spirit said firmly. “This is the town of Radial. You’re students at Macalister High School. Members of the Dance Committee. Two weeks ago you went to the Spring Fling at Oakhurst. Remember!”
The two of them stared up at Spirit for a long moment. Then Brett’s expression changed. He lunged to his feet. “I’m getting out of here!” he cried.
Burke grabbed him before he could reach the door. Juliette was on her feet as well. She stared at Spirit with hate in her eyes.
“You did this to us!” Juliette said. “You and that bunch of freaks up at Hogwarts! This is all your fault!”
Two weeks ago Spirit would have been stunned and unable to respond, but not now. “It is not our fault,” she said firmly. I guess having been High Queen of England is good for something. “We, too, are the victims of our true enemy. Ask your friends if you won’t believe me. But heedless flight will only bring your doom.”
“Good going,” Addie murmured softly. The sarcasm in her voice was plain: the more Spirit sounded like a refugee from a road show company of Camelot, the less believable anything she said was.
Brett stopped struggling, and Burke released him.
“It’s true,” Veronica said. “They’re in as much trouble as we are. More—they’re from Oakhurst.”
“Well maybe— Maybe we can trade them,” Brett said desperately.
“For what?” Loch asked in disgust. “You think Mordred’s going to just let you go?”
“We have a safe place to take you,” Spirit said quickly. “We’ll get you out of here and come back for your friends.”
It took longer than it had with Veronica or Brenda to quiet the Webers down. They finally calmed down enough to confirm what Brenda had said—they didn’t remembe
r anything after the Dance. They’d thrown away the gift bags even before they reached their car that night. It didn’t seem to make much difference.
“We hear—or I’ve heard, anyway—cars coming by the town,” Veronica said. “But only at night. During the day, we only see horses.”
“Those are the overseers,” Brett said in a low dangerous voice. “From the castle.”
Burke gave Spirit a worried look. He knew as well as she did that the Webers were trouble. Veronica had gotten time to adjust to this bizarre world, and Brenda was a natural problem-solver. Brett and Juliette were terrified and clearly on the edge of panic.
There was no help for it now. She couldn’t re-cast Mordred’s spell over them even if she’d been willing to.
“Come on,” she said.
“And keep your mouths shut,” Loch added.
FIVE
The four Reincarnates and the four liberated Townies headed back into the woods at the edge of the field. Spirit and her friends kept the Radial teens in the middle of the party. Once the eight of them were undercover, Loch started to lead them in the direction of Oakhurst. Spirit put a hand on his arm and shook her head, pointing toward the van. She didn’t want to take the Townies into Oakhurst. At least the four of them had their magic—and months of commando training, courtesy of their teachers. All the Radial kids had, just now, was fear. And that could easily be turned against them by Mordred and his allies.
Loch didn’t look happy about Spirit’s decision, but he nodded and began to lead all of them deeper into the trees.
“I don’t understand why this is happening,” Brenda said plaintively. “Even if you are a wizard, you can’t just make a whole town vanish. Somebody will notice.”
“Sure,” Burke said unconvincingly.
“You know what’s going on,” Juliette said accusingly. “I know you do. You have to tell us! You owe us!”
“When we’re safe,” Spirit said, gritting her teeth. It was bad enough having to tell them the villain of the piece was calling himself Mordred without explaining they were all the reincarnations of Arthurian myths and Mordred was going to bomb Earth back into the Stone Age.
When they were near the van, Loch stopped. He glanced back at Spirit, his face questioning.
“We drove here in a van. It’s over there,” Spirit said, pointing, keeping her voice low. “Go there and wait for us. We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Brett looked as if he wanted to argue, but Veronica put a hand on his arm. “Come on,” she said. “At least you won’t be out in the field, right?”
Brett nodded reluctantly.
“You— You’re coming back, right?” Brenda asked nervously.
“Of course we are,” Addie said instantly. “We won’t leave you. But you’ll be safer here than if we take you with us.” Before the others could say anything further, she turned and walked away.
* * *
“Wow,” Burke said comprehensively, as soon as they were sure they were out of earshot.
“I think they’re doing pretty good, all things considered,” Loch said. “At least there hasn’t been any screaming.”
“Yet,” Addie said darkly. “They’re going to be asking all the same questions we were asking two weeks ago—like why don’t we just go to the cops?”
“Maybe we can,” Spirit said. “If we can destroy the Tree, Mordred may panic.”
“Aye,” Burke said heavily. “The Kinslayer was always a coward.”
* * *
They circled wide around the school grounds, sticking to cover as much as possible. It was mid-morning by the time they reached the stables, the buildings farthest away from the school itself.
“Is anyone still here?” Addie asked in bewilderment. There was no one anywhere in sight.
“The horses are,” Loch said, coming back from a cautious inspection. “I guess that makes sense, if they’re using them to patrol. But I don’t see any people.”
“Well, if there’s nobody still here, it’ll be a lot easier to break in,” Burke said. “But they wouldn’t just abandon Oakhurst. They’d take everything they could move down to The Fortress. And we haven’t seen any sign of that. Let’s keep looking.”
“Carefully,” Spirit said, and Burke smiled at her.
There’d been a lot of new construction on the campus since Breakthrough had moved in back in January. It made sneaking around a lot easier than it would have been otherwise. The new Security building was next to the Motor Pool, and the four of them could hear the sound of a walkie-talkie long before they saw the security guard in Breakthrough black. He looked bored.
Eavesdropping on the chatter over his radio, they could understand why. Most of the security staff seemed to be inside the school building. The students were confined to their rooms. The whole place was on lockdown.
“That’s what we needed to know,” Spirit said, her voice a mere whisper. Burke nodded. He crept around the side of the SUV and sprang at the bored guard.
“All clear,” he said a moment later. “And I’ve got his keys.”
* * *
They went in through the back way, the doors that overlooked the gardens and the path to the little train station, the doors she’d gone in and out of a dozen times a day when Oakhurst had still been nothing more to her than the school to which she’d been exiled by her family’s death. The doors leading from the Refectory into the main part of the school stood open, but everything was changed. It feels like sneaking into a haunted house, Spirit thought. All the tables and chairs were stacked in the corners, and the room was filled with boxes. As Burke had said, they were clearly planning to gut Oakhurst to enrich The Fortress, but they hadn’t quite finished yet.
“We have to get to the Main Hall,” Spirit said, keeping her voice low. That was where the Gallows Oak—and Mordred’s entombed body—was.
“I’ll scout ahead,” Loch said.
Even with Spirit looking right at him, Loch just seemed to vanish. That was what the Shadewalking Gift did. It wasn’t invisibility: it was more like misdirection refined into high art.
Loch was back less than five minutes later, seeming to simply appear out of thin air. It was as if he’d been there all along and she just suddenly noticed him. He didn’t look happy.
“It looks like the Shadow Knights are having a party in the Main Hall,” he said grimly. “There’s no way we can walk in there and nuke the Tree.”
“Now what?” Addie demanded despairingly.
“We need—” Spirit began.
“Company,” Loch said in warning.
He indicated one of the storerooms off the kitchen, and they hurried to hide. It was completely empty. There wouldn’t be a lot of reason for anyone to come in here. They held their collective breaths and strained to listen. In a moment, they heard voices coming from outside.
“I don’t like this idea.” The voice belonged to Mark Rider—Mark of Cornwall, Mordred’s sworn knight. Spirit clutched Burke’s arm, whipsawed between Spirit’s terror and Guinevere’s rage. Mark had been Arthur’s sworn vassal before Mark betrayed him to ally himself with Mordred.…
“When I swore to him it was for wealth and power,” Mark went on. “I make no secret of that. I never have. How much of either is there in a radioactive wasteland? I have no interest in ruling a kingdom of ashes.”
“You should have considered that a long time ago, husband.” Madison Lane-Rider’s voice had the faintly formal inflection of her Reincarnate self, Morgause of Orkney. “Now your decisions all come down to one. Do you wish to live or die? Cross the Black Dragon, and you choose death.”
Mark’s only answer was a wordless growl, and the two of them passed on down the hall. It was a long time before Spirit could draw a deep breath.
“So much for convincing Mark to change sides,” Addie muttered.
“As if,” Loch whispered back, and Addie shrugged philosophically.
“Now what?” Burke asked Spirit.
“With the Shadow Knights i
n the Main Hall, we need two things: a way to destroy the Tree fast, and a big enough distraction to lure the Shadow Knights away while we do it. That means—” she swallowed hard, thinking of Doc Mac. “—that means we can’t just do it ourselves. We need to find someone who has a Gift that can destroy the Tree—and who’s willing to help us.”
“If everybody’s on lockdown, they’ll probably be glad to do anything if it means getting out,” Loch said. “By your leave—”
“No,” Spirit said instantly, already knowing what he was about to say. “We stay together. I’m the only one who can break a glamourie if— If any of you get, you know, hit.”
“Lucky you; at least that’s one less thing for us to worry about,” Loch said without heat. “Come on, then. I’ll take point. Where do you want to start?”
“Let’s start with people who might actually be on our side,” Spirit said.
“Dylan,” Addie and Loch said in chorus.
Dylan Williams was the only other person who knew any of the secret truths of Oakhurst. He’d helped them spy on Mordred, and he’d listened to the recording that had proven that Dr. Ambrosius was their enemy. But he’d never been a member of their inner circle. Spirit could only hope he was willing to help them now.
And that they could trust him.
Dylan’s room was on the second floor of the Young Gentleman’s Wing. Sneaking around Oakhurst was creepy beyond imagining. Once upon a time they’d imagined a Shadow Oakhurst where kids without magic might be sent. Now Oakhurst itself had become a thing of shadows. With Loch to guide them—without him, they would have been completely lost several times over, with all the detours they had to make—they finally reached the Young Gentlemen’s Wing. The hallway was entirely empty.
And more than empty.
“Where are the doors?” Addie asked in a strained voice.
Spirit had only been here once or twice, but she knew the layout of the Young Gentlemen’s Wing was exactly like that of the Young Ladies’ Wing: a hallway full of numbered doors that led to dorm rooms, as bland and forgettable as a corridor in an expensive hotel.
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