Spirit blinked in surprise; she’d never heard Loch say anything that cruel before, especially about a friend who was hurt. But then she thought about how guilty he must feel at having to leave Nick there. He’d said Nick had been trying to get loose. And he’d sedated him and run.
“You did the right thing,” she said firmly, and Loch glanced at her warily. “Hey,” she added, forcing a smile. “At least Nick gets to leave Oakhurst, right? Maybe he’ll get better in Billings.”
“I hear Billings’s the garden spot of Montana,” Addie drawled.
“I do not want to know what the garden spot of Montana could look like,” Muirin said feelingly.
“Well, it would have streets and buildings, just for starters,” Burke said, and they all made wry faces of agreement.
“So I guess what he said doesn’t mean anything to any of you?” Loch asked. And, when they all shook their heads, he added: “Well, we’d better find out what it does mean, because Nick ran into something out there that did something to his mind, everybody’s covering it up, and I have the feeling that at least some of them already know what did that to him. And if it happened to Nick—it can happen to any of us.”
On Monday afternoon, in the hour before dinner, Muirin and Spirit were in the Oakhurst Library trying to follow up on the clue Loch had gotten from Nick. So far it had been slow going: Spirit had been occupied with the surprise paper from Ms. Groves all weekend, and Monday, Wednesday, and Friday were martial arts class, which ate up another hour and a half after regular classes. Muirin had fencing classes in another section of the gym complex that the fencers shared with the gymnasts, and despite her boasts that she was “so advanced” as an Illusion Mage, she still had to practice, and constantly, because the teachers always wanted to see improvement in your spellwork.
Not that Spirit would know anything about that.
In addition to everything else, Spirit was doing her best to squeak out the promised hours to practice with Burke. She’d only managed it once so far—on Sunday afternoon—but she could already tell it had made a difference. Burke was a kind and patient teacher. He didn’t expect her to know any of this stuff already, but he had an unswerving belief that she could learn it. And he was willing to demonstrate the basic moves as many times as she needed, gently point out her mistakes, and show her how to fix them.
Spirit thought he’d make a much better teacher than Mr. Wallis.
“I just like people,” Burke had said, shrugging. “They’re basically good, you know. Or they want to be. Sometimes they get scared, or confused, but underneath that, they’re really good.”
While Spirit could definitely see what Muirin meant about Burke being “too good to live,” she thought his attitude was . . . kind of nice. And even one lesson had made a difference in class that day. She thought if it kept up, she might manage to get through the exhibition at the end of the month with all her limbs intact.
But classes and exhibitions and their “regular” lives at Oakhurst had suddenly become nothing more than an elaborate lie they were telling everyone. Their real lives revolved around solving the mystery of Nicholas Bilderback’s last words to Loch.
“The horns—the horns.” They could only hope they could figure it out before anyone else vanished.
Their research would have gone much faster online, but as Muirin had pointed out, online research left online traces. And besides, some of the sources they needed were only actual, not virtual. At least it wasn’t unusual for them to be in the Library at all hours. Mr. Jackson and Ms. Anderson were the librarians who took care of the collection, and the rest of the work was done by the students.
The five of them had tacitly decided that Nick must have been attacked by magic. If he’d been attacked by someone and drugged, there would have been marks on him—and the hospital would have tested for drugs, and the police in Radial would have had actual facts to go on, rather than just a story they really liked. The only thing that really fit the few facts they had—Camilla just vanishing and Nick turning up in the condition he had—was magic.
There were a lot of references to horns in magic and folklore, but so far none of them were very useful. Muirin and Spirit had ruled out the Horn of Gondor, since that was fictional. But that left Gjallarhorn, which the Norse God Heimdall would blow to announce Ragnarok; the Amalthean Horn, which some legends said gave forth food and drink and other legends said spewed out demons; the Horn of Roland, which had the power of summoning Arthur’s Knights from their enchanted sleep; and a number of references to things like unicorn’s horns. None of those things would have hurt Nick—at least not without leaving a lot more evidence behind, like a plague of demons or the end of the world.
“This is useless,” Spirit said in frustration, closing the latest book. It was about the size of a telephone book and weighed more than all her schoolbooks combined. “How can we figure out what’s going on if there isn’t any pattern to it?”
Muirin looked up from behind her own pile of books. “Maybe there is.” Her green eyes gleamed brightly in the gloom; they’d chosen the darkest, most secluded corner of the Library to work in. “Halloween is one of the four Fire Festivals.”
“I know,” Spirit said, rolling her eyes. “Halloween, and Imbolc—February second, and Beltane—May first, and Lammas—August first. And then there are the four Cross-Quarter Days between them, the summer and winter solstices, and the spring and fall equinoxes.”
“Ms. Groves would be so proud,” Muirin murmured sweetly.
“But so what? Nick wasn’t hurt on Halloween. And Seth didn’t disappear either on Halloween or on the Autumn Equinox,” Spirit pointed out.
“I take it back,” Muirin said. “Nick left Halloween night, so he ran into whatever grabbed Camilla. And . . .” She stopped, and stared down at her notepad, and when she continued speaking, it was in a small reluctant voice. “Seth . . . had been talking about leaving for a while. He’d been going to go next summer. During ‘Alumni Days,’ because, you know, it’s warmer in June. And he said everybody would be distracted then.”
“So he did really run away,” Spirit said quietly. Muirin had been adamant for weeks that Seth wouldn’t have done any such thing.
“He wouldn’t have run away in September,” Muirin said flatly. “Too cold, no tourists going through he could hitch a ride with, and all his contacts in Radial in school with no reason to go out after dark. Not unless . . . Not unless he thought he had a really good reason.”
“Okay,” Spirit said. She thought about Murin’s first point, how cold September here was, and shivered. “So say he had a really good reason. Then . . . If whatever took Camilla and hurt Nick grabbed him, it did it because he went outside the wards and it knew he was running away. So it’s sort of like a watchdog.”
“Not one I ever want to meet,” Muirin said, hugging herself and staring off into the distance.
The television in the little lounge had a DVD of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in it; supposedly they were all studying it, but they all knew the play practically by heart, so it made a good excuse to get together that wouldn’t attract anyone else. “But why didn’t the—the whatever-we’re-looking-for take Nicholas the way we’re assuming it took Camilla and Seth?” Addie asked. “He was out at Halloween—it’s Halloween—well, Samhain Night—from sunset until dawn.”
“Because in magic, a day starts at dawn, not at midnight,” Loch said. “And it ends at sunset. So the hours between sunset and dawn belong to the Otherworld.”
They hadn’t been able to get together in one of the lounges to compare notes until after nine. Loch was proctoring a tournament for the Chess Club, and Addie and several of the other Water Witches had magic practice after dinner, because the swim team was using the pool in the afternoon. And none of them dared to make changes to their routine they couldn’t explain. At least it gave Spirit and Burke another hour of practice time in the gym while Muirin did some more digging on her own.
“Maybe the Whatever couldn�
��t grab Nick,” Muirin said, frowning thoughtfully. She waved the spiral notebook she was holding. She’d told the others that they didn’t dare keep a single thing on their computers—not even if they were sure they’d saved it to a disk and deleted the copy on their computer—so all their notes were being kept in pencil on paper . . . and carefully hidden. Spirit kept hers between the mattress and the box spring on her bed. “Loch said he heard the cops say they found Nick a little after dawn. Maybe dawn meant the Whatever had to stop chasing him.”
“But by then the damage had already been done,” Burke said grimly.
“Yeah,” Muirin said. “I’ve found something else you aren’t going to like. I think I have, anyway. Okay, June is when Graduation is.”
“Right,” Addie said. “That and Alumni Days. Same week.” She glanced toward Spirit and Loch, the newcomers. “Doctor Ambrosius doesn’t make a really big thing of graduating, and . . . you know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody talk about what they’re planning to do after they leave Oakhurst?” She frowned, wearing the same baffled expression Spirit was starting to become all-too-familiar with—as if thinking about life after Oakhurst was a concept that had never occurred to her before.
Spirit sighed. “Anybody have any idea of about how many alums come to the Alumni Days?” she asked hopefully.
“Twenty? Thirty?” Burke said. None of the three who’d been here for Alumni Days—Burke had been here for four of them, beating out Muirin by one and Addie by two—seemed to know.
“The point is,” Muirin said determinedly, “that Alumni Days is held during the week of the Summer Solstice—June 21—and that’s also the week that the students who take ‘early graduation’ leave. Surprise. And I’ve been making a list of all the kids I can remember who’ve just left—no matter what reason Oakhurst gave—and okay, I didn’t exactly keep track of when they went. But it looks like we’ve got them vanishing at least in the right months for this to have something to do with the Quarter Days and Fire Festivals. Ads, didn’t Jimmy Richardson leave last October?”
“He didn’t leave. He broke his leg the week before the Halloween dance. Down at the stables,” Addie said, sounding indignant. “Ms. Wood drove him down to Radial to get it x-rayed.”
“He never came back,” Muirin said simply, and the five of them looked at each other for a long moment.
“I broke my collarbone in the first game in the spring, when Blake Watson clotheslined me,” Burke said, looking stunned. “I made it to the sidelines, and Colin Harrington Healed me right back up. I played the whole second half. Why didn’t someone just Heal Jimmy?”
“Maybe there was . . .” Addie said, and stopped. She looked at the others, but Healing was a Fire Gift, and none of them were School of Fire.
“Far as I know,” Burke said, after a pause, “the only reason to not Heal somebody is if you’re afraid you might make it worse—or if you’re too tired. ‘Too tired’ wouldn’t be a reason not to Heal Jimmy. And a broken leg isn’t that complicated.” Burke wasn’t a Healing Mage, but he’d certainly been Healed often enough to know things like that.
“So there was something more than a broken leg wrong,” Addie said determinedly. “They don’t tell us everything. Why should they?”
“So we find out for sure,” Loch said. “Muirin said—the other day—that Oakhurst might . . . benefit . . . from people like me—or Addie—dying while we’re here. If that happens, you can bet it’s going to be investigated by somebody higher up than the cops in a no-horse town. And magic or no magic, everything will go a lot more smoothly with the right paperwork. A place like this has to keep records. It’s insured, certified by the County Health Department, has a state license to operate, is accredited at the state and national level—that’s a lot of paperwork. You can’t just pretend you filed all of it. Or maintain an illusion from here to the State Capitol for years.”
“So . . . what?” Spirit asked. “We’re looking for a book that says ‘There’s a Portal To Hell In The School Basement’ with a list of names in it and the dates the teachers threw them in?”
Loch coughed, unsuccessfully trying to hide a laugh. “More like old files on former students. Maybe even death certificates, if they’re admitting that anyone died here. At the very least, a better list of who ‘ran away’ from Oakhurst.”
“Or graduated early,” Burke said.
“Whatever that means,” Loch muttered.
“Like Tabitha Johnson and Ryan Miller,” Muirin added.
Thanksgiving was coming, and Spirit kept thinking about last year, when she’d still had a family. She remembered grumbling and griping through the whole day—they’d driven into town to volunteer at the local shelter to serve Thanksgiving dinner to a couple of hundred people, then come home to eat their own with a bunch of Mom and Dad’s hippy-dippy friends, all of whom brought weird “organic” casseroles. They hadn’t even had a real turkey—because so many of their guests were vegetarians—it had been Tofurky, and Spirit and Phoenix both hated that. And all she’d been able to think about all day was that she wished she had a normal life, with normal parents, where she could eat a normal Thanksgiving dinner, without arguing whether or not something was “ethical,” “vegan,” or “green,” with sugary cranberry sauce and an actual turkey, and pie and ice cream for dessert, and not have to listen to a bunch of people who thought that Woodstock Was Not Dead.
She’d give anything to be able to step back into that life again.
The week seemed to drag on forever. It was boring and terrifying at the same time: they had to behave exactly as they had been—right down to hanging out on IM at night—and they could never even hint to someone outside their group that they suspected there was something going on.
At the same time, they couldn’t let Oakhurst notice there was an actual them, either. Spirit had started out only suspecting that Oakhurst didn’t want you to make good friends—not the kind of friends you’d be drop-dead loyal to—and the more she looked around, the more hints she found that she was right.
Zoey Young and Jillian Marshall were the two girls who’d arrived at Oakhurst before Spirit, and they’d become close friends. Both of them—and Spirit—were in the same afternoon History of Magic class with Ms. Groves. Then Zoey got switched to the morning class, and Ms. Groves announced—in class, so everybody knew—that it was because Zoey was “more advanced.” Spirit knew that Jillian was the better magician. Jillian knew it, too. She stopped sitting with Zoey at meals.
When Spirit mentioned that to the others, Addie didn’t seem to see anything odd in it, and Spirit wondered if she was being overly paranoid. The truth was that Oakhurst rarely needed to meddle that much to keep all of them at each other’s throats. With all the competition going, it was hard to stay friends with someone. On Wednesday in kendo, she’d been sparring against Jenny O’Connell, and when she’d blocked with her shinai, it exploded into splinters and ash in her hands. Somebody had carefully burned the bamboo-slat sword to cinders from the inside out. Jenny backed off and let Spirit get another shinai.
Spirit had thought Jenny was being nice until she saw her laughing with Andy Hayes about it after class. Andy wasn’t taking kendo—but he was a Fire Witch. So much for being nice; Jenny had sabotaged her sparring session.
When Spirit wasn’t dealing with her classmates, or trying to be “normal for Oakhurst,” she was helping the others try to figure out what was going on. What she was actually figuring out was that this kind of double life left her feeling as drained as those first weeks of rehab had—when she was struggling to reclaim her own body. There were never enough hours in the day, and they weren’t much closer to figuring out what the “Whatever” was (Muirin’s name for it had stuck), either. They were guessing it was something that had to vanish with the dawn, but there were a lot of magical things that did that.
On the other hand, they were starting to develop a scarily long list of missing students.
Oakhurst Academy had opened almost forty yea
rs ago, according to Loch. They couldn’t exactly ask any of the proctors or the teachers about kids who’d disappeared from Oakhurst before they turned twenty-one, but Burke was well-liked and knew everyone—and he had a good memory. When he sat down and thought about it, he came up with something that startled all of them, even Muirin. At least two kids had left Oakhurst in the weeks around the Fire Festivals and Cross-Quarter Days for as far back as Burke could remember. And if it had been going on for the last four years, well, there was no reason to think it hadn’t been going on for the last forty years. They were all orphans. Who’d know—or care—if one of them vanished, so long as everything looked right on the surface? Like Loch said, if the paperwork was all in order . . .
Oh, there were dozens of explanations. Illness, injury, ran away, long-lost relative turned up, transferred to a different boarding school . . . kidnapped by space aliens, for all Spirit knew! The point was, Oakhurst was like a Roach Motel in reverse: kids checked out—and they never checked back in again.
The double life was exhausting and nerve-wracking, and the expected attendance at the football game was pretty much the last straw. As the victorious players trotted from the playing field, Spirit decided her plans for the rest of the afternoon would be curling up with a good book, and . . . curling up with a good book. The football game had just been a reminder that Oakhurst encouraged confrontation and conflict—five players had been carried from the field into the hands of the Healing Mages—as well as a reminder that there was nobody any of them could turn to for protection. And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was cold out there in the stands.
When she got back to her room, her IM was flashing and chiming with a request for chat. So not in the mood, Spirit thought, muting the sound and turning her computer around so she wouldn’t have to look at the nagging image on the screen.
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