Was Angelina Swanson one of the bad guys? She was one of the proctors, and most of the younger girls didn’t really like her: Angie was an Air Mage, and not above using her Gift to raise a wind that would scatter your schoolwork all over your room—or out a window—or make a door slam on your hand. Was Dylan Williams? He had a nasty streak a mile wide, and used his Mage Gift—Dylan was School of Earth; a Jaunting Mage—to make life unpleasant when he could: He’d grab your pencil or your calculator out of your hands in class, and you’d be the one who had to make a disturbance in order to get them back.
Or was it just too simpleminded to think that because someone was a creep they were actually evil? Maybe they should be worrying about the nice people at Oakhurst, like Kelly Langley and Ms. Smith. Only Ms. Smith was just too nice to be real.
Wasn’t she?
This was all enough to make Spirit want to crawl into a hole and never come out again.
We aren’t getting anywhere,” Spirit said tiredly.
It was a Tuesday evening. Thanksgiving was in just a few days. And more to the point, the last football game of the Oakhurst season was this Saturday, and Saturday evening—instead of a basketball game—the martial arts club was giving an exhibition.
“No, no,” Burke said. “You’re getting a lot better, Spirit. Honest.”
The two of them were down in the gym, wearing their gis. Lately the only time Spirit felt as if she could relax was when she was practicing with Burke, because at least then she was doing something “normal for Oakhurst,” and Burke’s gentle style of teaching was a relief after the constant high pressure from everyone else at Oakhurst.
“I don’t mean this,” she said, smiling wanly. “This is great. I mean everything else.”
She tilted her head back, trying to work some of the tired stiffness out of her neck muscles. It had been two weeks since she, Loch, and Muirin had made their midnight trip to the subbasement, and they were all regularly blowing off the “lights out” part of curfew in order to get their schoolwork done, because they were all spending hours in the Library trying to figure out what Nick’s last cryptic warning—if it was a warning—had meant.
“Oh,” Burke said, as if she’d reminded him of something he really wanted to forget. “We’re all doing our best, but . . . Muirin wants to go back down there and look for more clues. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“God, no.” As much as she wanted to find answers, the thought of going back there made Spirit shudder with fear.
“But unless we come up with something soon, I’m scared she will,” Burke added. “And I’m scared something will happen to her.”
“You like her, don’t you?” Spirit said impulsively.
“Uh.” Burke looked as startled as Spirit had ever seen him. He turned away, fiddling with the hem of his gi. “Not that way. I mean,” he added, obviously thinking he sounded rude, “she’s too smart for me, I guess. Always making jokes and, um, they’re not really the kind I like,” he finished awkwardly.
“She doesn’t mean anything by it,” Spirit said. “It’s just . . . I don’t think she knows any other way to be funny.” Muirin’s humor was cruel, and her jokes were always at someone else’s expense. She rarely had anything nice to say about someone—just as Burke never had anything bad to say about anyone.
“That kind of makes it worse,” Burke pointed out quietly. “I think she needs friends. I’m glad that you and Addie and Loch are willing to be her friends. And I don’t mind if she insults me. But I know she thinks I’m big and stupid.” He shrugged.
“You aren’t stupid,” Spirit said, because there was no point in denying that Burke was big. He was the kind of guy that, if his life were normal, the spotters would be knocking on his parents’ door right now and offering him a full scholarship if he’d come and be a linebacker on their college football team. “It isn’t stupid to not want to say mean—”
“Clever—” Burke corrected, grinning at her.
“Whatever,” Spirit said, waving her hand. “—things all the time,” she finished. “Especially around here.” But saying that only brought her thoughts back around to where they’d started. “We’ve got less than a month,” she said. “And we’re no further along at finding answers than we were two weeks ago.”
“Trouble is, Loch’s Gift isn’t strong enough to get us the answers we need, and Addie doesn’t have the right Water Gift,” Burke said.
Spirit bit her lip. She knew what Burke was getting at. Kenning could tell you a lot more than just where something was—it could tell you something’s whole history, and even a lot about the people who’d handled it. And one of the Gifts in the School of Water was Scrying—a Scrying Mage could see past, future, and other places in the here-and-now. Some Scrying Mages did it in dreams, some in waking visions, and some even used “focus objects” like the traditional crystal ball.
“We can’t bring someone else into this,” Spirit said, alarmed. “What would we tell them?”
“That’s something to think about after we decide if we’re going to risk it,” Burke said seriously. “I don’t know if I can see any other way, though. It’s that or give up—not forever, but before the Winter Solstice for sure. But right now what we have to do is make sure you get through that demo in one piece. C’mon now. No more slacking.”
Spirit groaned theatrically, shaking her head, and stepped toward him on the practice mat again.
Without Burke and Loch, she didn’t think she could have borne Oakhurst at all.
Thanksgiving was horrible.
There weren’t any classes that day, but in the morning there was a concert and in the afternoon (oh joy) there was going to be a play. Naturally Oakhurst had a Choral Society, an Orchestra, and a Drama Society, but you weren’t allowed to try out for any of them until you’d been at Oakhurst for at least six months.
So an hour after breakfast, when Spirit would really rather have been watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (she knew it was silly and childish, but she still loved it), she was herded into the Theater along with everybody else.
Spirit hadn’t been in the Theater before. It was in a part of the main house she hadn’t been in yet, and it looked like an actual theater, with velvet seats and a stage with curtains and everything. It was hard to imagine that Arthur Tyniger had actually built it as part of the original house, because there were seats for everyone, and who’d build a theater this large if they never used it?
The decoration was the same kind of “King Tut and Back-To-The-Land vibe in a blender with Titanic” design that she’d seen in most of the house: There was a big Egyptian design over the top of the stage, and Deco ornaments down the sides, and then—just to top it all off—there were cartouches all up the walls of the Theater on both sides, and painted inside them were scenes of elks and snow-covered mountains and railroad trains.
“My brain hurts,” Loch said very softly, as they walked in.
“You get used to it,” Muirin said. “Just keep your eyes closed. Like the guys who painted it did.”
Loch made a rude noise of appreciation at the joke and Spirit just rolled her eyes, much as Addie would have if she’d been there. But Addie was in the choral society, so she was performing this morning.
To Spirit’s mild surprise, they were separated in the theater—boys on one side of the center aisle, girls on the other. That was a little odd, considering that the administration didn’t make any attempt to keep them apart the rest of the time. She shrugged and took her seat. She wasn’t going to worry about it. There were too many things about this day she was trying not to think about already.
But: “First Thanksgiving is rough,” Muirin whispered to her when they were seated. “First Thanksgiving, first Christmas, first birthday—they all suck. A lot.”
“Yeah,” Spirit said. She blinked hard, refusing to give in to the prickle of tears that had welled up in her eyes. I wish I was home. Even for Tofurky.
Maybe it was just as well she wasn�
�t watching the parade. She remembered how she and Phoenix made fun of the floats and the has-been stars, and her parents would get indignant and make comments about “rampant commercialism.” And everyone would always bitch that after coming all that way, the band kids wouldn’t even get thirty seconds on-camera. And Mom or Dad would say, “Well in my day, we got to see the whole band routine instead of two minutes of commercials.” And—
She started to choke up just thinking about it, and riveted her attention on the curtain and stage. After a few more minutes of shuffling, everybody was seated. Then Mr. Henderson—Spirit knew he was the Music Teacher, even if she didn’t have any classes with him—came out from behind the curtain and announced the morning’s program. It sounded horribly boring.
It was.
Something could be done very well and still not be something you wanted to have anything to do with, and “an exciting exploration of nineteenth-century American composers” was really high on Spirit’s list. Of course the two-hour concert began and ended with the School Song. Unfortunately, the end version was the orchestra and chorus together, so Spirit had to listen to the words. All seven verses of them.
“Okay, now let’s go do something mind-rotting that actually belongs to this century,” Muirin said, bouncing to her feet as the green velvet curtain closed.
“I—I think I just want to be by myself for a while, okay?” Spirit said.
“Yeah, sure,” Muirin said. “Don’t do anything emo or anything, right?”
“I won’t,” Spirit said, forcing a smile.
She went back to her room for her coat—and to change from a skirt into slacks—and then went for a walk. Dinner would be served early today, at five instead of six, and because the kitchens would be running flat-out all day, lunch would be a make-your-own sandwich bar. She wouldn’t be missed.
She knew she should be seizing this opportunity to plan with the others, because Burke had been right: one way or another, they either had to take a risk to get more information, or admit they wouldn’t be able to do anything when the December “Tithing” came.
Let Muirin go back down into the subbasement to look for information? There were a lot of file cabinets down there, but what they probably held was more files like Camilla’s. Whoever was doing this wasn’t going to write down all the details of their Secret Plot and then leave them lying around loose.
Recruit another student who could find out what they needed by magic? Suppose they picked the wrong one? Suppose it was somebody who was already a member of the secret society?
Yes, that was what she should be doing today. And she was too miserable to even think of it.
Come on inside, Spirit,” Burke said. “You’ll freeze, and you know Mr. Wallis won’t accept a head cold as an excuse for staying out of the demo Saturday.” He shrugged out of his jacket and draped it around her. It was nice and warm, warm like Burke. It even smelled like him, clean, with a hint of nice soap.
“How’d you know where to find me?” she asked. “Magic?” She heard the anger in her voice and winced.
“Nah,” he said. “Useless old Combat Mage, remember? Muirin said you wanted to be alone, and, well, this is where I always came to be alone when I first got here.”
She blinked up at him. He was holding out his hand to her. She took it. It was warm even through her gloves. He pulled her easily to her feet. “Your coat—” she said.
“Keep it,” he said. “I’m tough. Besides, it isn’t that far back to the house.”
They walked out from under the bleachers. “Yeah,” Burke said, glancing back, “it’s a good place—you can’t be seen, you aren’t really that far from the house, you’ve got shelter from the wind . . .”
“Don’t make fun of me!” Spirit said sharply, pulling away.
Burke’s face reflected his honest confusion. “I wasn’t,” he said. “That’s why I chose it. I figured that might be why you chose it. Maybe you’re a Combat Mage, too. It’d be nice if there was another one here,” he said, a little wistfully.
“You’re the only one?” Spirit asked in surprise.
“Well, not the only one ever,” Burke said. “But the only one here in all the time I’ve been here.”
“Maybe I am,” Spirit said. “I’d like to be something.”
“You’d like to be home with your family,” Burke said. “So would everyone here. Even people like Muirin and Loch who didn’t really have families. And I’d like to be back with my foster family—right now, right this minute—and it’s still awful, even if I know I’ll get to see them again in a few years, when I can protect myself and them. And I know that makes me luckier than everybody else here. I have a family to go back to.”
“I think it would be worse,” Spirit said. To have something and not to have it would be the worst thing she could imagine. “But at least you write to them, don’t you?”
“No,” Burke said in a low voice. “No, I don’t. It wouldn’t be fair. Doctor Ambrosius told me that when I got here. He was right. If I wrote them, the people who—well, they might figure out—” He shrugged. “Hostages.”
Spirit slipped her hand back into his. She thought it was a horrible kind of fairness—and what was worse was that Burke had accepted it so completely. “We won’t let anything turn us against each other?” she said a little desperately. “Us five? No matter what happens—or what other people tell us? We won’t believe them? Promise?”
“I promise, Spirit,” Burke said in a low voice. “I’ll always believe in you.”
Every meal at Oakhurst was formal, and Spirit had actually gotten used to it. But Thanksgiving introduced a new element into Oakhurst’s “elegant dining” obstacle course. Place cards.
She’d gone back to her room to try to get warm, having only realized how cold she’d gotten once she got inside. She took a hot shower and stayed under the water until she was on the verge of being late, but she still had to dry her long blonde hair. When she got to the Refectory, half the kids were already seated, and as Spirit headed for her usual table, Angelina grabbed her by the arm.
“Not today, White. You’re over there. Don’t you read your e-mail?”
“Oh, give her a break, Angie, she’s new.” Kelly Langley walked over to them. “Seating’s semi-alphabetical on Thanksgiving and a few other days: It’s in your Orientation Manual. Boy-girl-boy-girl. You’re over there: T through Z.”
Spirit nodded and walked over to her assigned table. She realized, with faint despair, that she was seated between Dylan Williams and Brendan Wilson. She liked Brendan—but she’d rather have skipped the meal completely than sit beside Dylan.
Blake Watson smiled at her as she passed him on her way to her seat. He was nicknamed “Henry” because he was a Healing Mage, and Henry Blake had been a doctor on an old TV show. At least if I stab Dylan with a fork there’ll be help nearby, she thought. Although I ought to be worrying about Dylan stabbing me!
“T through Z” meant Zoey Young was on the other side of Brendan, and also that Loch and Muirin were a couple of tables away, sitting at the “S” table. Most of the kids at her table were “W”s, except for Alexis Zimmerman and Nadia Vaughn, though there were a handful of “T”s, too: Andrew Tate, Kiara Tyler, Christopher Terry, Mariana Thornton, Noah Turner, and Serenity Thompson (why did parents always give their kids such horrible names?). Spirit didn’t need the place cards except to find her own seat; she knew everybody at her table by at least their first name, because she’d been here almost three months now. Some of her fellow students she liked, and some of them she didn’t know more than to just say “hi” to in the hallways, and some of them (like Dylan) she actively disliked. But the ones you have to worry about are the ones who are out to kill you, Spirit reminded herself. And which ones are those?
She’d never had a flat-out bad meal at Oakhurst, though some of them had been pretty weird. Spirit tried not to think about what Mom had always called “Apology Turkey”—the real-turkey dinner she made sometimes the week after Th
anksgiving, though it wasn’t an actual Thanksgiving dinner, just turkey. When the servers started going around, Spirit realized this was going to be like Thanksgiving dinner in a movie, with everything clichéd and perfect, from the stuffing and gravy to the cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes to the servers asking everyone if they wanted dark meat or white.
It all tasted like sawdust to her, and after a bite of her turkey, she set her fork down. Fortunately, the one thing they didn’t do here was nag you about eating if you didn’t feel like it. Maybe that was because they knew there wasn’t any junk food to eat.
“Hey, if you don’t want it, just pass it over here,” Dylan said, elbowing her. Under the table, he was pushing his leg against hers, too, but Spirit couldn’t work up the energy to care.
“Hey, Dyl.” The girl speaking was Kylee Williamson. She was in the martial arts class, but Spirit didn’t know much about her beyond that. “Know what an Energy Mage can do?”
“What?” Dylan asked suspiciously.
Kylee favored him with a bright hard smile. “Anything she wants. So if you want to keep enough Gift to be able to Jaunt your toothbrush tonight, lay the hell off. Know how Dylan ended up here, Spirit?” she added.
“Shut up,” Dylan said. There was as much desperation as anger in his voice.
“I don’t really want to—” Spirit said. Whether she wanted to know or not, she knew Dylan would hate her for knowing—rather than just enjoying tormenting her, the way he did now.
“I think you ought to know. Everybody ought to know about Mister Dylan I’m-So-Hot Williams. See, our last names are so close that our files keep getting mixed up, so one day I got ahold of his. Family vacation right? Mom, dad, three kids—”
“Kylee, shut up,” Dylan hissed.
“You bring the proctors over here and I’m not going to be the one in trouble,” Kylee said. She took a big bite of cranberry sauce. “So they ditched him at an amusement park in Florida. Took the police three days to track them down. Found ’em all dead. They’d run off to commit suicide rather than have him around anymore.”
Shadow grail 1 Page 16