Slow, Spirit. We’re going half-speed. Let’s walk that block through one more time. And blessed salt will banish a wandering spirit,” Burke said reassuringly. “That’s in pretty much every tradition I’ve found. So that takes care of any possible ghosts.”
They couldn’t risk being seen together as a group anymore. With the winter break coming up, everybody at Oakhurst was excited and on edge—and some of the excitement was playful, and some of it was malicious, and it wouldn’t really matter either way if it made the teachers notice the five of them and decide to do something to break them up. But pairs didn’t come up as high on the Oakhurst radar as a group of five would. So Addie and Muirin were researching the best way to destroy the Wild Hunt if it was composed of elves, and Spirit and Loch were looking for a good way to banish a demonic force. Fortunately at Oakhurst, neither research project looked at all out of the ordinary to anyone who might notice it. They might even be able to use what they found for an extra-credit paper when this was over. Right now, though, an extra-credit paper was the last thing on Spirit’s mind, because even now none of them could stop doing everything they were officially supposed to be doing. And that meant homework, and extracurricular activities, and going to the Friday night basketball games. Spirit had begun to cherish the few hours a week she got to spend practicing her martial arts with Burke; it was starting to seem like the only chance she got to actually relax.
At least when she wasn’t worrying about how they were going to destroy the Wild Hunt.
“But I—Burke, how are you going to get anything like that?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from rising in a wail of despair. “You can’t go into Radial. And I don’t think that Doctor Ambrosius is an actual minister. Even if he’d—”
Burke shook his head at her, smiling gently. “Anyone who believes can bless salt, so long as they’re acting with respect and mean to do good with it. And I guess keeping folks from being murdered—and letting some poor spirits find their rest—counts as good.”
“I guess,” Spirit echoed, confused. Burke was the last person in the world she would have imagined to be a devout Christian—he certainly didn’t spend his time either quoting Bible verses at the drop of a hat or ranting about the evil of “witches” and “magic.” I suppose that wouldn’t go down too well at a school for magicians, she thought irreverently. And apparently Burke had read the “other” Bible, the one that contained such verses as: Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself . . .
How had he managed to keep Oakhurst from poisoning him? He’d been here longer than any of them.
“Penny for your thoughts?” Burke asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Spirit said, and grimaced. “I just hope taking out the elves will be as simple. Walk me through the block again?”
After a solid week of research—more search than research, as Addie said to Spirit one evening when Addie and Spirit were studying in Spirit’s room—Addie and Muirin had settled on iron (“cold iron” as it was called in all the folklore databases) to get rid of the Wild Hunt if it turned out to be composed of elves. As Addie explained (sounding more than a little frustrated, but if Oakhurst’s graduates were expected to deal with supernatural creatures, they hadn’t been given any hint of it yet), there were a number of different ways to simply protect yourself from elves, but that wasn’t what they were going to need. What they needed was a form of attack—something that would make elves go away—and for obvious reasons, there wasn’t much reliable information about things like that available. People in the past—especially non-magicians—had been more interested in protecting themselves from the powerful magical creatures than doing something that might make them angry.
“We found other methods that might work, but they either involve things we can’t get, or we couldn’t find clear enough information to risk using them,” Addie said, propping her chin on her hand. “So it’s too much of a risk.”
“Like what?” Spirit asked curiously.
Addie smiled briefly. “Well, there’s St. John’s Wort—you know, that stuff that comes in pills that’s supposed to cure just about everything? That’s supposed to work. Like garlic with a vampire. Only it’s not like we could get a truckload of it shipped in here in a week. And I’m not sure if it has to be fresh or dried or what. And then there’s bread.”
“Bread?” Spirit asked in disbelief.
Addie nodded vigorously. “Stale bread. I know! It seems ridiculous, but just about all the books and folklore databases say ‘stale bread.’ Only the only kind of bread we can get is out of the kitchens, and the books don’t say what kind or how much—and what if what we’ve got is the wrong kind? Nope. I’m sticking to iron. Now all we have to do is get enough of it,” Addie said, looking down at the pile of books. “And figure out what to do with it, because I’m pretty sure that just having it won’t be enough. But Murr says she’s got some ideas.”
“I hope so,” Spirit said in a low voice. She tried as much as possible not to think about what they were going to do; if getting yelled at by Mr. Wallis in martial arts class scared her, how was she ever going to go off and actually fight something for real?
“So how are you and Loch coming along?” Addie asked. “You’ve got demons.”
Spirit had managed to stop being startled by hearing sentences like that, although she still couldn’t decide whether they were funny or bizarre. “Loch says demons are the worst,” she said slowly, “because they’re powerful and evil by definition. But he says the good thing about demons—”
“Assuming there is anything good about demons,” Addie interjected, and Spirit smiled ruefully.
“—is that they’re also really vulnerable, if you can hit them just right.”
“You mean like with a spell?” Addie asked.
“Or something,” Spirit sighed. She was pretty sure that when she found out what the “or something” Loch would come up with was, she wasn’t going to like it.
I can’t do that!” she hissed at Loch. Spirit was keeping her voice low by habit—and a good thing, too, because she could get together with Addie in her dorm room, and with Burke in the gym, but the only place she could meet with Loch was either the Library or one of the student lounges, and the Library offered slightly more privacy.
“You have to,” Loch said simply. “You’re the key to making all of this work.” He tapped the cover of the very large, very dusty book. He’d spent the last several days copying drawings and paragraphs of text out of it—and then double-checking them everywhere else he could. “We don’t know which demon-or-demons we’re dealing with, or if there are any demons at all. If we did know, it would be a lot easier. But whatever the Wild Hunt is, if it’s demons, this should work. It’s sort of a General Purpose Dismissing Spell, and what it will do is send a demon back to Hell. It comes in two parts: a spell-trap, and a spell. Once the demon-or-demons is inside the spell-trap, the spell has to be read out, and that will make the spell-trap send whatever’s in it back to Hell. So one of us has to be ready to decoy the demon-or-demons into the spell-trap . . . and the other one has to be ready to work the spell.”
“I—But—Why me?” Spirit demanded, starting to get angry. “You know damned well I don’t have any magic!”
“I know damned well you do—or you wouldn’t be here at Oakhurst,” Loch retorted just as hotly. “And we’d just better hope your Mage Gift doesn’t show up in the next week, or we are really, really in trouble. Look. Based on everything I’ve researched, a demon will sense magic, so it will sense me. That makes me the logical one to be bait. It-or-they will chase me to the spell-trap, and the spell-trap will hold it-or-them for a few seconds all by itself. That’s where you come in. I’ll set the spell-trap up in that little stand of woods up by the boundary stone. There’s less chance of somebody else coming across it ahead of time. Then—that night, when the Wild Hunt comes—you have to wait by the spell-trap for the demon-or-demons to
enter it, and as soon as it-or-they’re caught, you do the spell. It-or-they won’t know you’re there, because your Mage Gift hasn’t shown up yet. That’s why it has to be you, and why it can only be you.”
“But Ms. Groves always says that the reason spells don’t work most of the time is because non-magicians do them,” Spirit blurted out, feeling more than a little trapped and desperate. “If ordinary people can’t make spells work, what makes you think I can?”
“Because you’re a magician,” Loch repeated patiently. “The power is in you. There’s no such thing as a false positive for magical power, okay? Just trust me. You can do it, Spirit. But you’ll need to learn it by heart—and every word has to be exactly right.”
Oh my God, no pressure, right? Spirit thought for the ten thousandth time since she’d come to Oakhurst. What if Loch was wrong? What if she did something wrong?
That was too unbearable to even think about. If there were demons—If they followed Loch—If she did something wrong—
Then both she and Loch were dead.
But did she have a choice?
“Okay,” she said, resigned. “Give it to me.” She was going to say she’d try, but then stopped herself.
If they turned out to really need this spell—and she screwed it up—it wouldn’t just be her and Loch who’d be dead. Once the demons got through with her and Loch, they’d be mad, and they’d go hunting, and they’d find whoever was out that night.
They’d all be dead.
The next several days passed in a blur for Spirit. Fortunately she had a good excuse when Ms. Smith took her aside after Math Class and asked her if she was feeling okay. Spirit forced a smile and said she was feeling a little down because of the holidays. It hurt to use her parents’ memories like that—as part of a lie—but she knew they’d have understood. Especially Mom. Mom had always agreed with Davy Crockett: “Be sure you’re right, then go ahead.” Mom had always had a saying for every situation. Spirit wondered which one she would have used this time, and knowing that she’d never know—that she’d never know what saying Mom would have applied in any situation for the rest of her life made Spirit want to lie down and howl.
But she was too busy.
The spell Loch needed her to learn was long. And it wasn’t in English. Most of it was Latin—which was okay, since she had Latin three days a week now—but a lot of the words in it weren’t even Latin.
And it wasn’t as if she had any more free time than she did before. She actually had less. The Christmas tree had been brought into the Main Entry on the twelfth, and the whole enormous room—including the balcony—was garlanded in pine boughs. There’d been a lottery to see who’d get to decorate the tree and the garlands, and of course it had been Spirit’s bad luck to be chosen, so there went more precious free time, because this was Oakhurst, and it wasn’t as if you could just hang a couple plastic balls around and throw on some tinsel and call it done. Most of the ornaments were glass, and looked as old as the house, and each of them was probably worth more than the White family’s entire decorated tree.
In addition, everyone in the school was learning Christmas carols, because they’d be singing them every Sunday from here to Christmas, and on the twenty-fourth, too, when presents from Oakhurst were handed out. There’d be a few other presents, too; because while they weren’t allowed to shop on the Internet even if they had money, there was no rule against making gifts for their friends, so Spirit had been making book covers and matching bookmarks, since they did a lot of crafts in Art Class and Ms. Holland was willing to let them have stuff for special projects. Some of the other girls had seen her working and offered to trade for some to give as gifts, so Spirit was doing that, too, since it would look odd if she didn’t.
She didn’t dare do anything that would look odd.
The most frustrating thing about the so-called vacation was that everyone got extra-heavy homework assignments and “special projects” to do during their week off, just as if they weren’t already snowed under with homework all the rest of the year. That at least Spirit could ignore—there’d be time enough after the twenty-first to do it. Memorizing this spell was more important. Because if she didn’t memorize it perfectly, it wouldn’t matter whether she’d done her homework or not.
And Oakhurst seemed determined to present her with the whitest of White Christmases; because it hadn’t stopped snowing once in the past seven days.
How are we going to get out of the school without being noticed? Spirit thought, staring out her window in anguish. She thought she knew now why so many kids preferred second floor rooms—the windblown snow had already drifted as high as her windowsill. Even if they could manage to walk through it, they’d leave footprints that would be visible for miles.
Someone else is going to have to come up with a solution for that one. I’ve got enough to do with this, she thought grimly. Jaw set, she reached under her mattress and pulled out the sheet of paper that held the written-out spell.
Today was December eighteenth.
She had three more days.
From the end of the day on Friday—when classes were over for an entire week—the entire student body took to the great (and cold) outdoors. Even kids who’d loudly complained about the weather from the fall of the first snowflake spoke excitedly of their plans. And no wonder: winter at a school for magicians was a whole different season from winter anywhere else.
The first inkling Spirit had of that fact was when she looked up from her study of the spell on Saturday to discover that the snowdrift outside her window had vanished.
It hadn’t melted. It had been removed. The snow looked as if someone had come along with a giant ice-cream scoop and just scooped it all away. What the heck?
Maybe the snow’s demonic, she thought, faintly dazed. She’d certainly been doing the Spell of Dismissal enough times to banish every demon in the entire state of Montana. But there wasn’t any time to really ponder the question. It was nearly lunchtime, and she couldn’t skip going to the Refectory, no matter how little she felt like eating. It wasn’t that anybody would actually care if she skipped a meal, but Kelly would be sure to ask her if anything was wrong, and . . . Spirit wasn’t sure she could survive anybody being nice to her. Not right now.
It was just as well she did decide on lunch in the Refectory, because she received her answer to the puzzle of the missing snowdrift.
“—not enough snow yet to make a proper rink,” Burke was saying to Loch as she arrived, “but everyone’s impatient, so the Jaunting Mages are grabbing it from everywhere.”
“You wouldn’t think you’d need any Ice Mages in this weather,” Loch said. His skin was red with cold. He must have been outside all morning, Spirit thought, and repressed a flash of irritation. Why shouldn’t he goof off? Loch doesn’t have a whole spell to learn by heart!
“But the water just won’t freeze fast enough—no matter how cold it is out there,” Addie said. “So the Jaunting Mages help the Air Mages pile up a big snowdrift, and the Fire Witches turn it into water. Then a Water Witch—or two—holds it steady until an Ice Mage can turn it into ice.”
“Presto—instant skating rink!” Loch said. “Wow, that’s some trick!”
“Not quite ‘presto,’ Loch,” Addie said, smiling. “But they built the rim for the rink this morning and filled in a lot of it. Once there’s a solid block of ice, it won’t matter if it warms up outside—and a Fire Mage can just melt the top when the surface gets too cut up.”
“Better than a Zamboni,” Burke added lamely.
“Not that I’d call fifteen below zero warm,” Muirin muttered, shivering ostentatiously. She darted a questioning look at Spirit.
“Me, either,” Spirit said unconvincingly. How could they all sit here and talk about ice skating rinks when in a few days they’d all be . . . well, be facing something horrible. Or . . . Addie looked cool, as usual. And Loch . . . gah, she just wanted to strangle him! And Muirin.
At least Burke didn’t loo
k as if he didn’t have a single worry on his mind. He just looked like he was doing his very best to pretend he didn’t. She remembered what he’d said the night he’d taken her out to see the ice sculptures: “I hate it. I hate lying. I hate going to bed at night knowing I’m keeping secrets from Doctor Ambrosius.”
And it would be nice to think it would be over soon, but it wouldn’t be. This was only the beginning.
The morning of the Winter Solstice dawned bright and clear. Spirit watched the sun rise from a chair looking out her window. She’d been completely unable to sleep.
Full Moon tonight. Plenty of light. Chris Terry was a Weather Mage, and he’d said on Monday it would be clear for the next few days, to the disappointment of everyone who wanted more snow for the skating rink, and the Winter Carnival, and all the other things that were utterly meaningless to Spirit right now. Chris’s Gift wasn’t accurate past seventy-two hours, but that made him more accurate than the National Weather Service. And Spirit didn’t need to know what the weather would be like on Christmas. Just tonight.
It’s going to be a beautiful day, she thought, and felt like bursting into tears. As she got to her feet, she heard the crackle of paper from the pocket of her robe. The spell. Maybe I should? . . .
But no. If she hadn’t learned it by now, she wasn’t going to. She carried the incriminating sheet of paper into the bathroom, tore it into tiny scraps, and flushed it down the toilet.
At breakfast everyone in the Refectory was so noisy the proctors actually had to stand up and ask them to quiet down a couple of times. Spirit had managed to forget the Winter Dance was tomorrow until Brendan asked her who she was going with.
“To the dance? The Winter Dance?” he asked in disbelief as she just stared blankly.
“Oh, Spirit’s going with Burke!” Muirin announced, bursting into a peal of mocking laughter. “Spirit likes having her feet stepped on!”
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