Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

  “Is that what you really think?” she finally choked out. “That I’m acting out because I don’t have magic?” She stared hard into his eyes until he was the one who had to look away. “Well. Then what about this: Someone set up all those kids as sacrifices to the Hunt. It didn’t get here all the way from Ireland or Wales or whatever by itself. And someone opened the wards so it could get onto the school grounds. And whoever that was, we never found them. Do you think they’re going to stop now? Do you think the Administration can find them? What if it is the Administration—or some of it?”

  “I—” It was Loch’s turn to be at a loss for words. “I don’t know—”

  “Whoever called the Hunt has been doing it for years, Loch! And Doctor Ambrosius hasn’t figured out who they are, either! He would have stopped them a long time ago if he had!”

  “We don’t know that—” Loch said weakly.

  “Yes we do!” she snapped. “We know it had to be someone inside the school to take down the wards, because they were taken down and put back up—not broken. So—if you’re right, and the teachers are handling this and not telling us—who on the staff isn’t here anymore?”

  “Uh … We wouldn’t notice someone gone from the kitchen or maintenance—” Loch said helplessly.

  “Oh, give me a break,” Spirit said in contempt. “You think someone from the kitchen or maintenance is that good a magician? We don’t even know that any of them even are magicians—do we?”

  He withered a little under her glare. “I— Um— Well—”

  Now she was the one crossing her arms over her chest. “I’ll take that as a ‘no’—that the Housekeeping Staff aren’t magicians. And none of the teachers or the Admin staff have ‘left to pursue other opportunities’ in the last three days. So? Still think I’m creating crazy conspiracies to get attention?” It made her sick with anger to think he’d actually accused her of that.

  “Look, just cut Addie and Muirin some slack,” he finally said. “It’s not like they—we—aren’t cutting you plenty.”

  She started to snap back at him, then forced herself to nod. As much as it galled her to admit it, there was some justice in that. All four of them had put up with a lot from her since she’d arrived at Oakhurst. And she had to admit they’d all been on board with finding out what was hunting Oakhurst students and putting a stop to it.

  “Having a good Monopoly game is making Addie happy. Stuffing herself with cookies and candy until she’s sick and babbling on about what she’s going to wear to the prom is making Muirin happy,” Loch went on. “It’s Christmas, for heaven’s sake, Spirit. Give them at least one day off from being The Mystery Gang. You owe them that.”

  Her throat suddenly filled with a big lump. “As long as I don’t have to be the goofy mascot,” she managed to whisper.

  Loch gave her his sunniest smile—looking relieved, she thought. “Nah. I always thought of you as more the ‘cute cheerleader’ type.”

  All she could do after that was nod, and let him lead her back over to the soda table, and fill her arms with cold cans.

  She followed him back to their table, still gulping back tears of grief and humiliation, and if she couldn’t manage to smile and chatter cheerfully, she could at least pay attention to the game to give Addie a good one, and nod when Muirin went on about what an ordeal and a torture session the New Year’s Ball was going to be.

  Because, yeah, Loch was right.

  She did owe them that much.

  But they owed her, too.

  * * *

  The next day—Boxing Day—was the day when the students at Oakhurst traditionally exchanged their “personal” gifts with each other. Spirit had made book covers and matching bookmarks out of felt. Privately, she thought the gifts were a little cheesy, but they were all she could manage, and she’d wanted to give her friends something, at least. When the other girls on her floor had seen Spirit’s bookmark-and-book-cover combinations, some of them had asked her to make some for them. She’d done it, even though it had taken precious time from figuring out how to destroy the Wild Hunt, because she’d been terribly conscious of needing to behave as if everything was completely normal. And since the student body at Oakhurst had a flourishing barter economy going, it had meant she at least had some pretty and colorful paper to wrap her gifts for her friends in.

  By prearrangement, the five of them met in their favorite student lounge, the one beside the Library. Spirit had been worried she’d receive gifts far more elaborate and expensive than the ones she gave, but the one good thing about the draconian way Oakhurst ran things was that nobody could give expensive presents, even if they had a lot of money waiting for them in the outside world. So Loch gave her a flash drive full of music, which surprised and touched her, since she missed her music collection, and Loch had taken pains to track down (and trade for) most of her favorite songs, and Addie (who knitted) gave her a scarf that wasn’t cream, gold, or brown: It was knitted out of soft wool and striped in every color of the rainbow. Spirit was surprised to get a second gift from Muirin, as Muirin had already given Spirit her Christmas gift a few days earlier. But now Muirin presented her with one of the Oakhurst blouses, which would have been an insulting kind of gift if Muirin hadn’t covered it with intricate embroidery on the collar, the cuffs, the placket, and the back yoke. Spirit was grateful, but she couldn’t help wondering if it was some subtle Muirin-type commentary on her fashion sense.

  Burke gave her a necklace. He’d made it in Wood Shop, he told her after she opened it: It was a pendant in an oval shape, about two inches long, made with elaborate marquetry work and polished to a mirror smoothness.

  “Figured you might like to have something to wear that, well, wasn’t Oakhurst-y,” he said awkwardly.

  “I love it. I do,” she answered, reaching out to give him an impulsive hug.

  Muirin applauded mockingly—drawing irritated hisses from the other kids in the lounge, since even on Boxing Day there were always people studying—and Burke pulled away, blushing.

  “Um, so, it’s kind of stuffy in here, isn’t it?” he said clumsily. “Want to go outside and—uh, look at the stuff?”

  “What, go out where it’s cold enough to freeze your assets off and pretend the snow statues haven’t been there for the last three weeks?” Muirin mocked. “No, thanks. I am staying right here where it is nice and warm.”

  “I—” Loch began, and to her astonishment, out of the corner of her eye Spirit saw Addie’s elbow connect with Loch’s ribs, hard and fast. After what had happened Christmas Day, it was actually gratifying to see Loch on the receiving end of a “shut up” elbow. But why?…

  “You two go out and freeze your toesies off in the nice healthy subzero air,” Addie said cheerfully, as Loch gave her a look of blank astonishment. “The rest of us will keep the fire going for you.”

  Burke hadn’t missed the byplay, either, Spirit noticed—the color was back in his cheeks. If she’d met him back in Indiana (while she’d still been going to public school, before Dad decided the School Board wasn’t fit to raise hyenas, let alone set curricula), she’d never have given him a second glance. Sure, he was really good-looking—in a football-player way—but he was also quiet, bashful, self-effacing, and devout. So not what she’d been looking for in a boyfriend!

  But that had been when she was fourteen, not almost seventeen. When she’d still had a family, when magic was something you only found in books, before she’d come to Oakhurst and found out she’d been drafted into a wizard war and there were people out to kill her. She hadn’t made up her mind about whether she wanted any boyfriend at all—let alone Burke Hallows—but now she didn’t automatically dismiss him as too boring to be likable.

  Burke walked her down to the Entry Hall, where the two of them separated to get their coats—and in Spirit’s case, to get every other warm thing she could think of to bundle up in, because nothing in her life had prepared her for the cold of a Montana winter—and then met up again just insi
de the front door. Most of the Winter Carnival was on what would be the “front lawn” of any other place, but in the case of Oakhurst, it was the “front acreage.” It was almost as if the school was trying to shout to any (rare) visitor, “Look! See our Happy Students! See them Frolic at the Winter Carnival! And see how they are so much better at this than your kids are!”

  No wonder everyone from Radial hates us, she thought sourly. A few visits to Oakhurst and they’d have to be thinking we’re a bunch of stuck-up rich kids. She supposed they were lucky that Radial was twenty miles away as the crow flew—an odd expression she’d never understood—and thirty-five by road—when the road was even passable, which it really wasn’t for a lot of the winter. There was a reason everybody at Oakhurst used the private railroad set up by Arthur Tyniger, the nineteenth-century railway tycoon who’d built the place.

  She stepped out the front door, blinking at the bright glare of sun on snow. When she’d gotten here four months ago, the front lawn—the Oakhurst literature referred to it as the “Grand Lawn,” big whoop—had been as green and flawless as AstroTurf. When it started to snow, it had been just the same (only white)—a smooth sloping expanse leading down to the front gate.

  Now? Now it had been turned into a showpiece, a set piece, and once again Spirit wondered just who the Oakhurst Staff and Faculty were trying to impress, because really, there wasn’t anybody here but them. Even the Alumni didn’t visit until summer. Despite that, it was almost obscene, how professional—how posed—the scene before her looked.

  First of all, the whole Carnival had been carefully laid out beforehand by the teachers, with each piece of the Carnival to be placed exactly so. None of the ice sculptures were allowed to be an inch off the centers of their allotted spaces, and they all had to face the carefully sculpted and groomed avenue that threaded through them. Spirit supposed (grudgingly) the avenue was a good idea, since it was carpeted with pale blue AstroTurf so no one slipped and broke something. The thing was, Spirit had seen pictures of professional competitions in Sapporo and Montreal that hadn’t looked any better than this, and she wished she could stop wondering what invisible watchers Oakhurst was trying to impress, but she couldn’t. Maybe they’re just trying to suck all the fun out of it, she thought. Loch liked to quote something he called “The Litany Against Fun” (it was from a parody of a science fiction novel he liked): “I must not have fun. Fun is the time-killer. I will forget fun. I will take a pass on it. When fun is gone only I will remain—I, and my will to win…”

  She wondered if Oakhurst had read the same books, because not only was the Carnival laid out with all the spontaneity of a chessboard, all the kids who had to do the Carnival (three-person teams, whose Gifts were mostly from the School of Air and the School of Water, though there were a few Fire Witches involved) were given a theme and not allowed to deviate from it. This year’s theme was “Famous Statues and Monuments” (Spirit had seen it because Addie had to compete, of course) and the handout had been very clear that the statue of the little Belgian boy taking a whiz—the Manneken Pis—was so not on the list. So there was the armless Venus de Milo, and the headless Winged Nike (Addie’s team had done Laocoön and His Sons, but Spirit was already pretty much on board with the idea that Addie was a major-league overachiever), the statue of the Little Mermaid from Copenhagen, the Sphinx from Giza (with its face miraculously restored, though Spirit thought it would have been more of a challenge to reproduce the battered and eroded version), the Lincoln Memorial from Washington D.C., and—probably the most ambitious of all, because of the almost-unsupported “zodiacal zone” ring—the reproduction of Prometheus, who loomed over the Oakhurst skating rink just like he did over the one at Rockefeller Center.

  In keeping with Oakhurst’s general suck-all-the-fun-out-of-this tradition, there was a little plinth in front of each statue, and each plinth had a waterproof notebook on it, and each notebook contained a five to ten page essay about the original statue, with the pages inserted neatly in clear plastic sleeves to protect them from the weather.

  Not that anyone was reading them.

  Behind Prometheus (extending out toward the side lawn) was the maze, a duplicate in snow of the hedge maze at Hampton Court Palace. (Spirit knew the Jaunting Witches teleported snow from all over the place so there’d be enough for everyone to work with at Oakhurst, and frankly, she thought it was a wonder there was any snow left on the ground anywhere in McBride County.) And on the other side of the maze was the snow castle.

  It could have been fun. Even with all the regimentation, all the rules, all the grading as a class assignment, it still could have been fun. But even now, the teachers prowled among the statues taking notes, and watching the skaters, and she just knew they were even being graded on that—though she couldn’t imagine what the grades were in. Advanced sense of balance? Intermediate speediness? Whether or not the Chicago Blackhawks would like to recruit you?

  I am so not getting out there on the ice, she decided.

  “So, um, you want to skate?” Burke asked.

  She did her best not to facepalm. Guys! Every time they started to learn to read minds, they always got it completely wrong! “Not with the teachers watching,” she said truthfully. “Can we just walk and pretend to read the essays? Maybe get lost in the maze?”

  “Sure!” Burke said, more cheerfully than her suggestion really called for.

  The two of them walked along the AstroTurfed path, pausing at each plinth to leaf through the essay books as if they were reading them. Even though Burke was carefully not touching her—not even getting too close—he kept glancing over at her with this soft puppy-dog look, and she was starting to get the idea that he was working his way up to talking about Feelings. She wasn’t ready for that conversation right now, and she wasn’t really sure whether she ever wanted to have that conversation, but the thought of what it might involve gave her a warm fluttery feeling in her stomach. She wondered what he was going to say. She wondered what she’d say back. She wondered if—

  “Hey! Burke! Spirit!”

  Oh … damn. So much for finding out what Burke’s feelings were. Or hers, for that matter. It was Kelly Langley—one of the nicer proctors—but she wasn’t alone. She was more-or-less herding another girl along, kind of like a determined sheepdog with a stubborn sheep. Kelly was a Fire Witch, so she was out in only a jacket and a knitted gold Oakhurst cap, but the girl with her was bundled up to the eyebrows in so-new-it-crackled Oakhurst gear with no personalizing touches. Her shoulders were hunched, her collar was up, and her face was buried in the scarf that swaddled her almost to her ears.

  New girl? Spirit wondered. Belatedly she realized she’d heard the train during breakfast this morning. But there hadn’t been any kind of an announcement.…

  Well, maybe they never make an announcement. How would I know? Loch and I were the last kids to come here. There hasn’t been anyone after us.…

  “This is Elizabeth Walker,” Kelly said briskly. “She just got here this morning. Lizzie, this is Burke Hallows and Spirit White.” Spirit tried not to roll her eyes; poor kid, whether or not she liked the nickname “Lizzie,” she was going to be stuck with it now.

  “Hello,” came the voice faintly from behind the wool.

  “I need to report to the coach, so I’ll just leave her with you. I know you can show her the rest of the place,” Kelly said, and without even waiting to hear them agree, she turned abruptly and strode off, not quite running, but at a “walking” pace that would leave most people gasping in her wake.

  The three of them just stared awkwardly at one another for several minutes. Spirit couldn’t see much of the new girl, just brown eyes and light brown hair that looked as if it was probably long. She was an inch or two taller than Spirit—which meant she’d tower over Muirin and be just about Addie’s height—and in her stiff heavy coat it was hard to tell whether she was plump or thin. After the silence had stretched so long Spirit wondered if they were all going to stand there silently un
til they froze, Elizabeth said, in a wispy voice, “You don’t have to go to all that trouble. I can find my room from here.”

  “No, it’s okay, Elizabeth.” Spirit was half amused, half miffed to see that Burke was putting on his best “big, friendly dog” routine. “We don’t mind, do we, Spirit?”

  “I only got here this fall myself,” she admitted, a little relieved because Elizabeth’s arrival had saved her from the Feelings conversation, and a little irritated for the same reason. Then, for some reason even she couldn’t fathom, she suddenly blurted out, “I hate this place. I’d give anything to—”

  Then she stopped. Don’t drag anyone else into this mess. It was almost Loch’s voice Spirit heard in her imagination, but Loch wouldn’t say anything so sensible. Especially since you don’t even know her yet.

  Elizabeth nodded in a jerky sort of way. “It’s not home,” she said softly. “And it won’t ever be. And Doctor Ambrosius…” She cut off whatever she was going to say, glancing skittishly from side to side as if she was looking for something. Or someone.

  “Did he give you the ‘Oakhurst is your family’ lecture?” Spirit asked, bitterly.

  Another jerky nod. Burke snorted rudely, surprising Spirit. She kept forgetting that Burke wasn’t the rah-rah “Be True To Your School” guy he seemed so much as if he ought to be.

  “I— They were all out on snowmobiles. Out on the lake. I didn’t go ’cause I had Hamthrax. Um … flu. You know? The ice was supposed to be really thick. It was really thick! There were fishing shacks out there with ice-holes a foot or more thick!” Elizabeth’s voice shook, and when she put her hands up to her face to push the scarf out of the way, Spirit could see her hands were shaking, too. Spirit felt her own grief welling up in her throat again, and she felt a fierce uprush of pity for Elizabeth. “They said it was a freak warm spot that thinned the ice, and you couldn’t see under the snow. The temperature was twenty below. They didn’t have—” Her voice broke in a sob that called answering tears from Spirit’s eyes. “They didn’t have a chance in the water—”