Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

  And finally, at last, dessert. Bananas Foster, which she had never heard of, and which a waitperson made at the table with a lot of fanfare and flames. It turned out to be bananas in rum with sugar and cinnamon, cooked and set on fire and served on ice cream. Muirin’s eyes just lit up when she saw it, though she didn’t act the way she usually did when presented with dessert. It was good, better than the snails and the goose liver.

  Every course came with a change of plates, different silverware, and a change of drinks. Not real wine, fruit juice, but it wasn’t sweet, it was dry and tart. Red with the meat, white with the fish, sparkling with the duck.

  She was glad it wasn’t wine, she’d have been drunk.

  They did get coffee, real coffee, with dessert. She was grateful for that, she needed the caffeine along with the sugar jolt. She never knew eating could be such hard work!

  She was more than ready to go back to her room, pull on a sweatshirt, and watch a movie, but the evening wasn’t over yet.

  Never mind that they had been sitting there for three hours, from seven until almost ten!

  Ms. Campion signaled the end of dinner by putting her napkin on the table and waiting for one of the boys to come pull her chair out. Loch picked up on what she was waiting for first, of course. It was then that Spirit saw that Loch not only had a tux, he had a full tux with tails, like something Fred Astaire would have worn! And he looked, well, amazing in it. He pulled out Ms. Campion’s chair and she stood up. “There will be about half an hour for you to freshen up,” she said. “Then the dance will start at ten-thirty. As always, you are expected to be prompt.”

  “Thank you, Ms. Campion,” they all murmured; in the rest of the room, similar gettings-up and goings-out had started. Loch pulled out Spirit’s chair, while Burke got Addie’s and Muirin’s.

  Spirit would have liked nothing better than to go back to her room, pull off the dress, and pretend she was sick. But … no … there was no way she could get away with that.

  Bleah.

  * * *

  The dance was, of course, in the gym/auditorium. The decorations from the Winter Dance were back up, along with some balloons and streamers. She’d been in a kind of numb state at the time, and couldn’t appreciate them then; now, well, on the one hand, they were pretty, all blue and white and glitter and crystals. But on the other hand, they looked cold, and not so much festive as “professional.” Like this was some kind of theater or movie set, and they were all extras who were actually working and supposed to pretend they were celebrating.

  Well, yeah. We are pretending. This wasn’t our idea of a good time. Obviously if the kids had their way, this would just be a flashier version of a school dance. More and better refreshments, maybe costumes. Certainly louder music. And everyone would be using their powers, too.

  The music tonight, however, was all Big Band, and none of it was swing or any kind of lively—it was kind of what you’d hear at an Old Folks Home “dance,” Spirit thought.

  People are going to go to sleep in the middle of dancing, she thought, which would be kind of amusing actually. She could just see it. Like a bunch of zombies.

  Use of powers was completely forbidden. The teachers had been so adamant about that, without specifying what would happen if you dared try, that Spirit figured even the most rebellious were pretty cowed.

  All she could figure was that this was supposed to be more “practice” for the leading roles in society they were all supposed to take when they graduated. You had to pretend you liked all the food, pretend this sort of music was your idea of a good time, because people were watching you, and if you didn’t fit in, you wouldn’t be invited back or to the private dinners where important things got done. Well, if this was what being a lead in society was like, she would be perfectly happy to go work at Mickey D’s for the rest of her life.

  For a fleeting moment she wondered just what she was supposed to do when she graduated.

  Assuming I survive.

  Unless Muirin and Addie were right and there was a big pile of money waiting for her somewhere because of insurance, it wasn’t as if she had any money for college. Where was she supposed to go? What was she supposed to do? The others who didn’t have money, well, they had powers, and there weren’t any rules out there in the world telling them they couldn’t use them. So they would, of course. And that made her think about something else; sure, there were plenty of honest ways to use your powers, but there were more that weren’t. How many Shadewalkers were master thieves for instance? Or spies?

  But, of course, she didn’t have any powers.

  Maybe she would have to work at Mickey D’s for the rest of her life. She had a fleeting vision of herself serving burgers, living in a trailer …

  Strangely, that fleeting vision almost seemed more appealing than being here.

  She shook off the mood and walked all the way into the gym. There were more little tables set up around the dance floor, also with little name-plaques on them, but it was clear when Spirit spotted her that Muirin had somehow managed to swap a bunch so the gang got a table in a corner. Muirin was putting the last of the name-plaques on the table when Spirit saw her; Muirin looked up at her as she hesitated, just inside the door, and waved at her. With relief, she pulled the wrap around her shoulders and joined them.

  It turned out that the refreshments were pretty sparse—but then again, only someone like Murr-cat would have room for any kind of snacks after that dinner. There was punch and there were soft drinks—but not in cans or bottles, you had to ask the “bartender” for one and you only got a cup at a time, unless you were a boy, getting a drink for a girl, too. The boys were supposed to do that. The girls were not supposed to do the same.

  There were shiny gold cardboard tiaras for the girls and shiny black cardboard top hats for the guys, and noisemakers all bunched up in the centers of the tables, waiting, but hardly anybody even looked at those. No one was wearing them.

  “Welcome to our joyous celebration,” Muirin said, straight-faced. “Happy New Year. Be festive if it kills you.”

  Now that she wasn’t concentrating on eating and making sure she did all the right things with the right silverware, Spirit got a chance for a good look at the other gowns, starting with Addie’s. It was strapless, with a chiffon scarf, corset-like top, and huge, flowing chiffon skirt, all in a pale ice blue. Like Muirin’s, it was pretty obvious that this hadn’t come from the Little Closet of Horrors, either. Addie didn’t wear jewelry, though she had matching silk flowers in her hair, and not the kind you got at a discount store; these would have looked real, except for the color. Bird-of-paradise flowers didn’t come in blue—though, of course, if you had the right powers, you could turn them blue.

  As she looked at the other girls sitting down or milling around, it was really obvious who had gowns of their own, and who had been stuck with the Closet. Poor Elizabeth was one of the latter, bundled into an ill-fitting seafoam horror that made her skin look yellow, and bunched up around her waist. It made her look fat, which was pretty hard to do, considering how slender she was. Elizabeth wasn’t sitting down; she kind of hovered at the edge of the crowd as if she wasn’t sure what to do.

  It occurred to Spirit at that point that, unless some of the others had made their dresses—she supposed that was possible; after all, there was a theater group, and a costume shop, so there had to be sewing machines—this was a good way to tell who had money and who didn’t. Anyone who could have a real formal clearly did.

  Judging by the lack of Ugly, most of the kids, the girls, anyway, had money.…

  “Do I get to keep this?” she asked Muirin. “The dress, I mean.”

  Muirin shrugged. “Put it in your closet. If they don’t demand it back, it’s yours. I don’t suppose you know how to sew?” she added out of the blue.

  Spirit flushed, because … well, that was one of the things her mom had insisted she learn along with her homeschooling. Most of her clothing was homemade. No, not was, had been, bec
ause it all burned up in the fire. The last two years before the accident she’d been making all of her own clothes rather than suffer her mom’s tastes. The only thing they’d ever bought was blue jeans. “Uh, yeah…” she said. “Pretty well. I mean, not like you, but I can do basic stuff.”

  “Good. Your payment for that dress is to help me. No one ever wants to get stuck in the Bridal Rejects dresses twice.” Muirin licked her lips. “I collect a lot of favors around October and November, and again before the Spring Dance at the end of the term.”

  Spirit blinked. “You mean…”

  Muirin began pointing out the dresses she’d remade, refitted, or sewn completely from scratch. “There’s a certain amount of raiding the Theater Department fabric that we can get away with,” she said with a smirk. “Of course, they keep buying up Prom Zombies and sticking them in the closet, so I don’t often have to resort to cutting up stuff meant for The Importance of Being Earnest.”

  Spirit began revising her estimate of how many of the girls had a lot of money sharply downward.

  “Remember what I told you? There’s a big trade in favors around here.” Muirin nodded wisely. “Hey, you know what? If you don’t want one of the jerkwads to mess with you, we’ll offer to help his girlfriend with her party stuff for the Spring Fling, make sure he knows we did, and I guaran-darn-tee you he’ll leave you alone. If I’d known you could sew before this, I could have saved you some grief.”

  While Spirit was blinking in shock over this revelation, Loch and Burke returned with drinks for everyone. Muirin seized on her soda with the look of someone dying in the desert seizing a cup of water, and blew a kiss to Burke, who gave it to her. “Loch, I cannot believe you have a fitted tuxedo with tails,” Addie said with admiration. “You look fabulous! Is it bespoke?”

  Spirit had no idea what Addie meant, but evidently Loch did.

  “Yeah,” he said, with a shrug. “Dad got invited to a lot of Embassy things, and during school holidays it was easier for him to haul me along than leave me behind. I think he got some kind of brownie points for having me with him. So here I am, with a tux, and no blue jeans, because everything that got shipped here was packed by Dad’s secretary.” He rolled his eyes. “I think all she did was grab what was in the closet in my bedroom, which was never stuff I actually wore much, because I was hardly ever home. God knows what happened to the stuff that was still at school. It probably got bundled up and sent to storage.”

  Burke, who was wearing what must have come out of the boys’ version of the Little Closet of Horrors, gave him a look of sympathy. Somehow, he made the boxy secondhand rent-a-tux look good. Then again, his didn’t fit too badly. Not like a couple of the boys, whose trouser-waists were obviously somewhere in the vicinity of their armpits, and who were wearing cummerbunds to conceal that fact.

  “Why won’t you ever let me fit your tux to you, Burke?” Muirin asked, teasingly.

  “Cause it won’t fit next time I have to wear it,” he replied, with calm logic. “Besides, you just want an excuse to tickle me.”

  “He’s ticklish?” Spirit asked Muirin, who smirked.

  “Very, if you catch him off guard. Which I never can. Addie did it once, and it was hilarious, he turned purple.”

  “Everyone got your dance cards?” Addie asked.

  “My which-what?” Spirit was bewildered now. Addie shoved a little booklet-thing across the table at her; it had a brown metal foil cover with the school crest in gold stamped on the front, and a tiny little gold pen attached to it with a gold ribbon. She opened it. There was her full name in gold on the inside, and a list of numbers with the names of dances and blank spaces beside them.

  “You have to dance at least five dances, whether or not you’ve taken Ballroom yet,” Addie reminded her. “Your partner signs off on the dance. Or if you’re really popular, guys come up to you and fill it in ahead of time.” She made a face. “It’s part of ‘improving our social graces.’ Yet another thing to get graded on.”

  “Next thing you know, they’ll start grading us on how many dreams we have a night,” Muirin said sarcastically.

  “Oh…” Spirit swallowed. “Uh…”

  “No sweat, Spirit.” Burke plucked the card out of her nerveless fingers, and wrote his name in three of the spaces. Not to be outdone, Loch did the same. “There you go. One over the mandatory number, you’re set.” Then they both did the same for Muirin and Addie.

  Muirin took hers back with a smirk. “Since I took Ballroom and I have a bigger quota, I’m going to go collect on some favors,” she said, archly, and sailed off in the direction of the other tables. Addie laughed.

  “But … I don’t know how…,” Spirit began.

  “Which is why we picked easy stuff.” The music changed, and Loch held out his hand. “Come on. Just do what I do, backward.”

  It wasn’t as easy as Loch had implied—but it wasn’t as hard as Spirit had feared. He helped by counting it out under his breath—it was a cha-cha, a dance she’d only seen in movies. She managed to not trip and fall or step on his feet. He brought her back to the table, and since the next dance didn’t have his or Burke’s name after it, she sat and watched the others, trying to get the steps.

  Loch was a very good dancer, and some of the girls started coming up to him to get him to sign their cards, which he did, readily. It seemed to Spirit that he was sad, though, and she couldn’t figure out why. Okay, there was no real reason to be all that happy, but there was a melancholy look to him that was odd.

  She couldn’t get up the nerve to ask any of the boys to dance the way Muirin was doing, and anyway, since she hadn’t taken the Ballroom Dance classes, she wasn’t being graded on this, so she just sat and drank diet cola and watched in between being taken out on the floor by Burke and Loch, and felt a little envy when she watched Murr-cat being whirled around by Loch in a waltz. That looked like fun; Muirin was even smiling.

  About ten minutes to midnight, there was a little stir at the door, and a moment later it was obvious why. Doctor Ambrosius strode into the room, though he spent a little time greeting the teachers at the “bar” end of the room. Spirit sighed. They were probably in for another speech.

  She just hoped Loch would come get her for the midnight dance. That would be a nice sort of omen for the new year.

  But it was Burke who came over to the table, and held out his hand, just a little awkwardly. She didn’t want him to feel badly, so she got up and took it and let him lead her out onto the dance floor with a smile, even though she was a little disappointed. Still, at least she wouldn’t be sitting out the first dance of the New Year. That would bite.

  The music didn’t start, though, and Doctor Ambrosius walked out to the edge of the floor, standing in a spotlight. Spirit tried not to sigh. Here comes the speech.…

  The sixty-second countdown started before he could open his mouth, much to Spirit’s relief. Ambrosius didn’t even look annoyed; he had his “genial” face on, the one he’d worn when the presents were given out. She felt Burke tighten his grip on her hand, and in spite of it being pretty corny, she found herself counting down aloud with everyone else. Burke caught her eye and smiled. She smiled back.

  She wondered if he was trying to work up the courage to kiss her … and she wondered how she’d feel about that, even as she called out the last few seconds. Did she want him as a friend, or as a boyfriend? Maybe it would be easier to keep things the way they were. But if he was her boyfriend, maybe he’d feel like he had to support her more. That would help while she tried to convince the others that they were still all in danger.

  But would that be using him? Was that fair to him?

  “Five … four … three … two … ONE!”

  Suddenly the lights went out. Completely out.

  The “Happy New Year!” shouts died, abruptly. It was very dark, and unexpectedly quiet. A couple people laughed nervously. Even the emergency exit lights were out. It was like being in a cave.

  Spirit wondered if th
is was supposed to be part of the evening, even as Burke held her hand even tighter. But nothing happened, and even the nervous laughter died out.

  She got a strange, horrible, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach, and a cold chill went down her back that had nothing to do with the cooling air of the room.

  Something was wrong. And something very bad was about to happen.…

  Maybe not, she tried to tell herself, a little desperately. Maybe it’s just a prank so people can kiss.

  But that horrible feeling in her stomach didn’t go away, and neither did the sensation that made her want to shudder. The darkness wasn’t at all comforting; it swallowed up even the little sounds people were making as they stirred nervously, engulfing the shuffling feet and edgy titters in a way that made her hair try to stand up.

  There were uneasy murmurs now … whispers that didn’t sound like people were using the dark to neck. Why didn’t Doctor Ambrosius say something?

  Why didn’t one of the teachers?

  “Something’s wrong,” Burke said, still holding her hand hard. “This never happened at the other dances.”

  “C-c-could it be a trick?” she whispered back, her voice shaking despite herself. “You know—a prank?”

  “Not a chance. All the circuit-breaker boxes are in locked rooms to keep people from pulling stupid stuff; it has to be a power failure.” Burke sounded very sure of that. “Maybe as far as town. There’s no storm out there, though. Maybe someone from Radial got drunk and blew up a high tension tower.”

  “Do they do that?” she asked incredulously.

  “Well, they never have before, but they’re redneck cowboys, it’s New Year’s Eve, and they have easy access to dynamite…” his voice trailed off a moment. “Heck, it could be a cascade failure from as far away as Canada. Anyway, the power should kick back on in a minute. Oakhurst has big backup generators. We can make all our own power for as long as the diesel lasts, in fact, and there’s huge storage tanks underground.”