Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

  And still the field trip was on. It made no sense.

  Unless—maybe all this was to convince the students that no matter what happened, Oakhurst was still safe. If that was the intention … well, so far as Spirit was concerned, it wasn’t working. And yet, as days passed, it seemed she was in the minority.

  “Oh, I could really hate you this morning, Blondie,” Muirin said, before Spirit even got a chance to sit down at the table. “So unfair. What did you do to get your seat on the train, anyway? And why didn’t you tell me what it was so I could have, too?”

  Spirit stared at her, brain blank. She’d spent the night fighting off nightmares of those mounted figures charging down on them; she’d clawed her way out of sleep as the alarm went off for the third time and had barely made it in time for breakfast before her first class. “What?” she replied. “Train?” She couldn’t for a minute imagine what Muirin was talking about.

  “Didn’t you read your e-mail this morning?” Muirin asked, her green eyes dark with nameless emotion. “You get to go on the field trip. You, Burke, and Loch. So unfair!”

  “I don’t even want to go!” Spirit blurted, shocked. “Why should I go? Look, you can take my place, right?”

  “No can do, Spirit,” Burke said, sitting down with a huge bowl of oatmeal. “Designated field trippers only.” He offered Muirin a smile of commiseration. “Look at it this way, are you really that interested in an exhibit of someone’s modern horse sculptures? Not even you could convince me of that.”

  “It wasn’t the museum,” Muirin grumbled. “You know that. It was getting out of here. It was the shopping.”

  “Shopping?” asked Addie, with a raised eyebrow. “In Billings, Montana? After what you’ve been used to? You cannot seriously make me believe that you could be shopping for couture in Billings, Montana.”

  “Even Billings has mega-bookstores and mega-bookstores have magazine racks with things other than National Geographic and Smithsonian on them.” Muirin poked at her eggs with her fork. “Stepmother won’t forward my subscriptions, and there are always new magazines coming out that only last for a few issues. It wouldn’t be so bad if we had real Internet, but I need my magazines without it!”

  “Oh please, as if you’ve ever let that stop you from getting something,” Addie replied with a sniff. “The only reason you haven’t gotten past the firewall is because you haven’t tried hard enough to find someone or some way to do it.”

  Muirin just gave her a sullen glare and went back to poking at her eggs.

  “Well, I hate art museums, and I don’t have any money,” Spirit said, trying to look as irritated as Muirin was. “So I’m going to be bored with the museum and I can’t do any shopping. And Billings is, what, three hours away by train? Which means that I’ll have to be up way before dawn, and it’s going to be awful. I promise you, if I could trade places with you, I would. The only good thing about this is getting out of classes for a day.”

  Well, except for getting Burke and Loch all to myself.…

  “Oh, I bet they’ll have work assignments waiting for you on the train,” Addie said cheerfully. “After all, you’ll have three hours there and three hours back, that’s six whole hours you could be using to achieve. The only way you get out of class around here is if you’re unconscious. Then they expect you to make it up when you revive.”

  Burke nodded, and for a moment Spirit wondered how they could all be so callous about the students who’d “gotten out of class” by virtue of being dead or insane, when a little movement of Burke’s eyes alerted her to the fact that someone at one of the other tables behind her was listening.

  Right. Everyone else seems to forget that people go crazy and die and vanish. I need to pretend that I’ve forgotten, too.

  “There you go. I’ll be stuck in a train for six hours with nothing to do but class work, then stuck at a museum. No reason for envy.” Spirit shrugged. “I’ll ask if we can switch anyway. Maybe they’ll let you go instead.”

  But she already knew they wouldn’t. This was exactly what the Administration seemed to want—drive a wedge between friends—and from the look on Muirin’s face, they were getting it, too. Was it possible that Muirin had some reason why she’d been sure she, and not Spirit, was going to be going on this trip? If so, well, no wonder she was so ticked off.

  She’d have to figure out some way to make it up. Maybe she could borrow some money from someone and get Muirin some candy bars.

  On her first break between classes she went back to her room and checked her e-mail. Sure enough, there was the message congratulating her on being selected, along with a second, to all students, detailing who was going to go. There were about a dozen students on the list, including the new girl, Elizabeth—which made absolutely no sense, since she was having to catch up to the accelerated Oakhurst curriculum and not having an easy time of it. None of them were all that interested in art. None of them were at the top of the class.

  Yes, this was definitely going to drive wedges between a lot of people.

  * * *

  The museum opened at nine. It would take about half an hour to drive from the train depot to the museum, and three hours to get from Oakhurst to Billings. So they were all awakened at 4 A.M.

  Spirit felt as if she’d barely gotten any sleep, though she’d tried to make an early night of it. No nightmares last night, but it felt like she’d spent most of the night waiting to hear the alarm go off. She yawned her way through breakfast, and trudged out into the dark with the others to get on the train.

  There was definitely a surreal sense here. Days ago, the school had been attacked, physically attacked, and people had been hurt. Today they were going on a field trip. And the three teachers who were chaperoning them were still sporting the bandages from that attack, yet they acted as if they’d just had bad spills in the shower.

  It was as if she was living an entirely different life from the rest of them. And yet … at this moment, even she was finding herself sucked into the illusion that everything was normal. She trudged toward the tiny station with the others, hearing the dull throb of the locomotive engine out there in the dark.

  Like the train that had brought her here, this was a short, but very modern locomotive. This time it was coupled to two passenger cars instead of one. Both passenger cars had the Oakhurst logo on the side. Of course. They shuffled into single file and Spirit found herself sandwiched in between Burke and Loch. At least she could be sure of one thing; nobody on horseback was going to be able to catch them once the train was moving.

  Burke took a seat next to a window; she popped into the one next to him, and Loch took one immediately behind them.

  “Oh brother,” Burke said, reaching for a white card sticking up out of the seat back in front of him. “It looks as if Addie was right.”

  Spirit checked her card. Instead of being a safety thing, it was instructions on how to use the built-in video player in the other arm of the seat back and a list of the preloaded lectures each of them were supposed to watch. But there were only three under Spirit’s name, so Spirit put the card back and decided to get them on the way home. Of course, that was all there was to watch on the video players. And the list of available music was all from the Music Appreciation course.

  “Oh man, this stuff is lame. Who loaded up this player? Good thing I brought my phone.”

  Phone? Phone? She craned her neck as the train blew its whistle and began to move out of the tiny station. No one at Oakhurst was allowed a phone.…

  Ahead of her were four people she didn’t recognize, and for a moment they looked utterly alien in their bright parkas and hoodies. Four people—who were not in Oakhurst coats and Oakhurst colors.

  The train lurched into motion, and David Krandal stood up at the front of their car. He banged on the wall to get their attention.

  “Those of you Oakhurst students that aren’t already asleep,” he said, eliciting a polite laugh, “might have noticed we have some guests from Radial wi
th us: Brett and Juliette Weber, and Adam and Tom Phillips. They won’t be with us for the field trip, but they all have business in Billings and Doctor Ambrosius offered the good people of Radial some of the extra seats on the train, in light of our new relationship with the town.” He nodded at someone Spirit couldn’t see. “So welcome aboard, but don’t forget that if you miss the train when we head back, it’s a long walk home.”

  Another polite laugh, and Mr. Krandal sat down again.

  The train picked up speed. She was about to recline her seat for a nap when Mr. Krandal stood up again. He unlocked a door at the front of the car, and flipped a switch. Three icons lit up; a male and a female—probably for bathrooms—and a knife and fork.…

  “It was probably early for most of you, so the kitchen is open,” Krandal said. “There’s box breakfasts and lunches, and we’ll restock dinners for the trip back. There’s only room in there for two at a time.”

  The four townies got up immediately and there was some wrangling about who would get to go first. Two of them sat down, and the other two went in. The Oakhurst kids, who knew all too well what was going to be in those boxes, were in no hurry to get theirs.

  The first two came back with their open boxes and looks of disappointment on their faces. They sat down and began picking through the offerings while the other two craned their necks to see. “Granola, plain yogurt, a banana, an apple, orange juice, and milk,” announced one of the boys. “Not even a Pop-Tart, and no coffee. Bogus.”

  “I thought the Oakhats ate, like, steak and caviar and chocolate mousse for breakfast,” one of the others whispered just loudly enough for Spirit to hear. She smirked. The girl of the set got up and got a box anyway, and began stirring her granola into the yogurt. Krandal ignored them. The Oakhurst kids snickered.

  The train slowed down; Spirit was startled. They hadn’t been under way for more than half an hour, they couldn’t be anywhere near Billings yet—

  “Relax,” said Loch, deep in his first lesson. “We’re coming up on the junction with the main line. We have to get clearance so we don’t block a faster train or run up on a slower one. That’s why these trips take at least three hours, and sometimes can take five.”

  “Five?” she echoed.

  “Sometimes longer. Oh, hey, look at this—” Loch rotated his screen so Spirit could see it. He’d cued up some sort of video labeled THE HISTORY OF OAKHURST: FROM MANSION TO MODERN SCHOOL.

  “Huh, where’d you find that?” she asked.

  “It’s mislabled. It’s under Science as MITOSIS AND MEIOSIS: THE FUNDAMENTALS OF CELL DIVISION. I’m going to see if there’s anything else loaded up that was mislabeled.”

  The train slowed to a halt and stopped. In the stillness, Spirit could hear faint echoes of music and video-game beeps from the townies’ phones. The girl was txting someone as fast as her thumbs would work. After fifteen minutes the train lurched into motion again and rolled ahead in a left-hand curve. Spirit looked out Burke’s window but it was too dark to see anything. She could sure tell when they got on the main line, though; things got a bit rougher and louder. So part of the quiet had been the private rail spur.

  The Radial boy nearest Spirit was picking at his breakfast and making a face.

  Someone behind Spirit got up. As she passed Spirit, she turned and winked before leaning over the back of the boy’s seat. Spirit stared in shock. It was Muirin!

  “’Smatter, Adam, not used to eating anything for breakfast that doesn’t come in neon colors with marshmallow bits?” Muirin drawled.

  Mr. Krandal nearly exploded out of his seat. “Muirin Shae!” he barked, looking absolutely furious. “I’m not going to ask you what you’re doing here, because it’s obvious you decided to stow away.”

  Muirin looked as innocent as she could, which was not very. Finally she shrugged. “I’m ahead on my classes, you can check for yourself. I just want to go to a bookstore. Is that so bad?”

  Mr. Krandal was obviously struggling with himself. “It’s too late to turn back now, which I assume you know. You sit right down there, young lady. I am going to have a conference with the other teachers about this, and we’re going to call back to Oakhurst about it.”

  Muirin shrugged again and sat down in the empty seat beside the boy she’d called Adam. Mr. Krandal stalked down the aisle to the door at the rear of the car and through it to the second car where the other two teachers were.

  “Damn, Muir, now I see why you were always jonesing for some junk food, if this is the crap they feed you,” Adam said with a grin.

  Muirin rolled her eyes. “You have no idea,” she said. “Adam, these are my peeps, Spirit, Loch, and Burke. Guys, this is Adam Phillips. His brother Tom is the one hanging his chin on the seat back. They were the ones giving me and Seth some … help.”

  Spirit knew very well what Muirin meant by “help.” Tom and Adam, who looked to be about fourteen and eighteen respectively, were the ones who had helped Muirin and Seth with smuggling contraband into Oakhurst.

  “So what’d old Krandal mean by ‘the new relationship with Radial’?” Muirin asked, looking at him keenly. “Last I heard, Radial thought the school was a maximum-security jail for high-dollar juvies and would’ve been happy to see it shut down.”

  “Oh that’s big news.” Adam smirked and Tom rolled his eyes. “Really big news. One of your Alumns made good in video games. He’s the brain behind Breakthrough.” At Muirin’s blank look, he coughed. “Breakthrough Adventure Systems. I keep forgetting they keep you people in the Victorian ages. I’ll make it short and easy for you—MMOs and console games that have pretty much taken over the marketplace. They took over about six games that failed dismally and one old favorite that everybody had been waiting for the update on. And they made them all into everything everybody wanted. Anyway, he decided that the best place for his new HQ was Radial, ’cause he’s, like, nostalgic for good old Oakhurst.”

  “Yeah, right,” Muirin replied sarcastically.

  “Somebody has to be,” Loch said.

  “Anyway, this is like—like Lucas decided to move ILM out here on the same day that Sega announces they’re going to put a plant here and work with him,” Adam went on. “Bigger than big. Jobs, jobs, jobs, money coming into town like nobody’s seen before, and every time something comes up—like the sewer plant not being able to handle all the new people—Rider just throws money at the problem and it goes away. Him and Ambrosius are all BFFs, and some people figure he’s going to use Oakhurst as his game-designer-factory, ’cause you’re all supposed to be super-geniuses and everything. I can tell you, though, right now, so far as most of Radial is concerned, you could take a dump in the street and they’d swear it was roses.”

  “Most?” Muirin probed.

  “Well, you know. No matter what, there’s going to be somebody who’s going to hate it.” Adam shrugged. “They’re going to extend your rail line out to Breakthrough and start using it, ’cause the roads aren’t good enough for everything he wants to bring in. They’re already laying track in town. It’ll probably be done in a couple of weeks.”

  “And what’s your take on this?” Burke asked, leaning over.

  Adam blinked, as if he hadn’t expected Burke to speak. “It’s money coming in. I graduated last year; I’m going to get a job out there and work until I get enough saved up to get the hell out of Radial. I don’t care what people are saying, all that’s going to happen with Breakthrough is once they get their compound put up, it’s going to be us and them all over again. Anything they want, they’ll bring in from outside. They’ll use the train and that Oakhurst private airstrip, the bigwigs’ll live in California, the code-monkeys’ll come from Oakhurst or outside, they’ll put housing up out on the Oakhurst land and the money’s going to dry up as soon as the construction’s over. Don’t care, ’cause by then, I’ll be gone.” His brother Tom nodded in agreement.

  “Yeah.” The girl—Juliette?—piped up. “Like my gramma says it was like back in the day when i
t was a mansion. She never saw anything of Crazy Tyniger or the people he brought to it. ’Cause, like, rich dudes don’t mix with the po’ folks unless there’s something they want out of ’em.” The girl shot Muirin a sly look, as if she expected the dig to hurt. Muirin didn’t even notice. “Gramma says it was almost better when that biker gang took the place over in the Seventies, ’cause at least they came into town and bought beer and groceries.”

  Biker gang? That’s new …

  Of course—if it had been in the Seventies, it would have been after Tyniger was dead and the estate was tied up. Spirit filed that away for further investigation later.

  “That’s why so many kids run off,” the last townie said. He looked like the girl; they both were brown-haired and had the same square face and deep-set eyes. “There’s, like, nothing for us in Radial. Best thing you can do is hitch a ride out and disappear. No matter how bad it gets out there, at least it ain’t Radial.”

  So kids are vanishing out of Radial, too! No wonder the Radial cops don’t care. They’ve gotten into the habit of deciding a kid that disappears is a kid who ran away, and that’s the end. Spirit was willing to bet just about anything that those missing kids hadn’t “run off,” they’d been taken by the Hunt.

  She was going to ask Adam some questions herself, but that was when Mr. Krandal came back with the other two teachers.

  Adam and Juliette became very interested in their phones, and Tom’s head vanished back over the seat. Mr. Krandal crooked his finger at Muirin. “Come with me, young lady,” he said, frowning. “We have some things to discuss.”

  Muirin got up and followed them back into the other car.

  “What do you think they’re going to do with her?” Spirit whispered to Burke.

  He shook his head.

  They were back about fifteen minutes later, and Spirit relaxed a little. Muirin looked exactly like someone who had gotten away with murder, even though she had her eyes cast down penitently and had her mouth in a very slight frown. Spirit could tell, though, that she figured she had won this one, just by her eyes.