Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

  Her eyes were very smug indeed.

  Mr. Krandal pointed at the seat she’d been in, and she hesitated. “Can I please have a breakfast box, Mr. Krandal?” she asked quietly. “I didn’t eat before I left.”

  “Get one, get back here and sit down. And study those extra assignments,” Krandal growled, and went back up to the front of the car and took his own seat.

  Adam glanced back at them. Muirin winked. Adam grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. She got a breakfast box and busied herself with it.

  Spirit went back to the video player and cued up the mislabeled segment.

  By the time it was finished, she wasn’t sleepy anymore, so after a glance back at Muirin, who was studiously watching her own videos, she plunged into her lessons. Might as well get them over with. Mr. Krandal interrupted her when she’d finished the second by advising them all to get lunch. The Radial kids groaned at the sight of the healthy sandwiches, broccoli and dip, and fruit. She ate hers with both eyes on the screen, and figured out why there were only three lessons here.…

  Nothing about magic, of course. They would have known there would be people from Radial on the train, so whatever was on there had to be perfectly ordinary.

  She finished the last lesson as the train slowed again; a glance out the window showed that there was light out there now, and they were pulling into suburbs.

  Great. A million questions I want answered, things stalking us, and now … I go spend a day looking at artsy horse statues.…

  * * *

  The museum was just as boring as Spirit had feared. The horse statues were very artsy. The docent waxed eloquent about the deep meanings embodied by the horse statues. Spirit took notes. Loch took notes. Most of the rest of the students looked bored and pretended to take notes. Burke had wandered off to look at something else. Muirin said, “You’ll loan me your notes, right?” then vanished into the gift shop. When they all caught up with her she looked very smug indeed.

  The same Oakhurst cars that had picked them up at the train station showed up to get them at the entrance to the museum. Elizabeth attached herself to their group, which Spirit really didn’t mind, although Muirin rolled her eyes a little. Once they were all inside the thing, which was an SUV with an Oakhurst crest in Oakhurst colors that was big enough to need its own ZIP code, Mr. Krandal turned around to look at the five of them in the back.

  “Here,” he said brusquely, handing Elizabeth, Loch, Burke, and Spirit sealed envelopes in Oakhurst gold. “Obviously you can’t get a snack or shop without money.” He looked pointedly at Muirin, who had not gotten an envelope. He turned back too quickly to realize she wasn’t looking disappointed, she was smirking.

  Spirit opened her envelope. There was fifty dollars in tens in it. She blinked. Her parents hadn’t ever given her very much money at one time, but she knew she had to be in the minority there, because plenty of kids her age had jobs after school. This was probably like the change after paying for coffee to Muirin and Loch.

  “Remember, you can’t get anything Oakhurst doesn’t approve of,” Krandal said without turning around. “No Victoria’s Secret. No violent video games.”

  “Yes, Mr. Krandal,” Spirit said. Muirin elbowed her and whispered, “Ladies’ Room.” Spirit nodded. Was there anything she could buy for fifty dollars that might be useful against whatever it was that was after them all? A gun? There were guns at the school, and knives, and even real swords. This was all so crazy.…

  Maybe she should just … try not to worry about it. After all, the teachers were all being proactive now, and presumably they had a lot more experience at this than the kids did. And this business of Breakthrough coming to Radial … Doctor Ambrosius was certainly happy to see them. Maybe this was a kind of cover for the Alumns to come back and join Doctor Ambrosius! Despite the fact that those Shadows were Alumns …

  But no, Doctor Ambrosius surely wouldn’t be that easily fooled.

  She worried about that all the way to the mall. The cars dropped them all off, with orders to meet at the entrance where they’d been left at three. Ms. Holland stayed with them; the other two teachers drove off with the cars.

  Seeing as it was Ms. Holland who was with them, Spirit worried that she and Muirin wouldn’t be able to get rid of her, but the teacher immediately latched on to Loch. Muirin grabbed Spirit’s arm and babbled something about the Ladies’ Room and hustled her off.

  Of course they didn’t go that far, since there was absolutely no one following them. Instead, Muirin virtually hauled her into a hole-in-the-wall computer store.

  A computer store?

  The guy behind the counter was somehow geeky and gothy at the same time. He absolutely lit up to see two girls coming into his otherwise empty shop. He opened his mouth—

  Muirin cut him off. “I’m Desdemona. Have you got my thumb drives?”

  The guy closed his mouth and went all wistful. “Yeah, I do. Here you go.” He shoved over six sealed packages of tiny thumb drives marked down to ninety-nine cents. Muirin picked one up and looked at it critically. She looked up and beamed.

  “Brilliant!” she said. “I can’t tell they were ever opened!”

  The guy flushed and looked pleased. “I get a lot of practice.” Muirin pulled out a charge card and shoved it across the counter at him. Spirit was staggered at the number he rang up, but Muirin didn’t bat an eye. “I don’t suppose I could have your number?” he asked.

  Spirit expected Murr-cat’s usual scathing response, but for once Muirin surprised her. “You are totally my type, but Oakhurst is practically a convent,” she said apologetically. “That’s why I needed you to get my stuff this way.”

  The guy sighed. “Well, you’ve got to graduate some time, right? And I’ll probably still be here when you do.”

  Muirin smiled at him sweetly, and took the bag with the drives in it. She left the store, Spirit following.

  “What—” Spirit said.

  Muirin shoved the bag at her. “These are yours until we get back to the school. If anyone asks, you got them to back up your class work in case that thing at New Year’s really was an EMP and the next one will blow out the computers. Okay?”

  “Uh, okay, but—”

  “Seth and Adam were my contacts to this guy, they knew him from gaming. This is six months’ worth of downloads so I don’t go mental listening to Oakhurst-approved music.” She rolled her eyes. “And so I can see a movie that isn’t PG-13. Don’t worry, these are special. If you don’t have the unlock code they look like two-gig drives with nothing on them. If you do, it opens up the hidden storage.”

  Spirit was impressed. “Wow, you know a lot—”

  Muirin shook her head. “Not me. It was all Seth. Now let’s go get some magazines. I wasn’t kidding about that, and they’re going to expect me to figure out how to use my own money anyway.”

  * * *

  They ran into Loch and Burke at the bookstore. It was one of those really big ones with places to sit and read, and on a weekday afternoon there was no one in here and only one person at the register. They took over the chairs in the Hobby section.

  “What was with Ms. Holland?” Spirit wanted to know.

  “Yeah, did she come on to you?” Muirin made a kissy-face. “Oh teacher, teacher!”

  “Cut it out Murr-cat,” Loch said with annoyance. “It wasn’t like that. She was trying to convince me to pull a runner. She told me she had a lawyer friend who would go to my trustee for me and get him to petition for a new guardian. She said her lawyer friend would convince my trustee that Doctor Ambrosius just wants to get his hands on my money.”

  “Say what?” Muirin looked at him as if she didn’t quite understand the words coming out of his mouth. “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her I didn’t think I would be any safer away from Oakhurst,” Loch replied, and shook his head. “She said I had no idea what was going on, and that anyone who stayed was going to come face-to-face with an evil I could never imagine.”


  “Well, gee, that was helpful,” Muirin said sarcastically. “I don’t suppose she could have been more specific?”

  Loch shrugged. “No, she just spent about ten minutes trying to convince me that staying at Oakhurst was a fate worse than death, then literally threw her hands up in the air, said, ‘Fine,’ and stomped off.”

  “She must have gone after me,” Burke said. “She cornered me in the Food Court and gave me the same story. Well, except for the part about the lawyers and the trustees; she said she’d get me a bus ticket back to my foster parents and convince them that Oakhurst was some kind of weird cult compound so they’d keep me with them. I pretty much said the same as you.”

  Muirin looked from Loch to Burke and back again. “You both just had a chance to get out of here practically shoved in your faces, and you turned it down,” she said incredulously. “Why?”

  Burke scratched his chin. “You want the logical reason or the illogical reason?” he asked.

  “Logic first,” Muirin said. “Convince me.”

  “We know there’s someone inside Oakhurst that’s helping the Shadow Knights.”

  “Shadow Knights?” Spirit interrupted. Burke blushed.

  “That’s—just what I call them. Stupid, I know, it sounds like a bad fantasy movie or a video game.”

  “No, it fits, go on,” she urged, smiling at him. Burke blushed a little more.

  “Okay, so, we know there’s someone at Oakhurst working with the Shadow Knights, and we don’t know who it is. We just know there’s a good chance it’s a teacher, and so far, who are the people that have managed to get in the way?”

  Muirin chewed her lip. “Us.”

  “So what’s the best way to get us out of the way? Break us up. Separate us.” Burke nodded as Muirin hissed a little. “You know, the whole bundle of sticks routine. So maybe Ms. Holland knows what’s going on and is trying to help us out. And maybe she’s the inside man, or one of them. So okay, we’ve been warned and it isn’t Spirit being paranoid. We’re better off sticking where we know the territory and can maybe put up a bunker somehow.”

  Muirin pondered that for a while. “Okay. So what’s the not-logical reason?”

  Burke gazed earnestly at her. “Because you’re all my friends. And I don’t bail on my friends.”

  “What he said,” said Loch.

  ELEVEN

  The cars came to pick them all up; when they got to the train, a third and fourth railcar had been added. One was a sleek metal thing with no windows and a big double door. It didn’t look like a baggage car, more like something meant to hold a lot of cargo. And behind that was one of those container cars stacked two high. There were people loading the cargo car when they arrived, but it looked as if they had just started—and they were packing it tight.

  The townies were already there, waiting; Mr. Krandal unlocked the doors to the passenger cars; he went into the rear car, and they all settled into their seats, but the train showed no signs of moving as the light faded.

  The townies stirred restlessly, and Spirit was beginning to feel hungry. That was when Mr. Krandal came into their car from the rear car.

  He rubbed his hand unconsciously over his bald spot. “As you can see, we’re taking this opportunity to get in some supplies for the school, and in addition, a generous Alumnus is getting us some new equipment we’re sure you’ll appreciate. However, since this is causing something of a delay in leaving, I’ve unlocked a game feed to your seat consoles, and…” A pizza delivery van pulled up to the platform. “… ah, there we are, right on time. We have some hot food for you.”

  There were cheers at that, and a tall stack of pizza boxes was unloaded into each car. There was a little grumbling from the townies to discover that most of the toppings were “healthy”—a lot of veggies were involved, including shredded broccoli and “pepperoni” made of tofu. But there wasn’t too much complaining. Everyone was very hungry. These were gourmet pizzas, not stuff from a chain, delivered so hot the cheese was still bubbling. Spirit overheard Adam saying with awe that he’d heard one of these pies cost more than he made in two days at his job. That couldn’t be true, but it impressed the townies. There was contented silence, broken only when someone got up to get another slice. Then there was more silence as people put on headsets and plugged into the promised video game.

  Out of curiosity, Spirit called it up, and was unsurprised to see that it was from Breakthrough. The game didn’t interest her; it was a futuristic combat game, and you were fighting what looked like alien Nazis in powered armor, big spherical flying things with tentacles and energy beams, and robotic wolves and eagles. It allowed several players to form a team and either take on things in the game or fight one another. You could be either some kind of soldier, or people in black bodysuits with all kinds of powers. Soldiers could only fight the Nazis or the people in the black bodysuits; people in black bodysuits could only fight the Nazis or the soldiers. Or both could team up to fight the Nazis. Interestingly, a lot of the powers involved magic that seemed to work exactly like the magic being taught at Oakhurst. It was very pretty, very fast moving, and as far as she could tell, very inventive, but she wasn’t in the mood to fight anything. Judging by the antics of most of the others, though, it was immediately popular with everyone playing.

  The car was warm, the seat was comfortable, and Loch, Burke, and even Muirin were deep in the game. Elizabeth wasn’t playing, but she was staring at the screen, watching the others. With a mental shrug, Spirit pulled out one of her carefully considered purchases—a book—and pulled out her iPod, glad that she’d loaded it with music she liked, not the Music Appreciation stuff.

  It was nearly 8 P.M. by the time the train lurched into motion. Spirit looked up when it did, but the others didn’t notice. She pulled up the game briefly to see what had them so immersed, but couldn’t tell which little figure was which person and shut it off again.

  They had to detour to a siding halfway to Oakhurst to let an express freight go by and that delayed them further. By the time they got to the school, it was almost midnight and Spirit was too tired to think. The others were even more tired than she was, and they all shuffled like zombies into the tiny train station, where there were four more teachers waiting to check their purchases. The three chaperones didn’t stop at the station, and she was pretty sure they’d gone straight to their own quarters. She waited with the others while her purchases were examined for contraband—she half expected someone to say something about all the thumb drives, but no one did; they didn’t even give more than a cursory look inside the little white plastic bag from the computer store. She was really glad when they sent her off to the main building.

  Muirin tailed her all the way to her room, chattering about nothing; as soon as they were out of sight of teachers and proctors, she held out her hand and Spirit passed her the white bag. Muirin blew her a kiss, and dashed off with it. Spirit got into her room and dumped her purchases on the bed.

  A red sweater, some candy, a lipstick, two books, and a magazine. Everything but the magazine had been on sale, but she’d always been used to shopping carefully. Before.

  She frowned and picked up yet another thumb drive. She hadn’t bought this. And it wasn’t anything like the thumb drives Muirin had bought. For one thing, this wasn’t in a blister pack. For another, it was in a brushed-metal case, not plastic. There was a little logo and a single word across the bottom just above the indicator light. IRONKEY.

  Maybe it was already in the bag at the computer store. But she’d handed the whole bag to Muirin. It must have fallen out. If so, it was too late to return it, and there was no way to tell them she had it. Well, she was too tired to look at it now. She tossed it in a drawer and went to bed.

  She woke to someone banging on her door; blearily she opened her eyes and saw it was just two minutes before her alarm was going to go off. “What?” she yelled, fighting her way out of the blankets.

  Kelly opened the door and stuck her head in. “Special A
ssembly before class, in the Auditorium,” the Proctor said, and closed the door again.

  Special Assembly?

  She dressed with a little more care than usual—this might be a kind of inspection, and she didn’t want to take the chance on failing it; that left her a little behind, and the others must have already gotten breakfast, because there wasn’t any sign of them in the Refectory. She ate in a hurry—everyone else was bolting their food, so she figured that was a sign she’d better, too. The cold air hit her like a hammer as she went outside and hurried toward the Auditorium. And it was dark. She couldn’t help but think that if there was going to be an ambush by the bad guys, this would be a good time for it; either while they were all in the open, scuttling to the Auditorium, or even better, once they were all in the Auditorium.

  When she got there, she got another surprise; no “free seating” this time, they all had assigned seats in alphabetical order. A proctor consulted a list and sent her to hers just as Doctor Ambrosius came out on the stage, and the house lights dimmed.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, casting his gaze around the room. “Some of you are already aware of our generous Alumnus donor, although you don’t yet know what he is giving us. I won’t spoil his surprise, but I will tell you this. After the incursion of those unwelcome visitors last week, Oakhurst put out a call for help, and the generous Oakhurst family has responded. We will be receiving both visitors and new residents today; I would like you to be on your best behavior and prove to them that the quality of Oakhurst students has not diminished over the years.” He cleared his throat, and scanned the audience again. “We will be playing host to students who graduated and went on to greatness, experts in protection and defense both arcane and—well, given the level of technology involved, I could not in good conscience call it mundane, so let us just say arcane and physical.” He smiled, grimly. “And let those who oppose Oakhurst beware.”