Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies

by Mercedes Lackey; Rosemary Edghill

  As always, the winter cold nearly took her breath away. But now there was the added hazard of having to avoid the military guys. She scouted carefully. Tonight there were only two of them on the school grounds: one guarding the stable and one the gym. But just to be sure, she tried to keep as much in the shadows as possible as she sprinted for the tiny rail station.

  She reached it and ducked inside. “Hey?” she whispered into the darkness.

  “We’re all here,” Burke said, in normal tones. “You’re the last one. Well, except for Murr-cat…” His voice trailed off.

  “I passed her a note, but she was pretty wrapped up in Ovcharenko,” Addie said sadly into the darkness. “I don’t—”

  But then the sound of light footsteps running toward them made them all fall silent and hold their breaths. Spirit felt someone grab her and stifled a squeak as arms went around her. “If it’s anyone other than Muirin, pretend like we’re making out,” Burke breathed into her ear. “That’s the plan.” He turned her so that she was facing into his chest, and put both his arms around her.

  Her heart thudded and she felt a little dizzy. She had to lock her knees to keep her legs from trembling.

  Nice plan—

  “Guys?” Muirin said from the doorway.

  Burke didn’t let go of Spirit for a good long moment. “We’re all here,” Addie replied. “Glad you could make it.”

  “Are you?” came the uncertain reply.

  “Yes!” Spirit said firmly, before anyone else could speak—and so that it wouldn’t sound as if they were hesitant. The others chimed in just as firmly.

  “Okay then … ’cause I think if you aren’t sitting down, you’d better. Or, wait.” Spirit heard the shuffling of feet as Muirin worked her way along a wall. “Yeah, here, I thought I remembered right. There’s a closet here under the platform, sometimes people use it for making out. Let’s all get in there so I can make a light. Follow my voice.”

  Now Burke let Spirit go, but kept a firm grip on her gloved hand as he led her toward Muirin. They all crowded into the closet, which was low-ceilinged, but bigger than Spirit would have thought. The door closed, and Muirin muttered something. Spirit winced away as a ball of light that was way too bright after the darkness of the station flared up in Muirin’s hand. The room was about six by ten and completely empty.

  “So?” Burke said, once they were settled.

  Muirin looked away from him uneasily. “Uh … I’m not sure where to start,” she said, finally, and sighed. “Okay, look. I’ve been hanging out with Anastus, not Dylan. I mean, come on, he’s Russian, he’s hot, and it’s a kick to be with an older guy, okay? So I knew that tonight was going to be ‘recruit the kids’ night for the Breakthrough peeps.”

  “And you didn’t—” Loch began, then shrugged. “Yeah, no point in warning us, it’s not like we could have done anything about it.”

  “Well … something happened today with Anastus.” She swallowed. “He met me after dinner and we went out in his car, but all we did was sit in the driveway with the heat on while he drank. My God, I thought Step could put it away!” she added, aghast. “I mean, straight vodka, right out of the bottle, like it was soda!”

  “He’s Russian,” Loch said, as if that explained everything.

  “Whatever! Anyway, I think he was trying to get me drunk, but he was so mad he didn’t notice when I just kept passing the bottle back to him, and pretty soon … he was talking. A lot.” Her voice took on an edge. “So that’s when I found out I’m second string to Madison so far as he’s concerned. I heard all about Madison and how bad he wants to get into her pants. And how since I’m her sestra, which I guess means sister, I’ll do until he gets a shot at her.”

  There was awkward silence for a moment. “Well,” Addie said judiciously, “that’s not the sort of thing I want to hear out of a guy, but—”

  “That’s not why I’m here,” Muirin interrupted. “Okay, that was bad enough, because I don’t like being anyone’s substitute mama, but then he started telling me about his family. Only I mean Family, with a capital “F.” He’s Bratva.”

  “Holy crap,” Loch swore. “Russkaya Mafiya. Maf. Russian Mafia. Now a whole lot of stuff starts to make sense.”

  “Yeah,” Muirin said bitterly. “He told me all about his connections. His father is supposed to be pretty big stuff; specializes in murder-for-hire and he’s a high-dollar smuggler. Which is how Dr. Ambrosius met him and then met Anastus, and Dr. Ambrosius persuaded the old man to let Anastus come to Oakhurst.”

  There was a shocked silence when Muirin stopped talking. “You mean—” Addie said in a small voice.

  “Yes, I do. I don’t know that Ambrosius ever used him as a contract killer, but he’s been using him to get stuff into the country he wouldn’t be able to get legally.”

  “Like?” Addie prompted.

  “Magical stuff that also happens to be stolen artifacts.”

  “Okay,” Loch said warily. “Well … I can kind of see the need, but that’s dancing really close to the fire. Look, you do not have friends in the Russian Mafia. You have people you’ve killed, people you haven’t killed yet, clients you might have to kill, superiors whose job you are gunning for, and your thug-puppets.” He paused. “My father ran an international financing cartel—Spearhead Venture Partners—and even though we weren’t close, there was just no way I couldn’t absorb a bunch of this stuff just from being around. He’d always get his security firm to investigate potential partners, and if there was even a hint of Bratva about them, he’d back off.”

  Muirin nodded. “So Anastus kept talking when I stayed quiet. He told me that when he was sixteen, he took on two of his father’s jobs to prove to his father that he was worthy of being the old man’s heir. And he does the same for Mark Rider, contract killing, except these days he usually has his thugs kill people, he doesn’t do it himself.” Muirin swallowed hard. She looked very white, even in the dim light from the glowing ball in her hand. “And you know, I could almost have gone, ‘Okay, he’s kind of a vigilante, he’s just taking out people like the Shadow Knights, right?’ Except—he’s not. At least, not for Mark Rider. He got really drunk. He told me who some of those people were—some of his victims.” She stopped, and shrank into herself. “Burke … I am so sorry…”

  Burke’s head came up, but he looked bewildered. “Huh? What?”

  “Your foster parents,” she whispered, staring down at her hands. “It wasn’t an accident, Burke. He killed your foster family and burned the house down around them to cover it up, so you’d have nowhere to go.”

  It took all four of them to hold Burke down. But it was Spirit’s shoulder he cried into when he finally broke.

  * * *

  Spirit stared into the darkness of her room for a very, very long time that night. It was more vindication for her, but—yeah. It was vindication she’d really rather not have had. This was the hard evidence that the Shadow Knights and the Gatekeepers were one and the same. Maybe not all of them, but certainly Mark Rider and his core group. Even Muirin agreed. Spirit had been vindicated.

  But Burke …

  Poor Burke.

  She was pretty sure he wasn’t going to run off and do anything stupid now, although if they hadn’t restrained him, in those first few moments he probably would have. The big question now was, what were they going to do about all of this? They were in the middle of enemy territory. The enemy didn’t yet know that they knew, and the longer they kept that a secret, the better off they’d be, but …

  Then she remembered what QUERCUS had said. Ignorance and powerlessness is your greatest defense. And now that made sense. The longer they looked stupid and weak, the more likely it was that they’d be left alone.

  She got up, plugged in the Ironkey, and logged on her computer, touch-typing in the dark. QUERCUS? she typed into the chatroom.

  I am here.

  She wondered about that. She wondered how he could always be there. But then … maybe he knew her h
ours, or guessed them, and slept when she was in class. Or more likely, he was more than one person.

  What you said about ignorance and powerlessness—

  Yes. The more ordinary you appear, the safer you are. And they must never think you have somewhere to run to, or they will look for that haven and destroy it.

  But I actually don’t have anywhere to run to, she replied, feeling a lump of fear in her gut and tears burning her eyes.

  Then QUERCUS replied with something utterly unexpected.

  Yet.

  She bit back a gasp.

  Be careful. Be very careful. And Spirit, you have a weapon that they will see as a weakness. Do not hesitate to use it.

  A weapon? she typed. What weapon?

  Kindness.

  Okay, that sort of made sense. Because the Shadow Knights were trying to divide people up, but you couldn’t do that if the people you were trying to divide them from kept doing nice things for them. Shoot, it had even worked with Muirin!

  And it wouldn’t look like she was doing anything at all, not to them. Just being all touchy-feely-hippie-kid. Not a threat, not even close.

  I can do that, she typed back, and closed the window. With all of Mark Rider’s geeks living here now, she was even more paranoid about not chatting too long to QUERCUS. She figured five or ten minutes was all right, but not more.

  She slipped back into bed, wishing she had some idea of what might come so she could be ready for it.

  * * *

  The next day was a grueling one, so hard Spirit really couldn’t do anything but spare a thought now and again for Burke. If anyone here knew how he felt, she did. When they finally all met up at dinner, though, he looked a lot different than she had thought he would. She’d thought he would be broken up, but he wasn’t. He didn’t look angry, either, which she’d been afraid of; she didn’t want him running off and challenging Anastus or something equally suicidal. She slipped her hand into his under the cover of the table and gave it a squeeze; he squeezed back, glanced over at her, and gave her the faintest of smiles, then let go. It took her a while to figure out what he reminded her of; finally she did. He was like a marathon runner at the beginning of the race—no idea of what was ahead of him, only knowing it was going to be incredibly hard, but determined to get across that finish line.

  It was Muirin who looked absolutely miserable. She poked at her food until Burke finally spoke into the silence.

  “Murr-cat. It’ll be okay. I promise.”

  She looked up, hope warring with guilt in her eyes. She was about to say something when—

  The power went out.

  All of it. Lights, emergency lights, everything. They were in the Refectory with the curtains drawn, and it had been an overcast day, so by evening it was as dark outside as it suddenly was inside.

  Within moments of losing the light, the crushing fear descended.

  People started screaming; you could hear them all over the room, jumping up, chairs going over, even tables. People stumbled toward the exit, or tried to, fell, tripped over other people and furniture. It was a good thing their table was against the wall, but even so, someone shrieking like a banshee blundered into the back of Spirit’s chair, flailed wildly and smacked the side of her head, then stumbled away again.

  Spirit fought the fear back and grabbed first Burke’s hand, then Addie’s on the other side of her. “Hold hands!” she managed to choke out, over the fear and the noise. “Grab hands!”

  She couldn’t have told when she knew, but she did, the moment that Addie on one side and Loch on the other managed to get hold of Muirin’s hands, completing the circle. We need to break this somehow, she thought, dimly, through terror that screamed at her to run, run anywhere. People were running; she could hear them stampeding into the dark, out into the hall, screams receding as they made it past the Refectory door. And beyond? She thought she heard doors slamming. Were they running outside?

  Desperately, she started chanting the first thing she could think of.

  Multiplication tables. Neat, orderly, logical. Always the same.

  “One times one is one,” she shouted hoarsely. “One times two is two. One times three is three. One times four is four.”

  The others caught on pretty quickly to what she was doing and, raggedly, their voices joined hers as the dining room emptied, the screaming was all somewhere distant, and the terror tried to force their hands apart.

  They got as far as the twelve times when suddenly, with no more warning than when it had descended, the fear vanished.

  In the next moment, the lights came back up.

  And there they were, sitting around the table, blinking in the light like a bunch of spiritualists interrupted at a séance. Around them the room was a wreck: tables overturned, chairs flung all over, food and dishes on the floor and broken. There were two people here besides them, and both were huddled in far corners, weeping and shaking, curled in fetal positions.

  Doc Mac charged into the Refectory a moment later, hair wild, eyes wilder. He spotted them, and barked out, “Stay here! Don’t move until another teacher or one of the Breakthrough people comes!” and dashed out again.

  They looked at each other, then at their shattered classmates in the corners. Spirit shrugged, got up, and went over to one of them. Addie joined her a moment later, and they tried to get Sharon Hastings to uncurl. Loch and Burke went to the other—Noreen Templeton. Muirin stayed where she was, paper white, eyes dilated, shaking.

  Truth to tell, Spirit wasn’t far from that, herself.

  Finally Lily Groves showed up, grim-faced and angry. By that time the friends had managed to get Sharon and Noreen over to the table; for lack of anything better, since they were shaking like leaves, Spirit had gotten a couple of the tablecloths that weren’t too splattered and wrapped them around their shoulders. Addie was getting them—and Muirin—to drink some hot tea so loaded with sugar it was practically syrup.

  “Nothing fixes things like a nice cup of hot tea,” she was saying firmly, as Ms. Groves shoved open the Refectory doors.

  “That’s seven,” she said into a handheld radio she was carrying. “Hastings, Spears, Templeton, White, Lake, Hallows, and Shae.”

  The radio cracked. “Roger that. Get them to their rooms. We’re still searching.”

  Addie was already getting Noreen to her feet. Spirit did the same for Sharon, then Muirin. “We heard, Ms. Groves,” Burke said as he took Sharon’s elbow, then put his arm around her. “You don’t mind if Loch and I take them to their rooms—”

  “Go, go, go—” Ms. Groves said impatiently. “Rules are temporarily suspended. In fact, if you all want to huddle in the same room, I authorize it, just as long as we know where you are. Do you?”

  They looked at each other. “Yes, please,” said Muirin in a small voice.

  “Mine’s closest,” said Addie.

  “All seven going to Lake’s room,” Ms. Groves barked into her radio as they passed her.

  It took a lot longer than Spirit liked, shepherding Sharon and Noreen along. “I have a bad feeling this isn’t over,” she told the others quietly, when they finally got into the hall on the girls’ floor.

  “Yeah,” Burke replied, his eyes going everywhere, as if he was looking for danger. Probably he was. Finally, they got into Addie’s room, which was supernaturally neat. Addie closed the door, then the curtains, and lit a candle. And a good thing, too, because fifteen minutes later, the power went out again, and the fear descended.

  Sharon and Noreen wailed for a moment then passed out on the bed.

  Addie put the candle on the floor; the rest of them huddled over that candle like a campfire, staring at it as if it was their salvation—

  Which it was. Somehow, with that light there, the fear wasn’t able to get hold of them as thoroughly. They were able to think. It was Loch who began to recite this time. Recite, and then sing, hoarsely. And it was the filthiest song Spirit had ever heard in her life. The lyrics were so rude, and so funny,
and so shocking, that her surprise even overcame the terror. She had no idea that Loch—proper, gentlemanly Loch—knew anything like that! She started to giggle.

  Then when Loch finished the song, Addie started one—about some poor bricklayer having a really, really bad day.

  Then, when she was done, Muirin started croaking out dirty limericks. They were much, much worse than Loch’s song.

  Burke was bright crimson. So was Addie, and even Muirin herself. Spirit had a pretty good idea that she was just as red—and she had no notion of what she could contribute, but after Muirin had recited about a dozen, suddenly the power came back up and the terror vanished again.

  This time there was a knock on the door less than a minute after the lights came back on. It was Doc Mac and a couple of the Breakthrough people. They collected Sharon and Noreen and left without saying a word, leaving the five of them sitting on the floor with the candle still burning.

  It was very quiet. “Do you think it’s over now?” Muirin asked, in a small voice.

  “Usually these things happen in odd numbers,” Addie said, staring at the candle flame intently. “I don’t know. I don’t know if there’s going to be a third wave and Doctor Ambrosius will manage to repel it. I—just don’t know.” She frowned with concentration. “Who’s feeling brave enough to get up and get into one of my dresser drawers?”

  Loch coughed. “I am,” he said, before anyone else could answer.

  “Left hand side, third down, behind the thermal shirts,” Addie said. “There’s a big rectangular box, it fits all across the drawer. I took advantage of the new rules. Get it and bring it here.”

  Loch did so, coming back with a box that looked expensive largely because, though it might have been cardboard, it was like no cardboard that Spirit had ever seen before. Glass-smooth, a deep, dark metallic brown, the word Lavendula was written in gold script across the top. Loch carried it as if it weighed ten pounds. He put it down next to the candle. Addie slid the top off. Inside were stacked squares wrapped in gold foil. Addie took one and unwrapped it.