TWELVE
Spirit woke up with a start—with someone’s hand clamped over her mouth. She froze. Her body couldn’t seem to move even though her brain wanted her to leap out of bed and—
“Don’t scream,” came a hissing whisper. “It’s just me, Elizabeth.”
The hand came away, and before she could get a good breath to let out a shriek, the light over her bed clicked on. It was Elizabeth, looking pinched and anxious. Spirit struggled up into a sitting position and rubbed her eyes, still sore and sticky from crying. “Elizabeth, what are you doing in my room?” she asked angrily. What was wrong with her? “It’s after hours. You’re going to get us both in trouble.”
The girl shrank away a little and sat down on the floor beside the bed, breathing shakily. “I had to talk to you,” she said. “You’re the only one that doesn’t seem all sucked in by the Breakthrough people.”
She was actually wringing her hands. Spirit had never seen anyone wring their hands before. It looked strange. “I’m not buying into it,” she said, cautiously. “You were there when the Shadow Knights turned up, and they were wearing Oakhurst rings. A week later, these guys are here—but you can’t just pack up and ship building crews and tons of stuff in a week, so I don’t buy that they came running when Doctor Ambrosius called last week. From what one of the Radial kids said, it sounds like they’ve been in Radial for weeks, setting up this move. So … maybe Doctor Ambrosius called them a couple months ago, and it’s just strange timing that they turned up now, but … I don’t like it. It just seems all wrong.”
Elizabeth was shivering, but looked up sharply. “The Shadow Knights! You know what they’re called!” she exclaimed, her eyes darkening.
Spirit blinked, startled. “Uh, what? Burke just made up that name.…”
“But it’s the right name for them! The Shadow Knights—they’re the ancient enemies of the Knights of the Grail!” Elizabeth clutched Spirit’s arm; her hands were freezing. “It all goes back to Arthur!”
“Arthur?” It took Spirit a moment for her brain to come up with the right association. “You mean King Arthur? Camelot? Excalibur? Merlin?”
“Yes!” Elizabeth had her arm in a death grip. “Listen, it’s all deeper, all larger than you think. It’s not just Oakhurst, and it’s not just now, this is a war that’s been going on for centuries, and now it’s getting near the end—”
And then, the words just poured out of her, as if they had been kept behind a dam all this time. More words than Spirit had heard Elizabeth speak in the entire time she’d been here. As Spirit listened, caught in a kind of bemused numbness, Elizabeth spun a story so wild that it belonged in a book, not real life. Spirit’s friends had been calling her paranoid for weeks, but even though she was dead certain they were all in danger and smack in the middle of some horrible conspiracy, even she hadn’t come up with anything this crazy. And Elizabeth wasn’t exactly making it easy to follow her story.
Finally, when Elizabeth ran out of air, Spirit tried to get it all sorted out so it was more or less coherent. “So … all this is about King Arthur and the rest of those mythical people. First, there are these Shadow Knights. And they’re serving Mordred. Mordred has been reincarnated, or else he never died, you’re not sure which. But some of the Shadow Knights are people who served him, or were his allies before, and they are all reincarnated over and over. And Mordred wants the usual Evil Overlord stuff, and the Shadow Knights are going to help him get it. Right?”
Elizabeth nodded and opened her mouth to start again. Spirit held up her hand. “Whoa. Wait. I’m still trying to get this straight.”
Elizabeth nodded, and watched her expectantly.
“But the Shadow Knights have never been able to defeat the Grail Knights, who were the ones that served Arthur and Merlin. And the Grail Knights haven’t been able to defeat the Shadow Knights, either. Which is why they all keep getting reborn.”
The girl nodded. “And Arthur, too. Arthur is reborn.” She faltered. “Merlin and Mordred, I am not sure. I am not part of their story, so I do not know these things, I only know what I have been a part of myself—”
Wow, now she’s even starting to talk … odd. Like someone who’s not really from around here … as in a zillion years ago not from around here.
“Wait! I’m still—Okay, so now we talk about Oakhurst. Some of the Oakhurst people are Shadow Knights. Some are Grail Knights.” She paused, trying not to think about how absurd this all sounded. “Some aren’t anything, except magicians. And you can’t tell which is which.”
“It is all part of the curse that fell upon Britain when Mordred betrayed Arthur and sold himself to the Dark,” Elizabeth said earnestly. “Everyone involved in any way with Arthur’s kingdom is doomed to be reborn over and over until either the Shadow or the Grail triumphs. One must destroy the other. But I do not recognize any of the people here at Oakhurst, because I did not know them in the past.”
“So why doesn’t anyone remember all this?” she wanted to know.
“The Shadow Knights do, but only once they turn to the Dark. Their master, Mordred, wakes their memories. I do not know about the Grail Knights.” She looked as if she knew that part of the story sounded pretty weak. “Possibly Merlin wakes theirs as well. But when they are reborn, they have no memories of their past lives.”
“But—I don’t get it, if they’re reborn over and over and fight the war over and over, why hasn’t anyone noticed until now?” Spirit shook her arm a little, and Elizabeth finally noticed she was holding on to it and let go.
“Because until the spirit in the Tree was freed, they had no leader and no direction,” the girl said simply. “Their conflicts were random, skirmishes rather than battles, and since none of them recalled their pasts, they did not even know why they fought with each other. That Tree is the one here in the Entry Hall. That is why we are all here, because of the Tree.”
“And the spirit was freed when lightning hit it and killed it?” Spirit replied.
Elizabeth shrugged. “I do not know, but that is a good notion. I’m not part of that story. I know I keep telling you that, but all I can tell you is what I know—I was just a tiny part of the original story. I never met Arthur, or Lancelot—I only ever knew a few on the side of the Grail or the Shadow.”
“Wait—you—”
“I am a Reincarnate,” Elizabeth said quietly, but with conviction. “I am—was—Yseult of Cornwall. Iseult the Fair. Isolde.”
“Wait, what—Tristan and Isolde, that Isolde?” Spirit’s jaw dropped a little. This was getting crazier by the minute.
Elizabeth nodded.
“Prove it,” Spirit demanded.
Elizabeth looked off somewhere over Spirit’s shoulder, her eyes unfocused. “Ol an tekter a wylys ny yl taves den yn bys y leuerel bynytha. A frut de ha floures tek menestrouthy ha can whek fenten bryght. Avel arhans ha pedyr streyth vras defry ov resek a-dyworty worte myres may tho whans,” she said.
Well, it sounded like another language, and not gibberish. And it sure didn’t sound like any language Spirit knew. She had a smattering of Spanish, some French—Oakhurst insisted you learn Latin and Greek, so she was getting those now—it wasn’t any of those. And it didn’t sound like anything she’d ever heard people speak, like Italian, German, Japanese, or Russian.
“I mean, that’s all I can do,” Elizabeth said apologetically. “I can speak Cornish, old Cornish, and no one’s been able to do that in hundreds of years. I speak what we now call Irish-Celtic. I could tell you where to find landmarks in Cornwall and Ireland. But things that I knew are probably not even two stones on top of each other now. The ruins at Tintagel aren’t even from my … lifetime.” She shrugged helplessly. “I know this sounds mad. You look at me and see an American, a sixteen-year-old girl, but I have been Yseult—known I was Yseult—nearly the whole of my life. I thought I was crazy when I first started getting my dreams, except I finally figured out they weren’t dreams after all. They were memories. That’s when I started seeing the Shadow Knights, too. I think they were looking for me.” She shuddered. “I—Yseult, I, we’re the same person, don’t you see? There is no Elizabeth Walker. There’s only Yseult of Cornwall, and I wasn’t on either side originally, and if the Shadow Knights can get me to choose them—that’s more power for them. Plus my Gift. I can see things, past and future, and that would be really useful to them. I think that’s how I ended up waking my own memories, because I saw my parents dead, and I was trying to find out how they died and warn them, but … I got all this other stuff instead.”
Spirit licked dry lips. “So … Breakthrough … Mark Rider, all of them…”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said, sounding desperate. “I know some of them are Shadow Knights. I think Mark Rider is, but that’s only because—well, I don’t have any proof. Maybe I think he is only because he’s one of those guys you know would run over you then sue you because you ruined their tires. And you don’t have to be a Reincarnate to become a Shadow Knight; they’ll recruit anyone who’s a magician, so even if he is a Shadow Knight, he might not be a Reincarnate. Reincarnates are the most powerful, but anyone who is a sorcerer is useful. So Mark Rider could be a new recruit, he could be a Reincarnate, I could be completely mistaken about him. I mean, the only way I can find out for sure is to get close to them, and if I do, and it’s someone I recognize and a Shadow Knight, then that person will recognize me, too, and then they’ll know I’m more than just someone with a Gift.” She looked up at Spirit, shivering again. “If they do that, I’m dead. Either they’ll kill me because they can’t get me to join them, or they’ll—well, it won’t be me anymore, so I might as well be dead.”
Suddenly, she raised her head. “There’s someone coming. I can’t be found here.”
She was on her feet faster than Spirit would have believed, had the door to the room open and was out into the hall before Spirit could react.
Spirit jumped out of bed and ran after her. She paused in the hall, trying to remember which way Elizabeth’s room was. Before she could remember, she heard footsteps and a flashlight shone in her face.
“Spirit, what are you doing out here?” Kelly Langley demanded.
“I thought I heard something.” Lame, but it was the only thing she could think of. “Like someone dropped something out here.”
Kelly panned her flashlight around the hallway, which was, of course, empty and clean. “You were having a nightmare or something,” Kelly said firmly. “Go back to bed. Now.”
There wasn’t exactly a choice. Spirit nodded, and went back into her room. She thought about trying an e-mail to Elizabeth, but … well, probably not a good idea. Besides, Kelly was probably waiting outside the door to make sure her light went out. With a sigh, she got back into bed and turned it off.
Fat chance getting any more sleep tonight.
* * *
“Merlin. And Arthur.” Burke shook his head. “It sounds like a bad fantasy movie.”
“Or a manga, or an animé, they’ve got plots that screwy,” Muirin said. “Ha. Park Place, Addie. Pay up. Seriously, Liz needs to market herself to Japan, they’d eat that kind of thing up with a spoon.”
“I know but…” Spirit had woken up this morning with the conviction that, as utterly unbelievable as it had all sounded, that was exactly the reason why it must be true. If Elizabeth had been making something up, she surely would have gone for a story that was a lot more plausible.
“Look, Spirit, if it makes you feel any better, how about if I go find her?” Burke asked. “I’ll go get her right now, we can talk to her, and we’ll—” he paused. “Not interrogate her, but if she really made all this stuff up, unless she’s psycho, we can probably point out enough holes to make her admit it.”
“It’s already got more holes than Swiss cheese,” Muirin muttered.
“No, I’ll go,” Addie said, getting up. “I’m almost out of Monopoly Money anyway, what with Moneybags Muirin there owning every property on the board that I land on. If she’s in her room, you couldn’t go there anyway, Burke. I’ll try there first.”
But Addie came back only five minutes later, and she had a very strange look on her face.
“What?” Spirit demanded.
“She’s gone.” Addie shook her head. “I mean, completely. The name tag is gone from her door, the room’s been cleaned out. And there wasn’t any announcement or anything—”
“Well, there’s your proof she was delusional, Spirit,” Muirin said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. “I bet Kelly caught her wandering the hall looking for Excalibur, sent her to Doc Mac, and he shipped her away. I mean, think about it. Mark Rider said we’re under attack, and the last thing you want here is someone damaged like that. She wouldn’t be safe here, and who knows what she’d do if she decided she didn’t like the protections? And there wasn’t an announcement because—well, who’d care? It’s not like she had any friends.”
Spirit was more than a little shocked by Muirin’s callousness, but … if Muir was right, then … well, Muir was right. Poor Elizabeth was safer somewhere else, and Oakhurst was safer without her. But …
If Muirin was wrong … had the Shadow Knights found Elizabeth, just as she had feared they would? Was everything she had said, crazy as it sounded, actually true?
* * *
The next day, all classes were canceled while the new schedules were made up—but that didn’t mean they were free. In fact, they were even less free. Divided into groups—and, of course, none of the five of them was in the same group—they were tested in every way possible. A battery of physical tests—not just physical fitness: Their reflexes were tested and timed, their proficiency in anything like a martial art underwent the scrutiny of Anastus Ovcharenko and his two underlings—were interspersed with academic tests. By the time the day was over, Spirit was too tired even to think, and she wasn’t the only one. The Refectory that night was extremely quiet, people dully shoving food into their mouths as if they were too tired to taste it. Even Muirin was too tired to complain.
“I’m going straight to bed,” she announced as she got up from the table. “Thank God there’s no homework.”
Burke, who was sporting a fine crop of bruises as well as looking as if he had packed a hundred pounds up a mountain, nodded. “Me, too. Just check your e-mail; Mr. Krandal told me they’d send our new scheds after supper.”
“No argument here,” Addie groaned. “I just hope there’s hot water with everyone wanting baths.”
Spirit and Loch just nodded; she was so exhausted she found it hard to concentrate on even the simplest of things. It took her two tries to get at her e-mail, and she must have stared at the screen for fifteen minutes before she figured out which e-mail was the right one.
She was unsurprised to see that music and art classes had been canceled “until further notice.” They’d been replaced with new language courses and new literature courses. Celtic, Norse, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian had joined Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, and German. The new “literature” classes were all folklore, intensive studies in mythology—of course, this was Oakhurst, so “myth” wasn’t so “mythical.” Celtic, French, German, and Italian had already been on the list, now there were Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Roman, Ancient Greek, Ancient Persian … the list was enormous, and the notes said it didn’t matter if you were the only one that wanted to study a particular culture, you would be accommodated.
Everyone was taking marksmanship, which was going to cover every possible weapon you could shoot.
Oh, that’ll make Loch happy. Not.
Everyone was taking something called Systema. Since Ovcharenko was teaching it, it was probably a martial art. Spirit’s morning “conditioning” class remained; her Art class was now a class in Celtic language, her Music class was now her choice of mythologies. She picked one at random, sent the e-mail back, and went to see if there was hot water. She almost fell asleep in the tub, and when she did drop into bed, she was out without a chance to even think about anything.
* * *
It seemed very strange to see Madison Lane-Rider standing where Ms. Holland should have been. Up close she was even more impressive than she’d been on the stage. A long fall of thick red hair so perfectly smooth and shining it looked like it was Photoshopped dropped to just below her shoulders and was parted on the side. Her pale skin looked Photoshopped, too. With that hair and skin, Spirit would have expected green eyes—but no, she had eyes of a very strange gray color.
She wasn’t wearing the Oakhurst uniform, and today she wasn’t even in Oakhurst brown or gold. She wore a slim skirt and bulky sweater in shades of dark emerald, a carved jade pendant, and jade bangles. Spirit got the feeling Madison Lane-Rider was deliberately showing that she wasn’t to be slotted into some preset place on the “team.” And Spirit also got the feeling that between the outfit and the jewelry, what Ms. Lane-Rider was wearing could probably have paid for the White’s old house.
Evidently, Spirit had ticked off “Nordic folklore,” because that was what Ms. Lane-Rider began to lecture on.
“Death,” she said, when everyone had settled. “Death is omnipresent in Nordic lore. There is probably not a single culture that celebrates death or elevates it to such a level of importance as the Norse. Other cultures have the cult of heroic self-sacrifice to save others, to be sure, and the Japanese have, or had, the Kamikaze of sorts, but only the Norse placed so much emphasis on ‘dying well’ regardless of what was won or lost—”
Dylan raised his hand. She acknowledged him with a raised eyebrow.
“What about Klingons?” he asked, eliciting a laugh.
“Very good. Writers have to start with something, and it is quite clear that the Klingon attitude is Nordic, though their catchphrase of ‘It is a good day to die’ is Native American. Now, the question we must answer as magicians, is: ‘What does this mean to us, and how can we use it?’”
Spirit listened, and took copious notes, even though she didn’t agree morally with an awful lot of what Ms. Lane-Rider had to say. Or maybe more to the point, Ms. Lane-Rider lectured from a completely amoral point of view, and Spirit could not have been more opposed. She could tell that Muirin was just drinking all of this in, though, and that worried her. When the class was over, Ms. Lane-Rider even stopped by Muirin’s desk to talk to her about something, which worried Spirit even more. She couldn’t wait, though; her next class was that Systema thing, and she was pretty sure Anastus Ovcharenko was not going to cut anyone any slack.
He didn’t. And Systema proved to be a martial art, but it wasn’t like anything that had been taught at Oakhurst before this. As Mr. Ovcharenko explained it, it was all about controlling the joints of the opponent, since this was where you got the most gain for the least force. He talked for about ten minutes, then said abruptly: “Bah! Enough of talking. Now we spar.”
And instead of exercises or kata, that was exactly what they did. He broke them into teams of two—and he seemed to have a pretty good idea of who the bullies in the class were, because he paired them off against each other and the glint in his eye said that this wasn’t an accident. After he’d let the pairs match off against each other for a while, he stopped them, and demonstrated some moves, drilled them, then set them to sparring again. But he wasn’t looking for “the right counter.” In fact, when Dylan repeated the same strike three times, he interrupted, shouting “Nyet! Svinya! This is not tournament! Systema is to be flexible, reactive, and never, never to set up pattern! Now, again! This time being to think!”
Up close, he was a surprise. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty; very blond with brilliant blue eyes, almost too handsome to be real. But he had very cold eyes, and Spirit got the feeling that almost everything he did was a carefully calculated act—a Systema of behavior, designed to fool everyone around him until he decided to take out a weak spot.
* * *
All through dinner, all that Muirin could talk about was Madison Lane-Rider, and it was driving Spirit crazy. It was as if Muirin had discovered a long-lost older sister. Not that Spirit was jealous—but because her instincts were screaming at her not to trust the woman.
“Muirin,” she finally snapped, “you’re acting like you and this woman you didn’t even know existed two days ago are BFFs! I mean, we don’t know anything about these people, and she could be one of the Shadow Knights for all we know!”
Muirin looked offended. “I’m not stupid! All I’m trying to do is get information out of her! Can I help it if she’s the first person I’ve ever met here who knows the difference between Donatella Versace and her brother? It’s the first time in months that I’ve had an intelligent conversation that wasn’t about conspiracies, disappearances, or people trying to kill us!” Her voice took on the tiniest edge of something like hysteria. “I just want to have a normal conversation like a normal person and enjoy some normal things in this lunatic farm!”
“Whoa, Murr-cat,” Burke said soothingly. “Spirit didn’t mean you were being stupid. Did you, Spirit?”
Spirit shook her head, although she was pretty sure that Muirin was lying. These people were exactly the sort that Muirin wanted to be around and be like—rich, connected, and fashionable. Muirin might not betray their secrets consciously, but subconsciously she was likely to give a lot more away than she realized.
“Anyway, I did find out something and I was getting to that,” Muirin continued resentfully. “You know how I said there’s some kind of Skull and Bones thing going on here? Well, I got Madison to admit to being one!” She tossed her head with a look of triumph. “She told me that the strength of your magic isn’t the only way you can stand out here. She said there’s what she called an ‘inner circle’ of exceptional students. She said the Gatekeepers pick these people because they’ve ‘embraced their potential to accomplish great things.’”
“And I’m the Keymaster,” Addie drawled, which made Loch crack up while Spirit and Burke were completely lost. “Never mind. So, what else did she tell you? Secret handshake? Password? Do they all have little tramp-stamp tattoos? This isn’t quite on the same level as Elizabeth’s Sekrit K-niggits of Arthur, but she could just be feeding you a line, Murr-cat.”
“Ha! That’s where you’re wrong, and I can prove it!” Muirin retorted triumphantly. “They all wear badges. It’s the Oakhurst coat of arms, and they do it as a pin or a tie tack or cuff links—”
“Muirin, we all get those pins in the second year,” Burke interrupted.
“We get a pin; it’s not the same,” she replied. “The regular pins, the snake is gold. The Gatekeepers, the snake is black.” She settled back to finish off the last bites of her dessert with a satisfied air.
“Huh…,” Loch said thoughtfully. “Madison Lane-Rider was wearing one of those and I thought it was kind of strange because, well, think about it, I’ve never seen anything other than gold and brown on anything from Oakhurst.”
Right, so everyone wears a little name tag that says HELLO, MY NAME IS EVIL? Spirit thought. It can’t be that easy. And you don’t have a shred of proof that these Gatekeepers are the same as the Shadow Knights, either!
“You don’t … could they be the Shadow Knights?” she asked tentatively.
“Oh, get real, Spirit! They’re the ones that came pounding up like the cavalry,” Muirin snapped. “They’re just as likely to be the Grail Knights, if you’re going to buy into Elizabeth’s fantasy. Which I don’t. Just because the snake on their badge is black, that doesn’t mean a thing; and since when would bad guys advertise who they were with a nice handy sign?”
Since that pretty much echoed Spirit’s own thoughts on the matter, she looked down at her plate.
“No, if this is like Skull and Bones, then that means whoever is in it is going to be really influential,” Muirin continued, a bit of gloating in her tone. “Once they get the Shadow Knights or whatever you want to call them taken care of, that’s where I want to be. I mean, have you seen what Madison wears? Not to mention the kinds of people Mark Rider gets to party with—”
Muirin went on and on in the same vein; Spirit stopped paying attention. This was making no sense at all. Granted, Muirin had been the last one to believe her about the continuing threat, and was still the most shrill skeptic among them, but within hours she seemed to have cast aside all thought of the very real danger they were in because Madison Lane-Rider had spent time talking to her. Now Muirin was acting like the most important thing was the kinds of social contacts she could make with the Breakthrough people, and completely ignoring the fact that the Breakthrough people were training them as if they were going to be on the front lines any second now. And they had been openly attacked.
What was wrong with Muirin? First being completely cold about Elizabeth, and now this?
She glanced over at Addie. Addie could usually be counted on to rein Muirin in, but Addie was just sitting there with a little frown on her face, twisting her ring on her finger.
Burke—
For the first time since they’d sat down, she really looked at him. Burke looked completely exhausted. There were more bruises on him, and now that she was really paying attention, he had the expression of someone who was on his last legs, but couldn’t see an end to the tunnel. Despair, that was it. And as Muirin chattered on, he finally held up a hand and stopped her.
“I just spent the entire day either getting beat up, or trying to wrap my brain around stuff I am never in a million years going to get,” he said, his voice a little rough, like he was holding back his emotions. “Mostly beat up. Almost all my classes now are actually martial arts, and the ones that aren’t are things I am not good at. And you know what? I’m going to admit it. I’m beat. We got lucky before, when we didn’t know any better, and the people who called the Hunt thought there was no possible opposition. Now we know better, and they do, too, whoever they are, and I think I just realized I’ve hit the end and there’s no more rope.” He sighed—it was almost a moan—and rubbed his eyes. “I can’t do this anymore. I keep thinking about you guys getting hurt—or worse than that. I can’t. I’m not a superhero. There’s going to be trouble here, and I think we need to leave it to the people who are already trained to handle it.”
Spirit sat up in alarm. “You’re not going to tell Rider about the Wild Hunt!” she exclaimed. “You’re not going to tell him it was us who stopped them!”
“No. I’m just going to go to Doctor Ambrosius and tell him I want to leave Oakhurst. If he wants, he can send me wherever they sent the others. But I just can’t take any more of this.” He looked as if he was about to cry for a minute. “I’m—just a guy. Just a dumb jock with a little magic.…”
“I think we need to tell Doctor Ambrosius that it wasn’t just an accident that we stopped the Hunt,” Addie said firmly. “I think we should tell him about the files marked Tithed, about what we’ve seen written on the Oak, about what Elizabeth told Spirit. All of it. We’re just kids, this isn’t what we should be doing.”
“But Addie—” Spirit began.
“Enough, Spirit.” Addie’s expression hardened. “Look, I understand that figuring all this out is partly your way of handling that your family is gone. I get that. I get that since your magic hasn’t bubbled up yet, this is your way of feeling effective. But it’s gone way beyond what we can do now. We need to stop, let someone else take over, and do what they tell us to do.”
She looked around at the others; all of them were nodding, even Loch. Her heart sank. Could they be right? Could she be trying to keep them involved in solving the problem, rather than turning it over to more competent people, just because she couldn’t bear to come to terms with her family’s death?
I need to talk to Doc Mac, she thought—but then she’d have to tell him everything. Could she trust him? She tried to remember. Did he wear one of the pins with the black snake on it?
And did that black snake even mean anything? Was Muirin right about that, too?
“Look,” she said desperately. “There is something we need to keep looking at! They keep telling us we’re all Legacies here, right? No one just pulled in off the street to go to Oakhurst. One or both of our parents had to be Oakhurst grads, even though they never told us about it. Which could make sense since Oakhurst is kind of secret, and for all we know, the other kids’ parents told them, and ours were just keeping things back.”
Addie nodded, but there was a look of faint impatience on her face. “Yes. So?”
“And have you seen anyone around here who didn’t have magic?” Other than me.
They all shook their heads.
“I know for a fact my parents didn’t have a smidge of magic. And they weren’t hooked up like the Riders are.” She ran her hands through her hair nervously. “OK, maybe they chose to give up the magic and the perks, like being in a witness protection program so they could just bail.” Like Burke wants to, she thought, and a shadow of guilt passed over Burke’s face, confirming her thought. “And maybe the kids that didn’t get Tithed to the Hunt but actually do leave are doing that. But we’re orphans, and underage, and we can’t just leave and get jobs or inherit anything without a guardian and not everybody has Trust Funds to do that. So our parents being Oakhurst grads and us not knowing that, and—well, everything—it only makes sense if there’s another Oakhurst somewhere. One where no one has magic, or at least, no one uses it, ever.” She turned to Muirin. “Remember what Madison Lane-Rider told you about magic not being the only way you get noticed? So if you wanted, you could get all hooked up and get rich and all that without having and using magic at this other place. But unless it exists none of this makes sense—”
“Spirit, you’re starting to sound like Elizabeth,” Burke said, quietly. “Come to the point, will you?”
Now even Burke …
“We need to find out if there are any kids here who aren’t Legacies. We need to find out if there’s anyone here who is not an orphan—”
Muirin raised her hand. “Duh. Me.”
“Your stepmother doesn’t count,” Addie and Loch chorused. They looked at each other. Loch shrugged. “She doesn’t,” Addie continued. “She doesn’t want you, she’s been trying to dump you anywhere but with her, and besides, she doesn’t control your money, your Trust does.”
“And the third thing is—” Spirit rubbed her aching temples. “We need to find out if any of the Alumns have kids, if the kids are magicians, and if so, why they aren’t here.”
“And what will all this prove?” Muirin demanded.
“If we find out that we’ve been lied to about any of that, which is, like, pretty basic and important—what else did they lie to us about?” Spirit replied, feeling a horrible headache coming on. “I mean look, maybe it means what happened to our parents wasn’t—”
“What? You’re trying to say that what happened to our parents was murder, is that it?” Addie said, her tone icy. “And then what? If we’ve been lied to, maybe it was Oakhurst that killed them, or someone inside Oakhurst? More Shadow Knights? More conspiracy?”
“And how would a few people do all that anyway?” Loch added. “Because it couldn’t be more than a few, or someone would talk. Cops were investigating the hotel fire—don’t you think they’d have noticed arson? And how would you control a fire so it didn’t kill me, too?” Now he was twisting his ring, and shrugged. “Spirit, you have got to get a grip. If all our parents were killed by magic, there would be some trace of it. Face it, what we do isn’t exactly subtle, people would see things. If it was done by some other means, there would be evidence.”
But you didn’t see what I saw, she thought, starting to shiver.
“You’re confusing cause and effect,” Burke said, wearily, but in a tone that still sounded patronizing. “Or something like that. Most people our age have parents that are alive. People our parents’ ages generally don’t die, and when they do, it’s going to be something unusual. We’re just the ones in the minority who lost our parents, so of course how we lost them is unusual. So we’re orphans and we have magic, and our parents went to school here, so this is where we got sent by their wills. It’s no different than if we were all Native American and we got sent back to the rez when we were orphaned, even though we didn’t know we were Native American because our folks kept it secret from us.”
“Parents do that, Spirit, keep secrets from you,” Loch told her. “I don’t care how wonderful you thought they were, or how open, I know for a fact they were keeping secrets from you. The proof is that they never told you about Oakhurst. They might have been doing so because they were trying to protect you, or because they were ashamed of not having magic or ashamed that they did, or a million other reasons.”
“I’ll say it again, Spirit. Get a grip. It’s all coincidence.” Burke rubbed his head. “Seriously. Keep this up—”
“And they’re going to send you to the Shadow Oakhurst Loony Bin and you and Lizzie can trade hallucinations and be BFFs,” Muirin said, with a nasty glint in her eye. “Maybe she’ll decide you were her mother, the Queen of Ireland. Or her rival, Isolde of the Fair Hands, would that be nice to be confined with?”
“Muirin, chill,” Addie said warningly.
Spirit felt her eyes starting to burn as she held back tears. She didn’t get it. Was it just that they really were all burned out and wanted someone else to take over? Was she really the paranoid one? Was she delusional?
She got up and left them abruptly, scrubbing her sleeve across her eyes as soon as she was out of sight. The tears came anyway, and she had to grope her way the last few steps to her room. Once inside she leaned against the door, feeling physically sick from her emotions. Anger, betrayal, despair … mostly despair. And abandonment. Maybe that was the worst. She sat on the edge of the bed and cried for a while. And that made her feel even more abandoned. Part of her had thought—hoped—that Addie or Muirin at least would come after her. That Burke or Loch would try. Hoped for a knock on the locked door. But nothing came. Not even the sound of a whisper or footsteps in the hall outside.
So maybe you’re the one who’s crazy, here, a little voice whispered in her mind.
If only she could talk to someone outside this place … one of her Mom or Dad’s friends, or something … but there was no getting past that firewall.
Was there?
The thumb drive!
She went to the desk and dug it out, and this time she went ahead and followed the instructions.
The instructions didn’t open a browser. They sent her straight to what looked like a chatroom. There was one other user in it, someone called QUERCUS.
After a moment, a long moment, she hesitantly typed hi.
Hello Spirit, QUERCUS replied. I am glad you found the way out.
A shiver ran up her back, quickly quelled when she looked at the screen and realized the software had already put Spirit as her user name.
Who are you? she asked. The next logical question.
A friend. I want to help you.
Yeah, right. She glared at the screen.
I know about feeling alone, QUERCUS typed when she didn’t respond.
Why did you send me this software? she asked, instead of responding directly.
To give you hope in the dark times.
Well, that wasn’t exactly helpful. And—how did she know she was actually outside the school firewall? All she had was this chatroom.
Why should I trust you?
Open a new window, bring up your browser.
She did so.
Now go to one of your old favorite Web sites.
Well. Okay. How about CanHazCheeseburger? She opened a browser, typed it in, expecting to get nothing, as usual, and—
“… shoot…,” she whispered. There it was. And it wasn’t cached, either, the time/day stamps on the posts proved that.
As long as this chatroom is up and open, you can get onto the Internet. When you close it and take off the thumb drive, that will automatically close the link to outside. Magic.
She stared at the LOLcats. Stared at the chatroom.
If only this didn’t feel so much like a trap.…