NINE
Wednesday was December first. Three weeks from today, either somebody else would be dead, or they would have stopped the Whatever. No pressure, right? Spirit thought to herself.
The pop-up calendar app on her desktop told her that the twenty-first wasn’t just the Solstice, but a Full Moon. If this were a movie, she could hack into the school’s main database and run a search on every student who had ever been here. She could find out which ones had left before the age of twenty-one, and when, and then she could just hack her way out onto the Internet and cross-index that with the Naval Observatory’s ephemeris. And then she could find out what lunar phases those dates corresponded with and get all the other information she needed, too. Like complete bios on all the Alums. If she had the complete files on everybody who’d ever gone to Oakhurst, she’d have all their Social Security numbers, and there were any number of sites on the Internet where you could find out about people . . .
Great wish list. She was about as likely to get any of it as she was to find out that she was the last Jedi Knight. Her computer skills were probably good enough to get out of the sandbox to the system itself, but she doubted she could get past whatever security Oakhurst had set up around its data files. And even if she could (because who knows, its security might suck), she definitely couldn’t do it without getting caught.
Looks like technology’s a wash. Better hope magic comes through, she thought.
You have got to be kidding,” Muirin said, her whisper harsh with disbelief. “Crazy Eddie?”
“Don’t whisper, Murr. It makes it sound like you’re plotting something,” Burke said in a quiet voice.
“Well we are, aren’t we?” Muirin demanded reasonably. “But—oh come on, Ads.”
It should have been an idyllic scene, Spirit thought. The five of them were sitting in front of a crackling fire (a real fire, not an illusion) in one of the student lounges. Snow sifted down outside, as fine as powdered sugar. It was so cold that the snow blew around like dust instead of sticking, and Burke said it would probably be gone by morning.
There were six student lounges at Oakhurst: three on the first floor and three on the second. Five of them had sixty-inch flat-screen DVD players and microwaves. The sixth lounge was less than half the size of the others. It backed on the School Library and the staff didn’t want the sound of a movie disturbing the students who were studying. The only people who used it regularly were the Chess Club—who found the library too noisy—but right now the five of them had it to themselves.
“He’s a good choice,” Addie said stubbornly.
“He’s nuts,” Muirin retorted.
“Hey, uh, time out?” Loch said. “Who’s, uh, Eddie?”
“Edgar Abbott,” Addie began, looking sternly at Muirin, “is a Scrying Mage with an extremely strong Gift. Edgar uses a bowl of water to focus on.”
“And he’s cra-a-a-a-zy,” Muirin sang softly. “Addie, come on! He walks around talking to himself all the time! He’s on drugs! Last year he came to breakfast in his underwear—”
“He’s had his Full Gift since he was five years old,” Addie said forcefully. “Full—and completely uncontrolled. He’d have a Scrying episode whenever he saw water, or anything that glittered or sparkled. His visions were as real to him as what was actually around him and nobody understood that he wasn’t crazy. The ‘drugs’ he’s on is just Ativan, and he doesn’t take it all the time.”
There was something niggling at the back of Spirit’s mind. Finally she teased it loose. “But—if he’s here—he’s a Legacy, right? Wouldn’t his parents have . . .”
She stopped as something abruptly occurred to her. She remembered the day she’d found out about Oakhurst, traveling on the private jet with Loch, seeing the “Welcome to Oakhurst” video. And she remembered what Ms. Corby had said:
“Certainly you must be curious about the reasons your parents had for arranging for Oakhurst to become your guardian . . . the reason is simple . . . you are a Legacy . . . what this means is that your parents, one or both of them, was also raised at Oakhurst.”
I’m here because I’m a Legacy, Spirit thought. She’d been too stunned on the plane to think of this, and afterward there’d been too many new things to take in. So either Mom or Dad—or both—were here. But that would mean they were magicians. . . .
“He could be a Legacy without his parents having gone here,” Burke said. He smiled at her, as if he guessed her thoughts. “There’s that Other Oakhurst out there somewhere, the one where all the kids are normal.”
“You mean there’s two places that look like this in the world?” Muirin said. “Now that’s scary. But Eddie’s still crazy.”
Addie set her jaw and looked stubborn.
“Look,” Burke said. “There’s no point in fighting. Addie had a good reason for picking Eddie. Why don’t we listen to it?”
Loch smiled brilliantly at Burke. “Yeah. Because . . . I can’t even imagine what it would have been like just to get Kenning when I was a little kid, and Scrying’s got to be even rougher, right?”
“Yes.” Addie smiled at Loch gratefully. “Edgar’s got one of the strongest Scrying Gifts here. He’s the only strong one who works while he’s awake. We could ask Emily Davis or Cassandra Moore—they’re strong, too—but both of them work in trance.”
“Which, uh? . . .” Loch prompted.
“Which means they wouldn’t be able to tell us anything they Saw until they came out of trance—and then they might decide not to. Edgar can tell us what he’s Seeing as he Sees it,” Addie said. She shrugged. “And he’ll do it if I ask him.”
“Okay,” Loch said, blowing out a long breath. “I’m in. Let’s do it.”
“Me, too,” Burke said. “Spirit?”
“Yeah.” She didn’t like it much, but it was this or let someone die whose death they could prevent.
“And we know Addie’s in, Muirin, so that leaves you,” Burke said. “Because it has to be unanimous.”
Muirin was frowning, her mouth set in a thin angry line. She said nothing.
“Muirin—if Edgar had his Scrying Gift since he was five—and he wouldn’t be here if he wasn’t an orphan—what if he Saw what was going to happen to his parents, and couldn’t tell them?” Spirit said softly. “Or what if they didn’t believe him? I think—I think I might be a little crazy, too. But that doesn’t mean what he Sees can’t be trusted.”
“Oh, sure,” Muirin finally said offhandedly. “I think it’s stupid, but—what’s the fun of playing it safe?”
Spirit heaved a sigh of—not relief, exactly, but at least the decision had been made. “So what do we ask him to do?” she asked.
But just as she asked the question, six kids came in, two of them carrying chessboards, and the chance to speak privately was gone.
So much for Wednesday. For the rest of the week—in every private moment they could grab—the five of them argued over what to tell Edgar Abbott that would protect both him and them from the enemy inside Oakhurst who might be working with the Whatever. It was Muirin who finally came up with a story that all of them thought would work: asking Edgar where Seth was and if he was all right.
It made more sense than asking about Nick. None of them knew Nick that well, and either Edgar would just See him in a hospital in Billings, which would be pretty useless, or he’d look backward and See Nick being brain-fried, and while Addie said nothing someone Saw while Scrying really affected them, the others weren’t as sure.
But Muirin had a logical reason to ask about Seth, and if Seth had been taken by whatever was making Oakhurst kids vanish, Edgar would See what it was. And they’d probably have enough warning from listening to the things he said to interrupt his Scrying before he got to anything that might actually hurt him.
Addie had already talked to Edgar during the week, telling him as little as possible, but enough that she was able to tell the others that he’d agreed to See for Muirin. They decided that Sunday would be the best time—Sundays were the days when nobody expected them to be anywhere or do anything, unless one of them who hadn’t gone got picked to attend Afternoon Tea. They chose to do it in the Greenhouse, because if they tried to drag Edgar off somewhere really secluded, he’d probably pitch a fit (and besides, it was snowing), and agreed that they’d do it right after lunch whether they could all be there or not, because Sunday was already December fifth, and they were running out of time.
But they were lucky enough that none of them was picked for the “honor” of Afternoon Tea this Sunday, so once lunch was over, they went off one by one to the Greenhouse.
Spirit arrived after Loch and Muirin; Burke got there soon afterward. It was nearly another half hour before Addie arrived with Edgar Abbott.
It was only when she saw him that Spirit realized that everybody else at Oakhurst Academy really did look kind of perfect. It didn’t matter whether they were tall or short—or even fat or skinny—all the students at Oakhurst looked vibrantly alive.
Spirit wasn’t sure how to describe it. It wasn’t that everyone at Oakhurst was happy, because, just, no. Or even energetic (again, no), or cover-model gorgeous. And it really wasn’t their clothes, because the dress code made everybody look like robot zombie escapees from a weird religious cult. But whatever it was, Edgar didn’t have it.
His hair was light brown, and he had a good haircut, because there was an in-school salon where you could go get your hair cut if you wanted—and where you had to go get your hair cut if you were a guy, because boys’ hair length was part of the dress code, just like not dying it blue (whether you were a boy or a girl) was. But Edgar’s was messy and uncombed and sticking up all over the place. His clothes were a mess, too—not dirty, but rumpled, as if he’d just pulled them on and then never bothered to make sure his sweater lay flat or his shirt was tucked in. Worst of all, his hands flapped while he walked, and he twitched and stumbled along—not like he was a spaz, but as if he was constantly being distracted by sights and sounds that nobody else noticed but him.
“Oh boy,” Muirin said. “Here comes Freakazoid.”
“Do I even need to tell you how rotten saying something like that is?” Loch asked her in a perfectly pleasant voice.
“Why, no,” Muirin said, smiling a big false smile. “I can get there on my own.” She took a step forward as Addie and Edgar approached, since this was supposed to be her idea.
“Hi, Eddie,” she said unenthusiastically.
It seemed to take Edgar a moment to notice her. “You’re really pretty for a dead girl,” he told her. His voice was high pitched, like a child’s, though Spirit would have guessed he was about Addie’s age.
Muirin grimaced. “Yeah. I like you, too.”
“You didn’t say there were going to be a lot of, a lot of people here, Addie,” Edgar said. He had his book bag slung precariously over one shoulder, and he clutched at the strap as if it were a kind of security blanket.
“Remember, I said Muirin’s friends wanted to know, too?” Addie said. “This is everybody, Edgar. You know Burke. And this is Spirit White and Lachlan Spears. They came here in September.”
“Hi, Edgar,” Loch said.
“Hi,” Edgar said. He looked at Spirit. “You don’t have a crown,” he said, sounding disappointed.
Spirit blinked. She had no idea how to answer, since “I’m sorry” seemed kind of tacky. She was trying to remember if she’d ever had a dress-up princess outfit as a child—since it didn’t seem likely she was going to be crowned Queen of England any time in the future—when Addie took charge of matters.
“Come on over here, Edgar,” Addie said. “Then we can get started.”
Edgar smiled at her, and Spirit thought suddenly that Edgar wanted to reassure Addie as much as Addie was trying to reassure him. “It’s okay. We’re near the water,” he said.
Spirit heard Muirin growl faintly under her breath.
Edgar reached into his book bag and pulled out a battered metal bowl. It looked as if it was handmade—although Spirit couldn’t tell what the metal was, because it had been painted over thickly with black enamel.
“I use the, uh, the same bowl every time,” Edgar said shyly, glancing up from beneath his lashes. “I don’t have to. I just do. Ms. Smith, she says the fewer things you have to think about, the easier it is, and, and, and so your focus should be something familiar.”
“That makes sense,” Loch said, as if this were the most reasonable thing in the world to be discussing. “I wish my Gift worked that way, but it doesn’t. Mine’s Kenning.”
“Oh, oh, oh then you, you won’t want to touch my bowl, no. I’ve had it since before I came here, and, no. You wouldn’t want to touch it. No,” Edgar said, shaking his head and clutching the battered bowl to his chest. But not as if he was protecting it from Loch. As if he was protecting Loch from it. “No.”
“Okay,” Loch said, still sounding just as agreeable.
There were folded canvas drop cloths in the tool shed at the back end of the Greenhouse, and they’d brought one out to sit on. Burke seemed to know just about everything about the day-to-day running of Oakhurst. He said they used them when they wanted to move a plant from one of the raised beds to a flowerpot. Some plants “wintered” in the Greenhouse and were replanted in the flower beds every spring. The five of them arranged themselves in a semicircle on the drop cloth facing Edgar, and Edgar set the empty bowl down in front of himself. Addie picked up a nearby watering can, preparing to fill it—though she could just as easily have Called the water out of the can into the bowl with her Gift.
“First I should—Muirin wanted to ask me to See something, right Addie?” Edgar said.
“That’s right,” Addie said. “She—”
“I want you to See Seth, okay, Eddie?” Muirin said brusquely. “You know him—he has red hair and Pathfinder Gift.”
“He ran away,” Edgar said slowly. “In September. I don’t know why he’d do that.”
“I don’t know, either,” Muirin said, her voice deadly even. “And I don’t know where he is now. And he said he’d send me a message.”
“You mean, by, by, by someone like me? Because they wouldn’t let you have his letters, you know,” Edgar said seriously.
“He’d send it somehow,” Muirin said. “So could you look for him? I just want to know where he is and if he’s okay, okay?”
“Sure, Muirin,” Edgar said. “I like doing things for my friends.”
He looked toward Addie and nodded, and she lifted the watering can and poured the water into the bowl. She kept the spout purposefully low, but Spirit could see how Edgar’s gaze followed the flowing water, and as the bowl between his knees filled, he became more and more intent upon it.
“Hi, Seth,” he said, as conversationally as if Seth were in the Greenhouse with them. “Oh, no. Don’t go out there. It’s dark, and you don’t have a jacket. You’ll be cold. Go back to Oakhurst. Nobody will know you ran away if you go back now.”
Spirit looked at Loch in confusion. The other three might be familiar with Scrying and seeing magic done, but neither of them were. Spirit couldn’t tell if what Edgar was doing was normal, and from Loch’s expression, neither could he.
“It’s cold. It’s dark. He’s walking. He’s been this way before, many times.” Edgar’s normal speaking voice was high and stammering, but his voice while in trance was deep and resonant. Spirit saw Muirin nod to herself at Edgar’s words. It was obvious to all of them that Edgar was Seeing the past.
“He hears howling in the distance. It sounds like wolves. A whole bunch of them.”
Spirit saw Loch frown and hesitate, on the verge of saying something, then shake his head and change his mind.
“He looks around. He starts to run.” Edgar stopped, staring down into his bowl. “Now he’s stopped. Listening. What does he hear? Engines? Maybe. They don’t sound right. They shouldn’t be out here. He starts to run again. I’m getting scared.”
Despite that last statement, Edgar’s voice didn’t change its calm even timbre. Addie shifted forward on her knees, obviously intending to interrupt Edgar’s Seeing, but Muirin shook her head violently and reached out her arm to block Addie.
“He’s running as fast as he can now. There are a lot of engines, but it’s dark. He sees a boxcar ahead. He can hide there and, and—no! Too late! Cold! So . . . cold! The riders have found him! They’re here! The dark! The hunters of the night! The hunt! The horns! The horns! THE HORNS! Nooooo—!”
It happened so fast that not even Addie—already primed to stop Edgar from Seeing more—could interrupt in time. One moment he was narrating a confusing description of Seth running from engine noises, and the next he was talking faster and faster, his voice getting higher and higher until he was kneeling upright and screaming out the same words that Nick Bilderback had said in the infirmary.
Burke grabbed for him, but it was too late. Edgar’s final words blended into a wordless wail as his body arched backward. He kicked over his Scrying Bowl as his body arched, jerking as if electrical current were running through it. A few seconds later he went limp.
“Is he dead?” Muirin asked after a moment.
“No,” Burke said after another moment, kneeling beside Edgar and feeling for the pulse at his neck. “Just had a seizure.” He bent down and picked Edgar up in his arms, getting to his feet as easily as if the other boy weighed nothing. “I’m going to take him to the Infirmary.”
“Hey, no, wait, you can’t do that,” Muirin said, sounding rattled. “What are you going to tell Ms. Bradford?”
“Half the truth,” Burke said grimly. “That’s why we came up with the story, right? You asked him to See where Seth is now. He had a seizure. He didn’t say anything.”
He turned away before Muirin could protest further, and Loch scrambled to his feet and ran ahead in order to open the Greenhouse door for Burke.
“I don’t want to be involved,” Muirin said. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with this.”
“Too late now,” Addie said callously. “You agreed. You’re in.” She reached over to pick up Edgar’s bowl, then pointed. At first Spirit thought she meant the two of them to look at something, but then she saw all the spilled water literally crawling across the surface of the drop cloth and back into the watering can.
“Yeah, but—” Muirin said.
“We should put this thing away and get out of here,” Loch said, coming back. He looked at Muirin. “I’m sorry, Muirin. You were right. Seth would have written to you from outside. Now let’s get what killed him.”
Muirin Shae was a green-eyed redhead, with the skim-milk pale skin to match. As Spirit watched, rage made Muirin turn even paler, until her eyes seemed as brilliantly green as a cat’s. She nodded sharply. “I was right. And we will.”
Spirit felt a twinge of unease. No one could say that Muirin’s buttons weren’t both highly visible and easy to push—but she wasn’t sure that pushing them this way was the best idea that Loch had ever had. Even if it did get Muirin back on board, it also focused Muirin on revenge—maybe even to the exclusion of her own safety.
They all felt too guilty to do what would have been the logical thing if they’d been innocent, which was to go to the Infirmary and see if Edgar was okay. At least Spirit did, and none of the others suggested it.
“But what does it mean?” Addie asked, sounding lost. “What did Edgar see? Nothing should have . . . Nothing could have . . .” She faltered to a stop and looked despairing.
“At least we know more than we did before,” Loch said quietly. “Even if we don’t know much.”
“Yeah,” Muirin said. “Riddle me this, campers: what hunts at night and drives you insane if you run into it?”
The other three looked at her, and none of them had an answer.
Muirin’s question was the clue that let them finally give the Whatever its true name, but before that happened, they all got another unwanted lesson in just how far someone—or something—at Oakhurst would go to protect its secrets.
Once they’d cleaned up the Greenhouse, they weren’t really sure what to do or where to go. By mutual agreement they split up, and Spirit spent the afternoon waiting for a summons—by whom and to where she wasn’t sure—that never came. When she saw the other four sitting at their table at dinner, it just showed Spirit how scared she’d been that one or more of them wouldn’t be there, and that just made her angry. She hated being scared all the time. She hated being afraid of her teachers, of her classmates, of the entire school. She hated the thought that there wasn’t anybody she could go to for help. She hated the thought of having to live this way for years.
And the fact that everyone else at the table was bubbling over with anticipation for the upcoming whole week of no classes with the Winter Dance right in the middle of it—on the twenty-second, a Wednesday—and talking about the big tree that would be brought in next Sunday to decorate the Main Entry just made everything worse. Spirit didn’t want to think about Christmas at all, let alone her first Christmas without her parents and her baby sister.
“What?” Spirit said, suddenly aware that one of the others had asked her something.
“I said, do you want to get in another hour or so of practice tonight?” Burke repeated. “I know we don’t have another demo until March, but it doesn’t hurt to keep in practice. Um, I mean—”
“Ooooh, can we watch?” Muirin purred.
“No, Muirin, you can’t watch,” Burke said, in long-suffering tones. “If you want to take karate, go see Mr. Wallis.”
“Sorry! Busy being a brilliant fencer!” Muirin chirped brightly.
Loch smiled at her. “You can come and be brilliant in the Library then. It’s dark back in the stacks,” he said.
Addie groaned appreciatively at the joke and Muirin made a face. Spirit just stared at her plate. Loch’s ability to, well, pretend still bothered her in a way she couldn’t quite explain.
Burke, do you wonder about Loch?” Spirit asked.
It was an hour later, and they’d both changed to their workout clothes and were down in the gym. While it wasn’t empty—there were two pick-up basketball games going on, one at each end of the court—nobody was paying any attention to them.
“Spirit, I have wondered about more things in the three months since the two of you got here than in the four years before,” Burke said. “Wonder what in particular?”
“I don’t know,” she said, frustrated. “It’s just . . . it doesn’t seem to matter how awful something is. He can just laugh and pretend it doesn’t matter to him at all. Do you think it really doesn’t?”
“Don’t know,” Burke said. “Get your feet wider. Bend your knees more. Yeah. Like you’re going to sit. Good. But if it helps any, Addie’s the same way, really. She just gets all quiet and polite. But maybe that’s just how rich folks are. Not supposed to let anybody know what they’re thinking.”
“That would be hor—Ow! You pushed me.” In the middle of her sentence, Burke had reached out and shoved at her shoulder. It had taken Spirit off guard.
“And if I could push you over, your stance still wasn’t good enough,” Burke said reasonably. “Come on, let’s try that again.”
“I wouldn’t have fallen over if you’d warned me,” Spirit grumbled, taking his hand and letting him pull her to her feet.
“Oh, yeah, the way Mr. Wallis always does?” Burke said, and Spirit had to laugh. It felt good.
They spent another half hour working on what Burke called “first principles”—he freely admitted he’d skipped all this stuff when he’d been working with her to get her ready for the demo because these were the things that could take months of work to get right (if you weren’t a Combat Mage). Standing. Balance.
“You don’t stand low enough,” Burke told her. “I know you’re short, and you think you want to be at eye-level with your opponent, but you don’t. You want to stand in your center, so all your movements come from your center and return to your center. If you do that, you’ll spend a lot less time looking up at your opponent from the floor.”
Spirit nodded. What Burke was saying made sense. And telling her why she should do it—and why she was constantly making the same mistake—was a lot more helpful that Mr. Wallis yelling at her. “So then I’ll be able to throw you over my shoulder?”
Burke shook his head, smiling. “Too much difference in height between us for you to do Ippon Seoinage—and that’s judo, anyway, not karate. But, oh, in a couple of years you could probably do a hip throw, sure. I mean, if we were doing judo.”
“And if you let me,” she said.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
Spirit hadn’t wanted to ask about Edgar at all. She didn’t really want to hear the worst—if there was a worst. But she knew that was being cowardly, because whatever had happened to him today, she was partly responsible. So when Burke said they’d had enough lesson for the night, she took a deep mental breath and said:
“Burke, what happened today when you took Edgar to the infirmary? He’s okay, right?”
Burke shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I hope so. I ran in there with him and Ms. Bradford asked me what happened, and I said he’d had a cat-fit, and she said to put him down on a bed and go out in the hall and wait. So I did. And about fifteen minutes later she came out and wanted the whole story. So I told her Muirin had been really down in the dumps since Seth ran away, and she wanted to know how he was, so we all came up with the idea of getting someone to See for her, and Edgar was the best choice because maybe Seth was somewhere that one of the deep-trance Scrying Mages wouldn’t want to tell Muirin about. And I said he looked into his bowl, and let out a scream, and went rigid and shook for about half a minute and passed out, and I brought him right to her. And she said I did the right thing and she hoped Muirin wasn’t too upset, and I said I didn’t know because I hadn’t stayed to find out. And she said Edgar would be fine and I should run along, and I thought that was a really good idea.”
“Me, too,” Spirit said quietly.
It had become habit for Spirit to check her e-mail first thing in the morning. In addition to several other pieces of the Oakhurst equivalent of spam (a request for students to review their “wish lists” and submit their first, second, and third choices to the Office no later than December fourteenth; a terse e-mail from the dance committee saying that it was almost New Years and the voting ballot for next year’s dance committee had to be final by January third; a long incoherent rant about a missing hairdryer from Madison Harris, who seemed incapable of figuring out how not to send her private e-mails to the entire school) there was a memo from “Staff” notifying “Oakhurst Students” that “Staff” was sure they would all regret to learn that Edgar Abbot had been taken ill Sunday afternoon and had been sent to Billings for treatment, and that “Staff” joined “Oakhurst Students” in wishing Mr. Abbott a speedy recovery and return to Oakhurst.
Spirit shuddered and closed her e-mail. She wondered if Edgar would be put in the same room as Nick.
She wondered if he’d be there for the same reason.
The rest of Monday was a “normal for Oakhurst” day: English Comp, Bio, Math, and Art in the morning; Humanities, PE, Art Class, and History of Magic after lunch, and Martial Arts Class after that. All of them except PE and Art came with hefty homework assignments, and at that, Spirit was carrying a light courseload, because she didn’t have magic labs, and she was only doing one sport. Spirit didn’t know how people like Addie—with magic labs, Choral Society, swim team, dance committee, and (for most of the year) field hockey—managed to get it all done. That kind of schedule didn’t leave much room for free time at all.
But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Spirit thought. Set us all up with crazy schedules and more work than we’d have in college, make us all see each other as competition instead of friends, make sure none of us has time to think about how crazy this place is, how the reason we’re learning all this stuff is that there are people out there waiting to kill us when we leave—or maybe something even worse . . .
She wondered how she’d managed to escape that particular trap.
And how long it would take someone in authority to notice.
That evening the five of them met briefly in one of the lounges to compare notes. Briefly, because Loch and Muirin both reported being teased about having a “gang”—which meant that despite their best efforts, they were drawing attention to themselves—and Addie had a virtual meeting of the dance committee, because the Winter Dance was a little over two weeks away and the committee still hadn’t settled on a music program. “And of course we can’t just recycle the one from the Halloween Dance—even though nobody heard most of it—because that would be too easy,” Addie said tartly. “At least I can get a lot of homework done while Kristi and Madison scream at each other in IM and Andy says we should include more Metal. You should get on it for next year, Spirit. It’d be nice to have somebody sane for a change.” She waved distractedly as she hurried off.
“I guess that leaves . . . huh,” Loch said, looking around. Muirin was already gone. “That illusion thing is pretty cool,” he said, sounding faintly puzzled.
“That ‘illusion thing’ is going to get the Murr-cat into real trouble one of these days,” Burke said.
“Or save her neck,” Loch said. “Anyway, this is a good chance for me to get in some practice time. Piano,” he explained, when the other two looked curious. He flexed his fingers theatrically. “Every good junior plutocrat gets music lessons. Although considering everything, I wish I’d studied something more portable.”
“There’s always the harmonica,” Burke said, and Loch grinned.
“Another karate lesson?” Spirit asked reluctantly, once Loch had left.
Burke shook his head. “We had class today. How about a walk?”
“In the snow?” Spirit asked in disbelief.
“Sure,” Burke said, smiling. “Get your coat. I’ll meet you at the terrace doors in fifteen.”
One thing you could say for Oakhurst, it didn’t stint its students on any of the basic necessities. At the beginning of November, Spirit had been sent a GIF-filled e-mail with winter wardrobe choices: snow boots and down filled waterproof mittens and high-tech fabric glove liners and heavy wool pants (with the notation that these were not to be considered classroom wear under any circumstances) and long johns and heavy wool hats and thicker scarves than the one she already had (with an appliqué of the school crest on the ends, in her choice of the three school colors) and her choice of heavy winter coat in two lengths. The fact that she already had a warm coat and hat and scarf and was being issued a warmer coat and enough extra gear to outfit an expedition to the North Pole had been a depressing forewarning of how cold winter here in Montana was going to get.
But it meant that once she bundled up and stepped outside with Burke, Spirit wasn’t cold at all.
The walkway lights were on, illuminating the snow falling from the sky. It was light—almost like dust—but it had been falling steadily for several days, and the ground was white as far as Spirit could see. She was used to heavy snow in Indiana, of course, but not to it starting this early—or to being out in the middle of nowhere when it did. The snow muffled even the ordinary sounds she expected to hear, making everything seem even more than ordinarily silent. Even without moonlight, the lamplight and the light from the house windows scattered across the snowfield and reflected back from the low clouds, illuminating the featureless whiteness for miles.
“Winter’s when most of the Elemental Schools—not mine—get a real workout,” Burke said as they walked across the terrace. “Come on. You’ll see.”
The terrace was completely clear of snow, and the brick walkways were wide dark lines crisscrossing the whiteness beyond. Spirit followed Burke cautiously down the fieldstone steps onto the bricks, but there wasn’t a trace of ice. Just as the Air Mages swept away the autumn leaves, they swept away the snow.
“Too cold?” Burke asked, when Spirit shivered.
“No,” she answered. “It’s just . . . I don’t think I’m cut out for all this . . . sneaking and plotting.” She kept her voice carefully low, even though they seemed to be the only ones going for an evening walk.
“I hate it,” Burke said. Spirit glanced at him in surprise. It was the first time she’d ever heard him say anything so negative. “I hate lying. I hate going to bed at night knowing I’m keeping secrets from Doctor Ambrosius. I hate thinking I’m planning to do bad things to someone—even if they might be bad and might even deserve it. I don’t . . . I don’t want to be that guy, Spirit.”
Impulsively, she put her hand on his arm. Her heavy mitten made a pillowy plopping sound, and she saw him smile a little ruefully. “At least we’re warm, right? And just wait until there’s a few more feet of snow. Then we can really have fun.”
“A few more . . . feet?” Spirit asked in disbelief.
“Sure,” Burke said. “Average snowfall over the winter here’s about sixty inches. We get enough snow on the ground, and the Fire Mages and the Ice Mages’ll have enough to work with to build us a great skating rink. Block of ice about a foot thick and as big as the football field. It’s great. If you don’t skate, I can teach you.”
“It’s been a while,” Spirit said. Winters in Indiana were cold, but they weren’t that cold.
Burke smiled at her. “I know what you mean. This makes Indianapolis feel downright balmy.” He sighed. “I sure miss Thirty Days in May.”
Spirit blinked, more homesick than she would have thought at hearing the local nickname for the Indianapolis 500. “Don’t tell me you’re a racing fan?” she said.
“Oh heck yeah,” Burke said. “My folks’ house is right on the Speedway. They rent the lawn, the driveway, and the backyard out every year for people to camp in. It was always a great way to make new friends.”
Spirit thought it probably was. She thought Burke had probably never met anyone in his whole life he hadn’t liked.
“Here we are,” he said. “Look.”
He pointed off to the side of the path. Spirit turned to look—and gasped in wonder.
The snowfield was filled with sculptures. Clear as crystal, delicate as gossamer, abstract designs whose closest resemblance was to those high-speed photographs where the photographer manages to capture the exact moment when a drop of water shatters against the ground. They glittered in the lamplight as if they were on fire.
“Ohhhh. . . .” she breathed. “They’re beautiful. . . .”
“Ice and Air and Fire Mages having some fun out here,” Burke said. He sounded pleased at her reaction. “They won’t be here by morning—wind’ll shatter ’em, they’re so delicate. See? Over there? Some of them are already broken.” He pointed, and when Spirit looked closely, she could see broken shards of ice lying on the surface of the snow. “I wanted you to see them, though.”
“I’m glad,” Spirit said simply.
They turned to walk back toward the school, and Spirit was surprised to see how far they’d come.
“If there’s enough snow vacation week—and there usually is—we do a whole Winter Carnival thing,” Burke said offhandedly. “You know: full-scale ice sculptures and all that. I think you’ll really enjoy it. If, uh, we’re all still alive by then,” he added in belated realization.
The reminder brought Spirit back down to earth with a thump. “What do you think Edgar Saw?” she asked cautiously. “I know he Saw . . . whatever took Seth, but . . .” But whatever it was he Saw, he didn’t tell us the details, and we really need to know.
“At least we know more than we did. It’s something that hunts at night. Something that—we know because of Nick—disappears at dawn. Something that drives you mad if you even see it. Hunters, riders, horns—both Nick and Edgar mentioned horns . . .” Burke said.
“Something that needs to be Tithed,” Spirit added grimly.
“Yeah,” Burke said unhappily. “That should be enough. We just have to put it all together.”
Neither of them spoke the rest of the way back to the house, each lost in their own thoughts.
The Wild Hunt,” Muirin said with fierce satisfaction.
Muirin said at breakfast Tuesday that she’d found their answer, so the five of them were risking a meeting. They were meeting that evening at the swimming pool. And Muirin was casting an illusion to make the indoor pool area look as if it were empty, so maybe nobody would come and wonder why they were here in the first place.
“That’s the Whatever?” Burke asked. “But the Wild Hunt’s English.”
“It’s found in Germany, Ireland, Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, and there are similar legends in parts of North America,” Muirin recited in bored tones.
Addie was making waterspouts in the center of the pool. First one, then two, then three, drawing them up thinner and finer until they towered twenty feet in the air and the level of water in the pool itself had dropped several feet.
“The details vary a little bit from place to place, but they’re consistent enough that this really seems to be what we’re looking for,” Loch said.
“Okay,” Spirit said, trying to ignore the dancing waterspouts. “But what is it?”
“Aside from—apparently—real?” Muirin said. “Which is a little something Ms. Groves has conveniently forgotten to mention in her really long and boring History of Toads, Newts, and Bats?”
Between the two of them, Loch and Muirin managed to deliver a concise and disturbing lecture—which was even scarier for what they didn’t know.
The Wild Hunt appeared in legends all across Europe. The basics were always the same: a supernatural group of hunters, mounted on things from horses to goats to other people and accompanied by hunting hounds, chasing across the sky or across the ground in wild pursuit of . . . something. Depending on which story it was, the hunters were the Fair Folk, or ghosts, or the souls of the damned, or outright demons. The leader of the Hunt was the demon Hellequin, or Herne the Hunter, or Odin, or just whoever’d been unlucky enough to encounter the Hunt as it rode out, because anyone who saw the Wild Hunt might be driven mad by the sight, or hunted down by it and never seen again, or forced to join it—and according to the tales, any attempt to leave again resulted in instant death.
“—and all the sources Muirin and I could find said that the Hunt appears ‘mostly’ in the fall and winter, but, uh, obviously ‘mostly’ isn’t ‘always,’ because the rest of this fits so well that this has got to be what we’re looking for,” Loch finished.
“But are they elves or ghosts or demons?” Addie asked. The waterspouts all collapsed at once, but before any of them could get splashed, all the water in the pool curled up and in, until it was a large round glob of water sitting in the middle of the pool like a loaf of bread in a pan. Addie looked at the rest of them. “You know as well as I do that what works against one of those isn’t going to work on the other two.”
“I guess we’re going to have to go prepared for all three, in that case,” Burke said.
“Gosh, gang, more research!” Muirin said, opening her eyes very wide. “Just what I was looking forward to!”
Amazingly, Burke snorted with amusement. “If you don’t know at least three ways to get rid of a ghost by now, Muirin, you haven’t been paying attention in class. You leave the ghosts to me. It’s if this Hunt is elves or demons I’m worried about.”
“But—” Spirit said. It was bad enough having to seriously think about there even being demons or elves (What’s next? her inner voice demanded, Vampires?), and worse to think about having to fight them. But worst of all was having to think about the details of how to do it, because if the Wild Hunt was riding out on the Winter Solstice, it would be riding in search of its Tithe, and Spirit was almost certain that none of the five of them would be it, so how? . . .
“Time’s up,” Loch said, glancing at his wristwatch. “We’d all better go pretend we don’t know each other.”
Everyone got to his or her feet. Loch slipped out first—his Shadewalking ability would provide him with at least some ability to evade curious observers—and Burke and Muirin went together. Burke hadn’t walked more than half a dozen steps before he vanished, to be replaced by a duplicate of Muirin. Anybody who saw Muirin with “herself” would just assume she was practicing her mirror illusions again.
Having come to watch Addie practice was innocent enough, so Spirit walked out with Addie. But her final question remained both unasked and unanswered.
How were they going to make sure that the Wild Hunt came after them, instead of claiming whoever had been chosen as the latest innocent victim?