FIVE
He’d always been a survivor. Last man standing. Everybody always said fast food would kill you, but it wasn’t fast food that’d killed Seth Morris’s parents, it’d been a crazy Realtor depressed over the housing market who opened fire in the Micky D’s. Like that would change anything.
He hadn’t even wanted to go, because Dad had been out of work for a year and a half and all he and Mom did (back then) was argue about money. Seth didn’t even like Micky D’s, and he knew that Dad would order too much food and then complain about how much it cost until Mom started snapping back at him.
Helluva last memory to have of your folks, Seth thought. He remembered seeing the ice and Coke from his drink hanging in the air, sparkling, even before he heard the sound of the first shot. He’d thrown himself to the floor and gone squirming across it on his belly, so tunnel-focused on getting behind the order counter to safety that he hadn’t thought about anything else.
There’d been eighteen people in the place when the shooter opened up. Twelve of them died, including his parents. Seth Morris had been the only one who wasn’t even wounded.
And that had been almost two years ago, and for a long time after he’d gotten to Oakhurst it had just been a relief that everybody wasn’t yelling all the time. There were a lot of rules, but Seth had always been good at getting around the rules. And when there was a place like this that was rolling in velvet (like Dad would’ve said), nobody was going to notice if he boosted a few things and traded them off. By the time he’d been at Oakhurst a year, he’d had a sweet arrangement going with the kids in Radial. Everything from clothes and magazines to downloaded MP3s went out, and anything Oakhurst didn’t want them to have came in: extra chocolate, extra soda, mail that hadn’t been censored . . .
The handoff place was an old boxcar out in the middle of nowhere, about halfway between Oakhurst and Radial. There were a bunch of them scattered all over the place out here; the locals used them to store feed hay in for the cows stranded in the winter blizzards. They were never all the way full. He’d leave his stuff when he could, and go back when he could and pick up what the townies left. He’d never gotten burned, and he’d never actually worried about it. Hey, it wasn’t like he was playing with his own money.
But in the words of Master Yoda: “It’s all good until somebody loses an eye.”
No deal was sweet enough to risk your ass for.
He hadn’t been sure at first. He still wasn’t entirely sure. Even at a school full of magicians, the idea that people really were trying to kill you because you did magic was just too weird. He was uneasy enough about it now, though, that he’d decided leaving Oakhurst was a really good idea. It would be a lot easier to hide what he was when he wasn’t sitting in the middle of nowhere surrounded by other people with targets taped to their backs.
It would be nice if he had one of the bigger, flashier Mage Gifts. But even a minor Earth Gift meant he’d always know when magic was around him. And this way might be safer. Nobody’d ever actually said so outright, but Seth suspected that the more power you had, the easier it was for Them to find you.
He stopped, looking back at the school. The whole place was still lit up. He was too smart to wait until after curfew to leave, or to go too early. Half an hour before curfew, if nobody saw him in the lounge or the library they’d just figure he was in his room. And if he wasn’t in any of the online chatrooms, people’d figure he’d either turned in early, or was even (shock) studying. They wouldn’t miss him until morning. He figured he could make it to Radial tonight—it was about ten miles, a long hike, and a cold one, but possible—and find some truck to hide in the back of. Once he was far enough away from Radial, it’d be safe to hitchhike until he got to a big city. And then—?
He didn’t know.
Better than here, though.
An hour later, Seth was most of the way to the boxcar. It was a good thing he was a Pathfinder: there was no moon tonight and he wasn’t stupid enough to use his flashlight out here. But having Pathfinder Gift meant you couldn’t get lost: he could find his way to any place he’d ever been—and for that matter, to any place he’d never been. And that was a good thing, because he’d never actually been to Radial. Being sure where he was going didn’t keep it from being creepy out here, though. Seth had grown up in San Francisco’s East Bay; he was a city kid, and all this open country without a shopping mall or a freeway or a skate park anywhere in sight was just unnatural. He’d never even seen snow until he’d come to Oakhurst, and it had been great—for the first month. Then it was depressing: too cold, too white, and too much of it. Then it was a stone drag and he wished it would go away. Which it hadn’t, not for another three months.
It was too quiet out here, and too loud, both at the same time. He stopped, thinking he’d heard voices, but it was only something howling off in the distance. Wolves or coyotes, whatever they had out here. He stuffed his hands deeper into his blazer pockets and kept walking. He had a coat stashed for his getaway, but it was at the boxcar; he hadn’t dared leave tonight looking as if he was going anywhere, in case somebody saw him. He’d be there soon. Another hour, tops. It was almost eleven, and once—before Oakhurst, back when he’d still had parents—that wouldn’t have seemed late, but being out here where streetlights (and streets) were an optional extra made it seem like it was a thousand o’clock already.
He stopped again, because the wolves (he was pretty sure now it was wolves) were making a lot of noise. Brendan, who could talk to animals (and who couldn’t be convinced that didn’t mean all the little fuzzy creatures loved him) said that wolves howled either before or after a hunt, and usually at twilight or when the moon was full. Brendan was a dork, but he was a nice dork, and he’d come to Oakhurst about the same time Seth had, and he’d tutored Seth on his English Comp for the last two years, so Seth knew a lot about wolves by now.
Whatever was howling out here tonight, it wasn’t wolves.
He stood for what seemed like far too long, listening, as the chorus of wolf (not-wolf) howls crescendoed and died away. The silence seemed to echo afterward. And in it, faintly . . .
He heard the sound of engines. What the—Were the local rednecks doing some kind of creepy night-hunting? Or was someone missing, so they sent out the sheriff’s department with bloodhounds?
Seth didn’t wait to hear more. He took off for the boxcar at a lope, just hoping he remembered the ground well enough and there was nothing that would trip him. If the ground was smooth he was sure he could reach the boxcar before the drivers of the vehicles saw him—he was on the Oakhurst Track Team; he had both speed and stamina. For now, he’d just hope they weren’t heading right this way. He’d get to the boxcar, duck inside, hide out for an hour or two . . .
But a few seconds later he had to admit that the crawling feeling between his shoulder blades wasn’t fear, but magic, and the sound of the engines was louder. And there was something very wrong with the sound.
He remembered his first day at Oakhurst, the first time he ever saw Doctor Ambrosius, when Old Doc A. told him the world was filled with good witches and bad witches, just like The Wizard of Oz, and back then Seth had figured Doc A. had been playing too much D&D in his spare time.
Later Seth had decided the Doc was speaking from personal experience.
That the Doc wasn’t training all of them out of pure unselfishness, but because someday they might need to fight the evil magicians. And Seth hadn’t wanted to be drafted to fight in somebody else’s war the way his grampa had. As the months passed, he’d kept his eyes open, put a few things together, and figured out that Doctor Ambrosius’s war wasn’t something that was going to happen “someday.” It was something going on right now, and the people involved—at least the ones on the Other Side—didn’t have any intention of letting anybody just sit on the sidelines.
Oakhurst should have been safe. But Seth didn’t think it was. He thought one of the enemies Doctor Ambrosius knew about had found it and gotten inside, secretly. He thought that whoever it was, they were making sure that when Doctor Ambrosius decided it was time to take on Emperor Palpatine and the Sith Lords, there weren’t going to be any Jedi Knights left.
His breath rasped in his throat as he ran; the night air was dry enough to burn. The motor noises were louder now. Not just one engine, but too many to count. They were coming closer, but he still didn’t see any sign of headlights, and that was just crazy. There weren’t any roads along here—he was heading on a straight “crow flies” path from Oakhurst to Radial, and both the county road and the railway line were south of here (at least until the tracks swung north onto the Oakhurst campus)—but the engine sounds were to the north of him. When he’d just been learning his magic, Seth had trained with maps of the area. There wasn’t anything to the north except miles of open range. Rocky open range. Even if whoever was out here was driving off-road vehicles and trusting to night-sight gear instead of headlights to show them where to go, they had a better than even chance of busting an axle.
Except they weren’t using night-sight gear. Seth knew that. The magic he could feel was strong enough to make his skin crawl. He could see the boxcar up ahead, a dark shadow against the sky.
Almost there. Almost safe. He put on a final burst of speed.
And suddenly the boxcar was lit in a dazzling wash of brilliance as his pursuers turned on their headlights all in unison.
And Seth Morris realized that he’d run out of time.
Spirit bounced into the Refectory with just minutes to spare, but Addie, Cadence, and Camilla were holding her a seat. There weren’t assigned seats in the Refectory—you could sit in a different place for every meal if you liked—but certain groups of kids just tended to sit together, like her and Muirin and Addie and Cadence and Camilla. And the boys, of course.
In any other school Spirit could imagine, Burke would be going around with his football hero nose in the air, refusing to even notice ordinary mortals. And while Oakhurst technically had a football team (two of them really, since they never played against any other schools) and Burke was on it (Burke was on all the Oakhurst sports teams), and Burke was its star player, he was as far from being dazzled by his own wonderfulness as it was possible to be. In fact, he and Loch had quickly become best friends, although Loch was the star of the Oakhurst chess team and had only taken up fencing because he’d done it at one of his other schools. Addie had talked him into adding swimming to his list of sports; they liked it here if you had what most places would call “a lot of extracurricular activities.” There really wasn’t much else to do.
Despite her early misgivings, Spirit had found herself settling in to life at Oakhurst. Burke was sweet, and Loch had a sly sense of humor once he got to know you. And Seth and Brendan and Nicholas were all kind of nice, although Nick was tongue-tied to the point of total silence except with Camilla, and Brendan seemed to believe absolutely everything anybody told him, no matter how ridiculous. Muirin (of course) teased Nick until he practically choked and told Brendan the most outrageous lies as if they were absolute fact, but Spirit was pretty sure that Muirin had a kind of thing for Seth, even though both of them would probably have died rather than admit it. So if Spirit thought that sometimes Seth’s sense of humor crossed the line into rudeness or even cruelty, she kept her opinions to herself. She didn’t think Muirin had that many friends.
Spirit slid into her seat and kicked her book bag under it. You could leave the Refectory early enough to go back to your room to get your books for your morning classes, but she preferred to save herself the hike. She reached for her juice glass.
“Where’s Muirin?” she asked, looking around.
Addie shrugged. “I haven’t seen her since last night. You know Muirin.”
Burke laughed. “You mean, you never know Muirin. She’ll probably stroll in here just before—”
The doors burst open. Muirin stood between them, out of breath, her face flushed. “He’s gone!” she yelled, her voice breaking on the second word. “Seth! He’s gone!”
Pandemonium inevitably erupted. Mr. Gail and Mr. Bowman came out of nowhere, seized Muirin by the elbows, and hustled her out of the Refectory before she could say anything else.
The others at Muirin’s usual table stared at each other over their plates, speechless. The room had erupted with speculation, students chattering so loudly it would have been impossible to speak, anyway.
And that was when Ms. Corby walked in, just as dramatically as Muirin had. Silence immediately fell. She looked around the room through narrowed eyes.
“Doctor Ambrosius wishes you to remain calm, finish your meals, and proceed to your classes in an orderly fashion,” she said, in tones that made it very clear that This Was An Order. “There will be no speculation regarding Mr. Morris until we have determined precisely what has occurred. If Doctor Ambrosius deems it necessary at that time, you will proceed to your rooms in an orderly fashion and remain there until you are released. Is this understood?”
One of the proctors stood up, somehow managing to do so subserviently. “Yes, Ms. Corby.”
He sat down. Ms. Corby cast her gaze over them again. Spirit tried not to squirm. “Very good. Breakfast will end at the usual time. That is all.”
She swept out, but the silence remained.
Halfway through First Period, the word came that they were all to go to their rooms. Spirit went back to her room like everyone else, but no sooner had Spirit closed the door of her room than she got the bird-chirp of an IM. Although the school had forbidden “speculation,” they’d forgotten to shut down the e-mail and Instant Message system. She ran over to her computer and opened IM.
ADDIE4: WTFs going on?!?!?!?!?
SPIRIT: Idunno!!!11!!
Brendan pinged her.
BRENDAN9: S ws out last nite, didn com back. M say NEthing?
SPIRIT: Not 2 me.
She kept repeating what Brendan had told her to everyone who pinged her until Addie opened up a chatroom for everyone to join. There were fifty people in it and the number was climbing when she finally saw Muirin’s icon flashing in her taskbar.
SPIRIT: ??? ??? ?
IMTOXIC: Double plus ungood
Of all the people Spirit knew here, Muirin was the only one besides her who not only had read 1984, but used terms from it. And the only reason she would be using that phrase now had to be because she was warning Spirit that “Big Brother was watching.” The first day Spirit had arrived at Oakhurst, Muirin had warned her that they monitored everyone’s computer use. So Spirit replied in kind.
SPIRIT: Dept of Hist B sez S wnt out, didn come back
IMTOXIC: MG sez S ran away. We have always been at war with Eastasia
Spirit considered that for a moment. “Mr. Gail says Seth ran away.” The fact that Muirin had phrased it just that way—followed by more 1984—told Spirit that whatever Mr. Gail thought, Muirin thought it was a cover story. She’d have to wait to talk to Muirin in person to find out what she thought.
SPIRIT: Wut naow cops?
IMTOXIC: Probly Y we’re N jail.
Spirit fidgeted; she had the feeling, no, the certainty, that there were a hundred things Muirin couldn’t tell her over IM. Unfortunately . . . they were all going to have to wait.
About ten minutes after that, someone in Admin—or maybe one of the proctors—bought a clue and figured out everyone was on IM, so the whole intraweb was shut down: no IM, no e-mail, no access to the online libraries. Spirit didn’t think the cops would want to talk to her; she didn’t really know Seth and she was new in the school. Meanwhile, she might as well take the chance to curl up with her music downloads and a good dead-tree book.
In theory, anyway. In practice, she kept thinking about how Muirin had looked at breakfast: upset, almost in a panic. Would she be that upset if Seth really had just run away?
It was almost noon before the intraweb came back up again. Her in-box icon was flashing and beeping, which meant a priority e-mail from the Administration. Two of them, actually. The first one simply said that they were all now free to leave their rooms. They were to proceed to the Refectory for lunch as usual, then go on with their regular afternoon schedules.
The second one was about Seth. It was short and to the point, and if any of them still had parents, Spirit thought wistfully, it would probably have gotten the school a few brusque phone calls once it got forwarded.
Dear Students: As you are aware, as of this morning, Seth Morris has left Oakhurst Academy. We regret to inform you that Mr. Morris has elected to pursue opportunities elsewhere. We know that you will share our regret in his unfortunate life choices and will learn from this experience. Regards, The Staff of Oakhurst Academy
Spirit stared at the e-mail incredulously. “Unfortunate life choices”? “Pursue opportunities elsewhere”? They made it sound like he’d quit some middle management job to go into rehab. “Learn from this experience”? She sure would. She’d learn that if anybody here had ever seen a real live teenager before they’d taken their shiny new jobs, she’d eat her entire new wardrobe.
She hurried back to the Refectory. Everyone in their group was already there, and Muirin was almost in tears, she was so angry. “. . . and of course they don’t give a damn! We’re just the freak-kids! It’s not like we’re real human beings or anything!” she was saying.
She had her arms wrapped around herself, and Spirit immediately put an arm around her. “Muirin, what happened?” she asked, feeling Muirin’s tense muscles trembling.
“What happened? Nothing! I talked to the cops, but they didn’t take notes, they didn’t even listen to half of what I said! They aren’t even sending out people to search for him! I asked! And he didn’t run away! Ask Brendan!”
But when Spirit glanced toward Brendan, he wouldn’t look at her or Muirin. “He didn’t take a coat,” Brendan muttered awkwardly, staring at the floor.
He thinks Seth did run away, Spirit realized in surprise.
“And why would he?” Muirin continued obliviously. “Where would he go? He hasn’t got anyone either! If any of us had any place that wanted us we wouldn’t have gotten dumped here! OK, he didn’t really like it here, but he didn’t hate it enough to make a run!”
Together, Addie and Spirit managed to coax her to sit down and eat something, though not even a PBJ with bacon tempted her much, which just showed how upset she was, since a PBJ was as close as Oakhurst got to allowing junk food most of the time.
On the way out of the Refectory, Spirit cornered Brendan. “You think he did run away,” she said without preamble.
Brendan looked as if he didn’t want to answer her. “You know I won’t tell anything you tell me to Muirin,” she coaxed.
Brendan sighed. “Well, you know, I don’t know for sure, Spirit. But one or two kids always do every semester. They just take off. I figure, we’ve all got magic, right? And I guess they think with a Mage Gift like oh, Healing or Transmutation or Weather, they can make it on the outside. All I know is the deputies come around and go off again and nothing ever happens.” He shrugged. “I’m gonna be late to class.”
Spirit stepped back, and Brendan hurried away. She didn’t think he really believed the e-mail, and she knew Muirin didn’t. But it really didn’t matter what the e-mail said, or how badly it said it. Seth was gone, and there wasn’t anything any of them could do about it.
I said block—you aren’t paying attention!” Mr. Wallis snapped.
Spirit heard the clonk of the bokuto—the wooden kendo practice sword—against the shinai. Bokuto were solid wood and were only supposed to be used to practice kata—not to hit anything—but Mr. Wallis didn’t seem to care. She winced, flinching back, and smiled apologetically at her partner. Kylee smiled back a little nervously.
“I’m sorry, sir. I’ll do better next time,” Burke answered softly.
It wasn’t fair, Spirit thought. Burke had blocked. If he weren’t a Combat Mage, Mr. Wallis could have broken his arm—or worse. This was supposed to be a sport, not war. But no matter how well Burke did—and he was better than all the rest of them put together—Mr. Wallis never let up on him once. And Burke just took it all without complaint, the way he put up with Mr. Gail and even Ms. Groves.
And if Mr. Wallis seemed to be trying to raise bruises on them, well, Mr. Gail seemed to be trying to get his football teams killed outright. More than once, during the games, Spirit had seen players carried off the field on stretchers. Of course, Oakhurst had an advantage that most schools didn’t: When the stretcher got to the sidelines, there was a Healing Mage waiting there to put the player back together again so Mr. Gail could put him back into the game. But all the Healing Mages were students—healing the players was part of their spell-practice—and sometimes if the game was particularly rough they’d get too tired to keep casting spells, so the players with minor injuries wouldn’t ask for help—they’d just play injured.
There’d been a game yesterday, and Spirit knew that Burke had really taken a beating. Mr. Wallis knew it, too. He ought to lighten up.
“Pay attention,” Kylee hissed, and Spirit nodded, raising her bamboo sword and circling the other girl. They were paired off today to practice forms. Burke, of course, was paired up with Mr. Wallis.
She’d thought several times about dropping her martial arts class and switching to something else. But Mr. Gail coached all the other sports, not just the football—except for fencing—and Spirit honestly couldn’t imagine how Muirin could stand Ms. Groves. And—much to her surprise—Spirit had discovered that she liked both karate and kendo. When she could tune Mr. Wallis out and just concentrate on her practicing, it was actually fun. And she was good at it, too. She’d only been in the class for three weeks, and while she hadn’t caught up to the kids who’d been taking it for three or four semesters, she wasn’t the worst student in the class.
And it wasn’t like she was sluffing off taking only one sport, because Ms. Wood, who gave the riding lessons, said the Riding School (she called it an ecolé, which was French for “school”) would be giving an exhibition in the spring, which would include jumping and precision riding. On the afternoons Spirit wasn’t in the dojo area of the gym (because the kendoka and the karate students were both going to be competing at the end of November, not just exhibiting), she was down at the stables. Only Sundays were free.
But only in a way.
Mr. Wallis called for a five-minute break before they changed partners. Spirit gratefully lowered her sword, stepped back, and bowed to Kylee before going over to the mat to rest. Karate was done on mats, kendo on the bare wood floor. She pulled off her mask and ran her hands through her hair, scraping it back into her ponytail again, and thought about Sunday.
Every Sunday at Oakhurst began the same way, with a pancake breakfast that was just as good as Muirin had said it was. And after breakfast, they all had half an hour to go back to their rooms and get their coats for the walk across the campus to the Chapel.
The Chapel was a freestanding stone building that looked as old as the main house. It even had a bell tower with an actual bell, not a recording of a bell, that Mr. Gail rang for Sunday service. It was one of those “neutral” kinds of places that didn’t really look as if it belonged to any denomination—or any religion—at all. There were pews, and a pipe organ, and a pulpit, but the stained glass windows all showed odd pictures of knights in armor.
Spirit thought it was kind of odd for somebody to build themselves their own church; Loch said he didn’t think that Arthur Tyniger had built it when he built Oakhurst, but that Doctor Ambrosius built it later when he turned the place into a school, maybe even putting it together out of bits and pieces of other buildings that were as old as the main house, because it certainly looked as if it matched.
Just as Muirin had said, Sunday service wasn’t exactly church, although there were songbooks and a choir—that Addie sang in—and all the students sang along with the choir. But in the last six weeks, Doctor Ambrosius had read to them out of the Diamond Sutra, the Yasna, the Rig Veda, the Qur’an, the Bhagavad Gita, and the Tanakh as well as out of what he said were several different translations of the Bible. Spirit couldn’t make up her mind whether Doctor Ambrosius was trying to convince them that all religions shared an underlying spiritual truth—or that they were all equally false. But at least after the service, the rest of Sunday was free.
Only last Sunday when the service was over, Spirit had been stopped on her way out the door by Ms. Smith, who told her she’d be having afternoon tea with Doctor Ambrosius. When she’d caught up to Muirin and the others and asked about it, Burke said that Doctor Ambrosius took afternoon tea every Sunday with four boys and four girls chosen at random from the student body. Once you’d been to an Afternoon Tea, you couldn’t be picked again until everyone else at the school had been picked. (“Kind of like jury duty,” Muirin said.) Spirit knew that one of the things Oakhurst was supposed to be teaching them was what that section of the Oakhurst intraweb that talked about their curriculum called “genteel deportment” and Camilla called “fancy manners,” and Spirit guessed that the Afternoon Tea thing meant that Doctor Ambrosius got to spend Quality Time with all of the students at least once a year.
When he wasn’t turning them into mice, that was.
At least she didn’t have to worry about what to wear.
The Afternoon Tea was held in the Senior Teachers’ Parlor, a place Spirit hadn’t been until now. It was one of the rooms on the second floor of the original house, and Spirit couldn’t imagine what it had been originally. Bedroom? Library? Roller-skating rink? Whatever it had been, it was an enormous room. The walls were paneled in golden oak, except for the outside wall, which was all windows (with window seats, or at least padded benches, although nobody sat on them). There were a bunch of oil paintings on the walls: some of them landscapes, but one of them—a huge one—was a portrait of an annoyed-looking man in old-fashioned clothes, who Spirit guessed must be Arthur Tyniger.
The other kids looked just as nervous about being here as she felt, and it didn’t make Spirit feel any better about this Tea that there were half a dozen teachers here, including Ms. Smith and Dr. Mackenzie, the Oakhurst psychological counselor.
Back when she’d still gone to regular school, Spirit had liked some of her teachers a lot and suffered through others, and the ones she hadn’t liked, she and her friends had all complained about together. But here at Oakhurst, nobody would complain outright about any of the teachers—even Muirin—and in Spirit’s opinion, there was plenty to complain about. The teachers like Ms. Groves actually weren’t the worst ones—Ms. Groves made no secret of the fact that she didn’t ever expect you to ever do anything that satisfied her. And nobody really expected a school shrink to be anything but a loser.
But then there were teachers like Ms. Smith.
Ms. Smith was always smiling and friendly and so interested in you and everything you were doing, and all the time she was asking a lot of prying questions about your life that none of the other teachers asked, like what were you thinking and how were you feeling and how were you doing, and Spirit had even fallen for all this friendly “concern” for a week or so—right up until Ms. Smith started asking her about just how depressed was she not to be a magician like everybody else here at Oakhurst. And over the last six months Spirit had too many people trying to climb inside her head trying to figure out where her switches were so they could flip them. She recognized the signs. If Ms. Smith wanted to flip somebody’s switches, she could look elsewhere. So Spirit had started keeping her mouth shut, and just saying she was fine, everything was fine, no matter what Ms. Smith asked her, and finally Ms. Smith had started to leave her alone.
At first the tea party had gone okay. There weren’t too many ways to screw up holding a glass of cider and a plate of cookies, after all, and Spirit knew better than to take more than one or two cookies. If she wanted to pig out later, she could go see Muirin, because Muirin always had some chocolate she could be talked into sharing. And there was always popcorn. Or apples. It wasn’t like they starved you here.
Thanks to Loch’s obsession with Oakhurst history, she’d been able to make mindless small talk with the teachers (she tried not to think of Phoenix, who’d always called it Spirit’s Stepford-Robot-Barbie act) while assuring them that she loved Oakhurst, loved her riding lessons, loved her karate lessons, loved her classes, loved the school, loved, loved, loved . . .
All the while she’d been constantly aware of Doctor Ambrosius, who was moving around the room making sure he talked to everyone, teachers and students alike. She’d never seen him wearing the flashy power suit he’d worn for her first interview again; he always wore a black suit in church, but now he was wearing a tweed suit with a vest that made him look like he probably ought to be talking with an English accent and riding around in a carriage. On television.
Since Doctor Ambrosius hadn’t turned anybody into anything this afternoon, Spirit was pretty much unruffled when he wandered over and sat down next to her on the couch. She’d picked it as a nice safe location because she could stare out the window at the (non-lethal) touch football game going on, or into the fireplace (where of course a fire was burning—and it was a real one, she could feel the heat) and not look as if she was as paralyzed with mind-numbing boredom as she actually was.
“And how are you finding Oakhurst, my dear? Spirit White, isn’t it?” Doctor Ambrosius asked.
“Yes sir,” Spirit answered obediently. Don’t you remember turning me into a mouse last month? she thought. “I’m very happy to be here,” she said, for what seemed like the ten thousandth time this afternoon. She knew Muirin said Afternoon Tea only ran ninety minutes tops, but that was starting to seem like a very long time. And just what would somebody here do if she said she was miserable? Give her some happy pills? Or worse—cast a spell on her to make her happy?
“Good, good. Very good,” Doctor Ambrosius said. Spirit thought for a horrified moment that he might pat her knee, but he didn’t. “And how are you coming with your magical studies? Your spellwork?”
Spirit stared at him, mouth open in surprise, caught in the middle of starting to say she was doing just fine, because she’d been sure that the next question was about her schoolwork, not her spellwork. “Um . . . I flunked my magician test,” she finally said. “You remember?” You practically had an entire cow right there and I woke up in the Infirmary? Hello?
He stared at her for a long moment in silence, and Spirit had the crazy feeling that he was about to tell her that she was mistaken, and even the thought that he might struck her as so unreasonably funny that she had to take a deep breath to keep from laughing.
“Well, don’t worry about it, my dear. I’m sure it will all sort itself out eventually,” Doctor Ambrosius said with grave politeness. “You just . . . continue to apply yourself to your studies like a good child.”
This time he did pat her, but on the arm, and he might have meant it to be consoling, but it just raised goose bumps. How could he have forgotten? He’d known her name, after all.
Maybe he was twins.
Maybe he was several fries short of a Happy Meal.
Maybe being a magician drives you crazy eventually. Oh hey. Something for everyone here to look forward to. Insanity. Once again she fought back the demented urge to laugh out loud.
Maybe that explained why all the teachers were so weird.
All right you slackers, playtime’s over.” Mr. Wallis’s voice jerked Spirit out of her reverie. His tone was contemptuous. He almost seemed to be taunting them.
She rose to her feet again and walked out onto the practice floor, pulling on her mask as she went. This time Mr. Wallis paired her with a boy named Dylan Williams. Spirit winced inwardly. Dylan was a year older than she was and had been taking kendo for three semesters. He was good and he was fast. And he liked to hurt people.
Normally she’d just complain about him to the instructor. But normally the instructor would see what Dylan was doing and stop it. She knew that wouldn’t happen here.
Maybe Mr. Wallis expects me to stop him myself?
It was a new idea, and one she didn’t like very much. It made it seem as if Oakhurst was some kind of cage-match, and only the strongest would survive to graduate. But it made sense—in a warped kind of way—if what Doctor Ambrosius had told her and Loch when they arrived about being at risk from evil magicians was true. If she could believe anything he’d said that day. If he wasn’t crazy.
Mr. Wallis gave them the order to begin, and Dylan raised his sword and began to circle her, his teeth bared in a predatory smile.
She couldn’t stop him—not today. She wasn’t good enough yet. But she was learning fast. And for now she’d count it a victory just to stay out of his way.
To stay out of everybody’s way.