Sacrifices (20 page)

“No can do,” Muirin said bleakly. “Mark tore a strip off Teddy for leaving me alone in Hacker Heaven. I don’t think I’m getting back in there any time soon. With or without explosives.”

“We have to tell Dr. Ambrosius,” Burke said.

“No!” Spirit burst out. She closed her eyes, but even so, she could feel the others all stare at her. She finally said it. Said what she had been thinking all this time, and hadn’t said aloud, because she knew the others had all been pinning their hopes on the idea that at least Dr. A could wake up and save them all. “I mean, what if he isn’t Merlin? Or if he can’t help? We need—”

“You need to tell us why you think he isn’t, Spirit,” Burke said slowly. “You were there. You saw that picture. It was Doctor A.”

“Yes it was,” Spirit said. “And so we know he was there the night Mordred got out of the tree.” She took a deep shuddering breath. “And we know Wolfman escaped, and he and Doctor A—Kenny Hawking—were friends, and so we assumed it was
Merlin
who helped Wolfman escape, because Kenny Hawking was a Reincarnate who got Awakened and realized who he was. But … that doesn’t make sense. Wolfman was crazy—at least when we talked to him he was—so why wouldn’t his friend have done more for him? And Wolfman was murdered after we talked to him.”

“You didn’t tell us that!” Addie exclaimed.

“Brenda was talking about it on Wednesday when we showed up for the Committee meeting,” Spirit said. “Then the Shadow Knights attacked the library, and … But that’s the point! If Kenny is Doctor Ambrosius, and Doctor A is Merlin … he isn’t in control of anything, because why would he let the Shadow Knights kill Wolfman if he was? So either he’s
not
Merlin—or he is, and he’s being completely controlled, and has been since right after Mordred got out of the tree.”

“Okay, so maybe Doctor Ambrosius isn’t Merlin,” Addie said slowly. “But we don’t know—unless you can tell me how we spy on what’s probably the most powerful magician in the school.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Muirin said slowly. “But you aren’t going to like it.”

*   *   *

The next day was Sunday, and that meant Sunday Service. With everything else going on, and so many classes being dropped, you’d think it would be one of the first things Oakhurst would ditch, but no. Spirit had never liked the chapel or its bland nondenominational decor—and services—but now the stained glass windows with their depictions of knights in armor all seemed horribly meaningful instead of just weird.

She’d spent all night reading Ms. Groves’s book, as much to blot out what Muirin had told all of them as in hopes somewhere in it there would be a solution to their problems. All she’d found was confusion piled on confusion. All the stories contradicted each other—in some, Arthur’s court was in France. In some, he went to war with the Roman Emperor. In some he was married to someone who wasn’t Guinevere. And less than half the stories in the book were about Arthur and Camelot anyway. Galahad and Percival and Gwalchmai and Gareth—her brain was stuffed with weird names and weirder stories until she couldn’t even
think
.

It’s hard to believe the Dance is next Friday,
Spirit thought numbly.
And oh yeah, Mordred’s going to bomb the world back to the Stone Age.
There was one more meeting of the Dance Committee before the Dance itself. Of course, a few deaths were no reason for Oakhurst to cancel an event, but she hadn’t heard about Radial pulling out either.

She sat up straighter and did her best to pay attention to the service. It had actually included a memorial to Beckett Green, for a wonder—but then, he hadn’t just vanished like most of their teachers did. He’d been murdered—by Anastus Ovcharenko, or whoever had forced Loch to point the shotgun at her. But if Mr. Green had been memorialized (if that was even a word), this sure wasn’t a memorial service.

Usually Doctor Ambrosius picked two or three holy books to read to them out of—by now she was pretty familiar with the Bhagavad Gita, the Qur’an, and the Tanakh as well as with a number of lesser-known scriptures. He always had a way of doing it that seemed to say all religions shared an underlying spiritual truth—and those “truths” were all equally false. Spirit usually found it more boring than anything else, but today Doctor A was sticking with the Bible. The Book of Revelations, to be exact. And it wasn’t at all hard to pick up the subtext.
And Lo! For there will be a Final Battle of Good and of Evil and maybe a few other things too, and in that battle the Special Kids will be saved and the Bad Kids will be cast into a burning lake of fiery fire to experience permanent fatal death. Great. Way to be subtle, Evil Overlord.

I should have told everyone about QUERCUS when I had the chance,
she thought. Now it was much too late. They were all on edge. If the others found out she’d been keeping a secret—a big secret—from them for
months …

She wasn’t sure what would happen.

At least she’d managed to convince them to try to find out more about Doctor Ambrosius without having to flat-out say why she distrusted him so much. She glanced over at Dylan. Dylan caught her looking and smirked at her. Spirit wasn’t sure whether to glare, pretend she hadn’t noticed, or just close her eyes and pretend she wasn’t here at all. She wasn’t sure what Muirin had told Dylan to convince him to help, but she’d gotten him to agree.

Loch had a digital recorder. It wasn’t even contraband; he used it to make notes for studying. It could record for about a day before it ran out of charge, and it was about the size of a cell phone. Dylan knew the layout in Doctor A’s office as well as any of the rest of them did: he’d Jaunted Loch’s recorder to the top of the bookshelf behind Dr. Ambrosius’s desk today before the service, and he’d retrieve it the same way tomorrow. And Spirit hoped it would have something
definite
on it. Because if it didn’t, then Burke was going to go to Doctor Ambrosius, and Spirit couldn’t come up with a really good reason not to, even if she was desperate enough to reveal QUERCUS.
I can just see how that would go: “Oh hey, my invisible friend who appeared mysteriously says you shouldn’t trust Doctor Ambrosius. And I’ve been keeping him a secret because I don’t trust
you
.” Yeah, how about not?

She stifled a yawn.

*   *   *

Ms. Smith and Ms. Corby were standing on either side of the doorway as everyone filed out. Spirit barely had time to register that they were pulling kids aside when Ms. Corby summoned her. She found herself standing beside Zoey, Kylee, and Maddie. On the other side were Chris and (Spirit’s heart sank) Dylan. A moment later, Burke and Loch joined them.

“What’s this all about?” Spirit whispered to Maddie.

“You’ve been chosen to attend afternoon tea, Miss White,” Ms. Corby said without turning around.

Back when Oakhurst was at least
pretending
to be a real school where the student body was going to live to grow up, one of the things on the curriculum was “Genteel Deportment,” which was what the formal dances and the formal dinners and the afternoon teas were for. Afternoon teas were held by Doctor Ambrosius every Sunday for the faculty and four boys and four girls chosen at random. Spirit had just assumed the teas had been discontinued, since she’d been picked during her first month at Oakhurst, and you couldn’t be picked again until everyone else had been picked once.

Surprise.

Then again, how many of us are left? Maybe my number just came up again.

Yeah, right.

*   *   *

Afternoon tea was even more grueling this time than it had been the first time, and even getting out of her new Sunday afternoon classes couldn’t make it any better. She was supposed to be doing two hours of Horsemanship (held in the paddock near the stables for safety) followed by her “Fencing” Class (they hadn’t worked out with anything as light as a foil in weeks). If they were all being prepared to survive in some kind of post-apocalyptic wasteland, their bizarre curriculum finally made sense.
Lucky us, to be the Oakhurst class here when Breakthrough decides to carry out its evil plan. I bet all Mark and Teddy Rider and Madison Lane had to take was French and Calculus.

She kept her face very still as a sudden thought struck her.

What made her think any of them had actually gone to Oakhurst at all? She had only their word for it they were alums. No one had bothered going through the files down in the secret basement to verify that.

But they weren’t old enough to have been Hellriders …

… were they?

No.

That had been forty years ago. Wolfman had been, well, Doc A’s age. It would have had to have been Mark and Teddy’s
father
who’d been one of the Hellriders. But that would mean they weren’t orphans.

Even though her brain really hurt right now, Spirit tried not to close her eyes and make a face. Somebody would be sure to see and ask why.
Every time I think I’ve managed to disbelieve everything Oakhurst’s told us, I realize I’m still believing part of something we’ve all been told. And what if I’m still believing the thing that’s going to get us killed?

She felt a little better about the Sunday Tea when she realized why the eight of them had been chosen. Six of them were on the Dance Committee, and Loch and Burke had been involved in the shooting—Loch directly, Burke as Mr. Green’s protégé. So it was probably just Doctor Ambrosius wanting to see if any of them were going to do something interesting (like freak out and gain access to their Reincarnate memories, because at least
some
of them had to be Reincarnates, and that was one more thing to worry about).

Or maybe it was the staff he was watching. None of the Breakthrough people were here, not even Mark and Madison, and in comparison to the other time Spirit had been here …

Last time there’d been twenty people besides Doctor Ambrosius and the students. Today there were six.

She was starting to wonder if Breakthrough wanted
any
of them. At all.

*   *   *

Monday evening. Less than an hour until she found out if their attempt to bug Doctor Ambrosius’s office had gotten them anything that could convince the others he wasn’t to be trusted.

Two months ago—a month ago—the events of the past thirty-six hours would have driven her to screaming hysterics. Today she just thought they were funny—in a really horrible way.

Sunday afternoon Addie almost drowned during practice when one of the other Water Witches thought the pool was empty and froze it into ice. Sunday night Spirit used the Ironkey to log into QUERCUS’s chatroom, but QUERCUS still wasn’t there. Monday morning they found out they had Ovcharenko back teaching
Systema
again, and now Burke was his designated chew-toy. Burke was good enough to take the worst Ovcharenko could throw at him, and Ovcharenko knew it—but the implacable patient anger on Burke’s face when he looked at Ovcharenko was frightening. In the afternoon, Mia Singleton had the Endurance class doing jumps in the Paddock—and Spirit took what could have been a bad fall when the saddle on her horse just slipped off as he was clearing a jump. Just before dinner, Loch caught up to her to tell her Noah Turner had said the Breakthrough guy he was dating (wow, surprise) said there was a memo with a list of all the gay and lesbian Oakhurst kids that was going to be “accidentally leaked” this week to the entire student body. Noah wasn’t on that list. Loch didn’t have to say anything more.

That’s how Breakthrough’s buying Noah’s loyalty, just the way it tried to buy Muirin with makeup and clothes and … freedom. Or Burke with friendship. They promise you whatever you want most. Whatever it is.

I want my family back
, she thought fiercely.
Give me that, Breakthrough, and we’ll talk.

But while even Breakthrough couldn’t give her that, it didn’t mean it couldn’t offer her something she wanted. She hadn’t had a moment alone with Burke since he’d snuck in through her window the night they’d gone to see Wolfman, and that hadn’t exactly been a romantic tryst. She’d been trying not to think about him too hard, so as not to give anything away if someone was watching, but when she did think about him, it was with an ache of
want
so bad it nearly made her cry.

If Breakthrough could give her Burke? Safe and happy and free?

Would that buy her?

I have to make sure they never know it could.

NINE

That night, Spirit and Burke and Loch and Addie went up to the attic as soon as they could sneak away after dinner. Spirit hoped Muirin would be joining them, but she hadn’t seen Muirin all day, and considering what Muirin had told all of them on Saturday, Spirit was more worried about her than ever. Muirin was self-centered and occasionally spiteful, but she was also generous, brave, and loyal. Spirit could only hope Muirin was taking her own advice and keeping her head down, especially around Breakthrough.

When Spirit got there, Addie had already lit the candles for light and for heat, but it was still freezing. But even shivering in a corner, Spirit felt better than she had all day.

No, not better.
Safer
.

I can’t go on like this much longer,
she thought. She hadn’t had a lot of patience with Addie just wanting to leave, but now she realized she’d been unfair. You just couldn’t go on being this scared day after day. Eventually you’d do anything to make it stop. And the penalty for that was disappearing to wherever Breakthrough disappeared people to. And that made everything worse all over again. She wanted to think, to plan, to imagine what they’d find on Loch’s recorder and what they could do about it, but her mind just kept going in a tiny circle saying:
escape, escape, escape
 …

Maybe they could. Loch had Kenning and Shadewalking; those Gifts were enough to guide them if they decided to strike out cross-country. Burke could protect them, Muirin could make sure they got away undetected—they could even use her car, if they could figure out a way.…