Sacrifices (24 page)

Just as they had with Dylan last night, the three of them told the
secret
story of Oakhurst, beginning with Loch and Spirit’s arrival—when they’d all become aware of just how
weird
Oakhurst really was—and continuing through the destruction of the Wild Hunt, the terror at New Year’s, the arrival of the Shadow Knights—and discovering the Shadow Knights were actually Breakthrough. This time all three of them told the story, interrupting each other, backtracking, reminding each other of details they’d forgotten. As they spoke, Doc Mac looked more and more thoughtful. By the time they got through the second half of their explanation—Reincarnates, Elizabeth Walker, Camelot, haunted oaks, dead bikers, Mordred being imprisoned in the oak instead of Merlin, and Breakthrough intending to start a nuclear war by launching missiles—Doc Mac looked pretty sandbagged. Spirit was glad she hadn’t included the part about him maybe being the Reincarnate Gawain. It was a theory she hadn’t confided to the others. There hadn’t been time and privacy.

“I wasn’t aware of any of this,” he said, when they finally paused. “Of course I knew we lost a certain number of students each year. But everyone who comes to Oakhurst is traumatically orphaned, and then they have their entire worldview overturned by learning not simply that magic exists, but that they have magic powers. With that much mental trauma, it would be out of the norm for there
not
to be suicides and runaways. That we lost such a small number each year seemed a blessing. I never thought any more about it.”

“Some blessing,” Muirin muttered.

There was silence for a time. Doc Mac sat and thought; Spirit, Loch, and Muirin just sat. Even if he didn’t think they were crazy, it was a lot to take in, Spirit knew. If she’d been told everything she now knew back in September, she would have rejected it utterly.

“If you really believe all you’ve told me,” Doc Mac finally said, “you three took an enormous risk telling me what you have.”

“Not really,” Loch said, shrugging. “Doctor A—Mordred—wants Spirit and me dead; Mark—King Mark of Cornwall—is insisting it has to look like an accident but he’s probably going to cave pretty soon. I don’t figure we have a lot to lose at this point. And Spirit says we can trust you—and I trust her.”

“And I’m connected,” Muirin said, smirking. “Madison Lane-Rider’s recruiting me for the Shadow Knights: Join the forces of Evil! Grind your friends under the iron heel of tyranny! And you’d better believe I’m going to go running to her the moment we get out of here to give her a suitably edited version of events.” She looked at Spirit and Loch and sighed, apparently realizing they didn’t find the situation as funny as she did. “You two wanted to go see the Doc; I tagged along. You guys are all freaked out because you figure you’ve been marked for death by some kind of Secret Conspiracy you can’t get Burke or Addie to believe in. Doc Mac talked you down off the ledge.”

“Nice of you to let me know my part ahead of time,” Doc Mac said dryly. “I can give you a few more details to make the story convincing, Muirin.”

“You believe us?” Spirit said, almost sick with relief.

“Let’s say I’m strongly inclined to,” Doc Mac says. “I’m not sure about the Arthurian reincarnation aspect of things, but”—he hesitated—“we’ve lost nearly all the faculty and almost thirty students in a bit over two months. I dislike Mr. Ovcharenko and his private army a great deal, and Lily Groves was a good friend—and not the sort of person either inclined to midnight rambles, or incapable of defending herself if attacked. And the fact I never thought what happened with Loch and Beckett Green was at all odd until you came and talked to me about it is a
big
warning sign to me that I should take everything you’ve told me very seriously. So—conditionally—I’m in. What do you need from me?”

“What are your conditions?” Spirit asked suspiciously.

“I won’t betray a professional confidence—yours or anyone else’s. I won’t do anything that’s both harmful and illegal, so if you’re expecting me to
shoot
anyone…”

“No!” Loch burst out.

“We need information,” Muirin said quickly. “They’re going to retest everyone. Why? Who’s doing it? And can we get out of it?”

“And if you happen to know anyone in Homeland Security…” Loch said.

Doc Mac smiled tightly—that, more than anything else, made Spirit think he believed them. Doc Mac looked
scared.
“Unfortunately, no. But I can find out about the testing. And I can certainly advise that you, Spirit, and you, Loch, be put at the bottom of the list because of your recent trauma.”

“Gee, thanks,” Muirin muttered.

“You’re on your own, kid,” Doc Mac said, smiling at her conspiratorially. “I have great faith in your ability to lie like a rug.”

Muirin bounded to her feet and bowed, looking pleased.

“Now,” Doc Mac said briskly. “You two should exit stage left—”

“—pursued by a bear,” Loch added irrepressibly.

“—and complaining you can’t decide whether I believed you or not. And Muirin can remain to explain to me all the reasons why I
shouldn’t
believe you.” He glanced down at his watch and sighed, obviously coming to a decision he didn’t like very much. “Loch, I think we’ll need to see each other for several counseling sessions in order to work through your conflicts about your sexual identity.”

Loch snorted, looking more cheerful than Spirit had seen him in weeks.

“That should also provide something of a safety net if the factionalism you predict comes into play. If the email system is working again, I’ll email you. Otherwise, I’ll just print out a schedule and have one of the Proctors deliver it. I’m assuming you have ways of communicating with your friends that won’t draw unwelcome attention?”

“Aside from the whole ‘marked for death’ thing, yes,” Loch said wryly. “Nobody much notices me.”

“I think you underrate yourself,” Doc Mac said. “But we’ll leave it at that. Okay, kids. Showtime!” He got to his feet, clapping his hands together.

“You’re going out there a persecuted lunatic, but you’re coming back a paranoid loner!” Muirin said fulsomely.

Spirit laughed. It felt good. For the first time, she felt they were actually doing something that might
help
.

*   *   *

Their visit with Doc Mac had run well into the afternoon. The rest of the day was weirdly tense; Spirit couldn’t decide whether she was too scared, or not scared enough. All the equestrian classes had been canceled for the moment—and so had the firearms course, which Spirit didn’t think would have happened just because somebody had
died
at the first one—so all the indoor PE classes were being doubled up (even more than before) and so were the History and Language classes. It was almost enough to make it look as if half the student body hadn’t vanished in the last six months.

Because of her appointment with Doc Mac, she’d missed her Intermediate Latin Class. Her next class was Jane Smith’s Math Class. Ms. Smith wanted them all to talk about their feelings (as usual).

Boy, it’s a good thing Breakthrough intends to destroy the world,
Spirit thought snarkily.
Because none of us is learning enough academic stuff to get into any college in the universe
.

Jillian Marshall and Claire Grissom both broke down in hysterics, and Ms. Smith (looking pleased) called for a couple of Proctors to escort them to what she called a “quiet room.”

Spirit wondered if she’d see Claire and Jillian at dinner tonight.

After Math was her History of Magic Class—Ms. Groves’s class. The replacement teacher was Madison Lane-Rider, and if that wasn’t bad enough, she said from now on they’d be concentrating on the Arthurian Cycle.

It seemed cruelly, horribly unfair. Ms. Groves had been killed for giving Spirit a book of Arthurian legends. And now Madison Lane-Rider was teaching a class in it. Spirit tried not to wonder if the class itself was some kind of elaborate drawn-out trap. Would students disappear for knowing too much of the course material? Or for not knowing enough?

She was trembling with pent-up nerves and exhaustion by dinnertime. She barely remembered to slip her class ring onto her finger before she walked into the Refectory. The gold felt heavy and somehow greasy against her skin. Moving as if in a trance, she collected her tray and sat down at her assigned table. Joe Rogers was sitting in his usual spot, and Spirit had a flash of happiness at his irritated expression and the gold-and-brown striped tie around his neck.
So you hate the new dress code too? Tough.

That was until she took a closer look.

The tie tack in the Oakhurst tie was a Gatekeeper emblem.

Joe Rogers had become one of the Shadow Knights.

*   *   *

Spirit didn’t bother to look for Addie or Burke after dinner. She hadn’t slept since yesterday morning, and the last thirty-six hours had been a series of brutal shocks. Loch and Muirin could fill the other two in on what they’d told Doc Mac; Spirit just wanted to sleep. She’d thought it would be a relief to get back to her room, but the moment she walked in, she realized it wasn’t. Having it searched the way it had been had destroyed any sense of safety she felt here.

She wanted to scream, or even cry, but she was too tired for either. She changed for bed, but just as she was about to get into it she glanced at her computer and saw the intraweb icon in the taskbar was lit. The intraweb was back up. She almost ignored it, but … what if this was the only chance she got?

She untied the Ironkey from around her waist and sat down in her desk chair. She clutched it in her hand nervously—what would she say? What if QUERCUS wasn’t there?—then checked her email instead. She didn’t even need to open any of them to know what they were about: at least twenty of them were from Maddie Harris, which meant all of Oakhurst was privy to her hysterics about
prom gowns.

And today is Tuesday, and tomorrow is Wednesday, and that’s the last Dance Committee meeting before the Spring Fling, which is Friday—
this
Friday. And the Shadow Knights are going to do
something
at the Spring Fling—because the Hellmouth opens at every single Oakhurst dance—and last time we had some idea of what it was, and this time I have no clue at all.…

And in six weeks Mordred was going to destroy the world, unless they could stop him. She frowned at the screen, turning the Ironkey over and over in her hands. The five of them needed help, and it sure wasn’t going to come from outside. She felt a lot better having Doc Mac on their side, but after what had happened to Ms. Groves, she knew he wouldn’t be able to do anything openly. He’d be risking enough just getting them the information Muirin’d asked for.

One person—or even half a dozen … The Shadow Knights can just make them go away and nobody will notice. But if a lot of people stood up to them …

She knew everybody here wasn’t falling for Breakthrough’s party line—they couldn’t be. The Breakthrough people were glamorous and almost credible, but Spirit bet that about half their current converts would ditch a future as a pawn of evil if they knew those were the actual stakes.

We need to find some way to organize—to get what we know out there and have people believe it.…

Yeah, like that’s going to happen. Even before Breakthrough showed up, Oakhurst was pitting all of us against each other. Mordred should have just named the school “Thunderdome” in the first place. I know it’s what we need to do. I just don’t know how to do it.

She realized she was delaying out of sheer funk. Before she could talk herself out of even trying, she plugged the Ironkey into her machine.

Hello, Spirit,
QUERCUS typed.

Spirit stared at the words for a very long time without typing anything. What if she’d been wrong from the beginning? What if QUERCUS was a trap? What if— What if— What if—

She had to decide. Friend or foe? Not choosing was as bad as making the wrong choice.

Hello, QUERCUS. Doctor Ambrosius is Mordred.

She counted heartbeats, watching the sentence on the screen. One— Two— Three— Four— Five …

I know.

Spirit stared at the words on the screen, too shocked to even know how they made her feel. Questions tumbled through her mind too fast to type:
Who are you? Why didn’t you tell me? Do you know what he’s planning? How can we stop him?

You are stronger than you know. The hardest part of your task lies ahead of you. Remain vigilant and in readiness. I will contact you soon.

She wanted to protest, to demand an explanation. But there was no one to hear. QUERCUS had logged off.

I hope I haven’t just screwed us all over,
she thought bleakly.

When she got into bed, tired as she was, sleep took a long time to come.

*   *   *

On Wednesday morning, the “leaked” memo Loch had warned Spirit about was in her mailbox, along with a follow-up memo from
STAFF
telling students to delete the first email without reading it. (Maybe some of them even had.) The list of GLBT students was less than a dozen names. (Not surprising, since there were only about sixty students here now.) Spirit wondered if there was any truth to the list. Of the two people at Oakhurst she knew
for sure
were gay, one was on it and one wasn’t.

She was so upset by that she almost missed the other memo from
STAFF.
Today “Doctor Ambrosius’s” testing began, and there was a schedule attached. The Proctors would go first, then everybody else. Doctor Ambrosius was doing all of the testing himself.

Spirit wondered how many people he could do in a day.

She wondered what he was looking for.

*   *   *

When Loch walked into the Refectory that morning, several of the boys made kissing noises. Loch’s was the only name from the “Platinum Spoon” group on the list. It made him a particular target—as if he “deserved” it more than the others (not that any of them deserved it).