Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies (16 page)

“All right, you dirty capitalists. Time to tally up your ill-gotten gains, figure out who won, and head for your rooms,” he called. “Fifteen minutes to lights out.”

With a sigh, Addie packed up the board that hadn’t been used all night, and they split up. Spirit only stopped long enough to tug on Burke’s elbow and hold him back a moment.

“Thanks,” she said, with feeling.

“For what?” he asked, looking both startled and gratified.

“For believing me.
In
me. That we’re still in danger.” She sighed. “I was beginning to feel as if none of you were ever going to see it.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m looking a little harder than the others,” Burke replied, smiling down into her eyes. “Spirit—”

“Hey!”

They both jumped, instinctively separating, and both stared guiltily at the door, where the proctor was shaking his head. “Rooms. Now.”

“Right,” Burke said, and hurried out the door. Spirit could only stare after him a moment, wondering what he had been about to say, before she followed Addie and Muirin back to the girls’ side.

*   *   *

The names still hadn’t been posted for the field trip, but a chance remark by Doc Mac had engendered—well, Spirit wasn’t sure what to call it. Other than tempting fate …

Although she hadn’t been there to hear it, evidently when one of the teachers had lamented the debacle of the New Year’s Dance, he had mentioned some Scottish celebration that happened the week after New Year’s that involved setting fire to a barrel of tar or a Viking ship, or both. “It’d give the kids something to get their minds off the bad experience,” he’d said, and for some reason the entire faculty had taken the idea and run away with it, combining this Scottish-Viking thing with the need to take down the Winter Carnival.

So now there was going to be a big nighttime gathering featuring a bonfire with a Viking ship on top of it, a competition to take down the ice-works fast (
of course
there had to be a competition, this was Oakhurst) and what wasn’t ice was to get tossed on the bonfire. The refreshments that didn’t get used New Year’s Eve had been thriftily saved or frozen; they were going to be served at this thing, along with grilled hot dogs and bratwurst. Muirin was already in heaven at the prospect.

Personally, Spirit thought this was a really dumb idea, not the least because it meant they were all going to have to go outside in the freezing cold, in the coldest part of the year, at night.

*   *   *

The night of the thing, she went out bundled up to her eyebrows, and within moments of stepping out into the snow her toes and fingers started to freeze. The electric lights strung for the Carnival were all on, providing plenty of light.

She watched Addie and Muirin’s team reducing an ice sculpture to powder snow. It was actually kind of fun to watch; the whole thing basically crumbled away like something right out of a movie. Like a vampire getting hit with sunlight, or a mummy crumbling away. She felt someone come to stand beside her, turned a little, and saw that it was Elizabeth, also bundled up.

“This is a bad idea,” Elizabeth said, sounding very unhappy.

“I’ve seen better,” Spirit said cautiously. “Somebody’s going to get frostbite if they aren’t careful.” She glanced over at the pile of wood with a cardboard-and-wood Viking ship on top of it. “I don’t know if that bonfire’s a really good idea, either—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Elizabeth replied, then shook her head.

Spirit waited, but Elizabeth was silent. “Well, what did you mean?” she prompted, as Addie and Muirin’s team moved on to the next ice sculpture, leaving a pile of tiny sandlike ice particles behind.

Elizabeth glanced around nervously. “It just seems like a bad idea. You know, like this might attract … something.”

Spirit shivered as she felt a cold chill that had nothing to do with the weather go down her back. She looked up at the moon in a mostly clear sky. “Well,” she replied, with a lightness she didn’t feel, “if you’re thinking it’ll attract what happened at New Year’s, even if the lights go out, there’s no way whatever it was is going to be able to put out the moon. So we won’t be in the dark and we will be able to see it.”

Elizabeth gave her a dubious look. “If you say so,” she replied, in a tone that said clearly she didn’t believe it.

Some of the snow sculptures, like the castle, had been built on wooden scaffolding. With the packed snow evaporated by another team, Burke and several others were tearing the scaffolding down and piling it on the unlit bonfire. The thing was going to be huge. They’d probably be able to see it in Radial.

At least it would be warm.

She got a cup of hot cider from the knot of kitchen staff setting up the grills and the tables with food on them. They didn’t look very happy, and she didn’t blame them. But at least once they got the grills going, they’d have a little warm patch where they were. She wrapped her cold fingers around the cup and sipped slowly. The cider tasted … thin, somehow. As if some vitality had been drained out of it.

She rubbed her eyes and stared at Addie’s team. There seemed to be a gray fog between her and them, and the sounds they were making as they took down another ice sculpture weren’t as loud as they had been a moment before. And were the electric lights getting weaker? She rubbed her eyes again. This was weird, very weird; it was like everything was getting dimmed down.

Someone shouted; she turned, and saw a line of cloaked and hooded riders silhouetted against the night sky, just beyond the lawn of the school. There was something
wrong
about them; it wasn’t just that they were wearing black, it was that the light somehow was sucked into them. She felt cold, horribly cold, staring at them.

Is this some prank from the kids in Radial? Please, let it be a prank …

But of course, she knew in her heart it wasn’t—which was only proved a moment later when one of the Riders let out a piercing whistle and they all plunged toward the students.

Someone screamed. That made everyone turn to look.

Spirit just
knew
that the terrible, paralyzing fear was going to clamp down over them all. She even braced herself for it, getting ready to fight it, even though fighting it hadn’t worked very well the last time.

But no—no, all that erupted was just plain old-fashioned panic.

People started shouting hysterically, and there was more screaming as the students scattered before the charge. As Spirit darted out of the way, something whistled over her head. A club of some kind, heavier than a bat, but swung expertly. It missed her, but not by much, and it forced her to take a tumble in order to escape the deadly hooves of another horse.

Who are they?
She got no time to think about it. The Riders were turning and coming back again. There were people on the ground now, knocked down and maybe hurt. And the Riders were between them and the school buildings. There was no way to get to safety except through them.

She heard a shout of rage in a voice she recognized. Burke! She looked around for him and couldn’t spot him. A moment later, something white shot through the air and hit one of the Riders in the shoulder. It couldn’t have been a snowball; the missile didn’t disintegrate when it hit. The Rider cursed, grabbed for his shoulder, his club dropping out of his hand. Whatever Burke was throwing was pretty solid.

Burke’s famous fastball …
It was followed by another, this time to the head. The Rider reeled—but the others charged.

But Burke’s rage had infected her. Furious, she spotted a metal scaffolding pole in a pile of others and ran for it. It was just about the length of her kendo staff, if not the same weight. She seized it and turned to face the Riders, screaming at them at the top of her lungs.

She wasn’t the only one. Addie, Muirin, and Loch had taken up Burke’s tactic, and now Spirit realized what it was Burke was using as a weapon.

Ice balls.

Addie was making them; Burke, Muirin, and Loch were throwing them. Murr-cat and Loch didn’t have the lethal precision Burke did, but they were making up for it with volume, and aiming, not at the Riders, but at their horses.

The horses didn’t like getting pelted one little bit. They fought their bits and their Riders. Spirit took advantage of this and charged, screaming like a banshee.

At least three of the horses won the fight with their Riders and bolted.

Spirit ended up beside the unlit bonfire; the remaining Riders milled around, fighting for control of their horses. Some of the other students were helping the ones on the ground; the rest responded sluggishly, as if they weren’t quite sure what they should do. In that moment of uncertainty on both sides, Spirit glanced over at the bonfire and saw two things: an empty gallon of kerosene, and a fireplace lighter. Someone had been about to light the bonfire when the attack started.

Horses liked fire even less than they liked being pelted with ice balls.

Time to finish the job!

She dropped the pole, grabbed the lighter, and struggled with it for a moment, trying to get it to light. When she finally succeeded, she saw some of the wood gleaming wetly, reflecting the flame, and smelled the kerosene fumes, thick and choking. She bent down and put the flame to the kerosene-soaked wood.

The bonfire went up with a roar; she jumped back barely in time.

She took another glance at the Riders; now the horses were rearing and bucking, whinnying shrilly. That made up her mind; she seized a piece of burning two-by-four and charged them, waving the end that was on fire in front of her in wild arcs.

The Riders couldn’t hold control of their mounts now. The horses had had enough. More of them peeled off, racing into the west. The leader fought his own horse for a moment, then must have decided to give up. He whistled shrilly and gave his horse its head. It galloped off after the first escapees, and the rest of the Riders followed.

Spirit dropped the burning board into the nearest snow pile, and sagged to her knees.

*   *   *

Mr. Bowman, Ms. Holland, and Mr. Krandal, the three teachers supposed to go on the field trip, were all hurt. Not badly, but they’d been ordered to the Infirmary along with the students who were injured. Most of those seemed to be Proctors.

Spirit sat with the others in the lounge, both hands wrapped around a big cup of hot chocolate, sipping at it. Her stomach was feeling very queasy after that confrontation. Murr-cat was on her third cup; evidently fighting didn’t harm
her
appetite in the least!

Spirit watched the door, waiting for Addie to come back from the Infirmary. “There she is,” she said, as Addie appeared in the doorway, a neat bandage on one hand.

Addie made her way over to them. “No one’s seriously hurt, but they could have been,” she said as she sat down with them. “One of the Proctors has a concussion. Those people wanted to hurt us.”

Spirit nodded, and started to say something, but Addie forestalled her.

“I don’t know if those Shadow Riders have anything to do with the Wild Hunt or New Year’s—but I can tell you how the magic crossed the wards,” she continued with venom. “I saw some of their hands. They were wearing Oakhurst rings. And since
we
were all accounted for,
they
have to be Alums!”

“Could they have just stolen the rings?” Spirit asked timidly.

“Unlikely,” said Burke.

“Then we are so doomed.…”

TEN

Ever since the attack of those mysterious shadowed figures, there’d been a curious sense of the surreal about Oakhurst. On the one hand, almost all the physical classes had abruptly shifted into physical defense. Any time you looked outside, you’d see a teacher or staff member working on … something magical. Defenses, presumably. It wasn’t obvious
what
was going on, but there was often some visual component, lights or vapors, or mysterious fleeting images.

On the other hand—unbelievable as it was, they were all expected to carry on as if nothing had happened. Even the ones that had been hurt. Bandages, casts on arms, and all. After her second night of nightmares, Spirit had tried to get an appointment with Doc Mac … but he was seeing people from six in the morning until midnight, and she just couldn’t justify trying to muscle out someone who was in worse shape than she was.

And still the field trip was on. It made no sense.

Unless—maybe all this was to convince the students that no matter what happened, Oakhurst was still safe. If that was the intention … well, so far as Spirit was concerned, it wasn’t working. And yet, as days passed, it seemed she was in the minority.

“Oh, I could really hate you this morning, Blondie,” Muirin said, before Spirit even got a chance to sit down at the table. “
So
unfair. What did you do to get your seat on the train, anyway? And why didn’t you tell me what it was so I could have, too?”

Spirit stared at her, brain blank. She’d spent the night fighting off nightmares of those mounted figures charging down on them; she’d clawed her way out of sleep as the alarm went off for the third time and had barely made it in time for breakfast before her first class. “What?” she replied. “Train?” She couldn’t for a minute imagine what Muirin was talking about.

“Didn’t you read your e-mail this morning?” Muirin asked, her green eyes dark with nameless emotion. “
You
get to go on the field trip. You, Burke, and Loch.
So
unfair!”

“I don’t even want to go!” Spirit blurted, shocked. “Why should I go? Look, you can take my place, right?”

“No can do, Spirit,” Burke said, sitting down with a huge bowl of oatmeal. “Designated field trippers only.” He offered Muirin a smile of commiseration. “Look at it this way, are you
really
that interested in an exhibit of someone’s modern horse sculptures? Not even you could convince me of that.”

“It wasn’t the museum,” Muirin grumbled. “You know that. It was getting out of here. It was the shopping.”

“Shopping?” asked Addie, with a raised eyebrow. “In Billings, Montana? After what you’ve been used to? You cannot seriously make me believe that
you
could be shopping for couture in Billings, Montana.”

“Even Billings has mega-bookstores and mega-bookstores have magazine racks with things
other
than
National Geographic
and
Smithsonian
on them.” Muirin poked at her eggs with her fork. “Stepmother won’t forward my subscriptions, and there are
always
new magazines coming out that only last for a few issues. It wouldn’t be so bad if we had real Internet, but I
need
my magazines without it!”

“Oh please, as if you’ve ever let that stop you from getting something,” Addie replied with a sniff. “The only reason you haven’t gotten past the firewall is because you haven’t tried hard enough to find someone or some way to do it.”

Muirin just gave her a sullen glare and went back to poking at her eggs.

“Well, I hate art museums, and I don’t have any money,” Spirit said, trying to look as irritated as Muirin was. “So I’m going to be bored with the museum and I can’t do any shopping. And Billings is, what, three hours away by train? Which means that I’ll have to be up
way
before dawn, and it’s going to be awful. I promise you, if I could trade places with you, I would. The only good thing about this is getting out of classes for a day.”

Well, except for getting Burke
and
Loch all to myself.…

“Oh, I bet they’ll have work assignments waiting for you on the train,” Addie said cheerfully. “After all, you’ll have three hours there and three hours back, that’s six whole hours you could be using to
achieve.
The only way you get out of class around here is if you’re unconscious. Then they expect you to make it up when you revive.”

Burke nodded, and for a moment Spirit wondered how they could all be so callous about the students who’d “gotten out of class” by virtue of being dead or insane, when a little movement of Burke’s eyes alerted her to the fact that someone at one of the other tables behind her was listening.

Right. Everyone else seems to forget that people go crazy and die and vanish. I need to pretend that I’ve forgotten, too.

“There you go. I’ll be stuck in a train for six hours with nothing to do but class work, then stuck at a museum. No reason for envy.” Spirit shrugged. “I’ll ask if we can switch anyway. Maybe they’ll let you go instead.”

But she already knew they wouldn’t. This was exactly what the Administration seemed to want—drive a wedge between friends—and from the look on Muirin’s face, they were getting it, too. Was it possible that Muirin had some reason why she’d been sure
she,
and not Spirit, was going to be going on this trip? If so, well, no wonder she was so ticked off.

She’d have to figure out some way to make it up. Maybe she could borrow some money from someone and get Muirin some candy bars.

On her first break between classes she went back to her room and checked her e-mail. Sure enough, there was the message congratulating her on being selected, along with a second, to all students, detailing who was going to go. There were about a dozen students on the list, including the new girl, Elizabeth—which made absolutely no sense, since she was having to catch up to the accelerated Oakhurst curriculum and not having an easy time of it. None of them were all that interested in art. None of them were at the top of the class.

Yes, this was definitely going to drive wedges between a lot of people.

*   *   *

The museum opened at nine. It would take about half an hour to drive from the train depot to the museum, and three hours to get from Oakhurst to Billings. So they were all awakened at 4
A.M.

Spirit felt as if she’d barely gotten any sleep, though she’d
tried
to make an early night of it. No nightmares last night, but it felt like she’d spent most of the night waiting to hear the alarm go off. She yawned her way through breakfast, and trudged out into the dark with the others to get on the train.

There was definitely a surreal sense here. Days ago, the school had been attacked, physically attacked, and people had been hurt. Today they were going on a
field trip
. And the three teachers who were chaperoning them were still sporting the bandages from that attack, yet they acted as if they’d just had bad spills in the shower.

It was as if she was living an entirely different life from the rest of them. And yet … at this moment, even
she
was finding herself sucked into the illusion that everything was normal. She trudged toward the tiny station with the others, hearing the dull throb of the locomotive engine out there in the dark.

Like the train that had brought her here, this was a short, but very modern locomotive. This time it was coupled to two passenger cars instead of one. Both passenger cars had the Oakhurst logo on the side. Of course. They shuffled into single file and Spirit found herself sandwiched in between Burke and Loch. At least she could be sure of one thing; nobody on horseback was going to be able to catch them once the train was moving.

Burke took a seat next to a window; she popped into the one next to him, and Loch took one immediately behind them.

“Oh brother,” Burke said, reaching for a white card sticking up out of the seat back in front of him. “It looks as if Addie was right.”

Spirit checked her card. Instead of being a safety thing, it was instructions on how to use the built-in video player in the other arm of the seat back and a list of the preloaded lectures each of them were supposed to watch. But there were only three under Spirit’s name, so Spirit put the card back and decided to get them on the way home. Of course, that was
all
there was to watch on the video players. And the list of available music was all from the Music Appreciation course.

“Oh man, this stuff is lame. Who loaded up this player? Good thing I brought my phone.”

Phone?
Phone?
She craned her neck as the train blew its whistle and began to move out of the tiny station. No one at Oakhurst was allowed a phone.…

Ahead of her were four people she didn’t recognize, and for a moment they looked utterly alien in their bright parkas and hoodies. Four people—who were not in Oakhurst coats and Oakhurst colors.

The train lurched into motion, and David Krandal stood up at the front of their car. He banged on the wall to get their attention.

“Those of you Oakhurst students that aren’t already asleep,” he said, eliciting a polite laugh, “might have noticed we have some guests from Radial with us: Brett and Juliette Weber, and Adam and Tom Phillips. They won’t be with us for the field trip, but they all have business in Billings and Doctor Ambrosius offered the good people of Radial some of the extra seats on the train, in light of our new relationship with the town.” He nodded at someone Spirit couldn’t see. “So welcome aboard, but don’t forget that if you miss the train when we head back, it’s a long walk home.”

Another polite laugh, and Mr. Krandal sat down again.

The train picked up speed. She was about to recline her seat for a nap when Mr. Krandal stood up again. He unlocked a door at the front of the car, and flipped a switch. Three icons lit up; a male and a female—probably for bathrooms—and a knife and fork.…

“It was probably early for most of you, so the kitchen is open,” Krandal said. “There’s box breakfasts and lunches, and we’ll restock dinners for the trip back. There’s only room in there for two at a time.”

The four townies got up immediately and there was some wrangling about who would get to go first. Two of them sat down, and the other two went in. The Oakhurst kids, who knew all too well what was going to be in those boxes, were in no hurry to get theirs.

The first two came back with their open boxes and looks of disappointment on their faces. They sat down and began picking through the offerings while the other two craned their necks to see. “Granola, plain yogurt, a banana, an apple, orange juice, and milk,” announced one of the boys. “Not even a Pop-Tart, and no coffee. Bogus.”

“I thought the Oakhats ate, like, steak and caviar and chocolate mousse for breakfast,” one of the others whispered just loudly enough for Spirit to hear. She smirked. The girl of the set got up and got a box anyway, and began stirring her granola into the yogurt. Krandal ignored them. The Oakhurst kids snickered.

The train slowed down; Spirit was startled. They hadn’t been under way for more than half an hour, they couldn’t be anywhere near Billings yet—

“Relax,” said Loch, deep in his first lesson. “We’re coming up on the junction with the main line. We have to get clearance so we don’t block a faster train or run up on a slower one. That’s why these trips take at least three hours, and sometimes can take five.”

“Five?” she echoed.

“Sometimes longer. Oh, hey, look at this—” Loch rotated his screen so Spirit could see it. He’d cued up some sort of video labeled T
HE
H
ISTORY OF
O
AKHURST:
F
ROM
M
ANSION TO
M
ODERN
S
CHOOL
.

“Huh, where’d you find that?” she asked.

“It’s mislabled. It’s under Science as M
ITOSIS AND
M
EIOSIS:
T
HE
F
UNDAMENTALS OF
C
ELL
D
IVISION.
I’m going to see if there’s anything else loaded up that was mislabeled.”

The train slowed to a halt and stopped. In the stillness, Spirit could hear faint echoes of music and video-game beeps from the townies’ phones. The girl was txting someone as fast as her thumbs would work. After fifteen minutes the train lurched into motion again and rolled ahead in a left-hand curve. Spirit looked out Burke’s window but it was too dark to see anything. She could sure tell when they got on the main line, though; things got a bit rougher and louder. So part of the quiet had been the private rail spur.

The Radial boy nearest Spirit was picking at his breakfast and making a face.

Someone behind Spirit got up. As she passed Spirit, she turned and winked before leaning over the back of the boy’s seat. Spirit stared in shock. It was Muirin!

“’Smatter, Adam, not used to eating anything for breakfast that doesn’t come in neon colors with marshmallow bits?” Muirin drawled.

Mr. Krandal nearly exploded out of his seat. “Muirin Shae!” he barked, looking absolutely furious. “I’m not going to ask you what you’re doing here, because it’s obvious you decided to stow away.”

Muirin looked as innocent as she could, which was not very. Finally she shrugged. “I’m ahead on my classes, you can check for yourself. I just want to go to a bookstore. Is that so bad?”

Mr. Krandal was obviously struggling with himself. “It’s too late to turn back now, which I assume you know. You sit right down there, young lady. I am going to have a conference with the other teachers about this, and we’re going to call back to Oakhurst about it.”

Muirin shrugged again and sat down in the empty seat beside the boy she’d called Adam. Mr. Krandal stalked down the aisle to the door at the rear of the car and through it to the second car where the other two teachers were.

“Damn, Muir, now I see why you were always jonesing for some junk food, if this is the crap they feed you,” Adam said with a grin.