Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies (27 page)

“Chocolate?” Burke said doubtfully. “Did you body-swap with Muirin?”

“Ninety percent cacao dark chocolate infused with chamomile and lavender,” Addie replied, a little grimly. “Best way to calm down that I know of short of liquor, and I don’t have any booze. I found them in France and told the Trust that was what I
always
want for Christmas and birthdays. Usually my box is kept in the Admin office and I get a couple of pieces each Sunday, but…” Addie shrugged. “When everything started going crazy around here, I asked if I could have it, and they gave it to me. Help yourselves.”

Gingerly, they all did. The chocolate was startlingly intense, and tasted a little like flowers. Spirit wasn’t sure she really liked it, but one thing was sure: You knew you’d eaten chocolate when you’d finished a piece.

There was a knock on the door, and Doc Mac stuck his head in. His grim expression told them that this had been worse than the last time. “You kids stay here and stay together,” he told them. “We’re missing people. There’s your group, and a couple of other knots of kids that managed to keep it together and huddle, but we know people went running out the doors in all directions. We have search parties out, but there’s a lot of ‘out there’ out there. Don’t leave this room till someone comes to tell you it’s all right.”

“Yes sir,” Burke said. Doc Mac closed the door.

“Okay,” Muirin said into the silence. “I’ll say it. Spirit was right. The Gatekeepers are Lizzie’s Shadow Knights. And they’re
horrible
people. The only way this could have happened tonight was from the inside.…”

“We should run.” Addie’s hand was shaking as she reached for a square of chocolate.

“To where?” Loch retorted. “And how? Steal horses and ride off to Billings? Even if we could get past Rider’s goons, and ride horses for two days, what would we do when we got there? I pretty much doubt Muirin’s and my secret charge cards are secret from Rider at this point.”

Muirin colored. “I sort of, kind of, told Madison about mine,” she muttered.

“We have to look insignificant,” Spirit said quietly. “Like we’re not worth bothering about. Us taking out the Hunt could have been a fluke—”

Burke nodded. “We didn’t really go into any detail when we told Doctor A., it’s true. We could have just gotten lucky. I don’t think any of us have done anything particularly wonderful since.…”

“We have to keep our heads down,” Loch said. “But how?”

“I know how,” Spirit said. “There’s more than one way to spread possible attention around. We need to get to some of the others, give them some idea of what to do when this happens again, and make them think it’s
their
idea.”

“You think this is going to happen again?” Addie began, then shook her head. “No, I’m being stupid. Of course it is, the only question is, when and why?”

“The Dance. It has to be the Dance,” Spirit said firmly. “We’re all together. Like Halloween. And New Year’s. I just don’t know how significant the date is.”

Addie’s brow wrinkled, but it was Loch who spoke up. “The dance is February Second. That’s Imbolc,” he said. “The Return of the Light. Except what if it doesn’t? What if the power goes out and there’s nothing but dark and cold and fear?”

Spirit snapped her fingers; “
That’s
why the fear-thing has hit us twice so far!” she said “They’ve been practicing!”

The others nodded. It all made perfect sense. “We have to figure out how we can fight off that fear.…”

“It can’t be a direct confrontation, not like the Hunt,” Burke pointed out.

“Well, both times that the Shadow Knights have shown up in person, we’ve been pretty nonconfrontational,” Muirin said sourly. “We just milled around like anyone else.”

“So we
look
like we’re milling around, but we do stuff.” Spirit looked down at the candle. “You know, the candle didn’t go out.”

“You know what’s better than anything…” Muirin began to smile, slowly. “A prank. We can get a lot of the kids in on a prank. All this military-school crap is starting to bite, and I’m not the only one that feels that way.”

“So, against cold and dark … fire and light. Maybe some other stuff…” Spirit nodded. “And we probably have all night to figure out what we need to put together.”

Addie got up and pulled some hoarded soda out of her refrigerator. “I’ve got the caffeine,” she said. “Let’s do this.”

SIXTEEN

When the searches were finally called off, three teachers and twenty kids were still missing. The day after that, e-mails went out that claimed they’d been found in Radial, and were electing to leave Oakhurst under the protection of Breakthrough. When Spirit counted it up, that was four teachers and almost forty kids that she knew of who had “left” Oakhurst, including the kids who had been Tithed or driven crazy in the last two years. It was a staggering total of dead and just-as-good-as. She knew the kids who were left wanted desperately to believe the missing ones had really gone off somewhere; there was no point in trying to tell them otherwise.

More Breakthrough people came to replace the missing (dead) teachers. The new teachers meant a new round of discipline-tightening, more classes, even less free time, and more of Mark Rider’s security goons prowling the campus, giving people the hairy eyeball, trying to chase them back to their rooms when they weren’t in class. And that was where Mr. Rider made his big mistake.

Maybe he figured that kids would do what they were told. Maybe he figured they were so scared by now they’d agree to
anything
as long as they were safe. Spirit remembered her parents having long debates about that with their friends—how some people would put up with just about any restrictions as long as they thought they’d be safe.

The thing was … even if she didn’t
like
a lot of them, Spirit knew that none of the kids at Oakhurst were stupid. Smart people tended to ask questions, and tended to resent it when they had to give up privileges and freedoms. She remembered her mom saying, “Stupid people are satisfied with
stuff.
Smart people can make themselves stupid by being willing to settle for
stuff.
It’s all about what you’re willing to settle for.”

The kids didn’t say anything openly—some of them were afraid to, truth to tell—but there was a
lot
of grumbling when Breakthrough people weren’t there.

The Breakthrough people got wind of it, of course, and another e-mail went out reminding everyone that the dance was still on, and that “the goal of Breakthrough was to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, so relax and enjoy your evening.” As if one of the Oakhurst dances was going to make up for being shadowed by a goon when you just wanted to take a walk and be alone for a while. As if the soda and otherwise-forbidden snacks would make up for
knowing
the Breakthrough geeks were monitoring every single keystroke when you chatted.

Combine the sort of strict regime that the kids brought up like Addie weren’t used to and strongly resented with the tension of wondering when the next “incident” would happen, and you had a tightly wound bunch of kids who were just looking for an outlet for all that nervous energy. It didn’t take much in the way of a hint here, a suggestion there, to get the “prank” rolling.

By the night of the dance, everything was primed to explode.

*   *   *

“The best thing is,” Addie observed, as she twined Spirit’s hair into a loose French braid, “even if
nothing
happens, the prank will still go off, and Rider’s people will have a hundred ‘suspects’ to watch. None of whom will be us.”

“You don’t really think that’s likely, do you?” Spirit asked, staring into the mirror so she could look into Addie’s reflected eyes.

“No,” Addie admitted, and rubbed the back of her neck. “I can feel it. It’s like a thunderstorm on the horizon.”

This wasn’t a formal dance, like New Year’s, but Muirin had insisted they all wear something besides Oakhurst clothing, so Spirit had her new red sweater and a pair of black pants Muirin had whipped up out of some velour from the theater supplies, and Addie had a similar gray outfit she said was cashmere. Those outfits would have gotten really warm after a while at a normal dance, but none of them figured they would be in the gym long enough for it to matter.

As for dates, in the end, Spirit had asked Loch and Addie had asked Burke; Muirin went through with going with Dylan, “Because it would look weird if I backed out after I already asked him.” Not that who you asked made any difference in the end, because they were all herded out to the gym in a group under the watchful eye of the Breakthrough guards. Even the real couples were looking resentful. It was pretty hard to get romantic when you had an expressionless Security Goon carefully not-staring at you.

No one had really known how to decorate for a “Sadie Hawkins Day Dance,” so they’d done a sort of pre-Valentine’s Day generic pink background of balloons and Mylar streamers with a disco ball in the middle. The usual soda-and-snacks tables were set up, but with a difference. Some of the Breakthrough geeks had made their own additions—a light show and a real DJ.

Much as Spirit hated to admit it … both were good. The light show was spectacular, and the DJ really knew his stuff.

Plus, he was playing music that was definitely
not
available in the Oakhurst official music libraries. Everyone started to relax when they realized there weren’t any members of the Goon Squad in the gym and the music was going to be fantastic.

It’s a good thing that this is all going to fall apart before the evening is over, or I’d be worried, because this kind of treatment is pretty tempting,
Spirit thought. Loch got her a drink, then drifted away to the “spot” he was going to cover for a while. Dylan hauled Muirin out onto the dance floor right away, but he didn’t even make it through two songs before Ovcharenko materialized out of the shadows and cut in. The DJ immediately faded into a ballad, which more or less forced Muirin into a slow dance with him. Loch moved out of his corner and onto the edge of the dance floor and made a little finger motion, since Dylan appeared to be too intimidated by Ovcharenko to cut back in. But Muirin shook her head, and Loch went back into his own little pool of shadow.

As Spirit stood there, nursing her soda, she felt someone come up close beside her. She turned. It was Mandy, the girl-geek from Breakthrough, and she had a guy with her. A guy who was pretty much a dead ringer for Jensen Ackles from
Supernatural
, except with a pair of wire-rim glasses that made him look even hotter. If that was possible. Spirit’s Spidey-Sense went off the scale, because Breakthrough could not possibly have picked someone
more
like what her Dream Guy would have looked like … a year or two ago.

“Hey,” Mandy said, far too casually. “This’s Clark, he’s another codehead. He saw you in the dining hall and wanted to meet you, so I said I’d introduce you. Clark, this is Spirit.”

“Hey,” Spirit said, forcing herself to look pleased. “My so-called date kind of ran off on me.”

“Yeah, I saw,” Clark said, with a far-too-ingratiating grin. “Well, it’s supposed to be a Sadie Hawkins thing, right? So, can you pick someone else instead?”

Way to go with the subtle hints, bozo,
she thought. “I don’t know,” she replied hesitantly. “I mean, he—”

“You do know he’s gay, right?” Clark interrupted, getting a little closer as Mandy vanished into the crowd around the soda table. “I mean, I could tell when I walked in, and … uh, magician here. Sorry.”

If Loch hadn’t told her himself— If they all hadn’t known what the Breakthrough people were doing— Spirit shut those thoughts away and concentrated on acting like this was a confusing—and unwelcome—surprise.

“Wait, what?” she said. “What do you mean? He’s—”

“I mean, if you think he accepted your invite for any other reason than to drool over the other guys, Spirit, I’m sorry.” Clark moved even closer. “Don’t think I’m gay-bashing. I’m not. But I thought you had the right to know in case you were going to fall for him. And I think whatever the rules for this thing are, if he didn’t tell you he wasn’t really interested, that pretty much undoes you inviting him, doesn’t it?”

Now Spirit was actually beginning to feel a little alarmed—first that this “Clark” was coming on so strong, and second that if she wasn’t nice to him, he’d out Loch, right here at the dance. She really didn’t know what to do, and her apparent confusion was very real.

“Come on, try me out with a dance,” Clark coaxed. He took her hand and gave her no alternative other than to pull away—which was no alternative at all, if she wanted to keep up the pretense of being the shy little hippie chick.

Which was right when Burke swooped in from out of nowhere and saved her.

“Hi, this is my dance, I think,” he said, cutting in. “Besides, I bet there are a lot of Breakthrough gals closer to your age who’d appreciate someone who can dance.”

Clark colored a little. “Look, kid, just because you’re one of the Big Bad Jocks—”

“Seriously, didn’t anyone ever teach you that you don’t try and make moves on a girl who’s going steady?” Burke said, with a mocking tone to his voice Spirit had never heard before. “Oh wait—you’re a code-monkey, and that sort of etiquette goes straight over your head, right? Well, here’s your fast education. You don’t haul someone else’s girl off for a dance, and you don’t
ever
mess with a jock’s steady. Got it? Great. Buh-bye.” He made a little finger-wiggle at Clark, who slunk away, muttering. Then he put his arms around Spirit and they started slow-dancing away from the Breakthrough geek corner. Before the crowd hid them, Spirit saw Clark arguing with Mandy.

“Um. Thanks,” Spirit said, feeling awkward. “The only thing is, that wasn’t true.”

“I know,” Burke replied, and flushed as he looked down at her. “But would you like it to be?”

All she could do was look up into his eyes and say, “Um—”

Which was precisely when the lights went out, the temperature dropped down to freezing, and the terror descended.

The terror wiped away her astonishment at Burke’s question. Before the terror could take hold, she took a deep breath and yelled into the silence: “
Rave! RAVE!
”

Burke bellowed the same word as he seized her hand. He hauled her across the dance floor by memory to one of the preset spots where the decorating committee had stashed a cache of flashlights and chem-lights. They stumbled into a few people on the way, and the silence had been replaced by deafening noise, but this time the noise was less screaming in fear and more shouting
rave
. Loch was already passing out chem-lights and flashlights from his station. And Addie, with chem-necklaces aglow around her neck and fistfuls of more chem-lights, was opening the fire exit door to the outside.

Addie was supposed to jam it open with a cinder block that had been left outside; Spirit couldn’t see if she had, because she was too busy handing out lights. Once she and Burke got that box started, they moved to one of the others—and by the time they got that one started, there was a huge
whoosh
outside, and the fire exit doorway lit up with a bright yellow light. The pranksters had been building an enormous bonfire in the sunken garden’s drained fountain all week, and someone had just lit it. Muirin’s illusion had fooled everyone not in on the scheme into thinking there was nothing in the sunken garden. She’d held that illusion 24/7 for days, and Spirit couldn’t wait to really congratulate her for it.

Everyone who had lights streamed out into the now brightly lit night. The rest scrambled through the boxes frantically to get something. Within minutes of the power going out, everyone was heading for the fire—and that was when they set off Part Three of the Great Rave Prank.

A wall of sound erupted from the vicinity of the fire.

A sound system, powered by batteries stolen from idle Breakthrough construction equipment, bellowed out the most cheerful, high-energy songs that any of the pranksters could think of. There were six hours’ worth of songs on the iPod that was running the show, and if the terror went on for more than six hours, well—it would be more than anyone could fight.

Everyone started dancing around the fire, which was easily fifteen, maybe twenty feet across, huge, and burning too high and hot for anyone to have a hope of putting it out, thanks to a five gallon jug of vegetable oil and a
lot
of candle-ends. Addie wasn’t the only one who liked to have scented candles in her room, and the Christmas decorations had included hundreds of candles. As the terror closed in on them they translated their hysterical energy into equally hysterical dancing, and—

—and that was where things got weird. Spirit knew what the plan was—Loch and Addie were somehow supposed to be feeding Muirin and Burke with the emotions and energy they were getting, and Muirin and Burke were supposed to be turning that into a shield against the fear. But as Spirit hung on to Burke’s hand as hard as she could, she could feel … something.

It was like there was this river flowing
through
her; not something she could stop, or do anything with, but—somehow, she needed to let this happen. Because somehow, what was flowing into her was much more powerful than what was flowing out of her. Which made no sense. So she hung on to Burke’s hand and tried to focus on the bonfire, and the music, and the kids all dancing around like a bunch of barbarians in a Viking movie.

Then, out of nowhere, she knew, she
knew,
the terror wasn’t all there was going to be this time. “They’re coming—” she said, breathlessly, then tugged on Burke’s hand, and repeated, more urgently,
“They’re coming!”

And a moment later, they were
there
.

Shadow Knights.

Some on horseback, some on foot, a few on ATVs and snowmobiles, they surrounded the bonfire and the Oakhurst kids. They were all wearing the same outfit the attackers who’d come after the endurance riders had been wearing: gray hooded parkas, gray scarves over their faces. This time, Spirit could tell that there were illusions on all of them to keep their faces in shadow, because the bonfire was throwing off so much light there was no way their faces could have been hidden otherwise.

The terror increased exponentially.

One of them charged the sound system; somehow he must have figured out where it was. It was one of the ones on a snowmobile; he gunned the engine, and the snowmobile careened toward the station. He just ran the machine over everything, ice forming ahead of the skids to give him a surface to drive on, his passenger whacking at everything in the way.