Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies (14 page)

It was creepy. It was really, really creepy. Creepy enough that Spirit didn’t want to stand out by
not
saying anything, so when Ms. Smith’s eyes alighted on her, she blurted out, “I couldn’t stand it! It was a nightmare!” then hid her face in her hands.

That seemed to be enough; when she peeked through her fingers, she saw Ms. Smith’s attention had drifted to one of the other girls, who was in tears and on the verge of hysterics.

Well, so much for
that
class.…

Ms. Smith did, finally, make the effort to get them all calmed down before the class was over. And she succeeded enough that though some of the guys were flushed and chagrined-looking, and all of the girls were still wiping their eyes, they were all able to walk out and go to their next class without breaking down.

But … if Elizabeth had been right about it being a test, one that had been sprung on them so that no teacher could warn a favorite student in advance … Spirit would have been willing to bet now that Ms. Jane Smith was one of the few who had known what was going to happen in advance.

… maybe even the person who had done it in the first place.

EIGHT

Spirit was normally pretty indifferent about math; she didn’t like it, but she didn’t hate it, either. Right now, though, she would have been a whole lot happier if there’d been more equations on the worksheet on the desk in front of her, because she knew what was going to happen, as soon as Ms. Smith finished going over the last of them—

“Very good. Does anyone have any questions?” she asked. Spirit glanced at her watch covertly and wanted to groan. There was a bit more than half an hour to go in the class. Ms. Smith smiled brightly when no one raised a hand. “All right then. How are you all holding up? You know, as a fellow magician, I am here to help you with much more than just math. Mariana?”

Oh, she
would
pick Mariana …

“I … uh…” Mariana’s thin face started to crumple, and her voice got choked up. “I can’t sleep,” she whispered, hiding behind her fall of dark hair. “Even when I keep a light on…”

Ms. Smith got a handful of tissues from a box on her desk, as if she’d prepared for this. Which she probably had. It was incongruous; Ms. Smith looked like a super-efficient secretary, with her tightly tied-back hair and her Oakhurst uniform blazer. She didn’t look like a magician, and she didn’t look particularly … empathetic. She handed the tissues to Mariana. “That’s all right, I’m not at all surprised,” she said soothingly. “Why don’t you tell me about it? Maybe it will help.”

Strangely, Spirit seemed to be the only person in the class that found this scene acutely uncomfortable, disturbing, invasive. Ms. Smith leaned over Mariana slightly, not touching her, but really getting into the girl’s personal space. “Every time I start to fall asleep, I get so s-s-scared,” Mariana gulped, rubbing at her eyes with the tissues and smearing her eye makeup. “It’s like I can feel
it
starting all over again. And when I do fall asleep, the nightmares…” She faltered, and took a shuddering breath.

“Is anyone else having nightmares?” Ms. Smith asked. She looked like she was enjoying this.

“The nightmares are the worst. I keep fighting something I can’t see,” said Taylor Parker, in a low voice, as if he was ashamed to admit he had nightmares, but couldn’t help talking. “It’s—it’s dark, and there’s something that keeps grabbing at me and hitting me, like in blind
randori.
Only it’s not practice and I’m not blindfolded and every time it hits me it slices into me so fast I don’t even feel it until I look down and I’m bleeding from all these slices—”

“I’m running, I’m back at home and I’m running,” sobbed Mariana. “I’m trying to get to my house, but the street keeps changing and there’s something behind me, and I know if I turn around to look at it, I’m going to
die
!”

“I’m here at school in my dreams, but my brother’s here, too.” That was Andrew Hayes, and although his voice was steady, his face was so bleak Spirit didn’t even want to look at him. Of course, just like the rest of them, Andrew’s family was dead.… “There’s this thing after him, this huge, shadowy thing, and I’m trying to get to him to save him, only I can’t!”

One by one, Ms. Smith got them to tell her their nightmares. Even Spirit—though Spirit lied. She just buried her face in her hands and mumbled something about dark and evil eyes. She didn’t think it would be a good idea to stand out by
not
talking.

This had been going on for days now. Only about half of the class was spent on math. The other half was Ms. Smith and her not-exactly-interrogations. This was the first time she’d grilled them about their nightmares, though, and actually, this was the first time Spirit had heard that practically everyone was having them. If it hadn’t been that Spirit’s mom had taught her lucid dreaming back when she was a little kid and having night terrors,
she’d
probably be having them, too. But she wondered if Burke and the others were having the same problem.
I could ask Loch. He’ll tell me, even if the others don’t.

Most of the time, Ms. Smith had been asking about the night of the dance, getting not only what everyone had experienced, but what they’d been doing and thinking
before
the lights went out. Definitely creepy … extracting details from the kids that Spirit was pretty sure they’d had no intention of telling any teacher. The sort of stuff you
might
put on your blog, for your friends, but not for anyone else. Certainly not for anyone
old
.

Spirit couldn’t figure out how Ms. Smith was doing it. Was it magic? Or was it just that she was really, really good at getting things out of people? At least there was only five minutes more of this before class change.

Is she like this with all her classes?
Spirit wondered.
Or is it just this one?
She had thought about asking Addie or Loch, but … no, better wait. If she started acting suspicious of Ms. Smith without any reason except that—well, on the surface, it looked as if the teacher was actually trying to
help
everyone, and they might think she was being paranoid again.

Just a few more minutes …

Ms. Smith handed Mariana another wad of tissues and went back to her desk. “I don’t want any of you to think that we’re making light of this,” she said, raking her eyes over the whole class. “You’ve all had a nasty shock, and Dr. MacKenzie is of the opinion that this has brought up a great many things that were buried. I’m sure you’re all familiar with post-traumatic stress, right?” She looked them over again, and wasn’t satisfied until she’d seen each of them nod. “Dr. MacKenzie wants each of you to have at least one session with him. He wants to evaluate whether you’re going to get through this on your own, or need some extra help.”

Spirit repressed a groan, and she was pretty sure she heard muffled sighs and moans from some of the others, too. Another shrink … she’d had her fill of shrinks at the hospital. If she had her way, she’d never see another shrink again. She didn’t even know what this “Dr. MacKenzie” looked like; in the months she’d been here, she’d never seen him, not even at meals or the dances. Or at least, if she had, she hadn’t known who he was.

“I’ve got your assigned times right here,” Ms. Smith said, in that tone of voice that pretty much made it clear there was no point in arguing with her. She began handing out little envelopes, and Spirit took hers with a sinking heart. From the looks on the faces of some of the others, they felt the same.

*   *   *

From the buzz at supper, it looked like, sure enough, everyone had gotten the appointments. Some people were actually happy about it; Mariana for one. She really was in bad shape, her voice had a shrill edge that carried right across the Refectory. “Maybe he can give me something so I can sleep,” she was saying, and it was true that she did look pretty awful, big dark circles under her eyes, and her eyes red from crying, lack of sleep, or both. Austin Phillips, who was at her table, smirked. “If we’re going to get drugs out of this, it might not be all bad,” he said, loud enough that other kids smirked or frowned or looked embarrassed, as if that was something they’d thought but hadn’t said out loud.

Muirin was one of the ones who smirked. “Let’s see,” she said in a quiet, mocking tone. “What drug would I like to get? Something fun, not a downer like Prozac.”

“Don’t joke about that,” Addie said crossly, cutting her meat with a lot more energy than the ham warranted. “It’s not funny.”

“Why not? What put a burr up your butt?” Muirin asked.

Addie put her silverware down on the table with a clatter. “It’s not funny because the Trust decided I needed to see a shrink before I came here—and he put me on so much Prozac I was a zombie, that’s why!” she hissed angrily. “I didn’t have two clear thoughts in a row until I got here and they took me
off
it.”

Spirit started to say something sympathetic, but Muirin just shrugged. “So you should have done what I did, and either flush the pills or throw them up if it was something I didn’t want to take. Seriously, Addie, lighten up. If you don’t want to game the system, fine. But don’t get all self-righteous about it.”

Addie’s jaw clenched, but she didn’t retort. The rest of the meal was passed in unusual silence, and as soon as Austin got up from his table, Muirin gulped down the last of her dessert and went to join him.

Burke patted Addie’s hand. “Don’t worry,” he said soothingly. “Doc Mac doesn’t like to prescribe drugs. He’s a magician, too, and he won’t give out anything that interferes with magic—which is most stuff.”

Addie relaxed a little. “I just worry about her, you know?” she said, looking into Burke’s eyes in a way that made Spirit feel a little uncomfortable twinge of jealousy. “She doesn’t think things through. What if we’re all drugged up and whatever it was that hit us does it again? A lot of stuff doesn’t just interfere with magic, it opens you wide up for
anything
—” She broke off. “I just don’t want to see Murr-cat hurt.”

“Well I saw Doc Mac for a while when I first got here, and he’s okay,” Burke said with confidence. “Muirin might think she can game him, but he’s pretty sharp. Serve her right if he decided what she needed was more time in the exercise room as therapy.”

Addie almost choked, and even Spirit and Loch found themselves grinning a little. Still, Spirit was not looking forward to her session. No matter what Burke said … Burke was far too inclined to think that everyone was okay until it was proven otherwise. When it came to shrinks, Spirit was going to assume that this “Doc Mac” was going to be just like all the rest. And the sooner she could get out of his office, the better she’d like it.

*   *   *

The morning of Spirit’s session with Doctor MacKenzie, she walked into the Refectory to the sound of conversational buzzing with the sort of edge to it that meant something had happened. She got cereal, yogurt, and fruit and hurried over to the usual table. Addie had been watching her, and gave her a little nod when she got close. As soon as she was sitting down, Addie leaned over and said in a low voice, “Mariana Thornton is gone.”

“Gone?” Spirit paused and put her spoon back down in her bowl. “What do you mean by gone?”

Addie looked over at Loch. “She wasn’t in her room this morning, her bed didn’t look like it had been slept in, which meant she went some time between dinner and lights out.” Loch shrugged. “So sayeth the word of Chat.”

Muirin plopped down in her usual chair with a stack of buttered toast that she proceeded to load up with preserves—even though they were the “no sugar added” kind. “And so sayeth the e-mail I got before I came down, Mariana was in such bad shape after supper that she was deemed in need of getting out of here and was sent away for a nice ‘rest.’ Presumably in a loony bin, and presumably so decided by good old Doc MacKenzie, since she saw him yesterday.” Muirin looked pensively at her toast. “Maybe I should have hysterics in front of him. Mother Dearest would have me put up in a really
plush
loony bin. You know, the kind with private rooms and ‘beauty therapy’ and massages. And satellite TV and chefs. No more conditioning classes, and real jelly on my toast, not mashed fruit pretending to be jelly.” She bit into the slice anyway. “And I hear if you’re cooperative, they reward you with chocolates.”

For a moment, Spirit herself was tempted. It
would
mean getting out of here … but then she remembered; it wouldn’t be a plush, resort-rest-home for her. She’d get dumped in one of those horrible places where they warehoused people, drugged them up like zombies, shoved them into tiny rooms with bunk beds, and locked them in at night. She swallowed hard, and drank a little milk to try and get the lump of fear out of her throat. No, there were places worse than Oakhurst.

And besides, at least here they
believed
in things like the Hunt. Out there—she’d have no protection from it. And if she tried to tell anyone about it, they’d think she was even crazier.

“What, now you want to flip out, and play right into your stepmother’s hands?” Loch asked, with a sarcastic edge to his voice. “I bet your Step would just love that. She could keep you in there forever, you know. All she has to do is pay the right shrinks to diagnose you as bipolar and a danger to yourself. You’d be locked in there and out of the old trust fund pretty darn quick.”

Muirin made a sour face. “That would be funnier if it were less true,” she admitted. “I have to stay alive and sane until twenty-one so I can wrestle her to the floor and take my inheritance. Stupid Trust.” She sighed dramatically. “Darn it, Loch, you’re right, she was looking for ways to cut me out when the Trust sent me here.”

“Hey, I know these things.” He shrugged. “The crap that went on with some of the guys I went to school with makes the Borgias look like the Family Channel.”

“Too true. Besides, I have to stab her in the back—metaphorically of course—and take back my castle. If I don’t, my robber-baron ancestors will probably show up to haunt me as a weak and cowardly branch of the family tree.”

“Do
you
think she was taken away?” Spirit asked Loch. “Mariana, I mean.” He actually thought about the question before he answered it, which he did just as Burke sat down.

“On the one hand, she’s been pretty much falling apart since New Year’s Eve,” Loch pointed out. “And face it, if we end up with another attack, she’d not only be no help, she’d be a liability. So yes, I can see her getting sent away. But on the other hand, unless she’s been sent to a facility that actually knows how to deal with psychologically disturbed
magicians,
sending her away from here is about the worst thing that Doctor Ambrosius could have done to her. And so far, no one has mentioned seeing the train go out, or the car going out to the airstrip. So…” He shrugged. “It’s possible that this is another cover-up. It’s not as if covering up disappearances is new around here.”

“I think the official story is the most likely,” Burke put in. “She was in pretty bad shape at dinner. She couldn’t even eat. I don’t know what the Doc said to her, but she looked like if you accidentally startled her, she’d fall to pieces right there.”