Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies (17 page)

Muirin rolled her eyes. “You have no idea,” she said. “Adam, these are my peeps, Spirit, Loch, and Burke. Guys, this is Adam Phillips. His brother Tom is the one hanging his chin on the seat back. They were the ones giving me and Seth some … help.”

Spirit knew very well what Muirin meant by “help.” Tom and Adam, who looked to be about fourteen and eighteen respectively, were the ones who had helped Muirin and Seth with smuggling contraband into Oakhurst.

“So what’d old Krandal mean by ‘the new relationship with Radial’?” Muirin asked, looking at him keenly. “Last I heard, Radial thought the school was a maximum-security jail for high-dollar juvies and would’ve been happy to see it shut down.”

“Oh that’s big news.” Adam smirked and Tom rolled his eyes. “Really big news. One of your Alumns made good in video games. He’s the brain behind Breakthrough.” At Muirin’s blank look, he coughed. “Breakthrough Adventure Systems. I keep forgetting they keep you people in the Victorian ages. I’ll make it short and easy for you—MMOs and console games that have pretty much taken over the marketplace. They took over about six games that failed dismally and one old favorite that
everybody
had been waiting for the update on. And they made them all into everything everybody wanted. Anyway, he decided that the best place for his new HQ was Radial, ’cause he’s, like, nostalgic for good old Oakhurst.”

“Yeah, right,” Muirin replied sarcastically.

“Somebody has to be,” Loch said.

“Anyway, this is like—like Lucas decided to move ILM out here on the same day that Sega announces they’re going to put a plant here and work with him,” Adam went on. “Bigger than big. Jobs, jobs, jobs, money coming into town like nobody’s seen before, and every time something comes up—like the sewer plant not being able to handle all the new people—Rider just throws money at the problem and it goes away. Him and Ambrosius are all BFFs, and some people figure he’s going to use Oakhurst as his game-designer-factory, ’cause you’re all supposed to be super-geniuses and everything. I can tell you, though, right now, so far as most of Radial is concerned, you could take a dump in the street and they’d swear it was roses.”

“Most?” Muirin probed.

“Well, you know. No matter what, there’s going to be somebody who’s going to hate it.” Adam shrugged. “They’re going to extend your rail line out to Breakthrough and start using it, ’cause the roads aren’t good enough for everything he wants to bring in. They’re already laying track in town. It’ll probably be done in a couple of weeks.”

“And what’s your take on this?” Burke asked, leaning over.

Adam blinked, as if he hadn’t expected Burke to speak. “It’s money coming in. I graduated last year; I’m going to get a job out there and work until I get enough saved up to get the hell out of Radial. I don’t care what people are saying, all that’s going to happen with Breakthrough is once they get their compound put up, it’s going to be us and them all over again. Anything they want, they’ll bring in from outside. They’ll use the train and that Oakhurst private airstrip, the bigwigs’ll live in California, the code-monkeys’ll come from Oakhurst or outside, they’ll put housing up out on the Oakhurst land and the money’s going to dry up as soon as the construction’s over. Don’t care, ’cause by then, I’ll be gone.” His brother Tom nodded in agreement.

“Yeah.” The girl—Juliette?—piped up. “Like my gramma says it was like back in the day when it was a mansion. She never saw anything of Crazy Tyniger or the people he brought to it. ’Cause, like, rich dudes don’t mix with the po’ folks unless there’s something they want out of ’em.” The girl shot Muirin a sly look, as if she expected the dig to hurt. Muirin didn’t even notice. “Gramma says it was almost better when that biker gang took the place over in the Seventies, ’cause at least they came into town and bought beer and groceries.”

Biker gang? That’s new …

Of course—if it
had
been in the Seventies, it would have been after Tyniger was dead and the estate was tied up. Spirit filed that away for further investigation later.

“That’s why so many kids run off,” the last townie said. He looked like the girl; they both were brown-haired and had the same square face and deep-set eyes. “There’s, like, nothing for us in Radial. Best thing you can do is hitch a ride out and disappear. No matter how bad it gets out there, at least it ain’t Radial.”

So kids are vanishing out of Radial, too! No wonder the Radial cops don’t care. They’ve gotten into the habit of deciding a kid that disappears is a kid who ran away, and that’s the end.
Spirit was willing to bet just about anything that those missing kids hadn’t “run off,” they’d been taken by the Hunt.

She was going to ask Adam some questions herself, but that was when Mr. Krandal came back with the other two teachers.

Adam and Juliette became very interested in their phones, and Tom’s head vanished back over the seat. Mr. Krandal crooked his finger at Muirin. “Come with me, young lady,” he said, frowning. “We have some things to discuss.”

Muirin got up and followed them back into the other car.

“What do you think they’re going to do with her?” Spirit whispered to Burke.

He shook his head.

They were back about fifteen minutes later, and Spirit relaxed a little. Muirin looked exactly like someone who had gotten away with murder, even though she had her eyes cast down penitently and had her mouth in a very slight frown. Spirit could tell, though, that she figured she had won this one, just by her eyes.

Her eyes were very smug indeed.

Mr. Krandal pointed at the seat she’d been in, and she hesitated. “Can I please have a breakfast box, Mr. Krandal?” she asked quietly. “I didn’t eat before I left.”

“Get one, get back here and sit down. And study those extra assignments,” Krandal growled, and went back up to the front of the car and took his own seat.

Adam glanced back at them. Muirin winked. Adam grinned and gave her a thumbs-up. She got a breakfast box and busied herself with it.

Spirit went back to the video player and cued up the mislabeled segment.

By the time it was finished, she wasn’t sleepy anymore, so after a glance back at Muirin, who was studiously watching her own videos, she plunged into her lessons. Might as well get them over with. Mr. Krandal interrupted her when she’d finished the second by advising them all to get lunch. The Radial kids groaned at the sight of the healthy sandwiches, broccoli and dip, and fruit. She ate hers with both eyes on the screen, and figured out why there were only three lessons here.…

Nothing about magic, of course. They would have known there would be people from Radial on the train, so whatever was on there had to be perfectly ordinary.

She finished the last lesson as the train slowed again; a glance out the window showed that there was light out there now, and they were pulling into suburbs.

Great. A million questions I want answered, things stalking us, and now … I go spend a day looking at artsy horse statues.…

*   *   *

The museum was just as boring as Spirit had feared. The horse statues were very artsy. The docent waxed eloquent about the deep meanings embodied by the horse statues. Spirit took notes. Loch took notes. Most of the rest of the students looked bored and pretended to take notes. Burke had wandered off to look at something else. Muirin said, “You’ll loan me your notes, right?” then vanished into the gift shop. When they all caught up with her she looked very smug indeed.

The same Oakhurst cars that had picked them up at the train station showed up to get them at the entrance to the museum. Elizabeth attached herself to their group, which Spirit really didn’t mind, although Muirin rolled her eyes a little. Once they were all inside the thing, which was an SUV with an Oakhurst crest in Oakhurst colors that was big enough to need its own ZIP code, Mr. Krandal turned around to look at the five of them in the back.

“Here,” he said brusquely, handing Elizabeth, Loch, Burke, and Spirit sealed envelopes in Oakhurst gold. “Obviously you can’t get a snack or shop without money.” He looked pointedly at Muirin, who had
not
gotten an envelope. He turned back too quickly to realize she wasn’t looking disappointed, she was smirking.

Spirit opened her envelope. There was fifty dollars in tens in it. She blinked. Her parents hadn’t ever given her very much money at one time, but she knew she had to be in the minority there, because plenty of kids her age had jobs after school. This was probably like the change after paying for coffee to Muirin and Loch.

“Remember, you can’t get anything Oakhurst doesn’t approve of,” Krandal said without turning around. “No Victoria’s Secret. No violent video games.”

“Yes, Mr. Krandal,” Spirit said. Muirin elbowed her and whispered, “Ladies’ Room.” Spirit nodded. Was there anything she could buy for fifty dollars that might be useful against whatever it was that was after them all? A gun? There were guns at the school, and knives, and even real swords. This was all so crazy.…

Maybe she should just … try not to worry about it. After all, the teachers
were
all being proactive now, and presumably they had a lot more experience at this than the kids did. And this business of Breakthrough coming to Radial … Doctor Ambrosius was certainly happy to see them. Maybe this was a kind of cover for the Alumns to come back and join Doctor Ambrosius! Despite the fact that those Shadows were Alumns …

But no, Doctor Ambrosius surely wouldn’t be that easily fooled.

She worried about that all the way to the mall. The cars dropped them all off, with orders to meet at the entrance where they’d been left at three. Ms. Holland stayed with them; the other two teachers drove off with the cars.

Seeing as it was Ms. Holland who was with them, Spirit worried that she and Muirin wouldn’t be able to get rid of her, but the teacher immediately latched on to Loch. Muirin grabbed Spirit’s arm and babbled something about the Ladies’ Room and hustled her off.

Of course they didn’t go that far, since there was absolutely no one following them. Instead, Muirin virtually hauled her into a hole-in-the-wall computer store.

A computer store?

The guy behind the counter was somehow geeky and gothy at the same time. He absolutely lit up to see two girls coming into his otherwise empty shop. He opened his mouth—

Muirin cut him off. “I’m Desdemona. Have you got my thumb drives?”

The guy closed his mouth and went all wistful. “Yeah, I do. Here you go.” He shoved over six sealed packages of tiny thumb drives marked down to ninety-nine cents. Muirin picked one up and looked at it critically. She looked up and beamed.

“Brilliant!” she said. “I can’t tell they were ever opened!”

The guy flushed and looked pleased. “I get a lot of practice.” Muirin pulled out a charge card and shoved it across the counter at him. Spirit was staggered at the number he rang up, but Muirin didn’t bat an eye. “I don’t suppose I could have your number?” he asked.

Spirit expected Murr-cat’s usual scathing response, but for once Muirin surprised her. “You are totally my type, but Oakhurst is practically a convent,” she said apologetically. “That’s why I needed you to get my stuff this way.”

The guy sighed. “Well, you’ve got to graduate some time, right? And I’ll probably still be here when you do.”

Muirin smiled at him sweetly, and took the bag with the drives in it. She left the store, Spirit following.

“What—” Spirit said.

Muirin shoved the bag at her. “These are yours until we get back to the school. If anyone asks, you got them to back up your class work in case that thing at New Year’s really was an EMP and the next one will blow out the computers. Okay?”

“Uh, okay, but—”

“Seth and Adam were my contacts to this guy, they knew him from gaming. This is six months’ worth of downloads so I don’t go mental listening to Oakhurst-approved music.” She rolled her eyes. “And so I can see a movie that isn’t PG-13. Don’t worry, these are special. If you don’t have the unlock code they look like two-gig drives with nothing on them. If you do, it opens up the hidden storage.”

Spirit was impressed. “Wow, you know a lot—”

Muirin shook her head. “Not me. It was all Seth. Now let’s go get some magazines. I wasn’t kidding about that, and they’re going to expect me to figure out how to use my own money anyway.”

*   *   *

They ran into Loch and Burke at the bookstore. It was one of those really big ones with places to sit and read, and on a weekday afternoon there was no one in here and only one person at the register. They took over the chairs in the Hobby section.

“What was with Ms. Holland?” Spirit wanted to know.

“Yeah, did she come on to you?” Muirin made a kissy-face. “Oh teacher, teacher!”

“Cut it out Murr-cat,” Loch said with annoyance. “It wasn’t like that. She was trying to convince me to pull a runner. She told me she had a lawyer friend who would go to my trustee for me and get him to petition for a new guardian. She said her lawyer friend would convince my trustee that Doctor Ambrosius just wants to get his hands on my money.”

“Say what?” Muirin looked at him as if she didn’t quite understand the words coming out of his mouth. “What did you tell her?”

“I told her I didn’t think I would be any safer away from Oakhurst,” Loch replied, and shook his head. “She said I had no idea what was going on, and that anyone who stayed was going to come face-to-face with an evil I could never imagine.”

“Well, gee, that was helpful,” Muirin said sarcastically. “I don’t suppose she could have been more specific?”

Loch shrugged. “No, she just spent about ten minutes trying to convince me that staying at Oakhurst was a fate worse than death, then literally threw her hands up in the air, said,
‘Fine,’
and stomped off.”

“She must have gone after me,” Burke said. “She cornered me in the Food Court and gave me the same story. Well, except for the part about the lawyers and the trustees; she said she’d get me a bus ticket back to my foster parents and convince them that Oakhurst was some kind of weird cult compound so they’d keep me with them. I pretty much said the same as you.”