Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies (20 page)

“I’m going straight to bed,” she announced as she got up from the table. “Thank God there’s no homework.”

Burke, who was sporting a fine crop of bruises as well as looking as if he had packed a hundred pounds up a mountain, nodded. “Me, too. Just check your e-mail; Mr. Krandal told me they’d send our new scheds after supper.”

“No argument here,” Addie groaned. “I just hope there’s hot water with everyone wanting baths.”

Spirit and Loch just nodded; she was so exhausted she found it hard to concentrate on even the simplest of things. It took her two tries to get at her e-mail, and she must have stared at the screen for fifteen minutes before she figured out which e-mail was the right one.

She was unsurprised to see that music and art classes had been canceled “until further notice.” They’d been replaced with new language courses and new literature courses. Celtic, Norse, Japanese, Chinese, and Russian had joined Latin, Greek, Spanish, French, and German. The new “literature” classes were all folklore, intensive studies in mythology—of course, this was Oakhurst, so “myth” wasn’t so “mythical.” Celtic, French, German, and Italian had already been on the list, now there were Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Roman, Ancient Greek, Ancient Persian … the list was enormous, and the notes said it didn’t matter if you were the only one that wanted to study a particular culture, you would be accommodated.

Everyone was taking marksmanship, which was going to cover every possible weapon you could shoot.

Oh, that’ll make Loch happy. Not.

Everyone was taking something called
Systema.
Since Ovcharenko was teaching it, it was probably a martial art. Spirit’s morning “conditioning” class remained; her Art class was now a class in Celtic language, her Music class was now her choice of mythologies. She picked one at random, sent the e-mail back, and went to see if there was hot water. She almost fell asleep in the tub, and when she did drop into bed, she was out without a chance to even think about anything.

*   *   *

It seemed very strange to see Madison Lane-Rider standing where Ms. Holland should have been. Up close she was even more impressive than she’d been on the stage. A long fall of thick red hair so perfectly smooth and shining it looked like it was Photoshopped dropped to just below her shoulders and was parted on the side. Her pale skin looked Photoshopped, too. With that hair and skin, Spirit would have expected green eyes—but no, she had eyes of a very strange gray color.

She wasn’t wearing the Oakhurst uniform, and today she wasn’t even in Oakhurst brown or gold. She wore a slim skirt and bulky sweater in shades of dark emerald, a carved jade pendant, and jade bangles. Spirit got the feeling Madison Lane-Rider was deliberately showing that she wasn’t to be slotted into some preset place on the “team.” And Spirit also got the feeling that between the outfit and the jewelry, what Ms. Lane-Rider was wearing could probably have paid for the White’s old house.

Evidently, Spirit had ticked off “Nordic folklore,” because that was what Ms. Lane-Rider began to lecture on.

“Death,” she said, when everyone had settled. “Death is omnipresent in Nordic lore. There is probably not a single culture that celebrates death or elevates it to such a level of importance as the Norse. Other cultures have the cult of heroic self-sacrifice to save others, to be sure, and the Japanese have, or had, the
Kamikaze
of sorts, but only the Norse placed so much emphasis on ‘dying well’ regardless of what was won or lost—”

Dylan raised his hand. She acknowledged him with a raised eyebrow.

“What about Klingons?” he asked, eliciting a laugh.

“Very good. Writers have to start with something, and it is quite clear that the Klingon
attitude
is Nordic, though their catchphrase of ‘It is a good day to die’ is Native American. Now, the question we must answer as magicians, is: ‘What does this mean to us, and how can we use it?’”

Spirit listened, and took copious notes, even though she didn’t agree morally with an awful lot of what Ms. Lane-Rider had to say. Or maybe more to the point, Ms. Lane-Rider lectured from a completely amoral point of view, and Spirit could not have been more opposed. She could tell that Muirin was just drinking all of this in, though, and that worried her. When the class was over, Ms. Lane-Rider even stopped by Muirin’s desk to talk to her about something, which worried Spirit even more. She couldn’t wait, though; her next class was that
Systema
thing, and she was pretty sure Anastus Ovcharenko was not going to cut anyone any slack.

He didn’t. And
Systema
proved to be a martial art, but it wasn’t like anything that had been taught at Oakhurst before this. As Mr. Ovcharenko explained it, it was all about controlling the joints of the opponent, since this was where you got the most gain for the least force. He talked for about ten minutes, then said abruptly: “Bah! Enough of talking. Now we spar.”

And instead of exercises or
kata,
that was exactly what they did. He broke them into teams of two—and he seemed to have a pretty good idea of who the bullies in the class were, because he paired them off against each other and the glint in his eye said that this wasn’t an accident. After he’d let the pairs match off against each other for a while, he stopped them, and demonstrated some moves, drilled them, then set them to sparring again. But he wasn’t looking for “the right counter.” In fact, when Dylan repeated the same strike three times, he interrupted, shouting “
Nyet! Svinya!
This is not tournament!
Systema
is to be flexible, reactive, and never, never to set up pattern! Now, again! This time being to think!”

Up close, he was a surprise. He couldn’t have been much older than twenty; very blond with brilliant blue eyes, almost too handsome to be real. But he had very cold eyes, and Spirit got the feeling that almost everything he did was a carefully calculated act—a
Systema
of behavior, designed to fool everyone around him until he decided to take out a weak spot.

*   *   *

All through dinner, all that Muirin could talk about was Madison Lane-Rider, and it was driving Spirit crazy. It was as if Muirin had discovered a long-lost older sister. Not that Spirit was jealous—but because her instincts were screaming at her not to trust the woman.

“Muirin,” she finally snapped, “you’re acting like you and this woman you didn’t even know existed two days ago are BFFs! I mean, we don’t know anything about these people, and
she
could be one of the Shadow Knights for all we know!”

Muirin looked offended. “I’m not stupid! All I’m trying to do is get information out of her! Can I help it if she’s the first person I’ve ever met here who knows the difference between Donatella Versace and her brother? It’s the first time in months that I’ve had an intelligent conversation that
wasn’t
about conspiracies, disappearances, or people trying to kill us!” Her voice took on the tiniest edge of something like hysteria. “I
just
want to have a normal conversation like a normal person and enjoy some normal things in this lunatic farm!”

“Whoa, Murr-cat,” Burke said soothingly. “Spirit didn’t mean you were being stupid. Did you, Spirit?”

Spirit shook her head, although she was pretty sure that Muirin was lying. These people were exactly the sort that Muirin wanted to be around and be like—rich, connected, and fashionable. Muirin might not betray their secrets consciously, but subconsciously she was likely to give a lot more away than she realized.

“Anyway, I
did
find out something and I was getting to that,” Muirin continued resentfully. “You know how I said there’s some kind of Skull and Bones thing going on here? Well, I got Madison to admit to being one!” She tossed her head with a look of triumph. “She told me that the strength of your magic isn’t the only way you can stand out here. She said there’s what she called an ‘inner circle’ of exceptional students. She said the Gatekeepers pick these people because they’ve ‘embraced their potential to accomplish great things.’”

“And I’m the Keymaster,” Addie drawled, which made Loch crack up while Spirit and Burke were completely lost. “Never mind. So, what else did she tell you? Secret handshake? Password? Do they all have little tramp-stamp tattoos? This isn’t quite on the same level as Elizabeth’s Sekrit K-niggits of Arthur, but she could just be feeding you a line, Murr-cat.”

“Ha! That’s where you’re wrong, and I can prove it!” Muirin retorted triumphantly. “They all wear badges. It’s the Oakhurst coat of arms, and they do it as a pin or a tie tack or cuff links—”

“Muirin, we all get those pins in the second year,” Burke interrupted.

“We get
a
pin; it’s not the same,” she replied. “The regular pins, the snake is gold. The Gatekeepers, the snake is
black
.” She settled back to finish off the last bites of her dessert with a satisfied air.

“Huh…,” Loch said thoughtfully. “Madison Lane-Rider
was
wearing one of those and I thought it was kind of strange because, well, think about it, I’ve never seen anything other than gold and brown on anything from Oakhurst.”

Right, so everyone wears a little name tag that says
H
ELLO,
M
Y
N
AME
I
S
E
VIL
?
Spirit thought.
It can’t be that easy. And you don’t have a shred of proof that these Gatekeepers are the same as the Shadow Knights, either!

“You don’t … could they be the Shadow Knights?” she asked tentatively.

“Oh, get real, Spirit! They’re the ones that came pounding up like the cavalry,” Muirin snapped. “They’re
just
as likely to be the Grail Knights, if you’re going to buy into Elizabeth’s fantasy. Which I
don’t
. Just because the snake on their badge is black, that doesn’t mean a thing; and since when would bad guys advertise who they were with a nice handy sign?”

Since that pretty much echoed Spirit’s own thoughts on the matter, she looked down at her plate.

“No, if this is like Skull and Bones, then that means whoever is in it is going to be
really
influential,” Muirin continued, a bit of gloating in her tone. “Once they get the Shadow Knights or whatever you want to call them taken care of, that’s where I want to be. I mean, have you seen what Madison wears? Not to mention the kinds of people Mark Rider gets to party with—”

Muirin went on and on in the same vein; Spirit stopped paying attention. This was making no sense at all. Granted, Muirin had been the last one to believe her about the continuing threat, and was still the most shrill skeptic among them, but within hours she seemed to have cast aside all thought of the very real danger they were in because Madison Lane-Rider had spent time talking to her. Now Muirin was acting like the most important thing was the kinds of social contacts she could make with the Breakthrough people, and completely ignoring the fact that the Breakthrough people were training them as if they were going to be on the front lines any second now. And they
had
been openly attacked.

What was
wrong
with Muirin? First being completely cold about Elizabeth, and now this?

She glanced over at Addie. Addie could usually be counted on to rein Muirin in, but Addie was just sitting there with a little frown on her face, twisting her ring on her finger.

Burke—

For the first time since they’d sat down, she really looked at him. Burke looked completely exhausted. There were more bruises on him, and now that she was really paying attention, he had the expression of someone who was on his last legs, but couldn’t see an end to the tunnel. Despair, that was it. And as Muirin chattered on, he finally held up a hand and stopped her.

“I just spent the entire day either getting beat up, or trying to wrap my brain around stuff I am never in a million years going to get,” he said, his voice a little rough, like he was holding back his emotions. “Mostly beat up. Almost all my classes now are actually martial arts, and the ones that aren’t are things I am
not
good at. And you know what? I’m going to admit it. I’m beat. We got lucky before, when we didn’t know any better, and the people who called the Hunt thought there was no possible opposition. Now we know better, and they do, too, whoever they are, and I think I just realized I’ve hit the end and there’s no more rope.” He sighed—it was almost a moan—and rubbed his eyes. “I can’t do this anymore. I keep thinking about you guys getting hurt—or worse than that. I can’t. I’m not a superhero. There’s going to be trouble here, and I think we need to leave it to the people who are already trained to handle it.”

Spirit sat up in alarm. “You’re not going to tell Rider about the Wild Hunt!” she exclaimed. “You’re not going to tell him it was us who stopped them!”

“No. I’m just going to go to Doctor Ambrosius and tell him I want to leave Oakhurst. If he wants, he can send me wherever they sent the others. But I just can’t take any more of this.” He looked as if he was about to cry for a minute. “I’m—just a guy. Just a dumb jock with a little magic.…”

“I think we need to tell Doctor Ambrosius that it wasn’t just an accident that we stopped the Hunt,” Addie said firmly. “I think we should tell him about the files marked
Tithed,
about what we’ve seen written on the Oak, about what Elizabeth told Spirit. All of it. We’re just kids, this isn’t what we should be doing.”

“But Addie—” Spirit began.

“Enough, Spirit.” Addie’s expression hardened. “Look, I understand that figuring all this out is partly your way of handling that your family is gone. I get that. I get that since your magic hasn’t bubbled up yet, this is your way of feeling effective. But it’s gone way beyond what we can do now. We need to stop, let someone else take over, and do what they tell us to do.”

She looked around at the others; all of them were nodding, even Loch. Her heart sank. Could they be right? Could she be trying to keep them involved in solving the problem, rather than turning it over to more competent people, just because she couldn’t bear to come to terms with her family’s death?