Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies (3 page)

But some people here were.

Who could they trust?

Muirin had mentioned a secret society within Oakhurst called the Gatekeepers. Loch said secret societies were common at private schools and at colleges. There was Skull and Bones at Yale, for example, or the Seven Society at the University of Virginia. But if the Gatekeepers were—as the others seemed to believe—just a kind of “honor society,” why wasn’t it made public? The students here were encouraged—were forced, really—to compete with each other at everything. It didn’t make sense that Oakhurst would miss an opportunity to make them compete with each other to join the Gatekeepers.

She hated the whole idea of seeing the world in terms of Good Guys and Bad Guys—as if she was living in a
Star Wars
movie, and you were either a Sith Lord or a Jedi Knight. But there didn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground. Were the Gatekeepers Good Guys or Bad Guys? What did they have to do with the Alumni who visited here every summer?

What happened to all the kids who—supposedly—graduated? They never wrote to their friends. Nobody here got any mail.

They had to start figuring out what was going on.
Now
—before whoever it was who had been behind the Wild Hunt came up with a new way to kill them.

Could they trust their fellow students? Maybe some. But which ones? Could they trust the teachers? Doctor Ambrosius? Half the time he was scary as all get-out, ranting on about the Final Battle. The other half of the time he was a doddering old man who couldn’t even remember your name. Was he another victim of the Bad Guys? If so, how could they possibly rescue him?

She was so lost in her own thoughts that it wasn’t until Loch nudged her sharply in the ribs that she noticed Ms. Corby standing in front of her with a look of impatience and irritation on her face. She was holding two small boxes wrapped in gold paper with a cream-and-brown design on it (the Oakhurst coat of arms, of course).

For a moment Spirit locked eyes with Doctor Ambrosius’s assistant. She wanted to say that she didn’t want Oakhurst’s gifts and she didn’t want to be here, either. But she didn’t quite dare. She reached out for the gifts. Ms. Corby held on to them, staring at her meaningfully.

“Thank you, Ms. Corby,” Spirit said, flushing angrily. Ms. Corby smiled in triumph and handed Spirit the boxes before turning away. Spirit’s last name began with “W,” so there weren’t too many more gifts to hand out.

Spirit looked around at the others. Addie had a long flat box under one arm. It was about the size and shape of a board game. Burke was holding a large square box, a cube about twelve inches on a side. Muirin had a small box about three by three by ten.

And Loch had two boxes identical to hers in every way—except for the fact that they were wrapped in dark brown paper with the design on them in cream and gold. She and Loch exchanged a look, and for the first time today, Spirit felt like smiling. It really was idiotic for anyplace to be so logo-obsessed that it even had
wrapping paper
with its coat of arms on it. In half a dozen different designs, no less!

Loch brandished the larger of the two boxes.

“iPod?” Spirit mouthed.

Loch was about to answer, but Mr. Devon had stepped up in front of the fireplace.

“Every winner—and you’re all winners here at Oakhurst—knows that one of the sweetest fruits of victory is the chance to kick back and enjoy what they’ve won. All of you have worked hard this year. Now is the time to enjoy yourselves. A dessert buffet is set up in the Refectory. Enjoy!” he added, clapping his hands together and smiling brightly.

Spirit thought it was the creepiest thing she’d seen—at least in the last few days.

Ms. Corby strode off ahead of Doctor Ambrosius, and Mr. Devon followed. When Doctor Ambrosius’s study doors closed behind them, everyone began to shuffle in place and head in the direction of the Refectory. Muirin was off like a flash, of course. Unlimited sugar.

“Yup. iPod,” Loch said, unwrapping the larger of the two boxes. “It’s the Gift du Jour.”

The “Gift du Jour” was brown, with the Oakhurst crest engraved on the back, and his name:
Lachlan Galen Spears
. Loch made a face, and Spirit winced in sympathy. It was awful to have a dorky name.

“They come in gold and cream, too, of course,” Addie said kindly. “If you don’t have one when you get here, you’re pretty much guaranteed to get one for your first Christmas.”

“Huh,” Loch said, sounding surprised. “It’s charged. And preloaded.”

There was no real point in trying to push through the mob of students heading for the Refectory, and one thing Spirit could say for Oakhurst was that when it decided to let them fall off the healthy diet bandwagon, it didn’t stint on the junk food. There was no need to hurry—there’d be more sugar and chocolate than all of them could eat in a week.

Bread and circuses.
For a moment she could hear Mom’s voice in her head. Mom had—used to have—a saying for every occasion. In Ancient Rome, the emperors used to keep the people from making trouble by giving them free food and free entertainment. Bread and circuses.

That’s what we get,
Spirit thought.
Every few weeks there’s another school dance, and a lot of candy, and most of the kids don’t look past that, to all the things that are wrong with this place.…

“What color is yours?” Loch asked. With a feeling of resignation, Spirit unwrapped the larger of the two boxes. Her iPod was cream-colored. Same crest cut into the back, and her name:
Spirit Victory White.
She didn’t bother to complain, even mentally, that now everyone at Oakhurst would know her middle name. “Victory” was just about as awful as “Spirit”—she’d always hated her name—but maybe someday she could just tell people her name was “Vicky” or something. She woke her iPod and looked at the preloaded playlist.

“Ah, I recognize this,” she said mockingly, scanning the start of the list of titles. “This is next semester’s Music History stuff.”

“Heaven forbid we should actually use these for recreation,” Addie said, her voice dripping with irony. “That would be frivolous. However could we expect to excel?”

“Ah, but you forget. We’re all already winners here at Oakhurst,” Loch replied, deadpan.

“Come on,” Burke said. “It’s cleared out a little, and we should go find the Murr-cat and stop her from eating herself into sugar shock.”

“Fat chance of that,” Addie answered.

*   *   *

The Refectory was full, but not crowded. Most of the crowd was around the dessert buffet, and Spirit had to admit it looked pretty. There were cakes on stands, pies, plates of brownies and blondies and cookies, pyramids of perfectly round scoops of ice cream frozen so hard that it would take them at least half an hour to melt, boxes of chocolates and marzipan shaped like fruit, and—because this was a school full of teenagers—stacked cases of soda.

The four of them, by mutual consent, took one of the empty tables at the opposite end of the room from the buffet table. Muirin saw them, waved, and came over, carrying two plates heaped high with goodies, including a stack of brownies topped with scoops of ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped cream.

“I don’t see how you can eat all that,” Addie said with a sigh as Muirin plopped down at the table opposite her.

“Practice,” Muirin answered. She pushed the second plate toward them. It was stacked with plain brownies of various kinds.

Spirit picked up the top one—marbled and studded with M&Ms—and bit into it. She didn’t have much of an appetite, but hey: chocolate.
Bread and circuses,
her mother’s voice whispered in her mind.

“So, come on, open your other one!” Muirin urged around a mouthful of fudge and ice cream.

Spirit had almost forgotten about the second box. Why had she and Loch both gotten two when no one else had? She tore the paper off quickly. Inside it was a pasteboard box, and inside that was a tiny wooden jewelry box—a ring box—with the Oakhurst crest (what a shock) laser-cut into the top.

She opened it.

Inside, on a bed of black velvet, was what looked like … a class ring. Well, a really
nice
class ring, not the cheesy ones the high school kids back in Indiana had, the kind with fake stones, set into rings made out of some cheesy-yet-fancy-sounding made-up metal like “Valadium” or “Endurium.” She lifted it out of its box and inspected it curiously. It was gold—when she looked inside the band, she saw it was stamped 24K—and felt heavy, very heavy. On the sides of the band were the broken sword and the inverted cup from the Oakhurst coat of arms. The bezel of the ring said:
ABSOLUTUM DOMINIUM.

“Absolute dominion,” Loch translated. He’d opened his own box and was looking at his ring curiously.

With everything else about the ring being so lavish, Spirit would have expected the stone to be something she recognized, something real. But to her surprise, it looked like something “lab created.” It was opaque like an opal, a strange glittery sort of opalescent blue, the kind of thing that made you think there were other colors in it, only no matter how hard you looked, you couldn’t see them.…

Spirit tore her eyes away with an effort and stuffed the ring back into the box and closed it. It made her uneasy for reasons she couldn’t quite understand. She saw Loch slip his on—of course it fit perfectly—and bit back the impulse to cry out a warning. Against what?

“Oh, they gave you your rings,” Muirin said offhandedly.

“Our rings?” Loch repeated, staring at his hand as if he was fascinated.

“Hey, open your stuff first!” Muirin demanded. “Look what I got!”

“You’d think they wouldn’t want to encourage you,” Addie murmured, as Muirin brandished the kit of makeup brushes and manicure tools. But she ripped the paper off her box gleefully, revealing a Monopoly set. It was the fanciest one Spirit had ever seen, with a wooden box and gold-colored counters.

“I get really tired of using the ones in the Games Library,” Addie said, grinning. “There are always a couple of pieces missing, and not enough Monopoly Money to get through a full game.”

She looked at Burke expectantly. He opened his gift methodically, prying the tape loose from the ends and folding the paper carefully.

“You got a
football
?” Muirin asked in disbelief. “This place has footballs coming out of its … ears.”

“Yeah, but not like this,” Burke said. “This is the old style, the one they stopped using around 1930. The modern one is more lightweight and streamlined.” He hefted it appreciatively.

“Okay,” Loch said, in tones that made it clear he didn’t really get it. “But about the rings…?”

“Okay. Class rings. We all get them at some point in our first year at Oakhurst,” Burke said.

“Why don’t you wear them, then?” Loch wanted to know.

“Because they’re dorky,” Muirin said with contempt. “I mean, come
on.
Class rings? That’s so Fifties!”

“But—”

“Come on, Murr-cat,” Addie said decisively. “You guys guard Muir’s sugar-hoard. We’ll be right back.”

Muirin rolled her eyes, but followed Addie out of the room, while Burke continued. “You don’t have to wear them, except for a couple of times a year—like Alumni Days, when we’re doing the full School Uniform thing, with the blazer and scarf and everything, like we were—”

“—on the playing fields of Eton,” Loch finished for him, in a broad fake English accent. Burke grinned at him.

“Some people wear them all the time, some don’t,” Burke continued. “The point about them is that they’re … kind of magic. The stone changes color until it matches your School of Magic.”

Great. A wizardly mood ring,
Spirit thought.

“It does?” Loch stared at his hand again. “Try yours, Spirit,” he urged.

Reluctantly, she reopened the box and slipped it on. It felt cold and heavy against her hand—much colder and heavier than she thought it should.

A few minutes later, Muirin and Addie returned; Muirin thrust her hand under Spirit’s nose and wiggled her fingers. Her ring was identical to Spirit’s, except for the fact that the stone was a pale lemon yellow. It seemed to have faint sparkles caught down in the stone. “School of Air,” she announced.

“Mine’s green,” Burke said. “Earth, you know? Addie’s is blue, but a deeper blue than—”

Suddenly, Addie squeaked. She smothered the sound immediately, but thrust her hand at them. “Look!” she whispered, half in excitement, half in alarm.

Just as Burke had said, the stone in Addie’s ring was a deep translucent sapphire blue instead of the pale opal blue of the stone in Spirit and Loch’s rings. But as Spirit stared down into it, she could see there was an image in it, too. It looked as if it had been engraved on the underside of the stone.

It was the image of a goblet, just like the one on the Oakhurst coat of arms.

“Holy Toledo, Addie!” Burke breathed. Spirit had never heard him sound so shocked.

“I know…” Addie gulped, staring at her hand. “I have a Destiny.”

“A what?” Spirit was puzzled. Addie’d said it as if the word “destiny” was capitalized. Did that mean you were especially powerful? She could sure believe that of Addie.…

“Oh hey,” Muirin said, trying not to sound impressed and failing. Out of the corner of her eye, Spirit saw Muirin slip her own ring off and stuff it into her pocket.

“Is this like a ‘it is your Destiny, Luke,’ thing?” Loch asked.

“Kind of,” Addie said hesitantly, staring at her hand.

“I heard a couple of the seniors talking about it a while back,” Burke said. “It’s something Ms. Groves teaches you about in your last year here. You can ask her about it if you like.”

“No thanks,” Spirit said. “I’ve already had enough extra assignments dumped on me.” Ms. Groves taught the “History of Magic” courses, as well as teaching magic itself. Any time she thought you weren’t interested enough, you got hit with an extra assignment on top of the stunning amount of homework the Oakhurst faculty already assigned.

Burke grinned a little at her comment. “So anyway, what I know is, if a Destiny appears in your ring, it means your future is pretty much set. Fixed. Unchangeable.”