Sacrifices (10 page)

“I thought it was going to be, you know, a big deal,” Spirit heard Brett said to Adam. “You know—something more than a few rags tied to sticks.”

“Well, the tin cans were pretty noisy,” Adam answered fair-mindedly. “And I think somebody set off a couple of firecrackers.”

“You have got to be kidding me,” Kylee said quietly. She glanced sideways at Spirit, and the two of them shared a moment of perfect understanding. To listen to the Radial kids talk, there hadn’t been any smoke bombs, any firepots—and certainly no prehistoric monsters.

What was that thing?
Spirit wondered again.
And what is it doing
here
?
For the last six months, Oakhurst had been stuffing her brain with magic and spells and Gifts and Schools—and nowhere in any of that had been anything about saber-tooth tigers. She shivered—as much from dread as from cold and exhaustion. If they were going to start being attacked by monsters during every class, nobody was going to survive to attend the Spring Fling.

When she heard the sound of galloping hoofbeats coming up behind her, she didn’t even look up. She knew who it was.

“Hi,” Muirin said brightly, reining up beside Spirit. “Miss me?”

Spirit studied her critically. The rifle she’d defended Derek with was nowhere in sight. Maybe one of the course spotters had taken it away from her. “Yes,” Spirit said honestly. “If you hadn’t been there, Derek—”

“Pas devant les domestiques,”
Muirin said lightly, nodding toward the Townies.
Not in front of the servants …
Spirit took the hint and shut up. She wondered yet again if this “new” Muirin was really an “old” Muirin—Muirin the way she’d been before she was sent to Oakhurst. Was this witty callous stranger who took nothing seriously just an act she was putting on to fool Breakthrough?

Or to fool
them
?

FIVE

By the time they reached the stables, Spirit was ready to fall out her saddle with sheer exhaustion. They had to unload and unsaddle their horses, but at least they didn’t have to do anything else—this was one area where staff actually took care of things.

Spirit signed the checklist saying she’d unsaddled her horse (it was probably possible to cheat and say you had when you hadn’t, but she didn’t think anyone would dare) and thought longingly of just walking into the stables and collapsing on the nearest pile of straw. She was so tired she didn’t even care if she missed dinner.

But when she turned around, Muirin was standing at her elbow.

“Come on, come on!” Muirin demanded. “Come and see my surprise! All of you—Addie! Loch!”

After all the trouble we’ve gone to pretending we don’t know each other, and she does this?
Spirit cut glances with Addie and Loch, and both of them looked just as confused and upset. But there was nothing to do about it but follow Muirin—or risk being the center of an even bigger scene.

*   *   *

Muirin’s “surprise” was waiting in the motor pool parking lot. Among the half dozen Jeeps and big black SUVs, the bright blue “sport” SUV stood out like a peacock in a henhouse.

“Not very sexy,” Muirin said grudgingly. “I mean … a Nissan. But it’s got four-wheel drive, so I don’t have to leave it parked until June!”

“Oh my god,” Addie breathed. “It’s a
car
. Muirin…”

“What did you have to do to get that?” Loch asked, disgust plain in his voice.

“Hey,” Muirin said, tossing her head. “At least I can ask the date of my choice to the Fling.”

There was a gleam of—triumph?—in her eyes as she looked at Loch. Loch simply looked weary.

“Well, don’t think it isn’t Topic A,” Muirin said archly. “Everyone’s talking about it. Guess it’s a good thing you picked Burke, huh, Spirit?”

Spirit couldn’t keep from wincing, even as she wondered whether Muirin was actually being as spiteful as she sounded—or was delivering a disguised warning. But at the same time she couldn’t help but wonder—
would
she have fallen for Burke if she hadn’t known Loch was unavailable?

“Anyway!” Muirin continued. “Having wheels of my own will make it a lot more fun to sneak out after curfew, right?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Loch drawled mockingly. “You’ll still be in Montana, sweetie.”

“If you’re going to be doing all that ‘sneaking,’ maybe you could help us out by doing some research down in Radial, Muirin,” Addie said quickly.

That’s right,
Spirit thought.
I was supposed to track down any surviving members of those bikers once I got off campus. Not that easy with the Dance Committee meeting at The Fortress.…

Muirin made a rude noise. “Research!” she scoffed. “Since I’m not gonna live to graduate, I’ve got to get in a lifetime’s worth of fun right now.”

I guess that’s a “no,”
Spirit thought.

“So hey—who wants to go for a ride?” Muirin added.

Loch shook his head silently, turning away, and Addie was still outraged at Muirin’s latest gift—obviously from Breakthrough. Neither one was going to take Muirin up on it, and Spirit saw the flash of hurt in Muirin’s eyes—and the dangerous line of temper in the set of her mouth.

“Oh hey, Murr,” Spirit said, forcing a laugh. “I didn’t think
eau de wet horse
was your signature fragrance! I don’t know about Loch or Addie, but I know I stink. And you probably don’t want that smell all over your new car until the end of time!”

“Ha,” Muirin said, smirking, the ugly flash of temper averted. “You have a point. Rain check?”

“Sure,” Spirit said, forcing herself to sound as if she was looking forward to it. She wondered how long all of them could dance on this knife edge. Muirin had always had a sharp tongue and a quick temper, but she’d used to reserve her cruelty for other people. Not her closest friends.

She wondered if they were still Muirin’s friends.

*   *   *

When she walked into the Main Building, Spirit saw Burke in the first-floor lounge. She was about to detour over to him until she realized he was deep in conversation with one of the teachers.

He was talking to Beckett Green.

It felt like rejection, and it hurt. In a normal world, she and Burke could have gone on dates, spent time with each other. At Oakhurst, they had to pretend they didn’t know each other, and every tiny scrap of time they’d managed to steal to be together (just the two of them) was precious.

But it also made her feel as if what she and Burke had could vanish at any moment—or be taken away.

They’ve given Murr a car. Now Burke has Beckett. What will they offer Addie? Or Loch?
She had a good idea what they
could
offer Loch—the one thing he’d never really had. Safety. What would Loch give to know that no one would be coming after him, that his physical safety would be guaranteed?
Just sign right here, and no one will ever bother you again.

Would he? And if he did, could she blame him?

As for Burke—

I just don’t know what to think right now.
She turned away and headed blindly back to her room. It was all falling apart, and there was nothing, nothing she could do about it. She closed the door behind herself and dropped down on the bed, pulling all the covers around herself in a kind of cocoon of misery.

At least she was warm.

*   *   *

Hunger woke Spirit at last; she’d crashed hard once she’d gotten back to her room, and at the time she hadn’t cared about missing dinner. She turned on the light and glanced at her watch. Two a.m. She might as well get up now. At least today was Saturday. That meant no
Systema
and no Endurance Riding. Just a lot of homework.

She pulled on her robe and opened her dorm fridge. Gatorade was better than nothing, she supposed. She chugged a bottle and brought a second one back to her desk. She opened the drawer of her desk, and her fingers slid under the litter of pens and loose papers to touch the Ironkey drive. Her link to QUERCUS, whoever he was. She plucked it out without hesitation and plugged it into her computer. The familiar book-shaped icon appeared once her computer recognized the device. She clicked on it, and the chatroom window opened.

Hello, Spirit,
QUERCUS typed.

Hello,
she typed back. She wondered how he’d known it was her—or if he was guessing. He always seemed to be right there whenever she opened their private chatroom. Maybe the Ironkey sent an alarm to his computer when it was plugged in. Or maybe he was more than one person, and they took shifts.

My riding class was attacked by a saber-toothed tiger today,
she typed.

The sentence looked insane on the screen. What would he think? She wasn’t sure whether she was trying to shock him or asking for help.

Tell me what happened,
QUERCUS answered. No emoticons. No hesitation. Did he—she—it—even believe what Spirit was saying?

Right now she didn’t care. She was so desperate to talk to someone—anyone—without watching every single word that she found herself telling QUERCUS everything. Not just about today, but about the last several weeks—things she’d held back before, still uncertain of whether he was the friend he seemed to be or a trap set by Oakhurst and Breakthrough. Sometime in the last week she’d stopped caring, she realized. If he wasn’t a friend … then at least this would be over. She was so tired, tired of it all, exhausted by what Oakhurst was putting them all through, tired of living a lie, of weighing every word out of her mouth, of thinking everyone around her was a potential enemy. She just wanted to be able to talk to someone without having to imagine the possible consequences!

At last she worked her way back around to Muirin and her new car. 
—and Addie was horrified about it, but that didn’t stop her from asking Murr to do some research for her. You know, when I got the Dance Committee gig, we figured I could poke around in Radial a little bit, but now I wonder if Teddy didn’t have an even better reason for bringing all of us to The Fortress that day than I thought.

There was a pause, then QUERCUS replied, the letters coming up on the screen as if he was typing very slowly.
You don’t need to go to Radial to do research,
QUERCUS typed.
You can use the Internet.

Spirit began to scoff, but he was right: when this chatroom window was open, she could get out onto the “real” Internet. She hadn’t even thought of it—partly because what she wanted to know about was right in Radial, and partly because the first time she’d taken advantage of the freedom the Ironkey drive gave her, she’d slipped up and accidentally let Muirin know she’d had Internet access, and she’d been afraid of repeating that mistake.

And Oakhurst is really good at teaching you not to think about things,
she thought sourly.

Thank you. I will,
she typed.

Her hands shook as she opened her browser window. She typed an address at random—
ain’t it cool news
—and today’s page came up. She let out a deep breath. It still worked. She chewed her lip, wondering where to start. Typing
biker gang survivors of magical gang war at the old Tyniger mansion
probably wouldn’t get her very far.

She was right about that. It took her an hour of Googling before she hit pay dirt. To her surprise (she ended up stumbling over it by pure accident), the
Radial Echo
—Radial’s dinky little hometown newspaper—hadn’t just been microfilmed, it had been digitized. And the digital copy was available in a public online archive. The town had been incorporated in 1885, and all 125-plus years of the paper were archived.
Searchably
.

Muirin should be doing this,
Spirit thought wearily, rubbing her tired eyes. Muirin was surprisingly awesome at research, as she’d proved time and again. But Muirin had already refused to help—and besides, Spirit would have to have let her in on the secret of the Ironkey if she was to do any online research. And she didn’t dare. She heaved a sigh and got back to work.

Oakhurst had been founded in 1973, Spirit remembered, so what she was looking for was earlier than that. She remembered Juliette Weber saying the place had been a gang hideout in the seventies, but just to make sure she didn’t miss anything she started with January 1960. By the time the sky outside her window began to lighten with dawn, she’d found what she wanted to know.

The gang everyone kept mentioning had been called The Hellriders. The first item—about them taking over Oakhurst—was from 1968. The last was from three years later—1971—and that was a big enough story that the
Echo
ran coverage for an entire month, and the story was picked up by several out-of-town papers.

It started the night of July 31, when a member of the Hellriders—Stephen “Wolfman” Wolferman—tore through Radial on his motorcycle doing over a hundred miles an hour. His joyride triggered a three-county chase that went on until he ran out of gas. The
Echo
just said he was “taken into custody,” but the
Billings Gazette
included the information that Wolferman, a Vietnam vet, had been raving and disoriented when he was apprehended.
The Touchstone
—a monthly magazine published in Billings—gave even more information: apparently Wolferman had been raving about the sun turning black, the moon turning to blood, and the dead rising up out of their graves. The local authorities assumed drugs, and went up to what was then still called “the Tyniger estate” to investigate. According to the
Billings Gazette,
they found several dead Hellriders, and evidence of “intergang warfare.”

I doubt it somehow,
Spirit thought.
If a second bunch of bikers had showed up, they would’ve had to go through Radial to get here. And even Radial would notice that.

She frowned, staring at the page. August of 1971 to September of 1973 was barely two years. Not enough time to turn a derelict mansion that had been sitting vacant since 1939—when Arthur Tyniger died—into Dr. Ambrosius’s showplace.