Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [27]
Until he killed her family.
And now she was here.
Doctor Ambrosius was no protection; if he wasn’t senile—which she was half convinced he was—he still had no idea what he was really up against. She knew Oakhurst was part of his plots—or she wouldn’t be here—but was Doctor Ambrosius an unwitting dupe … or one of his henchmen? Without knowing, she couldn’t warn him outright. He hadn’t listened to her hints—and worse, she’d already heard some of the kids had already gone missing from this place, no matter what Doctor Ambrosius said. It wasn’t nearly as safe here at Oakhurst as he claimed it was. It wasn’t safe from him.
So here she was, in the middle of nowhere, no idea who to trust, and not a familiar face in sight. Except for Mark—who she did not want to meet again—and Tristan, she’d never known any of the other ones likely to come back. She wouldn’t recognize them, so how could she find someone it was safe to trust her warnings to?
And even if she did figure out who they were—would they even listen?
* * *
“Tell me I’m brilliant,” Addie begged with a grin.
“You’re brilliant,” Spirit replied, going along with it. “You got the sketch?”
Addie nodded, and pulled a couple of sketch pads out of the bag she had slung over one shoulder. The others gathered around their usual “study” table in the lounge as Addie flipped the pads open and started passing them around as cover for the one they really wanted to see.
They all made appreciative or critical noises as she cast a cautious look around to see if anyone was watching them. She must have been satisfied that no one was, because she pulled a piece of onionskin from the back pages of the pad and laid it over the sketch of the oak tree. Spirit and the rest bent over it.
“You were dead right, Spirit,” Addie told her, a little grimly, as they all studied the marks now made plain on the tree. “I could feel something kind of pushing my eyes away while I was working. There is some very powerful magic on that tree. What do you think, people?”
“These aren’t natural,” Burke agreed, his finger starting to trace one of the signs, then pulling away, reluctantly.
“They look familiar, but I can’t place from where,” Muirin observed, then shrugged. “Although for all I know, they might have come from the cover of a Death Metal album.”
“You don’t really think that, do you?” Spirit challenged.
“It’s possible. Rumor hath it that this place was used by a biker gang before Doctor Ambrosius turned it into a school.” As usual, Spirit couldn’t tell if Muirin was serious, or trying to yank her chain.
“I don’t think bike-gang signs would try to make me look away from them,” Addie said firmly. “We need to research this. I made copies for all of us—by hand of course.” She passed them all tiny paper cranes, which they all oo’d and ah’d over. “I’m going to check the photo archives in the Art Department and see if there are any pictures of the tree I can use to photo-enhance the marks. We need to find out what they mean.”
Burke nodded. “I can check Norse,” he said. “I’ve got a project I can twist around to cover Norse runes.”
Muirin made her little crane “fly,” bobbing her hand up and down. “I can check Celtic ogham because of the Hunt connection.” She looked pointedly at Loch and Spirit. “That leaves you two.”
Loch sighed. “Into the archives, again?”
“What else?” Muirin nose-dived her crane. “And who else? You two make the cutest little spies.”
Spirit thought she saw a strange look pass over Burke’s face. But in the next moment, it was gone, and she decided she had imagined it.
She sighed. “Archives it is. And hope we can continue keeping from getting caught.”
FOUR
The Oakhurst storage rooms were beginning to feel as familiar as one of the classrooms.
At this point, Spirit felt that she and Loch had all this sneaking around stuff down to a fine art. They managed to meet up without scaring the pants off each other, and without