Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [64]
“All right, you dirty capitalists. Time to tally up your ill-gotten gains, figure out who won, and head for your rooms,” he called. “Fifteen minutes to lights out.”
With a sigh, Addie packed up the board that hadn’t been used all night, and they split up. Spirit only stopped long enough to tug on Burke’s elbow and hold him back a moment.
“Thanks,” she said, with feeling.
“For what?” he asked, looking both startled and gratified.
“For believing me. In me. That we’re still in danger.” She sighed. “I was beginning to feel as if none of you were ever going to see it.”
“Maybe it’s because I’m looking a little harder than the others,” Burke replied, smiling down into her eyes. “Spirit—”
“Hey!”
They both jumped, instinctively separating, and both stared guiltily at the door, where the proctor was shaking his head. “Rooms. Now.”
“Right,” Burke said, and hurried out the door. Spirit could only stare after him a moment, wondering what he had been about to say, before she followed Addie and Muirin back to the girls’ side.
* * *
The names still hadn’t been posted for the field trip, but a chance remark by Doc Mac had engendered—well, Spirit wasn’t sure what to call it. Other than tempting fate …
Although she hadn’t been there to hear it, evidently when one of the teachers had lamented the debacle of the New Year’s Dance, he had mentioned some Scottish celebration that happened the week after New Year’s that involved setting fire to a barrel of tar or a Viking ship, or both. “It’d give the kids something to get their minds off the bad experience,” he’d said, and for some reason the entire faculty had taken the idea and run away with it, combining this Scottish-Viking thing with the need to take down the Winter Carnival.
So now there was going to be a big nighttime gathering featuring a bonfire with a Viking ship on top of it, a competition to take down the ice-works fast (of course there had to be a competition, this was Oakhurst) and what wasn’t ice was to get tossed on the bonfire. The refreshments that didn’t get used New Year’s Eve had been thriftily saved or frozen; they were going to be served at this thing, along with grilled hot dogs and bratwurst. Muirin was already in heaven at the prospect.
Personally, Spirit thought this was a really dumb idea, not the least because it meant they were all going to have to go outside in the freezing cold, in the coldest part of the year, at night.
* * *
The night of the thing, she went out bundled up to her eyebrows, and within moments of stepping out into the snow her toes and fingers started to freeze. The electric lights strung for the Carnival were all on, providing plenty of light.
She watched Addie and Muirin’s team reducing an ice sculpture to powder snow. It was actually kind of fun to watch; the whole thing basically crumbled away like something right out of a movie. Like a vampire getting hit with sunlight, or a mummy crumbling away. She felt someone come to stand beside her, turned a little, and saw that it was Elizabeth, also bundled up.
“This is a bad idea,” Elizabeth said, sounding very unhappy.
“I’ve seen better,” Spirit said cautiously. “Somebody’s going to get frostbite if they aren’t careful.” She glanced over at the pile of wood with a cardboard-and-wood Viking ship on top of it. “I don’t know if that bonfire’s a really good idea, either—”
“That’s not what I meant,” Elizabeth replied, then shook her head.
Spirit waited, but Elizabeth was silent. “Well, what did you mean?” she prompted, as Addie and Muirin’s team moved on to the next ice sculpture, leaving a pile of tiny sandlike ice particles behind.
Elizabeth glanced around nervously. “It just seems like a bad idea. You know, like this might attract … something.”
Spirit shivered as she felt a cold chill that had nothing to do with the weather go down her back. She looked up at the moon in a mostly clear sky. “Well,” she replied, with a lightness she didn’t feel, “if you’re thinking it’ll attract what happened at New Year’s,