Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,6
to whisper in Spirit’s ear.
“Does he practice being that tactless, or does it come naturally?”
Spirit grimaced and shrugged.
“So, as the old year ends, and the new one begins, we pause for a time of remembrance. Remember—always—that it is your responsibility to live up to the high standards that other members of your Oakhurst family have set. An Oakhurst graduate who is merely average is one who has failed. An Oakhurst graduate soars where others plod. And an Oakhurst student can never rest on his accomplishments, for while he is resting, others are overtaking him.”
He paused, and Ms. Corby signaled what was expected of them by initiating a patter of light applause.
“Now, in the generous spirit of the season and your family,” Doctor Ambrosius concluded, beaming on them all again, “let us commence with the distribution of gifts.”
While Ms. Corby and Mr. Devon handed out the gifts, Spirit stood there feeling a kind of bemused horror. She’d expected some kind of announcement about the Wild Hunt during the service, but when it hadn’t come, she’d assumed there would be one here. But there wasn’t. When the kids had disappeared—Seth and Camilla just since Spirit had come here, and that wasn’t counting Nicholas and Eddie, who were alive but mind-blasted—Oakhurst had covered things up with lies that were meant to be reassuring. And maybe they’d had a good reason at the time, and maybe they’d even believed that Seth and Camilla ran away. But now that she and the others had defeated the Wild Hunt, and Doctor Ambrosius knew what had happened to everyone, Spirit had expected some kind of announcement. Wasn’t the Wild Hunt a part of what they were being trained to defend themselves against? Didn’t its appearance mean they should all be warned to be extra careful?
But there’d been nothing. Not one word about their classmates who were dead. Not one word about the fact that there were people here—and she’d even been one of them—who’d been marked for death at the hands of the Wild Hunt. It was just: too bad, so sad, you’ve lost your real families, people you knew, there’s someone—probably inside the school!—that wants to kill you all, just forget about it, here’s your iPod or your digital camera or your makeup kit or your Wii.
Even her own friends hadn’t talked about what it all meant. Okay, maybe they were kind of in shock, but now they knew. Oakhurst wasn’t safe. The enemies Doctor Ambrosius had talked about weren’t out there. They were in here. Killing people. If the five of them wanted to live long enough to graduate—not to mention everyone else here living to graduate—they had to find out what was really going on. She knew they’d all been lied to. But adults lied to kids all the time, playing the “it’s for your own good” card. Those kinds of lies were annoying, but they didn’t mean the person lying to them was out to kill them.
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