Darke Academy 4: Lost Spirits (17 page)

Cassie hesitated, not wanting to think the worst. ‘The phone system isn’t that reliable …’

‘I’ll tell you what
is
reliable,’ said Richard. ‘My favourite toy. Come on. Let’s stop wasting time. We’re going to the airstrip.’

Cassie was out of her seat before the Cessna had even bumped to a halt on the long flat strip of savannah. Ranjit was right behind her as she wrestled the door open to the dry, dusty heat of the day and had begun lowering the steps before Richard had taken off his headset. She couldn’t explain the terrible urgency that had filled her since they’d snapped out of their inertia and decided to sneak out of the Academy and fly straight to Mount Kenya, but she knew she wanted to see Jake and Isabella with her own eyes: alive, well, and loved-up.

She bolted across the tracks and towards the lodge, terrified of what she might find – or might not find – but when she came in sight of the long veranda, she almost shrieked with relief. Jake sat on a rattan couch, a book in his hand; Isabella lay the length of it, her head on his lap and her own book over her face.

‘Cassie?’ Jake dropped his book casually over the arm of the couch, and Isabella, startled awake, pulled the book off her face and sat up.

‘Jake! Isabella!’ Cassie slowed to a walk, trying and failing to look a little more casual. ‘Is everything … OK?’ she panted.

They didn’t answer. Both of them were on their feet now, staring beyond Cassie.

‘Oh—’ Isabella gasped, then flung her hands over her mouth. Jake froze.

Cassie glanced over her shoulder, momentarily dumbfounded.

Of course. Behind her stood Ranjit, his gaze remorseful and stricken. At his side, Richard glanced with interest from him to Jake and back.

Cassie rubbed her hand across her head and breathed out. ‘Oh. Isabella, can we come in? We’ve got a lot to tell you…’

Jake was pacing the rug in front of the fireplace, casting dumbfounded looks at Ranjit, who sat between Richard and Cassie on the leather sofa. Isabella was perched on the arm next to Cassie, her hand lightly on her best friend’s shoulder.

‘It’s a lot to take in,’ muttered Jake, ‘that’s all.’

‘I know,’ said Ranjit. ‘I’m sorry.’ He glanced at Isabella. ‘You’ve no idea how sorry.’

‘I heard you the first time.’ Jake came to an abrupt halt. ‘You said a lot of stuff that night, Ranjit. When you “killed” me. A lot of stuff about what happened with Jess in Cambodia.’

Ranjit put his head in his hands. ‘I didn’t mean any of it. I never meant for it to happen. I never meant Jessica any harm. Or you, for that matter.’

‘And as for you …’ Jake glowered at Richard. ‘The part you played in Jessica’s death? You
knew
what you were doing when you held up Ranjit. When you—’

‘Jake?’ Isabella interrupted, standing up and going across to him. She slid her arms around his waist. ‘Can I say something?’

Yeah.’ Taken aback, he put an arm round her shoulders.

‘It seems to me there’s only one person who really knew what she was doing the night Jess died, and it wasn’t Ranjit. It wasn’t even Keiko.’

‘I knew what I was doing,’ put in Richard softly, and Cassie took his hand and squeezed it. ‘I did delay Ranjit, long enough for Katerina to get to Jess …’

‘Yes,’ said Isabella, ‘but you didn’t know what would come of it. Jake, Richard had
no idea
what Katerina was planning. It’s Katerina who’s truly responsible for Jessica’s death, and if what Cassie says is right, she could be responsible for a lot more. We’re all of us in schlock—’

‘Shock,’ muttered Cassie absently.

‘Shock, then. But we don’t have any more time to waste. We have to get hold of Sir Alric, and fast.’

‘His mobile’s off,’ said Cassie bleakly. ‘We’ll just have to wait for him. Where the hell is he?’ She checked her watch again.

Isabella stared at her. ‘His phone is never switched off when he’s here at the lodge. He told us that, in case we needed to contact him.’

Cassie’s heart dipped. ‘Do you have any idea where he went?’

Isabella exchanged a worried look with Jake. ‘He didn’t say. He left three quarters of an hour ago.’

‘With Marat,’ said Jake.

Cassie felt the blood drain from her face. ‘Marat was here?’ She thought back to the squat man’s face in the office after she’d stolen the artefacts. This couldn’t be good. ‘I don’t trust him.’

‘Who does?’ muttered Jake. ‘Except for Sir Alric.’

Ranjit stood up. ‘What was he doing before he left? Why did he go out?’

‘Hard to say. He’s been buried in his study since he arrived yesterday. I asked what he was looking for, and when he’d finished barking at me, he said even he didn’t exactly know. Just that he’d know when he found it.’

Cassie tried to contain her frustration. ‘Well, he must have found something if he went out.’

Jake rubbed his temples, giving Isabella a worried glance. ‘Maybe. Marat turned up about an hour ago, and they disappeared into the study, then Sir Alric stuck his head round the door and said they were going out together to investigate a lead.’

‘A lead?’ murmured Cassie. So Marat had suddenly turned up bearing news? And now Sir Alric had gone off with him somewhere he couldn’t get a mobile signal? Don’t panic, she told herself as the feeling rose up. She had to keep a clear head.

Without another word, Cassie headed for the door at the side of the vast lounge. ‘This is his study, right?’

‘Yeah.’ Jake was at her side, pushing open the door.

‘Oh my God,’ whispered Cassie.

All four of them stood staring at the chaos on the desk and the floor. Papers had been tossed aside, left higgledy-piggledy on tables. Heaps of them had slid off the desk into piles on the rug. Filing cabinet drawers stood open, the files still open on top.

‘Jesus,’ murmured Richard. ‘What’s this impostor done with our favourite control freak?’

Cassie shook her head. ‘It must have been something urgent. What was he looking for?’

‘What did he
find
?’ murmured Ranjit darkly.

‘We’ve got to go after him,’ said Cassie, turning to go.

‘Hang on, Cassie. Can’t do that till we find where he went.’ Ranjit touched her arm. Even in the circumstances Cassie felt her skin prickle and her blood leap in response. Glancing at him, she met golden eyes that were as shocked by his own reaction as she was by hers. Gently she shook him off. There was no time for this.

‘There’s got to be something here.’ Richard yanked out a desk drawer.

Isabella heaved a deep sigh. ‘Let’s start looking.’

Cassie bent to lift a discarded pile of documents, flicking through them as she dumped them on the desk. All the others had taken sheaves of paper, barely taking time to read each heading before moving on to the next. Isabella sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by files, her expression hopeless.

‘Wait. Look,’ said Jake, lifting a lined notebook and flipping it open. ‘A bunch of notes about the Tears.’ He peered at it, and Cassie saw a shadow flit across his face.

‘What? What’s it say?’

‘Nothing. Doesn’t help.’ Still, Cassie noticed, he stuck it in the back pocket of his jeans. Well, he must be curious about the liquid that had saved his life.

‘If it doesn’t help, don’t waste time on it,’ she said sharply. ‘Keep looking, everybody.’

Calm down, Cassie told herself. Calm down. We just have to look till we find.

The state of the room disturbed her, if only because of the likelihood that Sir Alric was responsible for the mess. This desperation wasn’t like him – he was trying to find something, and quickly. What had Marat told him? Thinking about it now, Cassie was sure there was no one else who would have tried to burgle Sir Alric’s office at the start of term. No student she knew of – not even the most arrogant of the Few – would have dared. That must have been Marat’s first abortive attempt to steal the artefacts. She remembered his quiet satisfaction, his perfectly calm demeanour as he reordered Sir Alric’s office after Cassie’s burglary. Why had he done that? Why cover for her when he so disliked her?

Because, perhaps, she’d done his job for him?

But Marat, for all his sinister nature, never struck Cassie as the sort to act alone. He’d want a leader. And who else could that be but the Svenssons, given what had happened … ?

Her foot knocked against something solid, half-covered by the papers on the floor. The phone handset from Sir Alric’s desk. Picking it up, thumbing buttons, she pressed it to her ear.

‘Guys – the phone’s completely dead. Not just off the hook, dead.’

A shiver ran down her spine at the thought of Sir Alric, alone in Marat’s company out in the bush. Suddenly she stood up.

‘That little git Marat’s done something. He’s in cahoots with Brigitte and Katerina, I’m sure of it. He’s tricked Sir Alric, somehow, he must have. Nothing else would drag Sir Alric away if he was still searching his files, still unsure of exactly what he was looking for.’

Just as she said it, Jake was sweeping his arm across the papers on the desk, sending them tumbling to the floor in a disordered mess.

‘Like that’s going to help,’ drawled Richard.

Jake just leaned on the desktop, staring at it. ‘But it is,’ he said, pointing down. ‘There’s a map.’

They clustered round the desk. Sure enough, beneath the papers, pinned flat under a protective glass top, was a large-scale map of the slopes of Mount Kenya. As they examined it, something caught Cassie’s eye in the scattered papers Jake had just tossed aside, and she picked it carefully off the floor, narrowing her eyes.

‘This looks pretty old,’ she muttered, rubbing the document lightly with a thumb.

Ranjit peered over her shoulder. ‘Something about a temple.’ He took the fragile yellowed sheet from Cassie, laid it against the map beneath the glass. ‘Same symbol. Look.’

‘Not one I ever saw on the Ordnance Survey,’ observed Richard. Sure enough, it was familiar to Cassie only in one respect: it resembled the broken symbol branded into her shoulder blade. As if to confirm her thoughts, Richard loosened his collar further and tugged his shirt down, turning so that they could all see the brand on his shoulder.

‘Yes,’ breathed Ranjit. ‘It’s the Few symbol.’

They all looked at each other. Jake worked his fingers underneath the desktop glass and yanked it up, pushing it away until it slid on to the floor with a crack like a gunshot. It hadn’t shattered, but a clean crack ran from corner to corner.

Jake loosened the map from the desk, picking at the edges that had stuck to the wood. When it was free, he folded it carefully to show the patch of contours with the unfamiliar symbol at its centre.

‘Mount Kenya,’ he said. ‘You think that’s it? Where he’s gone?’

‘We’re never going to get a better clue.’ Richard said.

‘We’ve got to go for it,’ said Ranjit. ‘Come on.’

Ranjit, Richard and Isabella were already out of the door, but uncharacteristically Jake hung back, and Cassie paused to urge him to hurry.

But just as she opened her mouth, she saw him snatch a small container from a side table and stuff it into his pocket. His eyes met hers, and she shut her mouth. She wasn’t going to ask. They didn’t have time.

‘Right,’ he said grimly. ‘Now let’s go.’

A
s they climbed the steep-sided valley through the forest, Cassie could hear Isabella rasping for breath, but clearly her friend had no intention of being left behind. Despite the lazy weeks with Jake, and the aimless period of grief before then, she was grimly keeping up with three Few and her hyper-conditioned boyfriend.

Dusk was falling swiftly, but Cassie led the way, occasionally pausing impatiently so that Ranjit could check the map. As they waited on a basalt outcrop for Isabella to catch up, she caught sight of Ranjit’s eyes glowing behind her in the gathering darkness. From the odd look she got from Isabella as she pulled her up the steep rock, she guessed her own eyes looked much the same. Their Few power was primed – they weren’t sure exactly what they were about to face.

‘Are we sure this is a good idea? If we go much higher the altitude’s going to be a problem for Isabella,’ Richard muttered to the others in a low voice.

‘Me too,’ admitted Jake, ‘but it’s not much further. According to the map, anyway. If we’re even going to the right place.’

‘Let’s just hope we’re not too late,’ Cassie replied, clenching her jaw. This was all her fault – who knows what Marat and the Svenssons had planned for Sir Alric. They had to get to them as quickly as possible. ‘Come on, we’ve got to keep moving,’ she urged.

Cassie led them on quickly, listening out for the sounds of the forest: scurrying rodents in the undergrowth, the distant roar of a river, the high-pitched night chorus of cicadas. Between the trunks of the dense trees, the sky was turning from crystal blue to a deep amber, and in the occasional glimpses Cassie got of the ragged peak of Mount Kenya, the snow and glaciers were streaked with blue shadow and tinged with gold. It wouldn’t be long before the light died from the peak altogether, and true darkness fell in the forest.

As they hurried onwards, Ranjit hesitated again, checking the map, and Cassie pulled up and turned to watch him. Richard paused too, and Jake and Isabella caught up, Jake reaching out and taking his girlfriend’s hand to make sure she was close.

‘Here,’ Ranjit said in a low voice. ‘Cassie, three steps back. Look.’

The slit in the volcanic rock was almost imperceptible through the dense trees, and she doubted it would have been any more obvious in full daylight; as it was, it could easily have been taken for a stripe of deeper shadow, or a vein of blacker rock. Shoving branches aside, Ranjit crouched and forced his way across a ridge of stone, and Cassie followed, with the others at her heels.

‘We’re not the first to come here tonight,’ Ranjit said grimly.

Sure enough, there were signs of disturbance. Cassie touched broken twigs, then ran the palm of her hand down the rock. A breath of air, cold and dank, whispered from the hole across her skin, and she snatched her hand away. Ranjit caught it, linking his fingers with hers. His gaze met hers, intense and searching.