Victories (7 page)

She didn’t give up in the hospital, or in rehab, even though it hurt and she hated it and she didn’t see any point.

At Oakhurst, she didn’t give in to being who they were trying to turn her into. She was scared and confused, but she kept trying to do the right thing, not the easy thing.

Even when it looked like the right thing would just get her killed.

She was scared, but she’d faced the Demon Lord of Hell, even though she’d been so terrified she could hardly stand up. Because it was the right thing to do. And this was an even bigger fight, and she didn’t think she was the right person for it—that any of them were—and it would even look like being smart to try to get to Addie’s trustees for help instead of trying to do this themselves. Nobody would blame her if she said she’d changed her mind.

But it would be wrong. This is our fight, and I have to stop telling myself nobody expects me to be a hero. It doesn’t matter if I don’t think I’m a hero, either. I’m going to do everything I can, no matter what it is.

“Do you hear me?”
she shouted.
“I don’t care what you do! I’m not giving up! I may not be Oakhurst’s definition of a winner, but I’m not what you’re trying to say I am! I won’t give up! I won’t!”

Suddenly a Voice sounded in her ears: stern, kind, loving, severe. Merciful and unforgiving, filled with a thousand contradictions.

“You have been found worthy, you will be consecrated for the Hallows.”

She opened her eyes in surprise—the grey space was gone, she was surrounded by golden light, and warmth, and she could smell flowers. And just like that—before she could really think about it—she was standing next to Burke, blinking at the harsh fluorescent lights.

“You kids want that box, you can have the whole thing for a buck.”

They all jumped at the sound of the floorwalker’s voice. The woman stared at them with a tired, suspicious look.

“Uh … yeah,” Burke said. “We’ll take it.”

“And those,” Addie said quickly, as the floorwalker turned to pick up the things she’d dropped. “Those too.”

THREE

“I’d been hoping there’d be something in there you’d like. You know, just a little thing. I knew you blamed yourself for … for what happened to Muirin, and for not telling us about Merlin.…” Burke said slowly. “I knew you’d done right, and done all you could, and you couldn’t see it. I wanted to cheer you up. And then … I was in a place that was all grey, and … I saw every time I’d ever used my size, my strength, to get my own way. No. Worse than that. To bully somebody because I knew they could never fight back. To get what I wanted because they were afraid of me. To hurt someone just because I could.”

They were sitting in the back of the van, all four of them, with the box between them. It was a little crowded, because the space right behind the seats was filled with bags from their earlier trip to the grocery.

“Me, too,” Loch said quietly. “Not bullying. Not that way. But manipulating people. So they’d look like they were in the wrong, even though I’d pushed them into doing.… I saw all of it. I saw all the times I just turned my back on something I knew was wrong, because I wasn’t willing to fight for what I knew was right.”

“I just.…” Addie raised her hands, and let them fall into her lap again. “I don’t know what to say. I saw … every time I just
went along
with things. Everybody else seemed to know what I should do, and … even when I didn’t think they were right, I just went along with it. And … that’s okay when you’re five. But I knew I could spend the rest of my life just doing what I was told. And never doing anything that mattered. And I don’t want that!” she finished fiercely. “I want … I want to make my own mistakes!”

Spirit reached out and took her hand. Addie squeezed it gratefully.

Loch opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again, looking thoughtful.

Spirit had gone first, telling them what had happened—or what she thought had happened. She wasn’t really surprised to hear the same thing had happened to all of them. “But you all found a way to— To fight back, right? To tell the, the whatever-it-was that what it showed you might be true, but it wasn’t the whole truth,” Spirit said.

“I heard an angel speak to me,” Burke said solemnly. “I prayed for strength and guidance, and it said I was worthy.” He looked sheepish and awestruck at the same time.

“Worthy to be consecrated to the Hallows,” Loch said softly, nodding. They’d all heard the same words at the end. “I don’t know if it was an angel or not, but … it was something big. Something powerful. And it wanted to know that I understood the difference between right and wrong and to know that when I’d done wrong, I turned around and made up for it. It wanted to know if I … I don’t know … was
mature
enough to say that since we
know
we’re the only hope Merlin has, that I wouldn’t let him down.” He sighed. “I don’t like fighting. I’ve always run away, and when I couldn’t run any more, well, things never went that well. But I’m not going to run. And I’m going to fight.”

“Me, too,” Spirit said.

“And I—I’m going to stop being
nice,
” Addie said firmly. “Um, well,
you
know,” she added awkwardly.

Everyone laughed. Loch nudged her and grinned.
“‘She is intolerable curst, And shrewd and froward,’”
he quoted (it was Shakespeare), and Addie stuck her tongue out at him.

“So … where are these ‘Hallows’ we’re all worthy of?” Spirit asked. The box that had started all this was too small to hold a cauldron, let alone a sword or a spear.

“Here,” Addie said. She dug around in the box for a moment, and withdrew a set of car keys. The tag was a battered old GM logo on a plain steel split ring with a set of worn keys. But somehow—Spirit blinked as she looked at them—they were more
real
than anything else around them. “This one’s mine. I don’t know what it has to do with a cauldron or cup, but I know it’s mine. Your turn,” she said, nodding to Loch.

Loch approached the box much more tentatively than Addie had, as if he suspected whatever was in there might bite. He picked through it gingerly. Spirit saw a couple of refrigerator magnets, a battered deck of playing cards, some poker chips, a litter of pens and pencils, plastic Mardi Gras necklaces, worn action figures, six-sided dice.… Nothing but junk. Finally Loch plucked out something too small to see.

“Phone charm,” he said, holding it out on the palm of his hand.

It was a tiny plastic arrowhead, no longer than his thumbnail, with the usual long loop of cord to attach it to a cell phone. “Presenting … the Spear. Fitting, I suppose, given my name,” he added. “Although if I’m going to use it, I may need a slingshot. Now you,” he said to Spirit.

“No, I.… Could.… Burke, could you?” Despite her vow in the grey space, despite having been pronounced “worthy” by whatever the Voice had been (Burke said it was an angel, but Spirit lacked his easy faith), she felt strangely reluctant to find out which Hallow was going to be hers.

“Sure,” Burke said, smiling. He rooted around in the box for longer than either of the others had, and finally came up with one of the pens. It was a cheap ballpoint, the kind businesses used to give out, but whatever name had been on the white plastic body had been worn away. He held it for a long moment, then frowned. “I think this is yours, not mine,” he said, offering it to Spirit. She took it automatically. As she did, there was a single bright flash in her mind, and she knew Burke had been right. This was the Sword. This was hers. She knew that beyond doubt.

What she didn’t know was how to turn the pen
into
the Sword, if that was what she was supposed to do. She stared down at it in puzzlement.

“Well? What is it? Or which is it, I should say?” Addie demanded.

“It’s the Sword.” It was Burke who answered. He held up his prize. “Because I have the Shield, so that makes all four.”

The Shield Hallow of Britain was a set of men’s rings tied together with a scrap of pink yarn. They were both cheap pot-metal, with a gold plating that was mostly worn off. Their squared tops had symbols on them, picked out in rhinestones that were miraculously all still there: one an ace, and one a diamond.

You’re nothing but a pack of cards,
Spirit thought giddily.

“Well, that was … suspiciously easy,” Loch said, sounding puzzled.

“Nice that
something
is,” Addie grumbled.

“Anybody want the rest of this stuff?” Burke asked, nodding toward the box.

“Not unless there’s a large, well-equipped army in there somewhere,” Loch said. He poked at the box hopefully. “I don’t suppose any of you action figures come to life when I call you? No? Right then.”

Burke nodded again and opened the back door. He climbed out with the box and set it on the ground next to the nearest garbage can.

“Anybody feel any different?” he asked when he came back.

Spirit saw the others shake their heads. She shrugged. Except for
knowing
the object she held was the Sword Hallow, nothing was any different.

Burke climbed back in and pulled the door shut. “Well, maybe later,” he said. “At least we found them.”

Spirit couldn’t figure out quite how she felt. Finding the Hallows seemed almost like an anticlimax. And yet … it also felt like it was the
beginning
of something, as if this was right before a tornado, and she had looked up and the sky was turning green.

“Yeah,” Loch said. “Too bad Vivian didn’t mention the booby trap.” He made a face. “It’s a good thing nobody noticed us playing statues back there, or we could have found ourselves locked up or something.”

“Maybe she didn’t know,” Spirit said. “But … imagine what would have happened to Mark if he’d found them? Or Teddy? Or Madison?” She thought about that. She kind of wished it could have happened.

Clearly, so did Loch. “Or Ovcharenko,” Loch said with a dark smile. “Too bad there’s no way to know. I’d pay real money to watch.”

“I think we can guess, though,” Spirit said. “It wasn’t a booby trap, not really. It was a test. Of worthiness. The grey place turned all our best qualities inside out. It showed us our dark sides, to see if we could rise above them—or
had
risen above them, ever. And, you know, that makes me wonder—now that we’ve all seen that—why does anyone become a Shadow Knight? Or really,
stay
a Shadow Knight once they know what’s involved besides fancy limousines and penthouses, or whatever they get? Because—oh, I don’t know!”

“I do,” Addie said. “Who wants to be the bad guy, knowing they’re the bad guy? I mean, usually there’s a certain amount of … rationalization going on in the mind of your average supervillain. You know.”

“So to speak,” Loch said. “But yeah. The whole ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you’ thing. My— My father said once that the secret to success in business was knowing that nobody is the villain in their own story. And this isn’t exactly that, but.…”

“Some people just like knowing they can always get their own way,” Burke said quietly. “They don’t think about other people enough to care what they’re feeling.”

Loch frowned. “Actually … some people just can’t see other people as anything other than props. There were more than a couple of CEOs like that. They’d laugh about firing people, as if other people just weren’t real to them. Then they’d run out and drop five hundred bucks on dinner. Maybe that’s it. Maybe in order to be a Shadow Knight—everyone
else
is a shadow to you.”

Burke nodded. “So, nobody else matters because nobody else has feelings or importance except you. No reason why you can’t just shove them around, since they’re just extras in
your
play.”

“That isn’t you,” Spirit said firmly, meeting and holding his gaze. After a moment he smiled ruefully in acknowledgment. “But,” she added, turning to include the others, “are we going to be immune? I mean, we beat it once, but if someone—Mordred—offers us—”

“The kingdoms of the Earth,” Burke said.

“Right,” Loch said. “Come to the Dark Side! Not only are there cookies, but there’s safety and luxury and peasants to torture!”

“If that’s the sort of thing you want,” Addie said dryly. Loch made a rude noise and shook his head.

“We’ve just got to hope we’ll be smart when the time comes,” Burke said. “Or.… I dunno …
valiant
. And now we’d better get a move on. Because I don’t think keeping Vivian waiting is real smart either.”

*   *   *

The house-turned-museum was an old square two-story building that Loch instantly dubbed a “house kind of a house” on a back street. They pulled up and Burke went inside to see if Vivian was there and returned with a handful of pamphlets. Bess Streeter Aldrich turned out to be an author none of them had ever heard of, who’d published her last book around the time their grandparents probably started dating. About fifteen minutes later, Vivian showed up on her bike. Burke jumped out and opened the back so she could load it in.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Not here,” she said briefly, tossing her backpack in after the bike. She walked up to the driver’s side and opened the door, holding out her hand for the keys.

“I can drive,” Loch protested.

“And
I
have an actual license,” Vivian said. Loch shrugged and got out.

They stopped on the way back at a roadside hamburger stand—a kind of freelance McDonald’s—for lunch. There were no other customers, no drive-through, and no carhops. They had to walk up to the window themselves to get served. Nobody talked much. Vivian wasn’t the type to encourage conversation, and for their parts, Spirit and her friends were still freaked by the idea they now had ancient magic artifacts of mysterious (but vague) power in their possession. When they got back to the silo—Spirit could tell from Loch’s expression that Vivian had taken a different route this time—they all pitched in to bring the stuff down below. By the time they had it stowed away, every cupboard in the tiny kitchen was stuffed.

“Looks like we won’t have to go shopping for a while,” Burke said mildly.