Sacrifices by Mercedes Lackey, Rosemary Edghill Page A

had been raving and disoriented when he was apprehended. The Touchstone —a monthly magazine published in Billings—gave even more information: apparently Wolferman had been raving about the sun turning black, the moon turning to blood, and the dead rising up out of their graves. The local authorities assumed drugs, and went up to what was then still called “the Tyniger estate” to investigate. According to the Billings Gazette, they found several dead Hellriders, and evidence of “intergang warfare.”
    I doubt it somehow, Spirit thought. If a second bunch of bikers had showed up, they would’ve had to go through Radial to get here. And even Radial would notice that.
    She frowned, staring at the page. August of 1971 to September of 1973 was barely two years. Not enough time to turn a derelict mansion that had been sitting vacant since 1939—when Arthur Tyniger died—into Dr. Ambrosius’s showplace.
    Then she shook herself. She was still thinking like a normal person. Nothing about this place had ever been, or was, normal.
    Oh, don’t be silly, Spirit told herself scornfully. Of course it is. All you need is magic.
    Unfortunately, after that point, the regular papers lost interest in the story, but a Google Search using her new keywords turned up a page dedicated to the “Hellriders Massacre” on a site called Weird Montana.
    And “massacre” was apparently the word for it. When the authorities reached the mansion on the morning of August 1st, 1971, they discovered “several” members of the Hellriders dead and the rest missing. There were some grainy black-and-white pictures on the Web page, but they were so blurry Spirit couldn’t even make out where they’d been taken, though it had to be at Oakhurst. According to Weird Montana, the missing Hellriders never turned up. The only survivor was “Wolfman” Wolferman, who never changed his story (such as it was).
    Bingo. You were right, Loch. The authorities hadn’t been able to charge Wolferman with anything more illegal than speeding, and he ended up going to the County Hospital. Weird Montana said he was released in the early 1990s and returned home to Radial to live. She went back to the Radial Echo and found a mention of his return in the “Local News And Views” column. He’d apparently moved in with his parents. The story gave the address.
    She pulled out a pen and a piece of paper and jotted it down—dangerous, she knew, but she was afraid of forgetting it. She skimmed the next few years of the paper to make sure he hadn’t moved or died. The only thing she found was the announcement of the opening of Oakhurst Academy in September 1973. Doctor Ambrosius—the paper gave his first name as “Vortigern”—was described as “a progressive European educator and philanthropist.” Out of a vague curiosity, Spirit searched the rest of the Echo for mentions of either Doctor Ambrosius or Oakhurst Academy, but she didn’t find a single one.
    As far as Radial was concerned, Oakhurst Academy had simply ceased to exist.
    *   *   *
    “I am not cut out for this,” Burke said, sitting up with a groan. The Nissan hit a pothole and bounced; Burke winced as he finished unwedging himself from the footwell in the car’s cramped backseat, then reached down to lift Spirit up from the other side. She breathed a sigh of relief as she unfolded herself, and turned to glance out the back window. They were already off the school grounds; the school looked almost pretty in the dusk. If you don’t know what’s going on there, Spirit thought.
    “Sweet, isn’t it?” Muirin said, ignoring Burke. “Relax—we’re outside the wards, and I’m the mistress of illusion, remember? Nobody’s going to see anything I don’t want them to see.”
    “‘Feel’ is a different matter,” Burke said.
    “Which is why I snuck you guys out on the floor,” Muirin said reasonably. “With the town in-bounds, you just know they’re going to start searching cars.”