“You should teach the rest of us how to do that,” Leila said.
Tristan snorted. “Yeah, because I’m such an expert. I might as well open a house-painting business right now.”
“Good idea,” Leila said, laughing.
“Hey,” Rusty said, joining them in the doorway. “At least painting houses would be easier than building them.”
Once Merridy’s lesson was over, the holidays had truly begun. Tristan, Leila, and Rusty returned to the Subroom, where they sat lazily by the fire and shared a bowl of popcorn. Leila had somehow gotten ahold of one of Zeke’s old quizzes, and she amused them by reading aloud his ridiculous answers.
Hayley and Cailyn joined them before long, each carrying armfuls of pine branches and red ribbon, which they deposited on the broken table.
“Don’t worry—we’ll sweep up the needles when we’re finished,” Hayley said as she and Cailyn began twisting the boughs into garlands and wreaths.
Soon after the two girls arrived, there came a loud thud from the doorway. Tristan whirled to see an enormous pine branch poking into the room; the branch was cut off very abruptly by the invisible barrier, so the part that showed appeared to hang in midair. Swaying alarmingly, the branch grew longer and longer until, with a swish of branches, an entire tree was thrust through the doorway.
“Look what we’ve got,” Eli called as he appeared from behind the tree, Trey slipping through the barrier after him. Wiping his forehead, Trey hoisted the tree into his arms and carried it to the far corner of the room.
“Nice,” Leila said. “It smells wonderful.” The honey-vanilla scent of fresh pine sap had already swirled across the room.
Rusty got to his feet to help with the tree, which already had two thin boards nailed across the base of its trunk. “Is it snowing yet?” he asked.
“A bit,” Eli said. “Where’s Amber gone off to, with all those pinecones of hers?”
Tristan stretched out his legs and leaned back in his armchair. “No idea. The extra pinecones are there, though.” He gestured to the far side of the room.
Amber reappeared in the ballroom for dinner, cheeks flushed and hair speckled with snow. Evvie was still missing; even after dinner, when they retreated to the Subroom and began settling in for the night, she did not reappear.
Once he’d showered and changed into his pajamas, Tristan decided he couldn’t wait any longer. “If Evvie doesn’t show up in another ten minutes, I’m going to go find her.” He dropped to his knees on his mattress and pulled back the covers. “Unless someone else knows where she is.”
Rusty shook his head.
“Will you quit it?” Leila said, shoving a stack of books against the foot of her bed with unnecessary vengeance.
“What?” Tristan said, though he knew where this was going.
Leila snorted. “You’re only doing this because you think Evvie’s pretty, Triss. I wish you’d stop worshipping her—she still hates you.”
“I don’t worship her,” Tristan said, peeved. He punched his pillow flat along the wall, where it served as a back rest. “I’d do the same for any of you. Even Eli.”
“Aw, thanks,” Eli said sarcastically.
Leila shook her head at Tristan. “I doubt it.” Stretching out on her stomach, she opened a book and held it close to her face, as though trying to block Tristan from view. “If I vanished, you wouldn’t go tearing off to look for me like this.”
“No,” Tristan said mildly. “If you were missing, I would’ve searched for you hours ago.”
Before the ten minutes were up, Evvie tiptoed through the barrier and appeared abruptly in the doorway of the Subroom. Tristan had been pretending to read, but when he saw Evvie he sat up and threw off his covers.
“Where’ve you been?” he demanded. Now that she was here, and obviously unharmed, he was annoyed that she’d given him reason to worry.
Evvie crossed to her mattress, looking distraught. “I don’t need a babysitter,” she said. Then she appeared to reconsider. “Um?” she said, louder than before. It looked as though she was trying to make an announcement.
“What is it?” Tristan asked, trying not to sound too harsh. He got to his feet and approached her slowly.
“It’s the teachers,” Evvie said, her lips barely moving. “They’re doing something horrible.”
Tristan nodded grimly—he’d already guessed as much, given their repeated arguments on morality. “What are we supposed—”
“No,” Evvie snapped, cutting him off. “This is different. They’re doing something tonight, and people are going to get killed.”
Tristan swore. He hadn’t imagined this. The teachers couldn’t be murderers—well, maybe Drakewell could, but the others? “How do you know?” he whispered. Everyone was watching Evvie now.
“S-someone told me.” She swallowed visibly, her small eyes darting around the room.
“Are they going to kill us?” Hayley asked, clutching her pillow to her chest.
“We’re not the ones in trouble,” Eli said. “Damn it! What the hell are we supposed to do?”
“Are you sure this is true?” Trey asked steadily. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
Evvie nodded.
Closing her book, Leila got to her feet. “Guys?” she said. “We should talk this out. Come on.” She made her way tentatively over to the fire, where she curled up on the sofa, bare feet tucked between two cushions.
Tristan crossed the room and sat down beside her, with Rusty on his right. The others settled down around them, claiming the remaining armchairs or drawing over chairs from the table.
“Okay, Evvie,” Leila said sharply. “Before we can discuss anything, we need more details. Who told you about...whatever the teachers are doing? Can we trust that person? And what is it the teachers are supposed to be doing, anyway? The fact that people are going to die doesn’t mean much. Are the teachers just abandoning people who need their help, or are they actually slaughtering people?” Leila sat back, hugging her knees.
Evvie’s distress was plain. “I don’t know,” she muttered at last. “I don’t know any of it. And I can’t tell you who said it—they made me promise not to tell.”
Eli jumped to his feet, kicking his chair away. “What the hell?”
Trey grabbed the back of Eli’s pajama shirt, holding him back. “Sit down,” he said.
Breathing heavily, Eli took a step back, though he did not resume his seat.
Tristan leaned towards Evvie and whispered, “Is this about the person I helped you with?”
She shook her head.
The others were starting to mutter to each other; after a moment, Hayley’s sullen voice rose above the murmur. “I want to go home,” she said. She was clutching a blanket tight around her shoulders, her face pinched as though she struggled not to cry.
“You don’t have a home to go to,” Leila said. “None of us do, isn’t that right?” She looked around the circle, waiting for someone to contradict her. “We’re not just criminals; we’re criminals with nowhere to go after Juvie. That’s why they took us.”
“Shut up, Leila,” Eli spat. “No one cares.”
They were sitting so close together on the couch that Leila’s shoulder was pressed against Tristan’s arm—he felt her shoulders tense, ready to have a go at Eli, but he punched her gently in the knee. “Stop that.”
Again Trey yanked Eli back towards his seat; this time Eli turned and began shouting at Trey instead. Tristan shouted at them to calm down, but suddenly everyone was yelling.
Hayley burst into tears. “I wanna go home! I’ll just run away. I can’t do this anymore.”
Cailyn tried to calm her down, but a moment later they were both shrieking at Leila. Rusty waved his arms in the air, calling for order; when no one paid him any attention, he turned to Evvie and demanded that she tell them everything she knew.
“Guys!” Tristan roared. “Quiet!” He was scared at what this could turn into.
No one hea
rd. He jumped to his feet and shouted again. When they continued to ignore him, he grabbed a porcelain teacup from the table and hurled it to the ground. The teacup shattered, spewing shards across the floor, and the crash finally startled everyone into silence.
“Stop it, everyone!” His voice was loud in the sudden lull. “Yelling won’t do us any good. It’s the teachers we need to fight, not each other.”
With matching sullen scowls, Leila and Eli resumed their seats.
Trey folded his arms over his chest. “I’m going to find a teacher,” he said softly.
“No!” Evvie cried. “Don’t go, you can’t, you—”
Ignoring her, Trey crossed the room and vanished through the barrier.
A moment later everyone’s eyes returned to Tristan. What was he supposed to tell them?
“Evvie, are you completely certain that the teachers are killing people?” he asked.
She nodded glumly.
“Someone we know, or strangers?”
“Strangers.”
“And are they doing it to protect us, or because of some insane magical war?”
Evvie’s lip was trembling. “The people are innocent. They don’t know anything about this.”
“Right,” Tristan said. “First of all—Hayley, we can’t run away. I didn’t tell you guys about this, but I tried to escape during Merridy’s survival test. You guys know how well that worked. I was making good progress, heading south, when I got caught in an avalanche, and the next thing I knew I was back in Grindlethorn’s hospital.”
Hayley sniffed and wiped tears from her swollen eyes.
“Right now we’re completely at the mercy of the teachers,” Tristan continued. “We can’t leave, we can’t disobey them, and we can’t complain. But this Subroom isn’t just a place where we’re safe from Zeke’s gang—down here, we’re safe from the teachers as well.”
“Gracewright knew that,” Leila said. “Gracewright knew what we were doing, but she still agreed to plant the Prasidimum here. Some of the teachers agree with you, Triss—they don’t want us to be helpless.”
Leila was right, but that was the strangest part of the whole thing. If the teachers were arguing amongst themselves, divided and unhappy, what held them together?
“We need to gather our own strength,” Tristan said. “If we have power, enough to threaten the teachers, maybe we’ll have a say in what happens to this place—to us.” He glanced at Amber, who sat curled in one of the wooden chairs outside the circle.
“We need to find out what this magic is for. Once we know the secret of this place, we can decide who’s right and who’s wrong.”
Eli slammed his fist on the arm of his chair. “And what about the people they’re going to kill?” he demanded.
Tristan shook his head and slumped back against the cushions. “I don’t know. But what can we do?” He wanted to take Evvie by the shoulders and shake her until she gave the answers he wanted.
Some of Tristan’s worry must have shown in his face, because Leila rested her cheek against his shoulder and whispered, “We’ll figure it out. Don’t worry.”
After a long moment of silence, Rusty said, “What about Christmas?” His quiet voice sounded very childish.
Leila smiled sadly. “I haven’t celebrated Christmas in years. Let’s just try and enjoy ourselves, okay?” Tristan followed her gaze to the fireplace, where soft magical flames danced along a log. “Once the holiday is over, we can decide what to do.”
Though Eli gave Leila an ugly look, and Evvie crossed her arms and pouted, no one said anything more. Already it seemed as though the room had split apart, reverting to the wary friendships from the beginning of the year. Hayley was no longer crying; she and Cailyn had drawn their chairs closer together and were whispering, casting pointed glances at the others. Leila and Rusty had subsided into an uncomfortable silence.
After a long time, Trey reappeared in the doorway. Evvie noticed him first and demanded to know what he’d told the professors.
“I couldn’t find them,” Trey said. At his quiet words, the muttering died immediately. “I looked in every classroom, and knocked on the doors to all their bedrooms, but they’re gone. The whole Lair is empty.”
Chapter 15: Christmas in the Lair
In the morning, the Subroom was still as divided as before—Hayley and Cailyn were already gone when Tristan woke, while he and Eli deliberately avoided each other.
“What’s wrong with everyone?” Rusty asked, trailing disconsolately behind Tristan and Leila on the way to breakfast.
“I don’t know,” Leila said. In the dark tunnel, her voice was bodiless. “I honestly don’t know.”
Tristan said nothing. He was just grateful that Leila and Rusty hadn’t turned on him as well.
At breakfast that morning, Alldusk called out a greeting as Tristan took his seat. Tristan avoided Alldusk’s gaze and didn’t reply. When Quinsley came around with orange juice and scrambled eggs, Leila was the only one who thanked him.
“Tristan, could I have a word?” Alldusk said when Tristan made to leave the ballroom.
Tristan couldn’t ignore a direct question. “See you,” he mumbled to Leila and Rusty.
“Is everything all right?” Alldusk asked quietly.
Tristan stared fiercely at his black shoes.
“If there’s anything that you’ve seen or heard, anything that you’d like to talk to me about...”
With a curt nod, Tristan turned and strode from the ballroom. Alldusk must have guessed why Tristan was upset; how could he justify murder? How could he show his face in the ballroom as though nothing had happened?
Despite everything, the next week was one of the happiest times Tristan could remember. The halls of the Lair grew brighter and more colorful by the day—the doors were festooned with wreaths, the plain marble surfaces draped with pine garlands, and half of the enchanted lights glowed green or red. The far side of the ballroom was dominated by an enormous Christmas tree, so tall that only the lowest third had been decorated. Even standing on a rickety old ladder, Quinsley couldn’t reach any higher.
Tristan and the other kids from the Subroom watched the teachers with suspicion, but nothing in their behavior suggested anything new. Brikkens sang carols as he shuffled though the halls, his warbling baritone surprisingly sweet, and Gracewright took to wearing a Santa cap that she’d probably knitted for herself. Whatever Evvie said, Tristan couldn’t bring himself to hate them.
Every day, the sugary aroma of hundreds of baking cookies wafted through the halls. Leila spent hours helping Quinsley with the sweets, and at one point she dragged Tristan and Rusty up to the kitchen to decorate gingerbread cookies.
“I don’t think he agrees with the other teachers,” Leila said. “Come on, we really should trust him.”
“You’re not even taking this seriously,” Tristan said.
When Leila gave him a hurt look, he sighed.
“Sorry.” Glancing around the Subroom, he caught sight of Amber, who was curled up in a corner with a pile of books. “Amber, you should help us with the cookies.” He felt sorry for her—she had been trapped inside after a blizzard had practically buried the Lair’s entrance.
Amber looked up from her book, eyes wide. “I don’t know how.”
“Come on.” Tristan held out his hand, grinning; after a moment she took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet. “It’ll be fun.”
She bit her lip to hide a smile.
Up in the kitchen, Quinsley was mixing up two enormous bowls of golden-brown dough; he was delighted to see Tristan, Rusty, and Amber, and he set them to work at once, rolling out the dough and pressing cookie-cutter shapes into it.
Before long, Tristan relaxed and forgot his anger. Quinsley wasn’t responsible for what the other teachers had decided; he was just a cook, and it was easy to trust him.
Amber hadn’t exaggerated when she’d said she didn’t know how to bake cookies. She watched Tristan with wide-eyed curiosity as he
lifted gooey stars and snowmen from the floured counter, and when he gave her the spatula, she couldn’t lift the dough without squashing it.
“Maybe I should do that,” Tristan said, grinning. “You press the shapes, and I’ll lift them to the pan.”
Moving aside, Amber handed Tristan the spatula.
“Can’t you just do this with magic?” Tristan asked, pulling the pan closer. “Sometimes I can’t tell where your magic ends and you begin.”
Amber ducked her head. “Drawing on power is harder inside the Lair,” she said. “I should leave; I’ll only get in the way.”
Tristan nudged her with his elbow. “I was only teasing,” he said. “Do any of us look like we’re experts at this?”
Though Amber was silent, her shy smile returned.
Decorating the cookies took all day. “We should take some down to the Subroom,” Rusty said, when the last of the frosting had run out.
Tristan kicked him—even if Quinsley knew about the Subroom, they shouldn’t refer to it so openly.
“Ow!” Rusty yelped. “Have you got a plate we could use, Quinsley?” His fingers were brilliant with frosting, which he’d been sampling as he worked.
“Of course.” Wiping his hands on his apron, Quinsley lifted a large metal plate from the nearest cupboard.
Leila was helping stack bowls in the sink. “Open up, Triss,” she said, grinning. When Tristan obeyed, she stuck a frosting-filled spoon into his mouth.
On the morning of Christmas Eve, the students in the Subroom came to an unspoken understanding—for that day at least, they would act as though nothing divided them. This time Rusty wasn’t ignored when he went around the room, wishing everyone a happy Christmas, and even Evvie greeted Tristan quite civilly.
Eli remarked that their little Christmas tree looked wonderful. Leila and Quinsley had boiled sugar and made hand-pulled candy canes the day before, which she’d hung from every pine branch. Though Rusty had been eating candy canes off the tree since they’d arrived, no one could see a difference.
That night there was a lavish feast in the ballroom; each table was lit with enchanted gold candles and piled high with food, from savory turkey and honeyed yams to steaming zucchini bread and potato-cheddar soup. The students from the Subroom drew their tables together, until all nine were able to sit as though at one table.
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