The Assassin Game Read online

  “Giants—are they really a myth?” she reads.

  A flutter of laughter. Nothing like a bit of self-deprecation to get everyone on board. Beside me, Vaughan snorts. A few heads turn to look at him.

  “Almost every culture has its tales of giants.” She looks at us for encouragement. “Indeed, giants, or cewri, feature prominently in Welsh folklore. But what are their origins? Did they really exist? And are they still walking amongst us?” Another smattering of laughter. “As a person of size”—she chances a little flirt with her audience—“I was excited to find out.”

  Warming to her subject, she reads an essay that is clearly pseudo-copied from the school encyclopedia or some Wiki. But as an athlete, Emily should be applauded for even finding the library. Her talk is lightly amusing, and for what I suspect was an eleventh-hour under-the-duvet piece of frantic composition, it’s none too shaming. There’s a decent amount of Welsh to keep her tripping over bundles of consonants and a slight element of us laughing at, not quite with, her. But that’s OK. In many ways it’s a sympathetic audience of preoccupied genii—and the rest of us, who are just very glad it is not our turn.

  “Canthrig Bwt, a giantess and witch notorious in the folklore of Gwynedd, lived under a great stone in Nant Peris and killed and ate a number of the community’s children,” Emily enthuses.

  Nice. Sometimes I think we could do with that kind of giant around here.

  My mind begins to wander, regardless. Vaughan is bored too. He’s shifting around in his chair and staring at various people around him, like he’s trying out a remote Vulcan mind meld.

  I’m wondering when I can talk to Daniel and what I’ll say to him when I do, when I see something twitch in the corner of my vision. It’s as though something was moving in the shadows of the velvet curtains, onstage to Emily’s left. Vaughan thinks he sees it too; his head turns, and he squints. I rub at my eyes. No, nothing there. I need to start getting a little more sleep.

  “Although, in most legends giants are not generally thought of as child killers. Indeed, in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, it is actually an ogre and not a giant who is the villain of the piece.”

  Vaughan titters. “Fee! Fi! Foe! Fum!” he bellows. Oh no. I clap a hand over my own mouth, as if I’d done the shouting myself. Vaughan grins to himself. “A popular misconception, indeed.”

  Everyone is looking at him, including Emily, who clearly did not anticipate audience participation this early in proceedings. Down the line of seats, Alex leans forward and raises an eyebrow at me. I’m searching my database for a suitably resigned grimace, but before I can slap it on my face, the velvet curtains twitch again. I turn to look. Definitely something there. What is it? A mouse? I wouldn’t be surprised; this place is old and Ezra is not big on pest extermination. Most nights I fall asleep to the sound of things scratching in the walls.

  Something skitters forward on the stage. I sit up a little straighter. Not a mouse—it’s the wrong sort of movement. I look around me. Does everybody else see it?

  Most do, but Emily doesn’t. She clears her throat, still red in the face with Vaughan’s interjection. I don’t think she’s big on ad libs.

  “Although typically attributed with prodigious strength and physical abilities…”

  The skittering thing suddenly moves into her field of vision, and she does the classic double take. There’s a ripple in the audience. Finally, we’re all looking in the same direction.

  It’s a spider. A huge one. Tarantula-type huge. And it’s heading for Emily.

  “…prodigious strength and physical abilities.” She takes another run at the sentence, unable to stop glancing down at her feet. “Giants are frequently depicted as benevolent. And even if they have antagonistic tendencies, as with Goliath”—she glances again, and her voice wavers—“they can be swiftly brought down with something significantly smaller than them.”

  The spider rears up on its hind legs and jumps. It lands on Emily’s trainer. She yells and hops around, shaking her leg in a frantic jive. It clings on.

  “Get it off me!” Emily is pointing her foot out to the side, getting the spider as far away from the rest of her as possible. She flaps at it with her tablet. It’s not a terribly effective deterrent.

  The spider jumps again, this time onto her bare lower leg. Emily screams a full-throated scream and snags the spider with her hand, sending it up into the air.

  Everyone stares, nobody moving. The spider falls to the ground a mere foot away from Emily and starts to skedaddle back into the shadows of the velvet curtains. Emily watches it, and then her head falls back, her eyes roll white, and she sinks to the ground.

  And then suddenly the room is churning. Kids screaming, some laughing, everyone standing up, some pushing forward to see, some cowering back from the drama. Mr. Flynn dodges the melee, runs up to Emily, and takes the stage with a flying leap. He lifts a foot, which hovers over the spider for a moment—

  “No!” cries Vaughan beside me.

  Mr. Flynn’s foot crunches down on the arachnid. “Argh!” he cries. That spider was a lot hardier than he was expecting. He kicks it over the stage. Bits clink off it and bounce on to the floor.

  “It’s mechanical,” Vaughan mutters. “A mechanical spider.”

  The staff starts herding, getting us all out of there, pronto. A couple teachers, plus Mr. Flynn, are bending over Emily, who has come around and is coughing and spluttering.

  “Someone get the EpiPen!” Flynn roars. I try to catch a glimpse of Emily, but all I can see is one outstretched hand, reaching for something. The rest of her is obscured by staff.

  “Right, upperclassmen, you’re out!” Mr. Churley yells at us.

  I make for the door.

  “EpiPen?” says Vaughan excitedly in my ear. “Is she having an allergic reaction?”

  Before I can answer him, the projector screen at the back of the stage starts to unfurl, remotely controlled from somewhere else. Something is written on it, in three-foot-high letters. I recognize the font before I fully take in the word:

  Killed

  I gasp. There are a couple screams and some laughter. Kids who exited the ballroom start to try and come back in to look, and there’s a logjam. Teachers shout, telling everyone to leave, and I weave through the crowd and get the hell out.

  No need to go looking for trouble. It usually finds me soon enough.

  Chapter 17

  Trouble finds me straight away.

  The ballroom is evacuated swiftly and more efficiently than I ever thought possible. Kids are rushed into the corridor like cows on the way to slaughter.

  A hand grips my upper arm. “We need to get a look at that robot spider,” Vaughan says, pulling me aside under the stairwell. “What’s left of it anyway. Before they sweep it up.” He thinks fast. “You create a diversion; I’ll sneak in and grab the pieces.”

  “A diversion?” I say. “Were you actually in the room just now? How do I divert from a robot spider biting a pupil who goes into anaphylactic shock?”

  Vaughan shrugs. “Take off your clothes?”

  “Isn’t that your thing?” I begin to walk away but turn on him before I get swept into the crowd heading out of Main House. “Do you really think they’ll let anyone in there? It’s a crime scene now. Emily actually got hurt, and for all we know, she may die.”

  Vaughan looks amazed. “Do you think so?”

  “Yes!” I splutter. “She collapsed, and Flynn was shouting about EpiPens, you heard him! She has some nut allergy or something. Everyone knows. She’s even got a flippin’ necklace on that tells you so. I would have thought you’d have noticed that with your amazing skills of observation.”

  He looks stricken. “The Rod of Asclepius?”

  I raise my eyebrows at him. “If you say so. The snake and sword symbol thing that means medicine. On the back of it, it says she’s alle
rgic to stuff.”

  The hallway has cleared. In the distance, I think I can hear shouting from the ballroom. Vaughan does too. He edges out from under the stairs and starts to float toward the double doors.

  “Vaughan!” I hiss at him, but he’s not having it. I pad after him. “Look, if you must—come with me.” I grab him and pull him right, along a short corridor and through another door into a second corridor. There’s not much light in here, and I’m perfectly happy with that.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Backstage.” I hang a left and we find the door. The ballroom isn’t used for theatrical performances often, as we have the amphitheater and a barn that has been converted into a theater, but I happen to know there’s a small backstage area to the ballroom stage that is stuffed with chairs and hymn books. Once Daniel was rehearsing in the ballroom for a recital, and we ducked back here for a look.

  I open the door to backstage. A light is on, a reading light balanced on a pile of chairs at the far end of the room.

  “Whoa.” I put a hand on Vaughan’s chest. “Someone’s definitely been here.”

  Vaughan pushes past me, starts searching the floor. He whispers to me, “Oh—I see, there’s a safety curtain between here and the stage. And here! A gap. Just enough for the spider to be launched.”

  I tiptoe over to him. The thing he’s calling a safety curtain looks more like a sliding door that folds into itself when retracted. Normally it’s locked into place, but someone has pulled it open a little to reveal the velvet curtain which hangs on the stage in front of it. On the other side, we can hear the voices of the people in the ballroom, muffled—and some kind of scrabbling noise.

  “They must have moved her from the stage,” Vaughan whispers. I nod. The voices aren’t very near. We listen for a few seconds. I can recognize Mr. Flynn’s voice and Ms. Lasillo’s, and I think I hear Emily groaning, but it’s hard to make out actual words.

  Vaughan bends low. “It’s so dusty in here you can see the marks where someone knelt to line the spider up properly.”

  “Yeah.” I trace our steps back a little. “Shame we’ve probably scuffed away any footprints with our own.”

  “Cate, this isn’t Nancy Drew,” Vaughan snarks. “What were you going to do, trace a drawing of them?”

  I fume at him, hand on hip. “At least we could see what size the Killer’s feet are. Could determine girl or boy.”

  Vaughan sighs. “Boy. Do I need to repeat again? Another female victim. A mechanical spider, for heaven’s sake.”

  “That’s sexist. And pretty ignorant, given the robo girl-geeks we have at this school.” I give him a look.

  “Hmm. Still something very male about sinking your teeth into a girl’s leg.” He does vampire teeth at me, and I roll my eyes. He chuckles and continues. “So, the Killer places the spider here, and then he’s free to operate it remotely.” Vaughan moves away from the curtain, on hands and feet like a monkey, bobbing his head down to look beneath chairs and dusty boxes. “What are the chances?” He reaches under a low table. “Wake up, little spider, wake up.” He retrieves something slowly, with a handkerchief. He looks at it, being careful not to touch it directly, and then holds it out on his palm to show me. Half a spider’s face, with one googly eye and a little metal fang.

  “Be careful!” I can’t help but warn, even though the thing is pretty mashed.

  Vaughan sniffs it, then places a gentle fingertip under the fang.

  “What are you doing?” I say, alarmed. He rubs the fang, then sucks on his finger.

  “Vaughan!” I say. “Are you insane?”

  He mock chokes, then smiles at me. “Yum.”

  I shake my head. “So go on, tell me. It’s peanut butter, isn’t it?”

  “Smooth, not crunchy.” He nods. “The Killer knew about Emily’s allergy.”

  “Jeez.” I shudder. “That’s not red paint in the shower. That’s messing with someone’s actual life.”

  Vaughan pushes his sleeves up and rubs his hands over his hair. “It doesn’t make sense, does it? This Kill is completely different from the other three. No, this Killer has a completely different personality.”

  “Two Killers?” I pull a face. “Would Alex put two Killer cards in the mix?”

  Vaughan looks at me. “You know him better than me. What do you think?”

  “Maybe.” I clear my throat. “It would certainly make this Game memorable. Alex would like that.”

  “Yeah, well.” Vaughan wanders over to the gap in the curtain again. “Killer number two is maybe forgetting this is all just a game.”

  On the other side of the safety curtain, the noise suddenly ramps up. Vaughan beckons me over, and we crouch together, ears against the gap.

  “They’re not here yet?” It’s Flynn, shouting. “Then what’s their ETA?”

  Whoever replies is too far away for us to hear.

  “…causeway…emergency…” It’s Ms. Lasillo, but her voice doesn’t carry as far.

  “Of course,” Vaughan whispers to me, his face serious. “How does the ambulance get here if the tide is in?”

  “Ssh!” I listen again.

  “…the lifeboat, although if it wasn’t under control…helicopter…” It’s Mrs. James, the deputy head.

  “By boat or by air.” Vaughan shakes his head. “They’re taking no chances.”

  There are some bumping sounds and murmurs of instruction and then everything goes quiet.

  We do a quick scan of the rest of the room, but there’s nothing else to find. Vaughan pockets the spider parts, and we leave.

  The staff has succeeded in getting most students into classrooms, but when the helicopter flies over, there’s little they can do to tear people away from the windows.

  I’m in psychology, with Marcia, Tesha, Carl, Alex, and Daniel, plus a couple non-Guild. We’re not close enough to Main House to see Emily being stretchered out, but we see the helicopter fly over on its way back to the mainland.

  Our teacher, Ms. Carol, puts up no fight as we line the window.

  “Don’t worry,” she says. “Emily’s in expert hands now. I’m sure she’ll be all right.”

  “She’d better be,” says Carl grimly.

  “Do any of you know if this was some kind of prank?” Ms. Carol says gently.

  No one speaks. But really, Ms. Carol—what else could it be?

  “I’m sure no one intended Emily to actually get hurt.” The teacher fills the gap. “Anyway, let’s begin the lesson now.”

  “Did they call the police?” Marcia asks Ms. Carol, but the teacher only shrugs.

  “I know as little as you. It may be up to Emily’s parents.” She beckons us from her desk. “Let’s all sit down now.”

  As the lesson begins, I’m willing Ms. Carol to tell us to do something on our laptops, because then I can surreptitiously log on to Crypt and see what the chatter is. But perhaps there won’t be any—after all, every Guild member is in the same boat: stuck in a lesson, dying to talk about what’s happened. Except Emily, of course. She could just be, well, dying.

  The first half of the lesson is a discussion, but after a while, we’re tasked to begin an essay and everyone breaks out the hardware. As soon as I can, I log on. I’m impressed by how much talk is already going on. I look down the thread from the last half hour; sooperdooper has been online, as has DeadMcTavish, AllKillerNoFiller, RAW, Banana Hammock, and General Disarray. As far as I can tell, those users can’t be in this room, because nobody here has had the opportunity to get online until now.

  Or have they? Daniel had his tablet out briefly. Carl was called up to look at something on Ms. Carol’s machine, and she stepped away from her desk for a few minutes. But it would take balls of steel to log on and post in that short space of time, wouldn’t it?

  As more posts begin to pop up, I look around at my cla
ssmates. Laptops are being abused left, right, and center. Tesha is sitting with Ms. Carol at the teacher’s desk, going through a worksheet. I can tell she’s really frustrated not to get online. I watch users join the fray. 13*is*my*lucky*number appears. Becky_is_Dead starts posting, and IceColdBlond. Everyone is reaching out for more info on Emily, but no one knows anything.

  Then Alex posts:

  ATTENTION, all members, this is your GRAND MASTER.

  Emergency Summoning today @ 6:30 p.m. SHOW UP to high tea; we do not want to draw attention to ourselves. Leave promptly when you have finished, and go directly to the caves. Do not be late.

  STRICTLY NO MORE POSTS OR MESSAGES FROM ANYONE BUT ME ON CRYPT UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.

  The bell rings for end of lesson. I’m just about to shut down my machine, when:

  Skulk

  Death is a debt we all must pay

  Skulk

  (That was Euripides)

  Skulk

  Bitch asked for it

  Skulk

  (That last one I made up all on my own)

  I shake my head and shut down my machine. Whoever Skulk is, they’re a moron. And what do they mean by that anyway? Is Skulk claiming responsibility?

  As I leave the room, Daniel is standing outside, leaning against the wall, bag of books over his shoulder and the ever-present violin case. He looks at me, and just as I’m about to make some excuse about how I have to run, he leans in and hugs me. Right there and then. In public.

  “I’m sorry for how I’ve behaved.” He squeezes me, his hands rubbing up and down my back. “I’ve been a prat.”

  “Yeah, me too.” I do the half-reciprocated back-pat thing because I’m completely blindsided by this. In the distance, I spy a group of our year heading for the studies. I really hope they don’t see us.