Read Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies for Free Online Page B

the Library. Spirit had been worried she’d receive gifts far more elaborate and expensive than the ones she gave, but the one good thing about the draconian way Oakhurst ran things was that nobody could give expensive presents, even if they had a lot of money waiting for them in the outside world. So Loch gave her a flash drive full of music, which surprised and touched her, since she missed her music collection, and Loch had taken pains to track down (and trade for) most of her favorite songs, and Addie (who knitted) gave her a scarf that wasn’t cream, gold, or brown: It was knitted out of soft wool and striped in every color of the rainbow. Spirit was surprised to get a second gift from Muirin, as Muirin had already given Spirit her Christmas gift a few days earlier. But now Muirin presented her with one of the Oakhurst blouses, which would have been an insulting kind of gift if Muirin hadn’t covered it with intricate embroidery on the collar, the cuffs, the placket, and the back yoke. Spirit was grateful, but she couldn’t help wondering if it was some subtle Muirin-type commentary on her fashion sense.
    Burke gave her a necklace. He’d made it in Wood Shop, he told her after she opened it: It was a pendant in an oval shape, about two inches long, made with elaborate marquetry work and polished to a mirror smoothness.
    “Figured you might like to have something to wear that, well, wasn’t Oakhurst-y,” he said awkwardly.
    “I love it. I do,” she answered, reaching out to give him an impulsive hug.
    Muirin applauded mockingly—drawing irritated hisses from the other kids in the lounge, since even on Boxing Day there were always people studying—and Burke pulled away, blushing.
    “Um, so, it’s kind of stuffy in here, isn’t it?” he said clumsily. “Want to go outside and—uh, look at the stuff?”
    “What, go out where it’s cold enough to freeze your assets off and pretend the snow statues haven’t been there for the last three weeks?” Muirin mocked. “No, thanks. I am staying right here where it is nice and warm.”
    “I—” Loch began, and to her astonishment, out of the corner of her eye Spirit saw Addie’s elbow connect with Loch’s ribs, hard and fast. After what had happened Christmas Day, it was actually gratifying to see Loch on the receiving end of a “shut up” elbow. But why?…
    “You two go out and freeze your toesies off in the nice healthy subzero air,” Addie said cheerfully, as Loch gave her a look of blank astonishment. “The rest of us will keep the fire going for you.”
    Burke hadn’t missed the byplay, either, Spirit noticed—the color was back in his cheeks. If she’d met him back in Indiana (while she’d still been going to public school, before Dad decided the School Board wasn’t fit to raise hyenas, let alone set curricula), she’d never have given him a second glance. Sure, he was really good-looking—in a football-player way—but he was also quiet, bashful, self-effacing, and devout. So not what she’d been looking for in a boyfriend!
    But that had been when she was fourteen, not almost seventeen. When she’d still had a family, when magic was something you only found in books, before she’d come to Oakhurst and found out she’d been drafted into a wizard war and there were people out to kill her. She hadn’t made up her mind about whether she wanted any boyfriend at all—let alone Burke Hallows—but now she didn’t automatically dismiss him as too boring to be likable.
    Burke walked her down to the Entry Hall, where the two of them separated to get their coats—and in Spirit’s case, to get every other warm thing she could think of to bundle up in, because nothing in her life had prepared her for the cold of a Montana winter—and then met up again just inside the front door. Most of the Winter Carnival was on what would be the “front lawn” of any other place, but in the case of Oakhurst, it was the “front acreage.” It was almost