“She’s not here to keep you locked up, Will,” Robbins whispered. “Just to make sure you’re okay. Call me, immediately, if you need anything.”
“I will.”
Will walked into the great room. Brooke sat at the dining table next to Nick, who was in a wheelchair with his right leg elevated. She jumped to her feet when Will came in. Elise rose from the sofa, and Ajay popped out of his room.
Brooke got to him first and hugged him as hard as she could. She tried to keep from crying and failed miserably, while everyone else bunched around him. Even Elise brushed away a tear when she got her chance to hug him.
“Damn it, bro,” said Nick. “Damn, I’m so damn sorry. I don’t know what to say.”
Will had to squat on an arm of the wheelchair to hug Nick, and Nick nearly broke Will’s ribs. The girls made hot chocolate. Ajay got a fire going and they gathered around it, even Nick, who climbed out of his chair and limped down onto the sofa.
Brooke started to explain that she’d been walking back from the library when two masked figures had come out of the woods. Will saw the trauma carving lines on her face and took her hand.
“We know the rest,” he said. “Don’t go back there.”
Brooke seemed grateful. “Were your parents really on that plane?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” said Will. “They were a few days ago. We’ll have to wait and see. Did they ever find Todd?”
“Not yet,” said Ajay.
“They nabbed six Knights at the Barn, three at the boathouse,” said Elise. “And Lyle.”
“That leaves three of the thirteen Knights still unaccounted for,” said Ajay. “Including Todd. Nick thinks you’re right. Todd must’ve been the Paladin at the Barn.”
“Any word on Lyle?” Will asked Ajay.
“I talked to a friend at the med center,” said Ajay. “He says Lyle is one hundred percent non compos.”
“Whoa, he’s not even on campus anymore?” asked Nick.
“Non compos mentis,” said Elise. “Look it up.”
“It means he’s fried his motherboard,” said Ajay. “Blown his circuit breakers. Catatonic and nonresponsive. A condition most often associated with a devastating and perhaps irreversible nervous breakdown.”
Will thought back to the cave, when he’d seen Lyle’s face inside the wendigo’s rib cage. What had that thing taken from him? How much of Lyle was left?
“Well, pardon me while I break out the world’s smallest violin and play a really sad song,” said Nick.
“He’s still a person, Nick,” said Elise.
“Or was,” said Ajay. “At least sort of.”
“He was a little kid once, like us,” said Brooke. “With people who cared about him.”
“I was told Lyle’s parents are flying in as well,” said Ajay.
“There, see?” said Elise. “He has parents.”
The word appeared to bring Nick back to the weight of Will’s loss. “Sorry,” he mumbled.
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“Lyle got messed up by a nasty from the Never-Was that he brought over in the caves,” said Will, filling them in about the wendigo. “Lyle told me the Caps made him put a Ride Along in his own neck. I cut it off him. He hated me, he hated all of us, but I don’t think he would have tried to kill me if they hadn’t made him do it.”
No one said anything for a moment.
“Lyle also told me that the Bald Man is in charge,” Will said. “His name is Mr. Hobbes. Hobbes and the Caps tried to grab me at the airport in Madison.”
“What?!” said Nick.
“Good God, Will,” said Ajay.
“Another thing: He’s not exactly human,” said Will. “He’s not completely from the Never-Was, either. He seems like he’s … some kind of hybrid.”
“How do you know?” asked Elise.
Will held up his dark glasses.
“That’s it,” said Nick. “I’m getting a pair of those.”
“Did you tell the cops what he’s done to you and your family?” asked Brooke.
“No. He’s got heavyweight connections and I don’t know who we can trust yet. But Rourke definitely did not know this guy. That’s a good sign. Now I need to catch up on something. Nick: What the hell happened at the Barn?”
“Dude, the Big Paladin Statue Dude started chasing me,” said Nick. “I think they must’ve slapped one of those Ride Alongs on it.”
“And this was just before you were attacked by the grizzly bear and the giant squid,” said Ajay dryly.
“Dude, I told you—I wasn’t attacked by them. They were defending me. Against the statue.”
Will put his hand on Nick to calm him. “I have no idea why, Nick,” he said, “but I believe you.”
“Thanks, man.”
Everyone fell into a sober moment of silence. Brooke took Will’s hand.
“So, is it over, Will?” she asked. “Are you safe now?”
“I’m not sure,” said Will. “We know that Lyle ran the Knights, and Mr. Hobbes was running Lyle.”
“And Hobbes gave the order to kill you,” said Elise. “That’s why they staged this whole thing.”
“Except,” said Will. “Except that Lyle had a Ride Along at the boathouse that he was going to hit me with. So maybe the order changed and they decided they’d rather control me than kill me.”
“Why would it change?” asked Brooke.
“Lyle said they were afraid of me.”
“Afraid of you?” asked Ajay. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” said Will, stirring the fire. “But I expect the school’s going to tell us the Knights of Charlemagne are finished now. A sickness, like an outbreak of measles they’ve stamped out. And they have two perfect fall guys: Lyle and Todd.”
“But they are guilty,” said Ajay.
“Up to a point,” said Will. “I think Lyle realized he’d become a scapegoat, expendable in some way, and that lets the Center nail a lid on this whole rotten barrel. The other Knights will be expelled and face criminal charges. Todd’s still missing, and I don’t think they’ll find him. And Lyle probably spends the rest of his life drooling into a tube.”
“You almost sound like you feel sorry for him,” said Ajay.
“I do,” said Will. “He’s as much a victim as anybody, maybe even more so. The point is, all of this lets the school send a message to their students’ families that they’ve weeded out the bad apples and everything’s under control.”
Elise, watching Will closely, asked, “Is that what the school really thinks?”
“I hope so,” said Will. “That’s exactly what we should want them to think. And for our sake, we’d better hope it’s true.”
“Why?” asked Ajay.
“Because if it isn’t, it means the Knights of Charlemagne have been in business all along, ever since they were supposedly disbanded back in 1941. It means they still are, and that powerful alumni, possibly some parents and even teachers, have been mixed up in this all along—”
“Dude, you’re scaring the crap out of me,” said Nick. “I’m serious. I literally have no crap right now.”
“—working on a secret plan they call the Paladin Prophecy,” said Will, looking at each of them. “I figured out how it all fits together after Lyle said some things to me today. None of you are going to like it.”
Ajay’s eyes grew bigger and rounder than a bush baby’s. “I have a feeling this may require a beverage more fortifying than cocoa.”
Will stood up and walked around. “Why did they put us all together in this pod? Think about it for a second. What do we have in common?”
The others looked at each other, all thinking.
“We’re scholarship students,” said Ajay. “Our families aren’t wealthy.”