Hunt and Power. Stephen Hayes

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СКАЧАТЬ I don’t think I’ve got much to worry about.”

      “Fair point,” he said as he unlocked the door. “Better make it Thursday then; these two don’t have one on that day, thank God, so you can come back here then, Playman. I’ll make sure it’s up on the notice board by tomorrow morning.”

      “Blimey, sir,” said Justin, staring at Hall in surprise. “What have you got against the Playmans, anyway?”

      “That’s not your business, Time,” said Hall. “Another detention for you; that’s two you now owe me after today.”

      Justin glared at him for a moment, but then dropped his gaze.

      When we walked in, we saw that the trolley from yesterday’s detention was back in the corner where Harry and Simon had left it. They recommenced their article reading and summarising while the rest of us wrote lines. Thankfully, there were no boxes of condoms lying around, although I did have the Light Crystal in my pocket again, so I thought I could probably handle it if Hall did decide to spring that one on some unlucky soul.

      This gave me an idea. I’d already written a page containing twenty-five lines, which still left 125 to do. I gripped the crystal again in my pocket, after having cleared the hankies away, thinking as I did so how I would like there to be a way I could get through these lines quicker. No matter how hard I thought it, though, nothing happened. That ruined my theory about how I had performed magic. Perhaps all those condoms really had been clean, and I’d just imagined the crystal going warm.

      That left me a bit downhearted indeed. I just wished I could get out of there quicker; I wasn’t asking for anything unreasonable…

      Then it happened, giving me such a fright that I jumped. The crystal went warm in my hand and immediately I started perspiring. I quickly put the hanky around it and returned to the pages in front of me, only to find that the writing I’d done on the first page had duplicated itself identically onto the next five pages beneath it, only leaving out the numbers of the lines. All I had to do now was go down the pages, numbering the lines. It took only a few minutes.

      “What?” Hall bellowed when I showed him my lines. “How the hell did you do that so quickly?”

      Everyone else looked around at me in surprise. Keeping my face as casual as possible, I said, “Practise, I suppose. Maybe you need to give me something more difficult in future.”

      “Consider it done,” said Hall menacingly, and I felt suddenly nervous; why the hell did I have to go and say that? “Now get out of here before I give you another hundred-and-fifty.”

      “Righto,” I said cheerfully. “See you tomorrow.”

      I waved at my brother and sister before leaving the room, my spirits higher than they’d ever been when walking out of a detention. It was only just after half past 3, and I expected Nicole and Peter would be at least another twenty minutes. There wasn’t a lot to do at home without Peter and James, who had told us he was going to the park with Erica. So I wandered around the school for a while, just thinking about things; Natalie, Lena, Stella, the party, the Light Crystal. I eventually decided to go to the library; I didn’t need to do any research in particular, but I thought if I walked around the shelves for a while, I could find some inspiration for that horrible oral presentation for Hall.

      But after five very boring minutes, I came to the conclusion that this would only work if Peter and James were here. The three of us were, after all, working on the presentation together, so we should probably do the research together. I was about to emerge from the shelves near the back of the library when I saw Lena, who was by herself at a secluded table, reading a book that looked (judging by the picture of an erupting volcano on the cover) as though it was for either Science or Geography. I stopped short. She looked completely focused on what she was doing, but just the sight of her being this alone made me think George had been right about her character. But I didn’t want her to see me; I wasn’t ready to confront her on that particular issue today. I ducked back into the shelves and headed back to the front, hoping to avoid her completely.

      There was a free computer near the front desk, so I decided to use it to do a bit of research on the Light Crystal. In the end, my time proved as wasteful as the minutes I’d spent wandering the bookshelves, because the search engines I tried yielded nothing relevant. I thought of the discs Lisa and Natalie had burnt during the magic display and all the documents on them. The information would be in there, but searching those would most likely take even longer than the Internet. I couldn’t see a way of doing it without telling the others, or at least having enough time to do it properly. Perhaps tomorrow…

      So I packed up my things and went home, where I figured I might as well do some homework while I waited for the others. French, Maths, IT and Health; new homework in all those subjects today, and I knew there would be more coming tomorrow, so tonight I would have to do as much of it as possible if I intended to keep on top of it all.

      Peter turned up only five minutes after I got home, looking irritable.

      “What did you do?” he asked. “How did you get out of there so quickly?”

      I hesitated, but I couldn’t see a way out without flatly lying, so I told him the truth—or part of it.

      “I’m not sure,” I said, “but I think it might have had something to do with this.”

      I showed him the Light Crystal, and he shielded his eyes; it was pretty bright when shown to the naked eye.

      “You reckon?” he said, squinting through his fingers at me. “You think it was magic?”

      “I just had my hand on it, and I was wishing I could get out of there quicker, and it just happened. It sort of went warm, and the next thing I knew, the lines were all done. I just had to do the numbers.”

      “Why didn’t you make it do mine, too?” he asked indignantly.

      “Because you wouldn’t have known what it was; you’d have freaked out,” I said reasonably. “I can tomorrow, though; if it works again, anyway.”

      He shook his head. “Hall will have me there for three hours tomorrow. Won’t matter if I get them done; he’ll just give me more.”

      At that precise moment, both our phones started vibrating. The text messages were both from Marc, and they said exactly the same thing: ‘Wed, 17/02/2010 12:00 AM, my place, HQ.’

      “That’s tonight,” I said, after reading it. “There’s a meeting on tonight, at midnight.”

      “What’s HQ?” Peter asked. “Is he calling his house ‘headquarters’ now?”

      “Hidden quarters, maybe,” I said, rereading the message, feeling a sense of relief. Perhaps at this meeting tonight, we would be able to reach some sort of resolution regarding the party.

      “Why midnight?” asked Peter. “So many people are going to have trouble getting out, and if they get caught by their parents—”

      “Well midnight so that it’s less likely they get caught,” I said, thinking out loud. “But of course if anyone does get caught, they’ll be punished real bad. Blimey, I hope Harry and Simon didn’t say anything about this aloud; they’re still in Hall’s company.”

      * * *

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