The door closed behind him. He was gone, but nobody moved.
“Well?” Tina said. None of us looked all that enthusiastic—none of us were really the types who appreciated being Provost’s dancing monkeys. I wondered how they were going to edit the footage to make us look excited.
“Let’s get this over with,” I said and knelt by the table to open the box.
Inside, on bare wood, lay a folded note, five velvet jewelry boxes, and a stopwatch. I unfolded the page and read aloud.
“‘Treasure Hunt,’” the top of the page said. “‘You all have special talents, ways of searching out the hidden, of doing the impossible. You’ll break into the following five teams, and one at a time each team will have a chance to find the other half of the lockets in these boxes, which have been hidden outside the lodge. Conrad will monitor the stopwatch and see who finds the treasure the fastest.’ Dude, cliché,” I said. Sure enough, each box had a gold locket on a chain with the lid broken off. Each locket was a different shape: oval, circle, square, rectangle, and—of course—a heart. I read off the teams: Jerome and I were on one team, the vampires and Dorian on another. He’d teamed Tina with Ariel and Jeffrey with Lee. Odysseus was all by himself. This ought to be interesting.
“Isn’t there supposed to be a prize?” Lee said. “What do we get for winning?”
“The satisfaction of winning?” I said, shrugging. I didn’t really care, because I shuddered to think of what cheesy prize Provost would come up with.
“This isn’t very scientific,” Tina said. “And I thought we weren’t supposed to have competitions.”
“Bitching isn’t going to get it over with any faster. Think of it as a party game. Like Pin the Tail on the Donkey,” I said. “Who’s first?” We all glanced guiltily away—no one wanted to be first. We weren’t even bothering to look enthusiastic.
“Conrad, you pick, since you seem to be the one in charge,” Anastasia said.
“Let’s see,” Conrad said in a mock-serious tone. “Tina and Jeffrey are supposed to figure out where it is using their psychic powers, right? The werewolves… what are you supposed to do, sniff it out?”
“You’d be surprised,” Jerome said.
“The vampires do what, fly through the air and use super vision?”
“You watch too many bad movies,” Gemma said.
Conrad huffed and said, “And maybe Odysseus can pull it out of his top hat.”
Tina looked at Grant. “Can you really do that?”
Grant’s lips turned in a thin smile. “Not without preparation and a trapdoor.”
Conrad shook his head. “I still can’t tell if you think you’re for real or not.”
“A lot of what we’re doing here deals with perception rather than truth,” Grant said. “Many would argue that reality depends more on the former than the latter.”
There was a pause as we all absorbed that. Gemma’s forehead wrinkled, like she was still parsing the sentence.
“Right, yeah,” Conrad said finally. “So, I still perceive that you’re all deluded or faking. I think Tina and Ariel should go first.”
Ariel shrugged. “I don’t even have any weird talents. I’m like Kitty, I just talk too much.”
“Come on, why us?” Tina said.
“Because I’m betting you’ll put on the best show,” Conrad said.
And they did. At least Tina did. She started by choosing one of the lockets, closing her eyes, feeling it. Picking up vibes, whatever. I might have believed in the things she could do, but I still didn’t understand how it worked.
“What do you want me to do?” Ariel whispered, clearly in awe of the psychic.
“Hold the flashlight,” Tina said, retrieving the light from the kitchen counter.
They went outside. Gordon followed them with one of the cameras.
“What if they don’t find it?” Jerome said.
Lee sat back and stretched his arms over his head. “It’s going to be a long night.”