Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,10
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TWO
It took Muirin about half an hour to wolf down three heaping plates of gooey sugary treats. On her last trip back to their table she brought two more plates heaped so high with brownies and chocolates that Spirit was amazed they didn’t spill. It was obvious Muirin was settling in for the long haul, and with good reason: You couldn’t take anything out of the Refectory—though you could eat as much as you wanted while you were here—so most of the other kids were hanging around, too. Spirit didn’t have any appetite for the desserts, but the chance to mainline as much Diet Pepsi as she wanted was too good to pass up.
When Addie said she wanted to try out her new Monopoly game, it didn’t take much coaxing for her to get all of them to agree to play, because really, it was a game with them Addie wanted for Christmas, not the set itself. Addie chose the Moneybag token (with a faint smirk), and Loch chose the Top Hat (with an ironic bow). Burke chose the Race Car (he was from Indianapolis, home of the Indianapolis 500), and Muirin (surprisingly) chose the Scottie Dog. Spirit didn’t care what piece she picked, so just reached in and grabbed one at random. It turned out to be the Cannon. I wish I did have a cannon, she thought with irritation. I’d blow up Oakhurst. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t really solve anything. She tried to concentrate on the game, but her mind kept wandering—and not to good places. She was just as glad she’d taken her new ring off again—Loch hadn’t, and he kept looking at it with an expression of pleased wonder that was kind of sick-making. She wondered if Loch would find a “Destiny” in his stone when it finished changing color. Hearing about them had absolutely creeped her out.
And at least part of what creeped her out was that no one else seemed creeped out. She wouldn’t have known if the other kids were—from what Burke had said, you weren’t even supposed to know what a “Destiny” was until your Senior Year here—but even her friends just seemed to shrug the whole idea off.
That wasn’t all they were shrugging off, either. They’d defeated the Wild Hunt three days ago. They should still have been trying to deal with their very-near-death experience at the cadaverous claws of a collection of ghosts, demons, and—oh yeah—evil elves. She certainly was! She’d had nightmares about the battle in the snow every single night. But from the way the other four acted—and everything they said—it was as if that fight had happened three years ago, not three days ago. And that was just crazy.
She wanted a break. Needed a break. They’d taken on one of the nastier things in Celtic mythology—and won—and an all-expenses-paid month in Disney World—anywhere but here!—was the least of the things she would have liked as a follow-up. But she had the horrid feeling that things were only going to get worse from here on in. And fast.
So … get a break? Shoot, she hadn’t even gotten enough time to sit down and think. Too much wasn’t adding up, and that was terrifying. If the Wild Hunt showing up the way it had was the start of the wizard war, why wasn’t Doctor Ambrosius stocking up on magical nukes and having everyone build barricades? (Or, hey, just warning people, because that’d be nice.) And if the people here were the good wizards, where were all the bad wizards coming from? Didn’t anybody care?
She frowned, tuning out the sound of Loch and Muirin arguing—just as if it mattered—about whose turn it was, and whether or not Loch owed Muirin rent. There was another thing that had been bothering her for a while. If the only kids allowed here were magicians, but all the children of former Oakhurst students were eligible to come to Oakhurst, where did the kids who weren’t magicians go? Was there another school—a kind of Shadow Oakhurst—where the non-magical kids were sent?
“—so I got permission to have Admin ask the Trust peeps to send my formals, and—quelle surprise—she actually did, and I only fit the black one anymore,” Muirin was saying, as Spirit tuned back in to the conversation. “But that’s okay, since the others are like so last century and you gotta know if I fit one of them, that’d be the one Ms. Corby’d say I had to wear.” Muirin shuddered. “Seafoam! Come on! Maybe