Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,100

through to Muirin at last? I sure hope so.…

* * *

Things had been quiet for three days.

There was actually a funeral—well, a memorial service—for the three kids who’d been killed. No one in Radial knew about that—or about the deaths of Oakhurst kids in the first place. Spirit had used her QUERCUS connection to get the online version of the Radial newspaper, and found out that the one townie that had been killed had been officially reported as a “snowmobile accident while joyriding.” The article basically said the townies had been trying to jump the gully. Well, now Spirit had a pretty good idea of what Ms. Singleton’d been doing to the townies before the emergency crews took them back to Radial.

Muirin was as good as her word. She was teaching Spirit all about Combat magic. And it turned out there were things that could interfere with it.

“A bullet through the head is pretty effective,” Muirin had said dryly. “’Cause, you know, it’s hard to control your powers when your brain’s been blown out.” But then she’d gone on to school Spirit in other options.

Muirin wasn’t the only one Spirit had gone to about this. It had occurred to Spirit that this would be a good way to test Ms. Groves, one of the magic teachers. If what she said matched what Muirin said, then that was a good test at least of whether or not Ms. Groves was giving people misinformation. Plus she might get some angles from Groves that Muirin hadn’t thought of.

Even though Ms. Groves was … scary.

Ms. Groves looked at her with an expression that made Spirit think she was about to get reamed out. “And why would you want to know something like that?”

“Because I don’t want to be known as First Casualty,” Spirit replied.

Ms. Groves had smiled. Actually smiled. It was, as expected, a scary smile.

“Very good, Miss White,” the teacher replied, and rubbed her hands a little. “It pleases me to see you applying yourself at last. When you next get on your computer, you will find you have been given access to a number of new files. Study them. There will be a test in the morning.”

Spirit thanked her, but sighed inwardly. Of course. There’s always a test in the morning.

FIFTEEN

The Oakhurst Alumns had descended in force now, and were doing their level best to make things look scarier and at the same time more secure. They were sending one big message, that was for sure. “It’s all right that people have died, we’re here to protect you now, so you can go back to your dances and your classes.”

Except, of course, that half the classes had been canceled in favor of things that were all defense oriented … so the message for Spirit was decidedly mixed. Maybe the others weren’t that bright … or maybe they were just so desperate to have things back to normal they’d grasp at anything to hang on to that illusion.

Most of the new arrivals were Breakthrough employees; the few who weren’t seemed to be friends of the Breakthrough employees. All of them had the little Oakhurst pin or tie tack or cuff links with the black serpent on it. Now that had a perfectly reasonable explanation, of course; the Gatekeepers would naturally have kept in touch with each other to a greater extent than ordinary Oakhurst grads. Mark Rider probably kept tabs on all of them and had them all in his address book. When Doctor Ambrosius called him for help, all he had to do was have his secretary work his phone tree.

Still, you’d think there’d be at least one or two without the black snake … and one or two who didn’t make her skin crawl. But they all seemed to be out of the same mold—oh, not in the way that they looked, because they ranged from geeky nerds with thick black-rimmed glasses and rumpled clothing, through people who looked like career soldiers, to people like Mark Rider and Madison Lane-Rider—but in the intensity of how they looked at you. As if they were sizing you up, all the time.

And most of them were actually living here. The building crew already had dorm-trailers and they brought in more for most of the Alumns. The rest were in guest rooms in the same wing that housed the Infirmary and Doc Mac’s office. Mr. and Mrs. Rider were the only ones who weren’t physically at Oakhurst. From what Spirit heard through Muirin, there wasn’t