Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,105
though, he looked a lot different than she had thought he would. She’d thought he would be broken up, but he wasn’t. He didn’t look angry, either, which she’d been afraid of; she didn’t want him running off and challenging Anastus or something equally suicidal. She slipped her hand into his under the cover of the table and gave it a squeeze; he squeezed back, glanced over at her, and gave her the faintest of smiles, then let go. It took her a while to figure out what he reminded her of; finally she did. He was like a marathon runner at the beginning of the race—no idea of what was ahead of him, only knowing it was going to be incredibly hard, but determined to get across that finish line.
It was Muirin who looked absolutely miserable. She poked at her food until Burke finally spoke into the silence.
“Murr-cat. It’ll be okay. I promise.”
She looked up, hope warring with guilt in her eyes. She was about to say something when—
The power went out.
All of it. Lights, emergency lights, everything. They were in the Refectory with the curtains drawn, and it had been an overcast day, so by evening it was as dark outside as it suddenly was inside.
Within moments of losing the light, the crushing fear descended.
People started screaming; you could hear them all over the room, jumping up, chairs going over, even tables. People stumbled toward the exit, or tried to, fell, tripped over other people and furniture. It was a good thing their table was against the wall, but even so, someone shrieking like a banshee blundered into the back of Spirit’s chair, flailed wildly and smacked the side of her head, then stumbled away again.
Spirit fought the fear back and grabbed first Burke’s hand, then Addie’s on the other side of her. “Hold hands!” she managed to choke out, over the fear and the noise. “Grab hands!”
She couldn’t have told when she knew, but she did, the moment that Addie on one side and Loch on the other managed to get hold of Muirin’s hands, completing the circle. We need to break this somehow, she thought, dimly, through terror that screamed at her to run, run anywhere. People were running; she could hear them stampeding into the dark, out into the hall, screams receding as they made it past the Refectory door. And beyond? She thought she heard doors slamming. Were they running outside?
Desperately, she started chanting the first thing she could think of.
Multiplication tables. Neat, orderly, logical. Always the same.
“One times one is one,” she shouted hoarsely. “One times two is two. One times three is three. One times four is four.”
The others caught on pretty quickly to what she was doing and, raggedly, their voices joined hers as the dining room emptied, the screaming was all somewhere distant, and the terror tried to force their hands apart.
They got as far as the twelve times when suddenly, with no more warning than when it had descended, the fear vanished.
In the next moment, the lights came back up.
And there they were, sitting around the table, blinking in the light like a bunch of spiritualists interrupted at a séance. Around them the room was a wreck: tables overturned, chairs flung all over, food and dishes on the floor and broken. There were two people here besides them, and both were huddled in far corners, weeping and shaking, curled in fetal positions.
Doc Mac charged into the Refectory a moment later, hair wild, eyes wilder. He spotted them, and barked out, “Stay here! Don’t move until another teacher or one of the Breakthrough people comes!” and dashed out again.
They looked at each other, then at their shattered classmates in the corners. Spirit shrugged, got up, and went over to one of them. Addie joined her a moment later, and they tried to get Sharon Hastings to uncurl. Loch and Burke went to the other—Noreen Templeton. Muirin stayed where she was, paper white, eyes dilated, shaking.
Truth to tell, Spirit wasn’t far from that, herself.
Finally Lily Groves showed up, grim-faced and angry. By that time the friends had managed to get Sharon and Noreen over to the table; for lack of anything better, since they were shaking like leaves, Spirit had gotten a couple of the tablecloths that weren’t too splattered and wrapped them around their shoulders. Addie was getting them—and Muirin—to drink some hot tea so loaded with sugar it was practically syrup.