Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,11

if I was thirteen and still into Magical Girl animé!”

Spirit frowned harder. Formals? What was Muirin going on about?

“The Trust sent me another new one,” Addie said, sighing faintly. “Just like the old one, only blue this time.”

Spirit glanced around the table. The guys were exchanging “I hope they’re not going to talk about dresses all night” looks. Formals? We escaped death three days ago and they’re talking about—

“You guys seriously aren’t talking about the New Year’s Dance are you?” she asked incredulously.

Muirin gave her a slanty look. “Why not? We get graded on it, you know. Ballroom dancing, deportment, blah blah blah.”

“Don’t worry. You won’t get graded on the dancing, Spirit,” Addie said in a kindly tone of voice. “You weren’t here for the Summer Term, so you didn’t get Ballroom Dance. They only give it in the Summer Term.”

Spirit was so shocked all she could do was stare at the two of them with her mouth slightly open. “But we—But you—” She gathered her scattered thoughts. “But— We can’t just go on as if nothing happened! It isn’t over! You know it isn’t over!”

She would have said even more, but suddenly a sharp pain in her ankle interrupted her—Loch had kicked her!—and his equally sharp elbow hit her in the ribs for the second time that day.

“Let’s get something to drink,” he said. “That diet stuff might be okay for some people, but Real Men want real high fructose corn syrup.” He grabbed her wrist and practically hauled her out of her seat and off toward the Viennese Table. By now there wasn’t a mob of kids surrounding it, but about half the Refectory tables were full. They weren’t the only ones here playing a board game, and she glimpsed some kids playing card games, or just reading books and listening to music, either on Oakhurst iPods (easy to spot, since they were in custom colors) or on ones of their own.

Loch dragged her past the table, over by the kitchen doors. It was about as private as they could get without leaving. And the others would notice that—their table was right by the door.

“What do you think you’re—” she began, as soon as he stopped.

“Leave them alone, Spirit,” he hissed in an undertone. “You deal with stuff your way, let them deal with it their way.”

She blinked at him. This was the last thing she would have expected to hear, from the last person she’d have expected to hear it from. “But, Loch—”

“Don’t you ‘but’ me, Spirit White! Yeah, the New Year’s Dance is stupid, but if that’s what they want to focus on, you let them. Get it? If they want denial, whose job is it to tell them they can’t have it? Yours? Are you some kind of super-shrink now? Are you going to tell me you can help them deal when you can’t even stop moping around over your family and that’s half a year ago? Okay, we saw awful things, we almost died, but we won, game over, now let it go.”

The injustice of Loch’s accusation made her want to erupt with anger—just because he didn’t care whether or not he’d been orphaned didn’t mean she hadn’t loved her family and didn’t still miss them—and it took all her willpower to answer him instead of slapping his face and storming off. “But it’s not over! Loch, you know it’s not over! We still have to—”

“I don’t know any such thing.” Loch pulled himself up to his full height and folded his arms over his chest. “I know none of us—including you!—knows what Doctor Ambrosius and the teachers did after we told him what happened. I know they’re a million times better magicians than we are. And I know all this time he’s been telling us there’s danger out there. So what do you know? Did you follow all of them around for the last three days and see they aren’t taking what we told them seriously and beefing up the security? Have you got some kind of super Magic 8-Ball you can listen in on the meetings with?”

“But— But—” But why do you think they’ll take it seriously now when kids were vanishing for the last forty years and nobody cared? Why do you want to trust them when we know one of them was in league with the Wild Hunt? How can you think they’re going to take us seriously after you saw the basement, with all the dead kids’ stuff stored