Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,21

age—anywhere, ever—wearing that horror.

“I’ll get this stuff deconstructed before they have a chance to tell us not to get creative, then it’ll be too late for them to do anything about it.” Muirin glanced down the row of dresses at Spirit, who was wearing a look of utter horror. “Trust me,” she said, knowingly, waving the silver-and-black dress like a flag of triumph. “I might have to cover up where I take Rainbow Brite’s corsages off. You’ll love it.”

For one moment Spirit contemplated telling her not to bother, that she’d pick something out by herself. Then she looked at the other choices. And realized there were no other choices. “Um … thanks,” she said, faintly. She only hoped she wasn’t going to end up wearing something held together with safety pins.

Then, as she followed the other two out, she could have hit herself. What was wrong with her? They were all still in deadly danger—and she was worrying about a dress? She’d started her conversation with Addie and Muirin wanting to talk about Elizabeth, who behaved as if she knew she was in danger. She’d wanted to talk to them about the danger she knew they were all still in. And she’d ended up down here picking out a prom dress as if she didn’t have anything to worry about besides who’d dance with her at the ball!

This was the last thing that should have been on her mind. Maybe it wasn’t just shock and denial. Something was going on here. Maybe they were all being manipulated into forgetting what had happened at Midwinter, and even she was falling into the trap.

She started to say something to Addie and Muirin—and then stopped herself just in time. Because telling them—again—wouldn’t help. She couldn’t prove there was some sort of Jedi mind-trick stuff going on, and saying there was would only make her look more paranoid.

No, somehow she had to get them to see it for themselves.

Maybe investigating the oak in the Entry Hall would help. She had to start somewhere.

* * *

Muirin showed up to dinner a little late—not so much that she got in trouble, but enough so that a couple of the proctors gave her a glare. There were bits of white and black thread on her skirt, so Spirit knew she had made good on her plan to cut the two gowns up, and the cat-in-the-cream look on her face told Spirit that she was happy with the results. They kept the conversation to perfectly ordinary stuff over the food, but once they were free for the evening, they all retired to their favorite nook and Addie brought her Monopoly board from her room.

“I’ve been thinking about the Hunt,” Loch said, reluctantly. “And, yeah, it doesn’t belong here. And, yeah, somebody had to summon it.”

Spirit managed to not say “I told you so.” She practically held her breath as she waited for Loch to continue.

“It’s mostly Celtic in origin, so we’re looking for someone who really knows Celtic tradition, the genuine old stuff, as opposed to—oh, Nordic, or Native American or Chinese. So that’s as good a place as any to start,” he continued.

But Addie sniffed. “Oakhurst isn’t exactly the Rainbow Coalition,” she pointed out. “Most of the students and all of the teachers are whiter-than-white WASPs. That doesn’t much narrow down who could be the summoner, since practically anyone could have known about the Hunt.”

Spirit blinked a bit in surprise. Addie was right, and somehow she hadn’t noticed. Why hadn’t she noticed? Was this something else they didn’t want you to think about? But why? What difference could it possibly make?

Loch grimaced. “You’ve got me there, but it’s the only thing I can think of. Maybe if we can find someone doodling in ogham or something…”

Thanks to all the research they had done, Spirit knew what he was talking about, and—hadn’t those marks on the oak tree looked a bit like ogham? “I noticed something I hadn’t before. Two things, actually. You know the big oak tree the Entry Hall is built around?”

“You mean the Christmas—” Burke began, then blinked, looking puzzled. “Now why would I think that? Especially when you said ‘oak tree’…”

“That’s my point exactly!” Spirit said, excitedly. “What I noticed was that there’s something about the oak tree—it’s hard to remember it’s there even though it takes up tons of space!”

Both Addie and Muirin shook their heads, not as if they were saying “no,” but as if they were trying to shake something loose.