Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,30

go?” Spirit wondered aloud, and thought, And what happens when they figure out I’m never going to get any magic?

“Maybe they don’t go anywhere.” She looked up, and Loch shook his head. “I am completely without a clue here.”

“You don’t suppose…” she gulped, but it had to be said. “You don’t suppose that the ones without magic … die?”

That possibility had been haunting her ever since she got here; that the only reason that she had lived was because she wasn’t “normal.” And worse … that because she wasn’t “normal,” her family had gotten a big fat target painted on them. So in a way, the reason they were dead was because of her.

Loch looked her right in the eyes and nodded just a little. “It makes a kind of awful sense, doesn’t it?” he replied.

She swallowed hard. She didn’t want to think about it. Instead she showed him the pile of scrapbooks. “I found these. I think they belonged to the original owner of the house.”

He got up and came over to where she was sitting, squatted down on his heels beside her and looked through a few pages of one. “These might have something for Addie in them, and I doubt anyone is going to miss them. We might as well take them upstairs.”

She nodded, and shoved roughly half of them over to him. He picked them up wordlessly.

She still felt awkward after his revelation, and the awkwardness didn’t pass once they were out of the Furnace Room. It was only when they got into the hallways near the kitchen that it was broken, when she thought she heard a faint footfall, and they both froze.

Loch put a hand on her arm, ran it up to her mouth, and tapped her lips, warningly. She nodded. They both held as still as they could, though it seemed to Spirit that her breathing was horribly loud, and surely her heart was beating hard enough for someone to hear it.

She also had the creepy feeling that there were eyes on her.

But if it was Ms. Corby, or one of the other teachers, why hadn’t someone jumped out to confront them? They were breaking the rules; they shouldn’t have been out of their rooms this late, and certainly not together.

Maybe it was another student. Maybe it was someone who was sneaking into the room of a girlfriend—or boyfriend.

They stood like that, unmoving, for so long her legs started to cramp.

Loch could have left her, of course. He was a Shadewalker, he was really in no danger of getting caught.

But he didn’t. He stayed with her, hand warm against her arm, while she stood there getting all knotted up with tension, listening for another sound out in the dark.

Finally he squeezed her arm again, and tugged it a little before letting go.

They parted at the divide between the boys’ and girls’ wings; the entire time they’d been making their way back to the dorms, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something or someone following them. But whatever, whoever it was, he, she, or it didn’t make its presence known. She got back to her room and eased the door open and closed again without a feeling of relief. All she could do was find her closet by feel and shove the pile of scrapbooks into the back of it on the floor, behind the shoes and boots. She’d have to find a better place for them later; for now it was enough that they were out of immediate sight.

Then she got her pajamas back on and huddled in the cold bed, shivering until her body heat warmed it up, and she finally was able to fall asleep.

* * *

Elizabeth Walker wrapped her arms around herself in the hallway and stared at the door she had just seen someone enter. There had been two people down in the part of the house past the kitchen. One of them had been a boy, since he’d gone to the boys’ wing. The other—she hoped she had counted the number of doors right; she wouldn’t know who it was until daylight and she could check the nameplates.

What had they been doing down there? She was pretty sure it wasn’t for making out. Who’d go make out in the storage rooms when everyone had his or her own private room and it would be just as bad to be caught out of bed as in it with someone? She thought she’d seen them carrying something, maybe