Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,31
two piles of books, but why? What could they possibly want that they couldn’t get by daylight? Not student records, those were all kept on the computer, not in notebooks.
Maybe they knew something, too? Knew just enough, and were looking for more answers, maybe allies, the way she was?
Could it be two more of Them?
She didn’t think there were any Shadow Knights among the students.…
But could she really be sure?
* * *
Spirit didn’t get a chance to show Addie her pile of scrapbooks in the morning, because she was awakened by Muirin, who sailed in the door without even a knock, her arms full of—stuff.
“Up!” Muirin demanded. “I can’t finish this now without fitting it on you.”
“What?” After last night, Spirit felt as groggy as if she had been drugged, and she couldn’t imagine what on earth Muirin was talking about.
“Your dress, doofus!” Muirin said. “I have to fit it to you if it’s going to look decent. Up! I won’t be seen with anyone that looks like she got her dress straight out of the storage closet!”
“Uh—” Spirit didn’t get a chance to say anything else; Muirin ruthlessly pulled the covers off her, hauled her up to stand on a chair, pulled something like an inside-out gown over the top of her pajamas, and then poked and pinned and muttered while Spirit tried to wake up and make sense of what Muirin was doing.
She hadn’t gotten more than a vague notion of what the dress was—maybe—going to look like, when Muirin finished pinning, yanked it up over her head again, and sailed out the door, muttering, leaving Spirit standing with the door open, barefooted, in a shower of pins, with her pajamas half over her head.
By the time she’d picked up all the pins so she was sure she wasn’t going to end up with a toe impaled, she knew she was going to have barely enough time to get dressed to get breakfast without getting into trouble.
Loch, Burke, and Addie were just finishing as she squeaked in the door. Muirin was nowhere to be seen.
“She ate early,” Loch said, without looking up at her.
Spirit blinked, and realized that must mean Muirin had gotten up to eat as soon as the dining room opened in order to have stormed into Spirit’s room to fit the dress.
“She didn’t sleep,” Addie said, with a wry smile. “She was in a white-hot passion of creation all last night.”
“Creation or caffeine.” Burke shrugged. “Don’t look at me, I’m a guy, I don’t get all that froufrou stuff.”
Spirit sat down, silently poured milk over her cereal, and began to eat. Her brain sluggishly began to wake up … and she looked down to hide her sour expression.
Because it certainly would have been nice if the others could be half as motivated about finding out who was behind the Hunt as they were about that stupid, stupid dress.
FIVE
Spirit sat on the edge of her bed in her slip, and reminded herself for the bazillionth time that this was just one night. Nothing was going to get done or undone in just one night. It wasn’t as if this was even a Significant Night like the Equinoxes or Solstices. Not a thing had stirred, for good or bad, since the last night of the Hunt.
New Year’s Eve was just an arbitrary night on a calendar; there was nothing magically special about it. Keep her guard up, sure, but there was no reason to be paranoid.
She’d never have gone to a dance, much less a formal dinner and dance like this one, if she was still at home. If she was still at home.…
It would have, could have, been so exciting. Fancy dress, a dinner right out of a movie? Way to go, Oakhurst, for turning what should have been a dizzying experience into an ordeal, and sucking every bit of joy out of it.
That was pretty much the way things went around here, though.
She took a deep breath. Okay, so this was going to be a night of tense misery alternated with pure boredom, but hey, at least there wouldn’t be anything trying to kill her or her friends.
She was sitting on the edge of her bed in her slip because Muirin hadn’t delivered the dress yet … and if she didn’t hurry up and do so, Spirit was going to have to go to the formal dinner in whatever was left in the Little Closet of Horrors. Or whatever she could make look sort-of formal