Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,34

of fanfare and flames. It turned out to be bananas in rum with sugar and cinnamon, cooked and set on fire and served on ice cream. Muirin’s eyes just lit up when she saw it, though she didn’t act the way she usually did when presented with dessert. It was good, better than the snails and the goose liver.

Every course came with a change of plates, different silverware, and a change of drinks. Not real wine, fruit juice, but it wasn’t sweet, it was dry and tart. Red with the meat, white with the fish, sparkling with the duck.

She was glad it wasn’t wine, she’d have been drunk.

They did get coffee, real coffee, with dessert. She was grateful for that, she needed the caffeine along with the sugar jolt. She never knew eating could be such hard work!

She was more than ready to go back to her room, pull on a sweatshirt, and watch a movie, but the evening wasn’t over yet.

Never mind that they had been sitting there for three hours, from seven until almost ten!

Ms. Campion signaled the end of dinner by putting her napkin on the table and waiting for one of the boys to come pull her chair out. Loch picked up on what she was waiting for first, of course. It was then that Spirit saw that Loch not only had a tux, he had a full tux with tails, like something Fred Astaire would have worn! And he looked, well, amazing in it. He pulled out Ms. Campion’s chair and she stood up. “There will be about half an hour for you to freshen up,” she said. “Then the dance will start at ten-thirty. As always, you are expected to be prompt.”

“Thank you, Ms. Campion,” they all murmured; in the rest of the room, similar gettings-up and goings-out had started. Loch pulled out Spirit’s chair, while Burke got Addie’s and Muirin’s.

Spirit would have liked nothing better than to go back to her room, pull off the dress, and pretend she was sick. But … no … there was no way she could get away with that.

Bleah.

* * *

The dance was, of course, in the gym/auditorium. The decorations from the Winter Dance were back up, along with some balloons and streamers. She’d been in a kind of numb state at the time, and couldn’t appreciate them then; now, well, on the one hand, they were pretty, all blue and white and glitter and crystals. But on the other hand, they looked cold, and not so much festive as “professional.” Like this was some kind of theater or movie set, and they were all extras who were actually working and supposed to pretend they were celebrating.

Well, yeah. We are pretending. This wasn’t our idea of a good time. Obviously if the kids had their way, this would just be a flashier version of a school dance. More and better refreshments, maybe costumes. Certainly louder music. And everyone would be using their powers, too.

The music tonight, however, was all Big Band, and none of it was swing or any kind of lively—it was kind of what you’d hear at an Old Folks Home “dance,” Spirit thought.

People are going to go to sleep in the middle of dancing, she thought, which would be kind of amusing actually. She could just see it. Like a bunch of zombies.

Use of powers was completely forbidden. The teachers had been so adamant about that, without specifying what would happen if you dared try, that Spirit figured even the most rebellious were pretty cowed.

All she could figure was that this was supposed to be more “practice” for the leading roles in society they were all supposed to take when they graduated. You had to pretend you liked all the food, pretend this sort of music was your idea of a good time, because people were watching you, and if you didn’t fit in, you wouldn’t be invited back or to the private dinners where important things got done. Well, if this was what being a lead in society was like, she would be perfectly happy to go work at Mickey D’s for the rest of her life.

For a fleeting moment she wondered just what she was supposed to do when she graduated.

Assuming I survive.

Unless Muirin and Addie were right and there was a big pile of money waiting for her somewhere because of insurance, it wasn’t as if she had any money for college. Where was she supposed to go? What was she