Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,36
she said. “Pretty well. I mean, not like you, but I can do basic stuff.”
“Good. Your payment for that dress is to help me. No one ever wants to get stuck in the Bridal Rejects dresses twice.” Muirin licked her lips. “I collect a lot of favors around October and November, and again before the Spring Dance at the end of the term.”
Spirit blinked. “You mean…”
Muirin began pointing out the dresses she’d remade, refitted, or sewn completely from scratch. “There’s a certain amount of raiding the Theater Department fabric that we can get away with,” she said with a smirk. “Of course, they keep buying up Prom Zombies and sticking them in the closet, so I don’t often have to resort to cutting up stuff meant for The Importance of Being Earnest.”
Spirit began revising her estimate of how many of the girls had a lot of money sharply downward.
“Remember what I told you? There’s a big trade in favors around here.” Muirin nodded wisely. “Hey, you know what? If you don’t want one of the jerkwads to mess with you, we’ll offer to help his girlfriend with her party stuff for the Spring Fling, make sure he knows we did, and I guaran-darn-tee you he’ll leave you alone. If I’d known you could sew before this, I could have saved you some grief.”
While Spirit was blinking in shock over this revelation, Loch and Burke returned with drinks for everyone. Muirin seized on her soda with the look of someone dying in the desert seizing a cup of water, and blew a kiss to Burke, who gave it to her. “Loch, I cannot believe you have a fitted tuxedo with tails,” Addie said with admiration. “You look fabulous! Is it bespoke?”
Spirit had no idea what Addie meant, but evidently Loch did.
“Yeah,” he said, with a shrug. “Dad got invited to a lot of Embassy things, and during school holidays it was easier for him to haul me along than leave me behind. I think he got some kind of brownie points for having me with him. So here I am, with a tux, and no blue jeans, because everything that got shipped here was packed by Dad’s secretary.” He rolled his eyes. “I think all she did was grab what was in the closet in my bedroom, which was never stuff I actually wore much, because I was hardly ever home. God knows what happened to the stuff that was still at school. It probably got bundled up and sent to storage.”
Burke, who was wearing what must have come out of the boys’ version of the Little Closet of Horrors, gave him a look of sympathy. Somehow, he made the boxy secondhand rent-a-tux look good. Then again, his didn’t fit too badly. Not like a couple of the boys, whose trouser-waists were obviously somewhere in the vicinity of their armpits, and who were wearing cummerbunds to conceal that fact.
“Why won’t you ever let me fit your tux to you, Burke?” Muirin asked, teasingly.
“Cause it won’t fit next time I have to wear it,” he replied, with calm logic. “Besides, you just want an excuse to tickle me.”
“He’s ticklish?” Spirit asked Muirin, who smirked.
“Very, if you catch him off guard. Which I never can. Addie did it once, and it was hilarious, he turned purple.”
“Everyone got your dance cards?” Addie asked.
“My which-what?” Spirit was bewildered now. Addie shoved a little booklet-thing across the table at her; it had a brown metal foil cover with the school crest in gold stamped on the front, and a tiny little gold pen attached to it with a gold ribbon. She opened it. There was her full name in gold on the inside, and a list of numbers with the names of dances and blank spaces beside them.
“You have to dance at least five dances, whether or not you’ve taken Ballroom yet,” Addie reminded her. “Your partner signs off on the dance. Or if you’re really popular, guys come up to you and fill it in ahead of time.” She made a face. “It’s part of ‘improving our social graces.’ Yet another thing to get graded on.”
“Next thing you know, they’ll start grading us on how many dreams we have a night,” Muirin said sarcastically.
“Oh…” Spirit swallowed. “Uh…”
“No sweat, Spirit.” Burke plucked the card out of her nerveless fingers, and wrote his name in three of the spaces. Not to be outdone, Loch did the same. “There you go. One over the mandatory number, you’re set.”