Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,4

at Oakhurst always seemed wrong in a way she couldn’t define, as if the entire thing was a smirky, mocking, yet somehow mind-deadening parody of a real religious service. Yet at the same time there wasn’t a single thing that someone—whether they were devout or not—could have pointed to as being overtly insulting. She knew Burke was the only one of the five of them who was really religious, and even he couldn’t say there was anything wrong with the Oakhurst services. They were all so very bland and inoffensive.

The concert that followed was pretty much identical to the one at Thanksgiving. Different music, but it sounded the same—like elevator music. It’s just like the Christmas service, Spirit thought, with an odd air of discovery. It’s all stuff that might have started out being good or interesting but now it’s had all the life sucked out of it.…

By the time they were let out of the concert, Spirit was feeling like a marathon runner entering the final stretch of the race. Only two more things to get through. The Formal Dinner would have been okay if merely eating hadn’t been an ordeal—and if Spirit had had any appetite for it. Like at Thanksgiving, there were place cards and assigned seating and extra-formal place settings, but even Dylan wasn’t his usual vicious self. I guess everyone thinks about their family at Christmas. She took servings of everything she was offered—you weren’t allowed to refuse anything, on the grounds that you were “broadening your gustatory horizons”—and just pushed it around on her plate with her fork until the potatoes and the vegetables were a beige mush. Then she covered them with the pieces of roast goose. At Thanksgiving, the meal had ended with pumpkin and mince pie. For Christmas, there’d be something called a Viennese Table set up in the dining room after the gifts were handed out. Spirit didn’t think she’d have any appetite for that, either.

Now there was just one more thing to endure before she could go back to her room and indulge herself by being completely miserable and crying until she puked. One of the worst things about Oakhurst was that the Administration kept pretending that the school’s money could make up for losing your family and your whole life. One of the ways they did that—tried to do that—was by giving all the students Christmas gifts, even though they didn’t even bother to pretend anyone here knew you well enough to pick them out. No, the staff sent around a memo with guidelines and a list of “approved” gifts, and told everyone to pick three items. Not that they’d get all three. No. Despite the fact Oakhurst was rolling in money, each student got one “approved” gift from the Administration. They were probably told to pick three just so there’d be a little suspense.

I don’t want an iPod or a pair of socks! I want Mom and Dad and Phoenix back!

Spirit wasn’t even sure what she’d chosen from the list. Thinking about Christmas without her family had been so painful she’d just blanked on it and wasn’t sure what she’d put down. Books and music, probably, to replace things she’d lost when her home burned down after The Accident. She wouldn’t have come to the “gift-giving” at all if she could have avoided it. But she couldn’t. Everything not compulsory is forbidden, she thought with a despairing flash of humor. 1984 had been one of Dad’s favorite books, and he’d taught her to love it, too. She’d been surprised, on coming here, to find Muirin loved it as well. It seemed to be just as odd a choice for a Goth girl from New Jersey as it was for a reluctant hippie kid from Indiana.

* * *

There were about a hundred kids here at Oakhurst. It seemed like a lot when you thought about the fact that they were going to be your nearest and dearest until you left Oakhurst at twenty-one. Or get sacrificed to demons. Hey, anything to get out of SATs, right? It didn’t seem like many when you thought about the fact that most high schools had about three times that many students.

It really didn’t seem like many when they were all gathered in the Entry Hall and the place still echoed.

The Entry Hall was the first thing you saw when you came to Oakhurst. It was about sixty feet across, and its focal point was the biggest single tree trunk that Spirit