Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,54
toast, not mashed fruit pretending to be jelly.” She bit into the slice anyway. “And I hear if you’re cooperative, they reward you with chocolates.”
For a moment, Spirit herself was tempted. It would mean getting out of here … but then she remembered; it wouldn’t be a plush, resort-rest-home for her. She’d get dumped in one of those horrible places where they warehoused people, drugged them up like zombies, shoved them into tiny rooms with bunk beds, and locked them in at night. She swallowed hard, and drank a little milk to try and get the lump of fear out of her throat. No, there were places worse than Oakhurst.
And besides, at least here they believed in things like the Hunt. Out there—she’d have no protection from it. And if she tried to tell anyone about it, they’d think she was even crazier.
“What, now you want to flip out, and play right into your stepmother’s hands?” Loch asked, with a sarcastic edge to his voice. “I bet your Step would just love that. She could keep you in there forever, you know. All she has to do is pay the right shrinks to diagnose you as bipolar and a danger to yourself. You’d be locked in there and out of the old trust fund pretty darn quick.”
Muirin made a sour face. “That would be funnier if it were less true,” she admitted. “I have to stay alive and sane until twenty-one so I can wrestle her to the floor and take my inheritance. Stupid Trust.” She sighed dramatically. “Darn it, Loch, you’re right, she was looking for ways to cut me out when the Trust sent me here.”
“Hey, I know these things.” He shrugged. “The crap that went on with some of the guys I went to school with makes the Borgias look like the Family Channel.”
“Too true. Besides, I have to stab her in the back—metaphorically of course—and take back my castle. If I don’t, my robber-baron ancestors will probably show up to haunt me as a weak and cowardly branch of the family tree.”
“Do you think she was taken away?” Spirit asked Loch. “Mariana, I mean.” He actually thought about the question before he answered it, which he did just as Burke sat down.
“On the one hand, she’s been pretty much falling apart since New Year’s Eve,” Loch pointed out. “And face it, if we end up with another attack, she’d not only be no help, she’d be a liability. So yes, I can see her getting sent away. But on the other hand, unless she’s been sent to a facility that actually knows how to deal with psychologically disturbed magicians, sending her away from here is about the worst thing that Doctor Ambrosius could have done to her. And so far, no one has mentioned seeing the train go out, or the car going out to the airstrip. So…” He shrugged. “It’s possible that this is another cover-up. It’s not as if covering up disappearances is new around here.”
“I think the official story is the most likely,” Burke put in. “She was in pretty bad shape at dinner. She couldn’t even eat. I don’t know what the Doc said to her, but she looked like if you accidentally startled her, she’d fall to pieces right there.”
“Oh, way to go, Burke.” Loch rolled his eyes. “Make sure Spirit feels real good about seeing the shrink in fifteen minutes.”
Burke looked startled, then sheepish. Clearly, he had forgotten this. “Oh heck Spirit, I—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Spirit said shortly. She got up and forced a smile. “Hey, I get out of conditioning class this way.”
Muirin looked at her sourly as she walked away.
Doctor MacKenzie’s office was in the same part of the main building as the Infirmary, down a long hall with stone floors. It was creepily quiet there, the lights were dim, and it was chilly. It looked like the hall of some grand hotel at the turn of the century, and she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if a ghost had walked through a wall to stare at her.
If Spirit hadn’t known better, she would have thought the place was deserted. Her footsteps were the only sound in the empty hall. It was funny; when you were in the populated parts of Oakhurst, you had no idea that there were whole sections like this, where there just wasn’t anyone.
The office door was solid wood, and closed, with Doctor MacKenzie’s name beside it on an ornate little brass