Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,57

I knew that it was after me.…” She started to cry again, and stifled it. “It was, wasn’t it? It was after me, and it was hunting me. If it hadn’t been after me, they’d still be alive. Wouldn’t they?”

She couldn’t help it, a sob escaped on the last word, and that set her off again, wailing softly, the guilt filling her chest and throat and choking her. She cried and cried until her eyes were all gritty and her nose was sore. Once again, Doc Mac let her cry herself out. When she got herself back under control, he sighed.

“I’m not going to blow smoke at you,” he said. “Yes, I think you did see something evil. And it was there to kill you. And yes, the rest of your family died because of it. But Spirit”—he leaned over and fixed her with an intense gaze—“Spirit, that does not mean that you are to blame, any more than you would be to blame if you were the only survivor of a mass murderer. Whoever sent that thing, whoever did this in the first place—that is who is to blame. Not you.” He sat back in his chair. “This is one of those ‘bad things happen to good people’ situations. This magician, or group of magicians—they made the choice to hurt people. You didn’t hunt them down to taunt them, you didn’t do anything to them; in fact, you didn’t even know they existed until you came here. They are the bad guys. They are the ones who hurt people. You are innocent; the only thing you did ‘wrong’ was to be born, and you weren’t exactly the one responsible for that. And I want you to keep repeating that to yourself until you believe it, all right?”

Spirit nodded, hesitantly. This was crazy. Here she was pouring out her secrets to someone she didn’t even know—and yet Doc Mac was the first person here besides her friends she had ever felt was a real human being, and trustworthy.

And she wanted to keep right on trusting him.

He smiled a little at her nod. “Good. Now, you hop along to class. If you need me, you know where I am.”

* * *

“… I didn’t tell him about the Hunt or anything,” Spirit concluded, as she and Loch continued to page slowly through the scrapbooks, “but I wanted to. What do you think?”

“I think he doesn’t sound anything like the shrinks my dad’s girlfriends all saw,” Loch replied. “Which is a plus. I have an appointment with him day after tomorrow. I’ll let you know what I think. Burke’s sold on him. Dylan hates him, says he’s a wuss.”

Spirit rolled her eyes. “Anybody Dylan hates has to be all right.”

Loch chuckled. “I kind of agree with you. What did Murr-cat say?”

“She was kind of pissy, but didn’t actually say anything.”

Loch laughed again. “Which means not only couldn’t she game him, he probably read her like a book.”

“Well, she wasn’t rude about him.…” Spirit ventured.

“Which means he might have either impressed or scared her. Maybe both.” Loch peered down at an old clipping. “Once I see him, and Addie does, I think we should all decide together on what we tell him.”

“If anything,” Spirit reminded him.

“If anything,” he repeated. “Though if he’s in Doctor Ambrosius’s inner circle, he’ll already know about the Hunt, or at least as much as we told Doctor Ambrosius.”

“So? If he does, great. He wouldn’t have told me he knows, he’d have been waiting for me to bring it up. That’s how shrinks work.” She frowned at her hands; they were filthy. Looking at the books together in the study carrels at the back of the stacks in the Library was a good idea, marred only by the fact that she was going to have to wait to get to her room to wash her hands.

“You’re not so bad at gaming the system yourself.” Loch lifted a corner of a yellowing bit of newsprint, carefully. This stuff crumbled easily.

“Practice. I wonder who made all these books, anyway?”

“Tyniger, or an assistant,” Loch replied. “Could have been either. Rich guys back then did things like that.” He put a marker in the pages and closed his book. “Okay, that’s it. My eyes are going to cross if I have to do any more of this today.”

“Mine, too,” Spirit admitted. “Let’s get going.”

“Why do you want to tell Doc Mac about everything we’ve found out so badly?” Loch asked, as they headed back