Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,65

cheerfully. “After all, you’ll have three hours there and three hours back, that’s six whole hours you could be using to achieve. The only way you get out of class around here is if you’re unconscious. Then they expect you to make it up when you revive.”

Burke nodded, and for a moment Spirit wondered how they could all be so callous about the students who’d “gotten out of class” by virtue of being dead or insane, when a little movement of Burke’s eyes alerted her to the fact that someone at one of the other tables behind her was listening.

Right. Everyone else seems to forget that people go crazy and die and vanish. I need to pretend that I’ve forgotten, too.

“There you go. I’ll be stuck in a train for six hours with nothing to do but class work, then stuck at a museum. No reason for envy.” Spirit shrugged. “I’ll ask if we can switch anyway. Maybe they’ll let you go instead.”

But she already knew they wouldn’t. This was exactly what the Administration seemed to want—drive a wedge between friends—and from the look on Muirin’s face, they were getting it, too. Was it possible that Muirin had some reason why she’d been sure she, and not Spirit, was going to be going on this trip? If so, well, no wonder she was so ticked off.

She’d have to figure out some way to make it up. Maybe she could borrow some money from someone and get Muirin some candy bars.

On her first break between classes she went back to her room and checked her e-mail. Sure enough, there was the message congratulating her on being selected, along with a second, to all students, detailing who was going to go. There were about a dozen students on the list, including the new girl, Elizabeth—which made absolutely no sense, since she was having to catch up to the accelerated Oakhurst curriculum and not having an easy time of it. None of them were all that interested in art. None of them were at the top of the class.

Yes, this was definitely going to drive wedges between a lot of people.

* * *

The museum opened at nine. It would take about half an hour to drive from the train depot to the museum, and three hours to get from Oakhurst to Billings. So they were all awakened at 4 A.M.

Spirit felt as if she’d barely gotten any sleep, though she’d tried to make an early night of it. No nightmares last night, but it felt like she’d spent most of the night waiting to hear the alarm go off. She yawned her way through breakfast, and trudged out into the dark with the others to get on the train.

There was definitely a surreal sense here. Days ago, the school had been attacked, physically attacked, and people had been hurt. Today they were going on a field trip. And the three teachers who were chaperoning them were still sporting the bandages from that attack, yet they acted as if they’d just had bad spills in the shower.

It was as if she was living an entirely different life from the rest of them. And yet … at this moment, even she was finding herself sucked into the illusion that everything was normal. She trudged toward the tiny station with the others, hearing the dull throb of the locomotive engine out there in the dark.

Like the train that had brought her here, this was a short, but very modern locomotive. This time it was coupled to two passenger cars instead of one. Both passenger cars had the Oakhurst logo on the side. Of course. They shuffled into single file and Spirit found herself sandwiched in between Burke and Loch. At least she could be sure of one thing; nobody on horseback was going to be able to catch them once the train was moving.

Burke took a seat next to a window; she popped into the one next to him, and Loch took one immediately behind them.

“Oh brother,” Burke said, reaching for a white card sticking up out of the seat back in front of him. “It looks as if Addie was right.”

Spirit checked her card. Instead of being a safety thing, it was instructions on how to use the built-in video player in the other arm of the seat back and a list of the preloaded lectures each of them were supposed to watch. But there were only three under Spirit’s name, so Spirit put the