Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,70
back up your class work in case that thing at New Year’s really was an EMP and the next one will blow out the computers. Okay?”
“Uh, okay, but—”
“Seth and Adam were my contacts to this guy, they knew him from gaming. This is six months’ worth of downloads so I don’t go mental listening to Oakhurst-approved music.” She rolled her eyes. “And so I can see a movie that isn’t PG-13. Don’t worry, these are special. If you don’t have the unlock code they look like two-gig drives with nothing on them. If you do, it opens up the hidden storage.”
Spirit was impressed. “Wow, you know a lot—”
Muirin shook her head. “Not me. It was all Seth. Now let’s go get some magazines. I wasn’t kidding about that, and they’re going to expect me to figure out how to use my own money anyway.”
* * *
They ran into Loch and Burke at the bookstore. It was one of those really big ones with places to sit and read, and on a weekday afternoon there was no one in here and only one person at the register. They took over the chairs in the Hobby section.
“What was with Ms. Holland?” Spirit wanted to know.
“Yeah, did she come on to you?” Muirin made a kissy-face. “Oh teacher, teacher!”
“Cut it out Murr-cat,” Loch said with annoyance. “It wasn’t like that. She was trying to convince me to pull a runner. She told me she had a lawyer friend who would go to my trustee for me and get him to petition for a new guardian. She said her lawyer friend would convince my trustee that Doctor Ambrosius just wants to get his hands on my money.”
“Say what?” Muirin looked at him as if she didn’t quite understand the words coming out of his mouth. “What did you tell her?”
“I told her I didn’t think I would be any safer away from Oakhurst,” Loch replied, and shook his head. “She said I had no idea what was going on, and that anyone who stayed was going to come face-to-face with an evil I could never imagine.”
“Well, gee, that was helpful,” Muirin said sarcastically. “I don’t suppose she could have been more specific?”
Loch shrugged. “No, she just spent about ten minutes trying to convince me that staying at Oakhurst was a fate worse than death, then literally threw her hands up in the air, said, ‘Fine,’ and stomped off.”
“She must have gone after me,” Burke said. “She cornered me in the Food Court and gave me the same story. Well, except for the part about the lawyers and the trustees; she said she’d get me a bus ticket back to my foster parents and convince them that Oakhurst was some kind of weird cult compound so they’d keep me with them. I pretty much said the same as you.”
Muirin looked from Loch to Burke and back again. “You both just had a chance to get out of here practically shoved in your faces, and you turned it down,” she said incredulously. “Why?”
Burke scratched his chin. “You want the logical reason or the illogical reason?” he asked.
“That’s—just what I call them. Stupid, I know, it sounds like a bad fantasy movie or a video game.”
“No, it fits, go on,” she urged, smiling at him. Burke blushed a little more.
“Okay, so, we know there’s someone at Oakhurst working with the Shadow Knights, and we don’t know who it is. We just know there’s a good chance it’s a teacher, and so far, who are the people that have managed to get in the way?”
Muirin chewed her lip. “Us.”
“So what’s the best way to get us out of the way? Break us up. Separate us.” Burke nodded as Muirin hissed a little. “You know, the whole bundle of sticks routine. So maybe Ms. Holland knows what’s going on and is trying to help us out. And maybe she’s the inside man, or one of them. So okay, we’ve been warned and it isn’t Spirit being paranoid. We’re better off sticking where we know the territory and can maybe put up a bunker somehow.”
Muirin pondered that for a while. “Okay. So what’s the not-logical reason?”
Burke gazed earnestly at her. “Because you’re all my friends. And I don’t bail on my friends.”
“What he said,” said Loch.
ELEVEN
The cars came to pick them all up; when they got to the train, a