Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,83

seen anything other than gold and brown on anything from Oakhurst.”

Right, so everyone wears a little name tag that says HELLO, MY NAME IS EVIL? Spirit thought. It can’t be that easy. And you don’t have a shred of proof that these Gatekeepers are the same as the Shadow Knights, either!

“You don’t … could they be the Shadow Knights?” she asked tentatively.

“Oh, get real, Spirit! They’re the ones that came pounding up like the cavalry,” Muirin snapped. “They’re just as likely to be the Grail Knights, if you’re going to buy into Elizabeth’s fantasy. Which I don’t. Just because the snake on their badge is black, that doesn’t mean a thing; and since when would bad guys advertise who they were with a nice handy sign?”

Since that pretty much echoed Spirit’s own thoughts on the matter, she looked down at her plate.

“No, if this is like Skull and Bones, then that means whoever is in it is going to be really influential,” Muirin continued, a bit of gloating in her tone. “Once they get the Shadow Knights or whatever you want to call them taken care of, that’s where I want to be. I mean, have you seen what Madison wears? Not to mention the kinds of people Mark Rider gets to party with—”

Muirin went on and on in the same vein; Spirit stopped paying attention. This was making no sense at all. Granted, Muirin had been the last one to believe her about the continuing threat, and was still the most shrill skeptic among them, but within hours she seemed to have cast aside all thought of the very real danger they were in because Madison Lane-Rider had spent time talking to her. Now Muirin was acting like the most important thing was the kinds of social contacts she could make with the Breakthrough people, and completely ignoring the fact that the Breakthrough people were training them as if they were going to be on the front lines any second now. And they had been openly attacked.

What was wrong with Muirin? First being completely cold about Elizabeth, and now this?

She glanced over at Addie. Addie could usually be counted on to rein Muirin in, but Addie was just sitting there with a little frown on her face, twisting her ring on her finger.

Burke—

For the first time since they’d sat down, she really looked at him. Burke looked completely exhausted. There were more bruises on him, and now that she was really paying attention, he had the expression of someone who was on his last legs, but couldn’t see an end to the tunnel. Despair, that was it. And as Muirin chattered on, he finally held up a hand and stopped her.

“I just spent the entire day either getting beat up, or trying to wrap my brain around stuff I am never in a million years going to get,” he said, his voice a little rough, like he was holding back his emotions. “Mostly beat up. Almost all my classes now are actually martial arts, and the ones that aren’t are things I am not good at. And you know what? I’m going to admit it. I’m beat. We got lucky before, when we didn’t know any better, and the people who called the Hunt thought there was no possible opposition. Now we know better, and they do, too, whoever they are, and I think I just realized I’ve hit the end and there’s no more rope.” He sighed—it was almost a moan—and rubbed his eyes. “I can’t do this anymore. I keep thinking about you guys getting hurt—or worse than that. I can’t. I’m not a superhero. There’s going to be trouble here, and I think we need to leave it to the people who are already trained to handle it.”

Spirit sat up in alarm. “You’re not going to tell Rider about the Wild Hunt!” she exclaimed. “You’re not going to tell him it was us who stopped them!”

“No. I’m just going to go to Doctor Ambrosius and tell him I want to leave Oakhurst. If he wants, he can send me wherever they sent the others. But I just can’t take any more of this.” He looked as if he was about to cry for a minute. “I’m—just a guy. Just a dumb jock with a little magic.…”

“I think we need to tell Doctor Ambrosius that it wasn’t just an accident that we stopped the Hunt,” Addie said firmly. “I think we should tell him about the files