Conspiracies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,88
us … except Muirin.” He shrugged. “You know Muirin. She likes to needle people.”
“Yeah.” Spirit watched him warily, trying to figure out if he meant it.
“We’d really like it if you’d hook back up with us,” he faltered. “I—uh—please? You were the first friend I had here.” He gave her a big puppy-dog look. She couldn’t help it; she folded.
“All right,” she said, but made it grudging. Let him know he—they—weren’t getting this one for free. She followed him back to the lounge. Burke greeted her with enthusiasm, Addie with her usual friendly reserve, and Muirin as if she hadn’t gone crying back to her room five days ago.
Muirin was sporting new (non-Oakhurst-Dress-Code-approved!) jewelry: earrings and a bracelet. The earrings were two little black snakes that coiled against her earlobes; the bracelet was another black snake with its tail in its mouth. Muirin saw Spirit looking, and thrust out her hand. “The Worm Ouroboros,” she said, with a giggle. “The big snake that coils around the world. Madison and Mark gave them to me. Enameled silver. Oh, and here, this is for you—”
She reached under the table and pulled out a bottle of perfume. “They gave this to me, but once I had it on, it turned too sweet.” Gingerly, Spirit took it. The bottle said “Bulgari,” and it looked expensive. “I figure it would suit you.”
Nice. “Too sweet.” But that was probably as close to an apology as Muirin was going to get, so Spirit took it. The perfume was nice, it smelled like roses. Yeah, very much not Muirin.
“I’m sorry, Spirit,” Burke said quietly. “For the other night.”
Addie nodded. “Me, too.”
“Okay,” Spirit replied, and slowly sat down. They started their usual desultory game of Monopoly, and that was when she noticed the only one still wearing the Oakhurst ring was Muirin. “So … how are things, under our new overlords?” she asked, trying to sound light.
Muirin made a face. “Awful, but Mark and Madison are pretty cool. They’re helping me get stuff in here, so that’s good. This might be Stalag Oakhurst, but chocolate helps everything.”
The Riders are helping her with her smuggling ring? Uh, what?
“I haven’t changed my mind about leaving,” Burke replied, shoulders sagging. “I have an appointment with Doctor Ambrosius in two days. I can’t do this. I just can’t.”
Spirit’s heart sank as Addie nodded sympathetically. She’d been thinking about telling them about QUERCUS—but with Muirin all cozy with the Riders, and Burke wanting to leave, it looked like she was the only one wanting to find out the truth anymore.
Except … Loch gave her a significant look. And when Addie cut the game short, because Muirin had pretty much cleaned her out, she lingered behind with Loch to clean up their area.
“Tonight. The basement,” he whispered. With a thrill and a little lift to her heart, she nodded.
* * *
“You’re right about one thing, Spirit. We’ve got to figure out if there’s a place where the Legacies with no magic go,” Loch said, as they went through more of the old boxes. “I don’t think it’s safe for Burke to go back to his family, and for another…” He stopped, and shook his head. “Your sister, Phoenix, didn’t have any magic, did she?”
“No, and believe me, she’d have been showing it off if she did,” Spirit replied, with a lump in her throat.
“So there has to be another Oakhurst. And we have to find it. If we find it, maybe we can get ourselves transferred to it or something. Heck…” he hesitated. “Maybe you were lied to at the hospital; maybe Oakhurst told them to lie. Maybe Phoenix is still alive, and there, and Oakhurst didn’t want you to know about it because, oh, I don’t know, because they didn’t want you thinking and worrying about her or something.”
Her heart contracted—hard!—at that thought. She pushed the idea away. She didn’t want any false hopes right now.
“I don’t think so,” she said, around the painful lump in her chest. “I think he would have told me—” She stopped, both hands buried deeply in a box of old papers, just about to blurt out the secret of QUERCUS. She stopped herself before she did.
Before Loch could ask her who she meant, she quickly changed the subject. “I can’t believe they’re still having a February Dance,” she said. “I mean, that’s crazy! Look what happened the last two times we had some kind of thing like that! It’s like asking for another attack!”