Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [53]
She paused for effect, and raked her eyes over all of them.
“What happened New Year’s Eve was a horrible shock. What caused it really doesn’t matter; what matters is the effect it had on you.” Ms. Smith leaned forward, and lowered her voice a little. “You all had a terrible experience. I know I did, and I’m a trained magician with … let’s just say I have a lot of stories I could tell. Bottling your feelings up isn’t healthy. In fact, it might cause problems down the road—psychological problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder, and problems with your control of magic. You need to talk about these things, and I’m here to help.”
She fastened her gaze on Nadia Vaughn, who chewed her fingernail nervously. Ms. Smith didn’t even call her on it. Finally, Nadia broke under the intense gaze. “It was awful,” she said in a small voice. “I was so scared—it was so dark, except for those awful little sparks, and I couldn’t breathe! I thought I was going to have a heart attack or something, I kept trying to say something but nothing would come out!”
Ms. Smith nodded. “I’m not sure which was worse, the dark, or those little sparks of light.”
“They were like eyes!” Kylee Williamson burst out. “Like— Like the eyes of something that knows it’s going to pounce on you and it’s just waiting for you to be scared enough!”
That pretty much did it. Everyone but Spirit started pouring out what they’d seen, and especially what they’d felt. Ms. Smith made no attempt to soothe them; instead, she encouraged them with little nods and the occasional word. And her eyes stayed so … detached. Analytical. It was as if she was taking notes on everything. But why?
It was creepy. It was really, really creepy. Creepy enough that Spirit didn’t want to stand out by not saying anything, so when Ms. Smith’s eyes alighted on her, she blurted out, “I couldn’t stand it! It was a nightmare!” then hid her face in her hands.
That seemed to be enough; when she peeked through her fingers, she saw Ms. Smith’s attention had drifted to one of the other girls, who was in tears and on the verge of hysterics.
Well, so much for that class.…
Ms. Smith did, finally, make the effort to get them all calmed down before the class was over. And she succeeded enough that though some of the guys were flushed and chagrined-looking, and all of the girls were still wiping their eyes, they were all able to walk out and go to their next class without breaking down.
But … if Elizabeth had been right about it being a test, one that had been sprung on them so that no teacher could warn a favorite student in advance … Spirit would have been willing to bet now that Ms. Jane Smith was one of the few who had known what was going to happen in advance.
… maybe even the person who had done it in the first place.
EIGHT
Spirit was normally pretty indifferent about math; she didn’t like it, but she didn’t hate it, either. Right now, though, she would have been a whole lot happier if there’d been more equations on the worksheet on the desk in front of her, because she knew what was going to happen, as soon as Ms. Smith finished going over the last of them—
“Very good. Does anyone have any questions?” she asked. Spirit glanced at her watch covertly and wanted to groan. There was a bit more than half an hour to go in the class. Ms. Smith smiled brightly when no one raised a hand. “All right then. How are you all holding up? You know, as a fellow magician, I am here to help you with much more than just math. Mariana?”
Oh, she would pick Mariana …
“I … uh…” Mariana’s thin face started to crumple, and her voice got choked up. “I can’t sleep,” she whispered, hiding behind her fall of dark hair. “Even when I keep a light on…”
Ms. Smith got a handful of tissues from a box on her desk, as if she’d prepared for this. Which she probably had. It was incongruous; Ms. Smith looked like a super-efficient secretary, with her tightly tied-back hair and her Oakhurst uniform blazer. She didn’t