Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [56]
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The morning of Spirit’s session with Doctor MacKenzie, she walked into the Refectory to the sound of conversational buzzing with the sort of edge to it that meant something had happened. She got cereal, yogurt, and fruit and hurried over to the usual table. Addie had been watching her, and gave her a little nod when she got close. As soon as she was sitting down, Addie leaned over and said in a low voice, “Mariana Thornton is gone.”
“Gone?” Spirit paused and put her spoon back down in her bowl. “What do you mean by gone?”
Addie looked over at Loch. “She wasn’t in her room this morning, her bed didn’t look like it had been slept in, which meant she went some time between dinner and lights out.” Loch shrugged. “So sayeth the word of Chat.”
Muirin plopped down in her usual chair with a stack of buttered toast that she proceeded to load up with preserves—even though they were the “no sugar added” kind. “And so sayeth the e-mail I got before I came down, Mariana was in such bad shape after supper that she was deemed in need of getting out of here and was sent away for a nice ‘rest.’ Presumably in a loony bin, and presumably so decided by good old Doc MacKenzie, since she saw him yesterday.” Muirin looked pensively at her toast. “Maybe I should have hysterics in front of him. Mother Dearest would have me put up in a really plush loony bin. You know, the kind with private rooms and ‘beauty therapy’ and massages. And satellite TV and chefs. No more conditioning classes, and real jelly on my toast, not mashed fruit pretending to be jelly.” She bit into the slice anyway. “And I hear if you’re cooperative, they reward you with chocolates.”
For a moment, Spirit herself was tempted. It would mean getting out of here … but then she remembered; it wouldn’t be a plush, resort-rest-home for her. She’d get dumped in one of those horrible places where they warehoused people, drugged them up like zombies, shoved them into tiny rooms with bunk beds, and locked them in at night. She swallowed hard, and drank a little milk to try and get the lump of fear out of her throat. No, there were places worse than Oakhurst.
And besides, at least here they believed in things like the Hunt. Out there—she’d have no protection from it. And if she tried to tell anyone about it, they’d think she was even crazier.
“What, now you want to flip out, and play right into your stepmother’s hands?” Loch asked, with a sarcastic edge to his voice. “I bet your Step would just love that. She could keep you in there forever, you know. All she has to do is pay the right shrinks to diagnose you as bipolar and a danger to yourself. You’d be locked in there and out of the old trust fund pretty darn quick.”
Muirin made a sour face. “That would be funnier if it were less true,” she admitted. “I have to stay alive and sane until twenty-one so I can wrestle her to the floor and take my inheritance. Stupid Trust.” She sighed dramatically. “Darn it, Loch, you’re right, she was looking for ways to cut me out when the Trust sent me here.”
“Hey, I know these things.” He shrugged. “The crap that went on with some of the guys I went to school with makes the Borgias look like the Family Channel.”
“Too true. Besides, I have to stab her in the back—metaphorically of course—and take back my castle. If I don’t, my robber-baron ancestors will probably show up to haunt me as a weak and cowardly branch of the family tree.”
“Do you think she was taken away?” Spirit asked Loch. “Mariana, I mean.” He actually thought about the question before he answered it, which he did just as Burke sat down.
“On the one hand, she’s been pretty much falling apart since New Year’s Eve,” Loch pointed out. “And face it, if we end up with another attack, she’d not only be no help, she’d be a liability. So yes, I can see her getting sent away. But on the other hand, unless she’s