Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [57]
“I think the official story is the most likely,” Burke put in. “She was in pretty bad shape at dinner. She couldn’t even eat. I don’t know what the Doc said to her, but she looked like if you accidentally startled her, she’d fall to pieces right there.”
“Oh, way to go, Burke.” Loch rolled his eyes. “Make sure Spirit feels real good about seeing the shrink in fifteen minutes.”
Burke looked startled, then sheepish. Clearly, he had forgotten this. “Oh heck Spirit, I—”
“Don’t worry about it,” Spirit said shortly. She got up and forced a smile. “Hey, I get out of conditioning class this way.”
Muirin looked at her sourly as she walked away.
Doctor MacKenzie’s office was in the same part of the main building as the Infirmary, down a long hall with stone floors. It was creepily quiet there, the lights were dim, and it was chilly. It looked like the hall of some grand hotel at the turn of the century, and she wouldn’t have been at all surprised if a ghost had walked through a wall to stare at her.
If Spirit hadn’t known better, she would have thought the place was deserted. Her footsteps were the only sound in the empty hall. It was funny; when you were in the populated parts of Oakhurst, you had no idea that there were whole sections like this, where there just wasn’t anyone.
The office door was solid wood, and closed, with Doctor MacKenzie’s name beside it on an ornate little brass plate. The plate looked as if it had been there since Oakhurst was built; it even had the same Deco script.
She knocked on the door, hoping he had somehow forgotten her session, or that he was busy with someone else, or that he wasn’t there—hoping, but really knowing that, of course, it wasn’t even remotely possible that any of these things could be true. Still, you never knew.…
“It’s open,” said a deep voice with a Brooklyn accent. Reluctantly, she turned the handle and stepped inside.
The room looked pretty typical for a shrink. The same cream walls and brown carpet as the rest of the school. Oakhurst brown chair and couch, in the same “lodge look” style. Usually there was a coffee table or something like one in a shrink’s office, but not here. Probably because the room was pretty small as it was. There was a wooden filing cabinet, a matching bookcase, and a tiny desk with a computer on it at the back of the room under the window, but Doctor MacKenzie was already sitting in the chair, looking at a file.
She stared at him. He looked up. She stared some more. He waited patiently for her to say something.
“You look like Lenin!” she blurted, finally. “The Russian!”
He chuckled. Somehow that made him look even more like the Russian, with his balding head and neat little beard. “I see homeschooling pays off,” he replied. “Usually the kids that actually recognize this face don’t say anything. They just give me that strange, puzzled look—like a dog that hears something funny. They know I look like someone, but they don’t know who.” He waved at the couch. “Come into my parlor.”
She took a seat on the couch, gingerly. It was brown suede, softer and more comfortable than it looked.
“I’m Doctor Cooper MacKenzie, you can call me Doc or Doc Mac if you like. I’m also a mage: Fire Mage, Gift of Cleansing.” He tilted his head a little to one side. “And you are Spirit White, and no one knows what your ability is yet. It’s there, though. The power is in you, curled up like a sleeping dragon.”
“You—can see it?” she replied, startled.
“There are a few of us who can. Not many. A few more who can sense it, but not actually see it. Ambrosius for one.” He raised an eyebrow. “You weren’t told that.”
It was a statement, not a question. She nodded.