Conspiracies - Mercedes Lackey [89]
“And they’re going to send you to the Shadow Oakhurst Loony Bin and you and Lizzie can trade hallucinations and be BFFs,” Muirin said, with a nasty glint in her eye. “Maybe she’ll decide you were her mother, the Queen of Ireland. Or her rival, Isolde of the Fair Hands, would that be nice to be confined with?”
“Muirin, chill,” Addie said warningly.
Spirit felt her eyes starting to burn as she held back tears. She didn’t get it. Was it just that they really were all burned out and wanted someone else to take over? Was she really the paranoid one? Was she delusional?
She got up and left them abruptly, scrubbing her sleeve across her eyes as soon as she was out of sight. The tears came anyway, and she had to grope her way the last few steps to her room. Once inside she leaned against the door, feeling physically sick from her emotions. Anger, betrayal, despair … mostly despair. And abandonment. Maybe that was the worst. She sat on the edge of the bed and cried for a while. And that made her feel even more abandoned. Part of her had thought—hoped—that Addie or Muirin at least would come after her. That Burke or Loch would try. Hoped for a knock on the locked door. But nothing came. Not even the sound of a whisper or footsteps in the hall outside.
So maybe you’re the one who’s crazy, here, a little voice whispered in her mind.
If only she could talk to someone outside this place … one of her Mom or Dad’s friends, or something … but there was no getting past that firewall.
Was there?
The thumb drive!
She went to the desk and dug it out, and this time she went ahead and followed the instructions.
The instructions didn’t open a browser. They sent her straight to what looked like a chatroom. There was one other user in it, someone called QUERCUS.
After a moment, a long moment, she hesitantly typed hi.
Hello Spirit, QUERCUS replied. I am glad you found the way out.
A shiver ran up her back, quickly quelled when she looked at the screen and realized the software had already put Spirit as her user name.
Who are you? she asked. The next logical question.
A friend. I want to help you.
Yeah, right. She glared at the screen.
I know about feeling alone, QUERCUS typed when she didn’t respond.
Why did you send me this software? she asked, instead of responding directly.
To give you hope in the dark times.
Well, that wasn’t exactly helpful. And—how did she know she was actually outside the school firewall? All she had was this chatroom.
Why should I trust you?
Open a new window, bring up your browser.
She did so.
Now go to one of your old favorite Web sites.
Well. Okay. How about CanHazCheeseburger? She opened a browser, typed it in, expecting to get nothing, as usual, and—
“… shoot…,” she whispered. There it was. And it wasn’t cached, either, the time/day stamps on the posts proved that.
As long as this chatroom is up and open, you can get onto the Internet. When you close it and take off the thumb drive, that will automatically close the link to outside. Magic.
She stared at the LOLcats. Stared at the chatroom.
If only this didn’t feel so much like a trap.…
THIRTEEN
For three days, Spirit avoided the others. It wasn’t difficult; they were all being worked like dogs. It was incredible; she’d thought Oakhurst was hard before … well, now she knew what “hard” really was. She’d never worked so hard physically in her life, although at least now there was so much supervision over their training that there was no chance for cheap shots from any of the others. Anastus Ovcharenko was sadistic, but he spread it across all of them, so nobody got singled out as the favorite and nobody got singled out as the goat. His two assistants were absolutely indifferent. “Cruel but fair” was what kept coming to mind. The course work was tough, but at least she was spared the courses geared for specific Schools of Magic, since she didn’t have one. That gave her a precious free period to study and work on the other ones. The time she used to spend with the others, well … there was QUERCUS. By the time the day was over, her brain