Shadow Grail #2: Conspiracies by Mercedes Lackey, Rosemary Edghill

something or someone following them. But whatever, whoever it was, he, she, or it didn’t make its presence known. She got back to her room and eased the door open and closed again without a feeling of relief. All she could do was find her closet by feel and shove the pile of scrapbooks into the back of it on the floor, behind the shoes and boots. She’d have to find a better place for them later; for now it was enough that they were out of immediate sight.
    Then she got her pajamas back on and huddled in the cold bed, shivering until her body heat warmed it up, and she finally was able to fall asleep.
    *   *   *
    Elizabeth Walker wrapped her arms around herself in the hallway and stared at the door she had just seen someone enter. There had been two people down in the part of the house past the kitchen. One of them had been a boy, since he’d gone to the boys’ wing. The other—she hoped she had counted the number of doors right; she wouldn’t know who it was until daylight and she could check the nameplates.
    What had they been doing down there? She was pretty sure it wasn’t for making out. Who’d go make out in the storage rooms when everyone had his or her own private room and it would be just as bad to be caught out of bed as in it with someone? She thought she’d seen them carrying something, maybe two piles of books, but why? What could they possibly want that they couldn’t get by daylight? Not student records, those were all kept on the computer, not in notebooks.
    Maybe they knew something, too? Knew just enough, and were looking for more answers, maybe allies, the way she was?
    Could it be two more of Them?
    She didn’t think there were any Shadow Knights among the students.…
    But could she really be sure?
    *   *   *
    Spirit didn’t get a chance to show Addie her pile of scrapbooks in the morning, because she was awakened by Muirin, who sailed in the door without even a knock, her arms full of—stuff.
    “Up!” Muirin demanded. “I can’t finish this now without fitting it on you.”
    “What?” After last night, Spirit felt as groggy as if she had been drugged, and she couldn’t imagine what on earth Muirin was talking about.
    “Your dress, doofus!” Muirin said. “I have to fit it to you if it’s going to look decent. Up! I won’t be seen with anyone that looks like she got her dress straight out of the storage closet!”
    “Uh—” Spirit didn’t get a chance to say anything else; Muirin ruthlessly pulled the covers off her, hauled her up to stand on a chair, pulled something like an inside-out gown over the top of her pajamas, and then poked and pinned and muttered while Spirit tried to wake up and make sense of what Muirin was doing.
    She hadn’t gotten more than a vague notion of what the dress was—maybe—going to look like, when Muirin finished pinning, yanked it up over her head again, and sailed out the door, muttering, leaving Spirit standing with the door open, barefooted, in a shower of pins, with her pajamas half over her head.
    By the time she’d picked up all the pins so she was sure she wasn’t going to end up with a toe impaled, she knew she was going to have barely enough time to get dressed to get breakfast without getting into trouble.
    Loch, Burke, and Addie were just finishing as she squeaked in the door. Muirin was nowhere to be seen.
    “She ate early,” Loch said, without looking up at her.
    Spirit blinked, and realized that must mean Muirin had gotten up to eat as soon as the dining room opened in order to have stormed into Spirit’s room to fit the dress.
    “She didn’t sleep,” Addie said, with a wry smile. “She was in a white-hot passion of creation all last night.”
    “Creation or caffeine.” Burke shrugged. “Don’t look at me, I’m a guy, I don’t get all that froufrou stuff.”
    Spirit sat down, silently poured milk over her cereal, and began to eat. Her brain sluggishly began to wake up … and she looked down to hide her