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

sour expression.
    Because it certainly would have been nice if the others could be half as motivated about finding out who was behind the Hunt as they were about that stupid, stupid dress.

FIVE
    Spirit sat on the edge of her bed in her slip, and reminded herself for the bazillionth time that this was just one night. Nothing was going to get done or undone in just one night. It wasn’t as if this was even a Significant Night like the Equinoxes or Solstices. Not a thing had stirred, for good or bad, since the last night of the Hunt.
    New Year’s Eve was just an arbitrary night on a calendar; there was nothing magically special about it. Keep her guard up, sure, but there was no reason to be paranoid.
    She’d never have gone to a dance, much less a formal dinner and dance like this one, if she was still at home. If she was still at home.…
    It would have, could have, been so exciting. Fancy dress, a dinner right out of a movie? Way to go, Oakhurst, for turning what should have been a dizzying experience into an ordeal, and sucking every bit of joy out of it.
    That was pretty much the way things went around here, though.
    She took a deep breath. Okay, so this was going to be a night of tense misery alternated with pure boredom, but hey, at least there wouldn’t be anything trying to kill her or her friends.
    She was sitting on the edge of her bed in her slip because Muirin hadn’t delivered the dress yet … and if she didn’t hurry up and do so, Spirit was going to have to go to the formal dinner in whatever was left in the Little Closet of Horrors. Or whatever she could make look sort-of formal with her school uniforms.
    And at this point, she wasn’t sure she cared.
    The door burst open and Muirin sailed through it, carrying a black-and-white dress over her head like a banner. Her expression was one of triumph and she looked absolutely fabulous, as if she was ready to step onto the Red Carpet at an awards ceremony.
    “Sorry I took so long, my hair decided to have a mind of its own.” Muirin handed the hanger to Spirit and closed the door. “Oh good, Addie did your hair already.”
    Actually, Spirit had done her own hair—she wasn’t too bad at doing a French braid—but she decided not to say anything. Instead she stood up and held the dress out for a look.
    She felt herself smiling. It was actually—nice! More than nice, it was elegant! It had nice straps—she had lived in terror that Muirin was going to make her go strapless, because she didn’t have any strapless bras. It was kind of like the dress Audrey Hepburn had worn as Eliza Doolittle at the ball, fitted in from the chest to the hips and flaring out from there, except the black had been made into a couple of side panels that would make her look taller and model-slender. “Here,” Muirin said, shoving something else at her, which turned out to be a wrap made of more black satin with white fur on the inside. “You’re going to freeze otherwise. You got them to get you white shoes like I told you, right?”
    “Uh-huh,” Spirit replied, sticking out one foot to show, while she struggled into the dress. Muirin spun her around while she was still struggling, expertly tugged the dress down and into place, and zipped her up, all before she quite knew what was going on.
    “A credit to my design,” Muirin said smugly.
    Spirit turned to look in the mirror and blinked. She looked … well, a lot older. Sophisticated. Not like she’d expected.
    Next to her, Muirin was just amazing, all sleek and styled and a whole lot older than she actually was, with just enough Goth about her to keep her looking like herself instead of someone’s trophy wife. All in black, of course. Even to the tiara in her hair, which was black crystals instead of the usual faux diamonds.
    Then Spirit blinked at the tiara, because it didn’t even remotely have that “fake” look to it, and turned toward Muirin to look more closely at it.
    “Black star sapphires. Man-made. And