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

even taken her shoes off before collapsing on top of her bedspread and pretty much passing out. Mom had a few careful words to say to her at breakfast about drugs, and how she wasn’t going to preach but she hoped Elizabeth would tell her if she’d decided to experiment because a lot of them were a lot more dangerous than alcohol, and Elizabeth had stumbled through an explanation about the game and seeing Terry get hurt. At least that explained her behavior.
    The game was Friday, and normally she’d have had to wait until Monday to find out anything, but Marcie’s older sister was dating Terry’s best friend, so it only took Elizabeth one phone call to find out that Terry’d wrenched his knee and he’d be out for a couple games but not the season. That certainly didn’t match Elizabeth’s memory of a leg broken in at least three pieces, with the ends of the bone pushing against the skin and threatening to break through. She spent the rest of the day trying to convince herself that Daphne and Marcie were right—just a sprain—and she hadn’t seen—or felt—what she knew she had. And when she tried, it seemed as if she could hear Yseult’s laughter in her mind, affectionately mocking her attempts to blind herself to the truth.
    So if the magic was real … were the dreams?
    She wasn’t ready to admit that. Not yet.
    She began to experiment, using ideas taken from books she’d read, fantasies where magic was real.
    Lighting a candle: easy. Seeing through the eyes of a bird: piece of cake. Putting magic into an object …
    There was this girl at school who Elizabeth felt kind of exasperated with and sorry for at the same time. Janine was nice enough, but she’d gotten mixed up with this guy who controlled practically every moment of her life. She stayed with Tommy because he said he loved her—and she said she loved him even after she ended up in the hospital and had to stay for three days. She told everybody she’d “fallen down the stairs”—but everyone who knew Tommy knew what had really happened to put Janine into the hospital.
    So Elizabeth decided she was going to do something about it. The magic that made people change their minds about things was pretty much always the same—according to the books—you just varied what you wanted them to do. Elizabeth swiped Janine’s sunglasses; they were expensive designer ones, but besides that, the girl had to wear them sometimes to hide her dark circles and even an occasional black eye. She returned them the next day—enchanted. “See him the way we see him,” was the enchantment she’d put on them—appropriate for a pair of glasses!
    It worked better than she had ever dreamed it would. The next day Tommy was in jail on assault charges, and Janine was wondering aloud what she’d ever seen in him.
    But Elizabeth’s triumph was short-lived. Because after that, she started seeing things—while she was awake.
    At first it was just out of the corner of her eye. Something moving impossibly fast, something that wasn’t there when she turned her head to look at it. Eyes in shadows.
    But then she started seeing them clearly, in daylight.
    They never showed up except when she was alone—when she was walking back from school was the first time she saw one by daylight. She had turned a corner, and realized the street was deserted, and too, too quiet. And there he was, standing in a challenging pose in the middle of the sidewalk, as if daring her to pass. A black blot that seemed to absorb all the sunlight, staring at her—he didn’t wear the black-washed armor and helm of her dreams, but she knew him, knew what he was, as he stared at her from beneath the brim of a black hat, black trench coat down to his ankles, open to the breeze, and showing black jeans and a tight black tee.
    She froze like a scared baby bunny.
    Then a little mob of grade school kids came around the corner, laughing and shrieking, and she turned involuntarily. And when she looked back,