Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,53
Oakhurst was a concept that had never occurred to her before.
Spirit sighed. “Anybody have any idea of about how many alums come to the Alumni Days?” she asked hopefully.
“Twenty? Thirty?” Burke said. None of the three who’d been here for Alumni Days—Burke had been here for four of them, beating out Muirin by one and Addie by two—seemed to know.
“The point is,” Muirin said determinedly, “that Alumni Days is held during the week of the Summer Solstice—June 21—and that’s also the week that the students who take ‘early graduation’ leave. Surprise. And I’ve been making a list of all the kids I can remember who’ve just left—no matter what reason Oakhurst gave—and okay, I didn’t exactly keep track of when they went. But it looks like we’ve got them vanishing at least in the right months for this to have something to do with the Quarter Days and Fire Festivals. Ads, didn’t Jimmy Richardson leave last October?”
“He didn’t leave. He broke his leg the week before the Halloween dance. Down at the stables,” Addie said, sounding indignant. “Ms. Wood drove him down to Radial to get it x-rayed.”
“He never came back,” Muirin said simply, and the five of them looked at each other for a long moment.
“I broke my collarbone in the first game in the spring, when Blake Watson clotheslined me,” Burke said, looking stunned. “I made it to the sidelines, and Colin Harrington Healed me right back up. I played the whole second half. Why didn’t someone just Heal Jimmy?”
“Maybe there was . . .” Addie said, and stopped. She looked at the others, but Healing was a Fire Gift, and none of them were School of Fire.
“Far as I know,” Burke said, after a pause, “the only reason to not Heal somebody is if you’re afraid you might make it worse—or if you’re too tired. ‘Too tired’ wouldn’t be a reason not to Heal Jimmy. And a broken leg isn’t that complicated.” Burke wasn’t a Healing Mage, but he’d certainly been Healed often enough to know things like that.
“So there was something more than a broken leg wrong,” Addie said determinedly. “They don’t tell us everything. Why should they?”
“So we find out for sure,” Loch said. “Muirin said—the other day—that Oakhurst might . . . benefit . . . from people like me—or Addie—dying while we’re here. If that happens, you can bet it’s going to be investigated by somebody higher up than the cops in a no-horse town. And magic or no magic, everything will go a lot more smoothly with the right paperwork. A place like this has to keep records. It’s insured, certified by the County Health Department, has a state license to operate, is accredited at the state and national level—that’s a lot of paperwork. You can’t just pretend you filed all of it. Or maintain an illusion from here to the State Capitol for years.”
“So . . . what?” Spirit asked. “We’re looking for a book that says ‘There’s a Portal To Hell In The School Basement’ with a list of names in it and the dates the teachers threw them in?”
Loch coughed, unsuccessfully trying to hide a laugh. “More like old files on former students. Maybe even death certificates, if they’re admitting that anyone died here. At the very least, a better list of who ‘ran away’ from Oakhurst.”
“Or graduated early,” Burke said.
“Whatever that means,” Loch muttered.
“Like Tabitha Johnson and Ryan Miller,” Muirin added.
Thanksgiving was coming, and Spirit kept thinking about last year, when she’d still had a family. She remembered grumbling and griping through the whole day—they’d driven into town to volunteer at the local shelter to serve Thanksgiving dinner to a couple of hundred people, then come home to eat their own with a bunch of Mom and Dad’s hippy-dippy friends, all of whom brought weird “organic” casseroles. They hadn’t even had a real turkey—because so many of their guests were vegetarians—it had been Tofurky, and Spirit and Phoenix both hated that. And all she’d been able to think about all day was that she wished she had a normal life, with normal parents, where she could eat a normal Thanksgiving dinner, without arguing whether or not something was “ethical,” “vegan,” or “green,” with sugary cranberry sauce and an actual turkey, and pie and ice cream for dessert, and not have to listen to a bunch of people who thought that Woodstock Was Not Dead.
She’d give anything to be able to step back into that life again.