Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,94
believe it.”
“Well, you better believe it,” Burke said. “With Spirit here on our side, how can we lose?” As if realizing he’d been holding her too close for too long, Burke let go and both he and Loch reluctantly stepped away from her.
“Oh but I—” I don’t have any magic. Spirit had been about to make her habitual protest, when suddenly she stopped. Loch said there were no “false positives” in magic, and . . . if she didn’t have her magic yet, then just what had she felt when she’d spoken the spell that sent the Lord of the Wild Hunt back to Hell? She knew she’d felt something. Something new. Something strange. She just wasn’t sure what yet.
“—are a good person to have on our side, no matter what,” Loch finished for her. “I’m sorry I doubted you, even for a moment.”
“I never did,” Addie said firmly, walking up to Spirit and hugging her very hard. “I’m so glad we’re all still alive!” she added.
“So am I,” Spirit said. “Oh, Addie—Muirin—Loch—all of you—”
“Hey,” Muirin said shakily. “Don’t get all emo. We’ve still got to sneak back into the dorms. And we’d better hurry. I’m freezing!”
“Not to mention putting back what we borrowed,” Burke said.
Addie snorted. “If anyone thinks I’m going after that Super Soaker, they can think again.”
“Come on,” Muirin said impatiently.
But the shocks and impossibilities of the night weren’t over yet. When they walked from the little grove of trees—Loch carrying the leaf blower and Burke carrying the shotgun—they saw . . .
“Uh . . . Guys, isn’t that the sun coming up over there?” Muirin asked, sounding baffled. “You know? In the east?”
“That’s where it usually comes up—okay, more to the south this time of year, but—” Loch broke off as he glanced at his watch. “It’s stopped. Burke?”
“Mine, too,” Burke said, confused.
Muirin wasn’t wearing a watch, and when she checked, Addie discovered she’d lost hers some time during the night. Spirit checked hers, and found it had stopped as well. When she and Burke and Loch compared notes, they found that their watches had all stopped at exactly the same time: 12:46 A.M. Or . . . probably just about the time she’d first heard the horns of the Wild Hunt. Despite herself, Spirit shuddered. As if she needed something else to have nightmares about!
“But I know we haven’t been out here this long,” Burke said in bewilderment. “We left at eleven p.m., and okay, it’s been maybe—what? Three hours?” He looked at them. Spirit nodded—that felt about right to her.
“Maybe four at the outside,” Loch said. Addie and Muirin just shrugged.
“Okay,” Burke said. “But that is definitely dawn over there. And sunrise is at 7:48 on December twenty-second. And this is December twenty-second . . .” His voice trailed off as if he wasn’t quite sure.
“We’re busted,” Muirin said gloomily.
“It was the elves!” Addie said abruptly. “Spend a few minutes—or an hour—with the Fair Folk, and when you get home, months or . . . years . . . have passed.”
“It can’t have been that long!” Loch said in horror. “It’s still winter! It is!”
“It might be winter again, Loch,” Burke said with a frightening gentleness. “We’d better get back—take our lumps—and find out how long we’ve really been gone.”
It isn’t fair! Spirit thought angrily. A moment before, they’d all been so happy. They’d won. The Wild Hunt was gone. Nobody else was going to have to die. And now . . . who knew what they’d find when they got back?
But what they found—as they neared Oakhurst—was their fellow students. The sun had just been rising as they left the forest, so by now it was about eight-thirty in the morning. Breakfast had been over for half an hour, and cold as it was, a lot of kids were already outdoors.
Kristi and Cadence were the first ones to spot them. They came running over and then simply stopped and stared.
“Oh my God, Burke, is that a gun?” Kristi said, her blue eyes very wide. “Addie, I was trying to IM you all last night and all this morning! The dance is tonight! You can’t just go running off like that the night before the Winter Dance! Oh my God!”
“I’m really sorry,” Addie said, and Spirit resisted the urge to break down in hysterical giggles, because this was just so ridiculous. I’m so sorry I couldn’t stick around to deal with your emo pain! I was busy saving the world. . . .