Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,21

Spirit realized she actually had a little appetite. There were bowls of fruit and brown sugar on the table, and pitchers of honey and maple syrup and milk and cream. She put a little brown sugar and milk on her cereal, while Muirin poured so much sugar and syrup onto hers that Spirit wondered if she could even taste the oatmeal.

Burke plucked the pitcher out of Muirin’s hand. “Leave some for the rest of us, greediguts.”

Muirin squealed in outrage. Addie sighed. “Every morning,” she said to Spirit, in an aside.

Spirit tried to smile back, but it was hard. “What do you think’s going to happen today?” she asked Loch in a low voice.

“I don’t know,” he answered. He was stirring his oatmeal around but not eating much of it. “When I checked my e-mail this morning, all it said was to report to the Front Desk after breakfast. You?”

“I forgot to check mine,” Spirit admitted. “My computer woke me up at six this morning with some horrible song.”

“ ‘Oakhurst We Shall Not Forget Thee,’ ” Loch said, his mouth twisting wryly. “It was composed by one of the first students here,” he added, and Spirit made a rude noise. That just figured. “You can actually set your computer to wake you up with any song in the library. Or just a .wav file if you prefer. I can walk you through that later, or I think there’s a tutorial somewhere in the library files,” he added, as if it was an afterthought.

“If I can’t find it, I’ll ping you,” Spirit said. If we’re both still alive later, she thought, and grimaced, reminding herself that, as weird and awful as the interview had been, the worst she had gotten was a scratch. What could be so hard about a few tests? If Dr. Ambrosius didn’t want them here, he wouldn’t have worked so hard to get them here.

Oatmeal was followed by bacon and eggs and toast. Apparently it was okay to ask for seconds, because Burke did. Spirit couldn’t even finish her first helping. She noticed that a lot of kids were leaving as soon as they finished eating, and Camilla said that you didn’t have to stay in the Refectory after you’d finished breakfast if you wanted to get a head start on studying.

“Me, I’d rather put it off as long as possible,” she said, grinning.

There wasn’t any coffee, but there was tea if you wanted it, even if it was herbal, and despite Muirin’s constant complaints about the lack of “junk food,” there was cocoa if you asked for it, and you could even get marshmallows in it. Of course Muirin did, and tried to get Spirit to order some, too, but Spirit refused. Her stomach was already rebelling.

“On Sundays there’s pancakes,” Muirin said longingly, licking marshmallow off her upper lip. “I guess it’s supposed to make up for having to go to church.”

“Church?” Spirit said, alarmed. There hadn’t been anything in the brochure about church.

“Mandatory spiritual education,” Muirin sighed. “It’s kind of Unitarian, I guess. Dr. Ambrosius gives a sermon, and then reads a passage out of the Bible and then out of another holy book so we can see how they’re all actually alike. So it’s more like a class. But there’s a choir.”

From Muirin’s tone, Spirit couldn’t tell whether she thought the choir was a good thing or a bad thing, and she was about to ask if there was any way to get out of it—because her parents hadn’t exactly been religious, at least not in that way—when she was distracted by someone sitting down in the empty seat on the other side of Loch.

“Hi,” the new girl said, leaning forward and making it clear she was talking more to Spirit than to Loch. “I didn’t get to introduce myself last night. I’m Kelly Langley. I’m one of the ‘Young Ladies’ ’ proctors, so if you need anything and you don’t want to ask one of the teachers, I can help you out.”

Kelly looked as if she was maybe three years older than Spirit. She had hazel eyes and dark brown hair cut even shorter than Muirin’s, and she looked frankly amused at the idea of having to refer to them as “Young Ladies.”

“Do you know who the, uh, ‘Young Gentlemen’s’ proctor is?” Loch asked. “We saw him last night, but . . .”

“Actually, there are five of them right now,” Kelly said briskly. “And we’re hoping to get a waiver to grab Burke next