Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,27

hard, and they had that harpy Ms. Groves today, and if Ms. Groves thought you weren’t paying attention to her lecture she’d bring everything to a screeching halt, bring up the room lights, and make you stand beside your desk and explain just what it was she was doing that was so terribly boring. From the way the others teased her, Spirit got the impression that Muirin got to do a lot of explaining in class whenever Ms. Groves lectured.

The trouble with going to a small exclusive private school was that the classes were small and exclusive, too. There were only four other kids in the room with Spirit: Loch; a boy named Taylor Parker who’d gotten here about four months ago; and two girls, Zoey Young and Jillian Marshall, who’d both arrived about a week before Taylor did.

There were two periods slotted in for Magic Theory. One was right before lunch, and the other was the last class of the day. All the before-lunch periods were for Advanced students, and two of the end-of-day periods were, too, so they only had M-Theory three times a week, which was more than enough. It generated more homework than the rest of her courses put together: history and theory and what went with which. It was like a whacko mix of The X-Files and cooking school.

Maybe it would have made more sense if she was actually using all of this stuff for something. Why did she need to memorize the subcategories of magician in each of the four Schools—and what the powers and weaknesses of each were—if she didn’t even know which Elemental School she belonged to and probably never would? Why did anybody need to know about the entire history of magic dating back to the Year Zero, when Ms. Groves (and Ms. Smith, and Mr. Bowman, and Ms. Holland) said most of it was wrong? What was the point in learning the details of the spells all the old-time magicians cast, when Muirin said that you either had the Mage Gift or you didn’t, and if you didn’t you could boil up bat’s blood and snake fins for ever and ever and not get any results? At least the others got to go off after their classroom hours and practice actual magic, though Spirit felt really sorry for whoever had Ms. Groves as a coach.

Ms. Groves clicked a button and another slide appeared on the screen behind her. “If we aren’t boring her too much, perhaps Ms. White can tell me what this symbol is on the screen behind me.”

“It’s the Greater Seal of Solomon, Ms. Groves,” Spirit said, making very sure she didn’t sigh aloud—much as she wished to.

Spirit was lucky enough to escape having to explain to Ms. Groves why M-Theory wasn’t boring (a good thing, because with the mood she was in today, she might have snapped and told Ms. Groves that no, it really was boring), but not lucky enough to escape another brutal homework assignment: showing the correlation between the Greater Key of Solomon and the Lesser Key of Solomon, and indicating where the so-called “powers conferred by demons” matched up with the Mage Gifts of the Elemental Schools. Spirit did sigh then; it was a good thing that Oakhurst had such a good library, both on-and off-line, or she wouldn’t have a prayer. She got to her feet gratefully when the bell rang. She’d have the library practically to herself until dinner. Everybody would either be in their M-labs or off doing their extracurricular stuff.

But when she walked out of the classroom, Muirin was leaning against the wall waiting for her.

Spirit had been at Oakhurst two weeks now. She knew that you weren’t allowed to shop online (even if you had any money), that incoming mail was searched by the school before you got it (even if you had someone to send things to you), and that violations of the Dress Code were practically punishable by death. Since all these things were true, she had no idea of where Muirin managed to find the stuff she kept showing up in.

Granted, it was after class. But Spirit thought it would probably have to be after the Apocalypse before the length of Muirin’s skirt wouldn’t give some of the more conservative teachers chest pains. The fact that it was one of their regular plaid pleated ones just added insult to injury—as did the fact that she was wearing brown cabled socks that would have fit the