Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,36

Mackenzie, the Oakhurst psychological counselor.

Back when she’d still gone to regular school, Spirit had liked some of her teachers a lot and suffered through others, and the ones she hadn’t liked, she and her friends had all complained about together. But here at Oakhurst, nobody would complain outright about any of the teachers—even Muirin—and in Spirit’s opinion, there was plenty to complain about. The teachers like Ms. Groves actually weren’t the worst ones—Ms. Groves made no secret of the fact that she didn’t ever expect you to ever do anything that satisfied her. And nobody really expected a school shrink to be anything but a loser.

But then there were teachers like Ms. Smith.

Ms. Smith was always smiling and friendly and so interested in you and everything you were doing, and all the time she was asking a lot of prying questions about your life that none of the other teachers asked, like what were you thinking and how were you feeling and how were you doing, and Spirit had even fallen for all this friendly “concern” for a week or so—right up until Ms. Smith started asking her about just how depressed was she not to be a magician like everybody else here at Oakhurst. And over the last six months Spirit had too many people trying to climb inside her head trying to figure out where her switches were so they could flip them. She recognized the signs. If Ms. Smith wanted to flip somebody’s switches, she could look elsewhere. So Spirit had started keeping her mouth shut, and just saying she was fine, everything was fine, no matter what Ms. Smith asked her, and finally Ms. Smith had started to leave her alone.

At first the tea party had gone okay. There weren’t too many ways to screw up holding a glass of cider and a plate of cookies, after all, and Spirit knew better than to take more than one or two cookies. If she wanted to pig out later, she could go see Muirin, because Muirin always had some chocolate she could be talked into sharing. And there was always popcorn. Or apples. It wasn’t like they starved you here.

Thanks to Loch’s obsession with Oakhurst history, she’d been able to make mindless small talk with the teachers (she tried not to think of Phoenix, who’d always called it Spirit’s Stepford-Robot-Barbie act) while assuring them that she loved Oakhurst, loved her riding lessons, loved her karate lessons, loved her classes, loved the school, loved, loved, loved . . .

All the while she’d been constantly aware of Doctor Ambrosius, who was moving around the room making sure he talked to everyone, teachers and students alike. She’d never seen him wearing the flashy power suit he’d worn for her first interview again; he always wore a black suit in church, but now he was wearing a tweed suit with a vest that made him look like he probably ought to be talking with an English accent and riding around in a carriage. On television.

Since Doctor Ambrosius hadn’t turned anybody into anything this afternoon, Spirit was pretty much unruffled when he wandered over and sat down next to her on the couch. She’d picked it as a nice safe location because she could stare out the window at the (non-lethal) touch football game going on, or into the fireplace (where of course a fire was burning—and it was a real one, she could feel the heat) and not look as if she was as paralyzed with mind-numbing boredom as she actually was.

“And how are you finding Oakhurst, my dear? Spirit White, isn’t it?” Doctor Ambrosius asked.

“Yes sir,” Spirit answered obediently. Don’t you remember turning me into a mouse last month? she thought. “I’m very happy to be here,” she said, for what seemed like the ten thousandth time this afternoon. She knew Muirin said Afternoon Tea only ran ninety minutes tops, but that was starting to seem like a very long time. And just what would somebody here do if she said she was miserable? Give her some happy pills? Or worse—cast a spell on her to make her happy?

“Good, good. Very good,” Doctor Ambrosius said. Spirit thought for a horrified moment that he might pat her knee, but he didn’t. “And how are you coming with your magical studies? Your spellwork?”

Spirit stared at him, mouth open in surprise, caught in the middle of starting to say she was doing just fine, because she’d been sure that the next question was