Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,39

it, when she heard the sound of engines. Car motors, but bigger, like a truck or an SUV—a bunch of them—but the school only had two SUVs, and they were locked up in the garage. And the motor noises weren’t coming from the direction of the road, and she didn’t see any headlights.

This is wrong. This is all wrong.

She didn’t know what was going on out here, and she didn’t want to know. The only thing Camilla wanted was to be back in the gym, back where there was noise and light and people.

The engines got louder.

She turned around and began to run as fast as she could. She could see the lights of the gym in the distance.

She didn’t get far.

Spirit hadn’t been sure whether the dance was going to be fun or awful. It wasn’t the kind of thing she’d used to do in her old life. She couldn’t keep from thinking of it that way, because going and standing around some sweaty gym somewhere waiting for a guy you probably didn’t even really like that much to ask you to dance had never been her idea of a good time. But at Oakhurst, at least it was something different to do.

The whole day had been a little strange. She wasn’t really used to seeing her friends and classmates out of their school uniforms. Everyone looked so different. Of course, Muirin had taken shameless advantage of the “No Dress Code” day to show up in all of her classes looking like a vampire version of Hello Kitty, but most of the students just wore band t-shirts, or sweatshirts, or jeans and some color that wasn’t gold or brown. Addie had come to class wearing a powder blue turtleneck, and she’d loaned Spirit a green sweater so at least Spirit had something nonregulation to wear with her jeans. For a change.

She didn’t know if her friends would have paired off more if Seth were still here, but since he wasn’t, they’d all sort of decided without talking about it to go as a group. It meant Spirit didn’t know if Loch would have asked her to “go” with him—but on the other hand, it meant she didn’t have to find out that he wouldn’t have.

The gym had been decorated for the dance, but they hadn’t tried to make it look as if it wasn’t the gym. The Theater Department and the Art Students had gotten together and designed some scenery flats that were painted up to look like old graveyards, and the inside of Dracula’s castle, and spooky forests, which was kind of babyish, but it was traditional, too. There were black and orange crepe streamers hung from the walls, and one set of bleachers had been opened out so everyone would have a place to sit, and there were tables full of food and drinks.

Everything might have been awkward, except that Addie announced that she was going to dance with Burke and Spirit was going to dance with Nicholas and Loch was going to dance with Muirin and Camilla was going to dance with Brendan and then they’d all go get cupcakes and punch. Spirit was too busy keeping Brendan from dying of shyness to think about how she felt, and after that, everything didn’t seem as weird. Addie was on the Dance Committee—there was a dance roughly every other month—and they’d picked some good music. No matter what you liked to dance to or listen to, it wouldn’t be too long before something you liked came up. She was a little surprised, though, when Burke asked her to dance during one of the slow ones.

“It’s like this,” he said, smiling at her and holding out his hand. “Addie won’t let me hear the end of it if I don’t dance with everybody we came with—I mean, all the girls—and I’m kind of the world’s worst dancer. I figure a slow dance gives you a better chance of getting out of my way.”

“Doesn’t your—?” Spirit asked, trying to take his hand and gesture inarticulately at the same time.

He shook his head, still smiling. “Combat Mage,” he said. “Dancing isn’t fighting. Unless, of course, you’re dancing with the Murr-cat.”

Spirit laughed, because Muirin had been showing off, dancing the last fast dance with herself, an illusion that had mirrored her moves exactly. She’d been in a strange kind of mood ever since Seth had . . . done whatever he’d done, withdrawing more from the rest of them all the