Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,44

overhead lights and walked over to her window. She turned off the light beside her bed and opened the curtains. As her eyes adjusted she could see clearly. Her windows didn’t overlook any of Oakhurst’s outbuildings. All there was outside her window was earth and sky and darkness and stars . . . a vast dark emptiness that made Spirit feel very alone.

She stood staring out the window for a long time, wondering where Camilla was, and what had happened to her, before drawing her curtains again, and switching on her light, and getting ready for bed.

In the morning, Spirit checked her e-mail before she did anything else. She was hoping for an announcement that Camilla had been found, and half-expecting an announcement from “Staff” that they were under house arrest today. There was neither one.

She dressed in her uniform, as usual, giving her lacy blouse a wistful glance. She hadn’t gotten much chance to show it off last night, and not a lot of time to enjoy wearing it, either. She made a mental note to remember to return Addie’s sweater to her sometime today, and headed off to breakfast.

The mood in the Refectory wasn’t much different than usual. Of course it isn’t, Spirit thought. This is Oakhurst Academy. Kids disappear here all the time. She didn’t like thinking that way, but it was hard to stop.

She slid into her usual place at their table—in between Burke and Loch—and reached for her juice. She wondered what time the others had finally gotten to sleep last night, because Muirin looked completely wrecked—she wasn’t even up for her usual morning rant against healthy breakfasts—and Addie looked positively grim. Spirit exchanged subdued “good mornings” with the others as the clock over the door ticked over to seven o’clock and the servers began setting out bowls of hot cereal.

Nicholas wasn’t here.

“Hey, guys? . . .” Spirit said hesitantly, her voice almost a whisper.

“You might as well tell everyone, Murr,” Addie said darkly.

“Is it something about Camilla?” Loch asked, his voice as low as theirs.

“Nick,” Muirin said. She was so distracted this morning she was actually eating her oatmeal plain. “He PM’d me last night to meet him, and I figured it was something he didn’t want to say on the intraweb, so I did. He said he knew the cops weren’t going to really look for Camilla, so he would.”

“And she didn’t tell me until this morning,” Addie said, sounding disgusted.

“You’d just have tried to talk him out of it, Ads,” Muirin said, and Addie made a face at the hated nickname.

“You should have stopped him,” Burke said fiercely. “You know damned well it’s dangerous out there. And Nick only has a minor Air Gift. Being able to predict the weather isn’t going to do much to save him if he gets into trouble.”

“Nobody else is going to look for Camilla!” Muirin whispered back, just as fiercely. “You were there last night—the cops had their minds made up even before they talked to us. They just wanted to know what we knew to make their story sound good.”

“They must know something they aren’t saying,” Addie said slowly. “But what?”

“I’ll tell you something else,” Muirin said. “If Seth really did run away like Oakhurst says, he’d have written to me by now. A long time ago he set up a deal with the kids in town: He brought them stuff from the school and traded it for contraband—and uncensored mail. Where do you think Camilla got her cigs? Or where I get all those Hershey bars? A lot of the kids at Oakhurst showed up with some fancy stuff—clothes and iPods and stuff—and they’re willing to trade it off for candy and soda and magazines. And . . .”

Her eyes shifted a little. “. . . and there’s stuff that you can do. Keep fried memory chips and motherboards and video cards around, wait for a storm, put ’em in and say your computer got hit with an overvolt from a ground strike. Then you’ve got hardware to trade. Report you lost something. Burn MP3 disks. Seth had a drop, partway between here and Radial. I took it over when he left. It’s been a month. He’d have sent a postcard. Something.”

The others did their best to calm her, to offer other explanations for Seth not having written, but Muirin wasn’t hysterical this time, she was coldly angry—and she had facts to back her up. Her explanation was delivered in whispered half-sentences over breakfast,