Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,48

to begin with. And last Sunday Doctor Ambrosius had finished making his “first pass” through the student body for Sunday Afternoon Tea, which meant she could get chosen again for that honor at any time, since student’s names were chosen at random. It would be just her luck to make the list this Sunday, and how would she be able to sit there and smile nicely and pretend that there was nothing wrong, that Seth and Camilla weren’t missing, that Nick hadn’t had his mind destroyed?

To top off what was turning out to be a really awful day, Mr. Wallis was in a horrible mood during karate class. Not only did he pick Spirit to come up to the front of the class to demonstrate a new form with, when she screwed up—she had only been in the class for a month and a half!—he did a foot-sweep that knocked her sprawling and then spent five minutes shouting at her about what a clumsy useless loser she was. The dojo had an exhibition coming up at the end of the month (for “exhibition” read “competition,” even if they were only competing against the other students in the class), he announced—as if he let any of them forget it for an instant—and he was not going to have them all made to look ridiculous by a lazy, untalented, good-for-nothing, spoiled little princess like her. He made her do forms with the other students for the rest of the class—even when she should have been working on her kendo—and of course Dylan Williams took the opportunity to hit her—and hit hard.

By the time the lesson was over, Spirit was bruised, nearly crying from sheer rage, and just about ready to run away from Oakhurst herself. As the other students folded and packed away their kendo equipment in their gym bags, Spirit strode toward her unopened one. It was probably just as well that she didn’t have a real sword. She’d probably have beheaded somebody.

“If you’d like, I could do some extra practice with you,” Burke said softly.

He’d come up behind her so quietly she hadn’t even heard him approach. If she had her magic, she’d have known he was there, Spirit thought, gritting her teeth. Over the last several weeks she’d noticed how all of the other students—even Loch, and that really hurt—seemed to notice whenever one of the others was there. How many times had she seen Muirin trying to sneak up on Addie, or Brendan, or even (she winced mentally) Nicholas, only to have her intended victim spin around just as she reached them? She was the only one who couldn’t tell. Spirit White. The loser. The cripple.

She was about to tell Burke that she didn’t need any more charity, and forced herself to bite back the words unsaid. Burke wasn’t offering charity. Burke was her friend. He wanted to keep her from collecting any more bruises from Mr. Wallis. And if she was honest, she’d have to admit she needed the help.

“I don’t know when you’d have the time,” she said grudgingly. The football team was playing under lights now, and they had practices every afternoon and a game every Saturday. Burke was heading off to football practice now.

“Evenings after dinner,” he said promptly. “We can get in an hour or so as often as we can. It’ll help.”

She straightened up and turned around, heaving the bag of armor and padding up onto her shoulder. If there had been the least scrap of pity or sympathy on Burke’s face, she would have refused: she refused to accept pity and she rejected the entire idea that she needed sympathy. But his face showed nothing but kindness, so she nodded. “Okay.”

The horrible session with Mr. Wallis had driven everything else out of Spirit’s mind. It was only when she was on her way into the Refectory for dinner that she remembered that Loch had been supposed to be sneaking back into the Infirmary while she’d been collecting a choice set of new bruises. When she saw him sitting at their table, she felt a sharp pang of relief. It would have been unbearable if Loch had vanished, too.

If any of the others had.

Camilla’s disappearance and Nick’s accident were the main topics of conversation at dinner—apparently everyone had heard that he’d been found and was going to be in the hospital for a long time. Listening to Brendan talking about it with Troy Lang and Eric Robinson, though, Spirit realized that nobody