Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,52

more than all her schoolbooks combined. “How can we figure out what’s going on if there isn’t any pattern to it?”

Muirin looked up from behind her own pile of books. “Maybe there is.” Her green eyes gleamed brightly in the gloom; they’d chosen the darkest, most secluded corner of the Library to work in. “Halloween is one of the four Fire Festivals.”

“I know,” Spirit said, rolling her eyes. “Halloween, and Imbolc—February second, and Beltane—May first, and Lammas—August first. And then there are the four Cross-Quarter Days between them, the summer and winter solstices, and the spring and fall equinoxes.”

“Ms. Groves would be so proud,” Muirin murmured sweetly.

“But so what? Nick wasn’t hurt on Halloween. And Seth didn’t disappear either on Halloween or on the Autumn Equinox,” Spirit pointed out.

“I take it back,” Muirin said. “Nick left Halloween night, so he ran into whatever grabbed Camilla. And . . .” She stopped, and stared down at her notepad, and when she continued speaking, it was in a small reluctant voice. “Seth . . . had been talking about leaving for a while. He’d been going to go next summer. During ‘Alumni Days,’ because, you know, it’s warmer in June. And he said everybody would be distracted then.”

“So he did really run away,” Spirit said quietly. Muirin had been adamant for weeks that Seth wouldn’t have done any such thing.

“He wouldn’t have run away in September,” Muirin said flatly. “Too cold, no tourists going through he could hitch a ride with, and all his contacts in Radial in school with no reason to go out after dark. Not unless . . . Not unless he thought he had a really good reason.”

“Okay,” Spirit said. She thought about Murin’s first point, how cold September here was, and shivered. “So say he had a really good reason. Then . . . If whatever took Camilla and hurt Nick grabbed him, it did it because he went outside the wards and it knew he was running away. So it’s sort of like a watchdog.”

“Not one I ever want to meet,” Muirin said, hugging herself and staring off into the distance.

The television in the little lounge had a DVD of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in it; supposedly they were all studying it, but they all knew the play practically by heart, so it made a good excuse to get together that wouldn’t attract anyone else. “But why didn’t the—the whatever-we’re-looking-for take Nicholas the way we’re assuming it took Camilla and Seth?” Addie asked. “He was out at Halloween—it’s Halloween—well, Samhain Night—from sunset until dawn.”

“Because in magic, a day starts at dawn, not at midnight,” Loch said. “And it ends at sunset. So the hours between sunset and dawn belong to the Otherworld.”

They hadn’t been able to get together in one of the lounges to compare notes until after nine. Loch was proctoring a tournament for the Chess Club, and Addie and several of the other Water Witches had magic practice after dinner, because the swim team was using the pool in the afternoon. And none of them dared to make changes to their routine they couldn’t explain. At least it gave Spirit and Burke another hour of practice time in the gym while Muirin did some more digging on her own.

“Maybe the Whatever couldn’t grab Nick,” Muirin said, frowning thoughtfully. She waved the spiral notebook she was holding. She’d told the others that they didn’t dare keep a single thing on their computers—not even if they were sure they’d saved it to a disk and deleted the copy on their computer—so all their notes were being kept in pencil on paper . . . and carefully hidden. Spirit kept hers between the mattress and the box spring on her bed. “Loch said he heard the cops say they found Nick a little after dawn. Maybe dawn meant the Whatever had to stop chasing him.”

“But by then the damage had already been done,” Burke said grimly.

“Yeah,” Muirin said. “I’ve found something else you aren’t going to like. I think I have, anyway. Okay, June is when Graduation is.”

“Right,” Addie said. “That and Alumni Days. Same week.” She glanced toward Spirit and Loch, the newcomers. “Doctor Ambrosius doesn’t make a really big thing of graduating, and . . . you know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard anybody talk about what they’re planning to do after they leave Oakhurst?” She frowned, wearing the same baffled expression Spirit was starting to become all-too-familiar with—as if thinking about life after