enough, it was cold out there in the stands.
When she got back to her room, her IM was flashing and chiming with a request for chat. So not in the mood, Spirit thought, muting the sound and turning her computer around so she wouldn’t have to look at the nagging image on the screen.
How come you weren’t answering your IM?” Muirin demanded, practically the moment Spirit settled into her seat in the Refectory. “I was paging you right up until dinner.”
Spirit felt a flare of irritation—and an unreasonable wish that she’d sat somewhere else tonight. Couldn’t Muirin give her a rest for one afternoon? “I was busy,” she said shortly.
She glanced around. The others were all looking at her as if she’d done something wrong—or something particularly stupid—and for just an instant Spirit was tempted to leap to her feet and start shouting: “Hey! Everyone! Camilla didn’t run away! She was kidnapped by the Monster Of The Week! And so was Nicholas! And so was Seth! And so was everybody that you think has left Oakhurst for any reason for the last ten years!”
“What?” she said instead, knowing she sounded sulky and out of sorts.
“Um, just, I could use some help on this thing I’ve got to work on, if you’ve got time after dinner,” Loch said, after an awkward pause.
Spirit was about to point out that not only were they not in any of the same classes, Loch was probably a better student than she was. He might have been bounced around among half a dozen private schools (or more), but the ones that weren’t just babysitters for the rich and bored were academic pit bulls. And Lachlan Spears, Senior, had probably been the type of father to go for the pit-bull school over the babysitter school. But she didn’t. She opened her mouth to say something when she felt a foot settle over hers and press down. Hard.
She glanced up in surprise. Addie was reaching for a roll and looking completely innocent, but Spirit had no doubt as to whose foot it was. “Um, sure. Glad to,” Spirit said unconvincingly.
She was grateful when dinner was over. She didn’t have a lot of appetite between wondering what the others wanted to talk about and trying to keep up a stream of inane chatter about stupid things. They hadn’t seemed quite as stupid when she’d just thought Oakhurst was a perfectly normal orphanage where all the kids happened to have magic powers. (“Will you listen to yourself, Spirit White!” her inner voice said. “ ‘A perfectly normal orphanage where all the kids happen to have magic powers’? Is it any wonder you’re a few fries short of a Happy Meal these days?”) But now that she knew it was an orphanage where all the kids had magic powers and some of them were inexplicably disappearing, she’d lost any patience with trivialities that she’d had left after her family’s deaths. Life wasn’t just serious business, it was downright grim. Why didn’t everyone else see that?
She was just as glad that Loch’s “cover story” of needing her help with a school project meant they could all head over to the Library after dinner instead of going to the gym for the basketball game. It was one more example of how Oakhurst was trying to turn them all against each other.
She really wasn’t in the mood.
The School Library occupied the second floor of the East Wing of the original house, and it had more books in it than the piddly little Association Library in Spirit’s hometown. Her former hometown. The Library was one long room, about twice the size of the Faculty Lounge where Doctor Ambrosius held his Afternoon Teas. The ceiling was painted dark blue, with a pattern of constellations on it in gold. Above each of the windows there was a half-moon-shaped panel (Loch—of course he’d know—said it was called a “lunette”) on which the celestial motif was repeated: there were twelve lunette panels in the library, and each had a painting of one of the signs of the Zodiac on it.
There were oak bookshelves all along all four walls, and if that weren’t enough storage space for the Oakhurst Library (and apparently it wasn’t) there were also bookshelves jutting out into the room to form “study bays.” There were large oak tables in each of the “study bays,” at which the students could congregate to work.
Ms. Anderson was behind the checkout desk this evening. You could check out as many