Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,63
on the edge of a crying jag during the previous week, it was nothing to what she felt during the days that followed. Now they not only had a deadline—December twenty-first—but they knew that someone here in the school was in league with . . . whoever the enemy was.
Student? Faculty? Staff? It was Loch who pointed out that whichever member of the Oakhurst staff was turning the school from a safe haven into a hunting ground, they weren’t their only problem. There were good reasons to suspect everyone. Knowing what they now did, it seemed more likely that the “secret society” that might-or-might-not exist among the Oakhurst students was more likely to be allied with Doctor Ambrosius’s enemies and the Whatever than it was to be on the side of the Good Guys. (“Just because they’re keeping it a secret?” Addie had demanded indignantly, and Loch had replied: “Yeah. Think about it. We’ve got a Chess Club, a Tennis Club, a swim team, a Kendo Club, and every other kind of club and team I can think of here at Oakhurst. If there were an Honors Society for wizards—a legitimate one—don’t you think they’d tell us about that, too? If only so we could fight over who got in?”)
So they didn’t just have to find the enemy—they had to do it while they were surrounded by potential spies. And then there was another problem: the Alumni, and the secret society that might (or might not) exist. Were they (and it) Good Guys? Bad Guys? Some of each? Not even Burke remembered who’d visited the Alumni during Alumni Days, so they didn’t know who they definitely had to avoid. And anyone at all who saw one of them in the wrong place at the wrong time—or saw something they shouldn’t, like their research notes on the Whatever—could betray them innocently and by accident, just by mentioning it to the wrong person.
Was Angelina Swanson one of the bad guys? She was one of the proctors, and most of the younger girls didn’t really like her: Angie was an Air Mage, and not above using her Gift to raise a wind that would scatter your schoolwork all over your room—or out a window—or make a door slam on your hand. Was Dylan Williams? He had a nasty streak a mile wide, and used his Mage Gift—Dylan was School of Earth; a Jaunting Mage—to make life unpleasant when he could: He’d grab your pencil or your calculator out of your hands in class, and you’d be the one who had to make a disturbance in order to get them back.
Or was it just too simpleminded to think that because someone was a creep they were actually evil? Maybe they should be worrying about the nice people at Oakhurst, like Kelly Langley and Ms. Smith. Only Ms. Smith was just too nice to be real.
Wasn’t she?
This was all enough to make Spirit want to crawl into a hole and never come out again.
We aren’t getting anywhere,” Spirit said tiredly.
It was a Tuesday evening. Thanksgiving was in just a few days. And more to the point, the last football game of the Oakhurst season was this Saturday, and Saturday evening—instead of a basketball game—the martial arts club was giving an exhibition.
“No, no,” Burke said. “You’re getting a lot better, Spirit. Honest.”
The two of them were down in the gym, wearing their gis. Lately the only time Spirit felt as if she could relax was when she was practicing with Burke, because at least then she was doing something “normal for Oakhurst,” and Burke’s gentle style of teaching was a relief after the constant high pressure from everyone else at Oakhurst.
“I don’t mean this,” she said, smiling wanly. “This is great. I mean everything else.”
She tilted her head back, trying to work some of the tired stiffness out of her neck muscles. It had been two weeks since she, Loch, and Muirin had made their midnight trip to the subbasement, and they were all regularly blowing off the “lights out” part of curfew in order to get their schoolwork done, because they were all spending hours in the Library trying to figure out what Nick’s last cryptic warning—if it was a warning—had meant.
“Oh,” Burke said, as if she’d reminded him of something he really wanted to forget. “We’re all doing our best, but . . . Muirin wants to go back down there and look for more clues. I don’t think that’s a good idea.”