Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,74

over to pick up Edgar’s bowl, then pointed. At first Spirit thought she meant the two of them to look at something, but then she saw all the spilled water literally crawling across the surface of the drop cloth and back into the watering can.

“Yeah, but—” Muirin said.

“We should put this thing away and get out of here,” Loch said, coming back. He looked at Muirin. “I’m sorry, Muirin. You were right. Seth would have written to you from outside. Now let’s get what killed him.”

Muirin Shae was a green-eyed redhead, with the skim-milk pale skin to match. As Spirit watched, rage made Muirin turn even paler, until her eyes seemed as brilliantly green as a cat’s. She nodded sharply. “I was right. And we will.”

Spirit felt a twinge of unease. No one could say that Muirin’s buttons weren’t both highly visible and easy to push—but she wasn’t sure that pushing them this way was the best idea that Loch had ever had. Even if it did get Muirin back on board, it also focused Muirin on revenge—maybe even to the exclusion of her own safety.

They all felt too guilty to do what would have been the logical thing if they’d been innocent, which was to go to the Infirmary and see if Edgar was okay. At least Spirit did, and none of the others suggested it.

“But what does it mean?” Addie asked, sounding lost. “What did Edgar see? Nothing should have . . . Nothing could have . . .” She faltered to a stop and looked despairing.

“At least we know more than we did before,” Loch said quietly. “Even if we don’t know much.”

“Yeah,” Muirin said. “Riddle me this, campers: what hunts at night and drives you insane if you run into it?”

The other three looked at her, and none of them had an answer.

Muirin’s question was the clue that let them finally give the Whatever its true name, but before that happened, they all got another unwanted lesson in just how far someone—or something—at Oakhurst would go to protect its secrets.

Once they’d cleaned up the Greenhouse, they weren’t really sure what to do or where to go. By mutual agreement they split up, and Spirit spent the afternoon waiting for a summons—by whom and to where she wasn’t sure—that never came. When she saw the other four sitting at their table at dinner, it just showed Spirit how scared she’d been that one or more of them wouldn’t be there, and that just made her angry. She hated being scared all the time. She hated being afraid of her teachers, of her classmates, of the entire school. She hated the thought that there wasn’t anybody she could go to for help. She hated the thought of having to live this way for years.

And the fact that everyone else at the table was bubbling over with anticipation for the upcoming whole week of no classes with the Winter Dance right in the middle of it—on the twenty-second, a Wednesday—and talking about the big tree that would be brought in next Sunday to decorate the Main Entry just made everything worse. Spirit didn’t want to think about Christmas at all, let alone her first Christmas without her parents and her baby sister.

“What?” Spirit said, suddenly aware that one of the others had asked her something.

“I said, do you want to get in another hour or so of practice tonight?” Burke repeated. “I know we don’t have another demo until March, but it doesn’t hurt to keep in practice. Um, I mean—”

“Ooooh, can we watch?” Muirin purred.

“No, Muirin, you can’t watch,” Burke said, in long-suffering tones. “If you want to take karate, go see Mr. Wallis.”

“Sorry! Busy being a brilliant fencer!” Muirin chirped brightly.

Loch smiled at her. “You can come and be brilliant in the Library then. It’s dark back in the stacks,” he said.

Addie groaned appreciatively at the joke and Muirin made a face. Spirit just stared at her plate. Loch’s ability to, well, pretend still bothered her in a way she couldn’t quite explain.

Burke, do you wonder about Loch?” Spirit asked.

It was an hour later, and they’d both changed to their workout clothes and were down in the gym. While it wasn’t empty—there were two pick-up basketball games going on, one at each end of the court—nobody was paying any attention to them.

“Spirit, I have wondered about more things in the three months since the two of you got here than in the four years before,” Burke said.