Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,81

frustrated, but if Oakhurst’s graduates were expected to deal with supernatural creatures, they hadn’t been given any hint of it yet), there were a number of different ways to simply protect yourself from elves, but that wasn’t what they were going to need. What they needed was a form of attack—something that would make elves go away—and for obvious reasons, there wasn’t much reliable information about things like that available. People in the past—especially non-magicians—had been more interested in protecting themselves from the powerful magical creatures than doing something that might make them angry.

“We found other methods that might work, but they either involve things we can’t get, or we couldn’t find clear enough information to risk using them,” Addie said, propping her chin on her hand. “So it’s too much of a risk.”

“Like what?” Spirit asked curiously.

Addie smiled briefly. “Well, there’s St. John’s Wort—you know, that stuff that comes in pills that’s supposed to cure just about everything? That’s supposed to work. Like garlic with a vampire. Only it’s not like we could get a truckload of it shipped in here in a week. And I’m not sure if it has to be fresh or dried or what. And then there’s bread.”

“Bread?” Spirit asked in disbelief.

Addie nodded vigorously. “Stale bread. I know! It seems ridiculous, but just about all the books and folklore databases say ‘stale bread.’ Only the only kind of bread we can get is out of the kitchens, and the books don’t say what kind or how much—and what if what we’ve got is the wrong kind? Nope. I’m sticking to iron. Now all we have to do is get enough of it,” Addie said, looking down at the pile of books. “And figure out what to do with it, because I’m pretty sure that just having it won’t be enough. But Murr says she’s got some ideas.”

“I hope so,” Spirit said in a low voice. She tried as much as possible not to think about what they were going to do; if getting yelled at by Mr. Wallis in martial arts class scared her, how was she ever going to go off and actually fight something for real?

“So how are you and Loch coming along?” Addie asked. “You’ve got demons.”

Spirit had managed to stop being startled by hearing sentences like that, although she still couldn’t decide whether they were funny or bizarre. “Loch says demons are the worst,” she said slowly, “because they’re powerful and evil by definition. But he says the good thing about demons—”

“Assuming there is anything good about demons,” Addie interjected, and Spirit smiled ruefully.

“—is that they’re also really vulnerable, if you can hit them just right.”

“You mean like with a spell?” Addie asked.

“Or something,” Spirit sighed. She was pretty sure that when she found out what the “or something” Loch would come up with was, she wasn’t going to like it.

I can’t do that!” she hissed at Loch. Spirit was keeping her voice low by habit—and a good thing, too, because she could get together with Addie in her dorm room, and with Burke in the gym, but the only place she could meet with Loch was either the Library or one of the student lounges, and the Library offered slightly more privacy.

“You have to,” Loch said simply. “You’re the key to making all of this work.” He tapped the cover of the very large, very dusty book. He’d spent the last several days copying drawings and paragraphs of text out of it—and then double-checking them everywhere else he could. “We don’t know which demon-or-demons we’re dealing with, or if there are any demons at all. If we did know, it would be a lot easier. But whatever the Wild Hunt is, if it’s demons, this should work. It’s sort of a General Purpose Dismissing Spell, and what it will do is send a demon back to Hell. It comes in two parts: a spell-trap, and a spell. Once the demon-or-demons is inside the spell-trap, the spell has to be read out, and that will make the spell-trap send whatever’s in it back to Hell. So one of us has to be ready to decoy the demon-or-demons into the spell-trap . . . and the other one has to be ready to work the spell.”

“I—But—Why me?” Spirit demanded, starting to get angry. “You know damned well I don’t have any magic!”

“I know damned well you do—or you wouldn’t be here at Oakhurst,” Loch retorted just as hotly. “And we’d just better