Nine's Legacy Read Free Page A

more guests.”
    “I promise,” I say, flashing a Boy Scout sign I picked up from some television show. Sandor smirks.
    “It did get me to thinking,” he says, standing up. “Maybe you’re ready to take your training to the next level.”
    I stifle a groan. Sometimes it feels like all I do is train, probably because all I do is train . Before my telekinesis developed, it was endless days of strength training and cardio, broken up by what Sandor calls “practical academics.” No history or literature, just more skills that I could potentially use in the field. How many kids know how to set a broken bone or which household chemicals will create an improvised explosion?
    Whatever complaint I might have made goes unvoiced when Sandor brushes aside a pile of junk to reveal my Loric Chest. He rarely opens it and I’ve only seen him use a few of its items. I’ve been waiting for the day to learn everything that it contains and how to use them. Maybe I should’ve lured a Mog to our hideout sooner.
    “Are you serious?” I ask, still half expecting to be punished.
    He nods. “Your Legacies are developing. It’s time.”
    Together, we open the lock on the Chest. I jostle in next to Sandor, trying to reach my hands inside. So many new toys to play with—I see some kind of spiky green ball and an oblong crystal that gives off a faint glow—but Sandor elbows me aside.
    “When you’re ready,” he cautions, indicating the shiny mysteries waiting inside my Chest.
    Sandor hands me a plain-looking silver pipe, probably the most boring item in the whole Chest, then snaps the Chest closed before I can see anything else.
    “Pretty soon your other Legacies will have developed. That means the rest of the Garde—the surviving ones, anyway—will be developing theirs too.”
    I push aside the memory of the panic attack I had after killing the Mog. But Sandor is looking at me with a steely glint in his eyes. He’s not playing around.
    “This might be fun now, but it won’t be a game forever. It will be war. It is war. If you want me to treat you like an adult, you need to understand that.”
    “I understand,” I say. And I do. I think.
    I turn the pipe over in my hands. “What does this do?”
    Before I can answer, the pipe extends into a full-length staff. Sandor takes a step back as I accidentally knock a hollowed-out computer onto the floor.
    “You hit things with it,” says Sandor, glancing worriedly at his fragile gadgets. “Preferably Mogs.”
    I twirl the staff over my head. Somehow it feels natural, like an extension of myself.
    “Awesome.”
    “Also, I think it’s time you started going to school.”
    My jaw drops. In all those years traveling, Sandor never bothered to enroll me in school. Once we were settled in Chicago, I broached the subject, but Sandor didn’t want to distract me from my training. There was a time when I would have killed to go to school, to be normal. Now, the idea of mixing with human kids my own age, of trying to pass as one of them, is nearly as daunting as taking down a Mog.
    Sandor slaps me on the shoulder, pleased with himself. Then he hits a button on the underside of his desk.
    A bookshelf littered with dusty electronics manuals makes a sudden hydraulic hiss and slides into the ceiling. A secret room, one even I was unaware of.
    “Step into the Lecture Hall, my young ward,” intones my Cêpan.

Chapter Five
    What Sandor calls the Lecture Hall isn’t like the classrooms that I’ve seen on TV. There are no desks, no places to sit at all, really, with the exception of a cockpit-looking chair built into one wall. Sandor calls it the Lectern, and he climbs into the seat behind a control panel of blinking buttons and gauges. The room is about the size of our expansive living room, all white, every surface tiled with what looks to be retractable panels.
    My footsteps echo as I walk to the center of the room. “How long have you been working on this?”
    “Since we moved in,” he