Page 95 of Legacy Ascended

"I don't know." The clerk hands my notes back, and the custodian puts the signed visit record on top. I look down at the stack. "I liked the window-glass receipt."

Jon smiles. "I thought you might."

The iron door closes behind us, and then the third, and the second, and the first. We come up into the lower corridor, where Luke is waiting across from the stairs.

He straightens when he sees me. "Well?"

"The inventory was never complete," I tell him. "Not from the first day. It says so in the clerk's own handwriting."

He looks at the papers in my hand, then at the signature on the top page.

"They put that in writing?"

"She did. A copy goes to the Council tonight."

Luke takes my hand.

I keep the papers in the other one all the way up the stairs.

Chapter seventeen

Jessica

Renzo has stolen my second pastry, which is fine, because I stole it from Sophia in the first place.

“That's the thing about a food chain,” he says with his mouth full. “Somebody has to be at the top.”

“The only thing you're at the top of is this table,” I tell him.

“I am at the top of this table,” he agrees. “It's a small kingdom. I rule it kindly.”

Sophia doesn't look up from the pages she's got fanned across two placemats and a bowl. “Somebody explain the weighting to me before I lose my mind. Voss says the practical is nearly half the unit. The handbook says less.”

“It's Voss's number,” Freya says. “I asked him. He looked delighted to be asked, which was unsettling.”

Sophia says something unrepeatable and starts rearranging her entire week.

Ander comes in, spots us, and heads straight over. He takes the chair beside mine without pausing to decide whether he's allowed to. His hand finds my thigh under the table and stays there, warm through the fabric, and he leans over and drinks from my coffee.

“That's mine.”

“You weren't drinking it.”

“I was building toward it.”

“You were building toward it slowly.” He hands it back, and I drink from the same side of the cup.

Luke comes through with Soren behind him. Luke stops at my chair, bends to kiss me on his way past, then takes the chair Declan was about to put his bag on.

“You people are a weather system,” Declan says.

“You've got room.”

“I had room.”

By the time we get to Faris's lecture, Sophia has rearranged her entire week twice.

We come in as a clump — Sophia, Freya, Declan, me — and I notice people looking. A couple of them look at my wrist. Someone else watches Torres head for the back row.