TWO
Four hours was a long time to spend in a small space with just one other person. It was long enough for Spirit to decide that she liked Loch a lot. Sure, Loch obviously came from money, but it didn’t seem to have turned him into a spoiled brat. She found out that he’d been bounced around a bunch of private schools, but it wasn’t because he got into trouble, it was because for a while he was bullied a lot, and at the kind of schools he’d been going to, it was easier to take the kid being bullied out of the dorms and send him for a series of “counseling” sessions that accomplished exactly nothing rather than to blame anybody for anything. Each time that started, Loch’s father would yank him out of the school and find another one, and nothing really changed.
“It finally stopped when one of the physical culture teachers started teaching me parkour, and free-running, and free-climbing.” Loch smiled shyly. “I couldn’t fight back, but if they couldn’t catch me, they couldn’t hit me, and after a while there wasn’t anyone who could catch me.”
That was the second time Loch had used those terms, and Spirit knew she knew them from somewhere. Then she got it. A documentary about a bunch of guys who did things—for fun—that would give Spider-Man a run for his money. “Like in Jump London?” she asked. Loch nodded vigorously, looking pleased that she knew.
Once they started really talking, time passed faster for her than it had in months. There was a small pantry at one end of the plane—there was even a sink! Loch got thirsty and went to prowl through it, coming back with sodas and a covered (not wrapped) platter of sandwiches, and another platter of fruit and fancy cookies. Spirit nibbled absently while they talked, and Loch inhaled the food like every other guy she’d known. By the time the plane started descending, they pretty much had the major details of each other’s life stories. And she decided that aside from the money and the family thing, the two of them were a lot alike. They liked a lot of the same books, same music, same shows—disliked the same kinds of people and attitudes. And for most of the flight she’d been able to not think about having lost Mom and Dad and Phoenix.
She’d never particularly wondered about what Montana looked like, but as the plane descended, she quickly realized that she’d been wrong to think Indiana was the butt-end of the universe. This was the butt-end of the universe! No cities. No towns. At least, not until they got a whole lot lower, and then there was a little bit of a town that looked like it had a main street and maybe four cross streets and that was it. Finally she heard a hum and a thump that must have been the landing gear descending. There still wasn’t much outside the windows but miles of Empty.
The plane touched down so softly Spirit didn’t even feel it at first, she only saw that there was tarmac on either side. Then the engines reversed, throwing them both forward against their seat belts, and the plane was rolling in a big circle, and coming to a stop, and now there was something outside the windows. A line of hangars, and in the distance the tiny town she’d glimpsed from the air. Loch said that this was only a little county airport. Spirit couldn’t make up her mind whether to be glad that he was answering her questions before she asked them, or cross that he knew she didn’t know these things.
Waiting as the plane rolled to a stop was a huge chocolate-colored SUV and another driver in a uniform. The SUV had the same gold-leafed coat of arms on it that the limousine had and the words Oakhurst Academy on the side.
The pilot walked back out of the cockpit. Spirit realized in surprise that they hadn’t heard the woman say anything during the entire flight. The woman walked back to the hatch and opened it, then lowered the stairs for them, still without saying anything. As Spirit walked carefully down the steps—this was actually the first time she’d been up and down a flight of steps since the accident—she saw that a man in green coveralls was already taking their baggage out of the luggage compartment of the jet and stowing it in the back of the SUV. It was chillier in Montana in September than it was in Indiana, and Spirit wished she had a sweater on.
“Master Spears,” said the driver of the SUV, nodding to Loch. “Miss White. Do you need any assistance getting in?”
From here the SUV looked so big it ought to have its own zip code, but Loch was already jumping in, so Spirit shook her head and hauled herself up into it. Inside it was just as plush as the limousine had been, and in the same colors.
She’d thought they’d just be driving to the school, but apparently not. They drove for about half an hour while Spirit looked out the window and tried not to feel like an extra in a Western, until they reached the outskirts of the little town. There was a normal, modern-looking train platform and ticket office on one side of the wide set of tracks—there must have been four sets of them laid side by side—but the SUV drove across the tracks to the other side, where there was a little Victorian-looking platform. The wooden sign hanging over it said “Terry,” and Spirit wondered if all the train stations here had girl’s names.
“We’re taking the train,” Loch said in delight.
“Yes, Master Spears,” the driver said without turning around. “It will be here in just a few moments.”
“Oakdale was originally a private house,” Loch said, seeing Spirit’s look of bafflement. “It belonged to an old-time railroad tycoon named Arthur Tyniger, and he had a private railway line built that went right to his door. This is Terry—as in town of Terry—where you can get the school’s private car hooked onto a regular train.”
“I can’t imagine why I’d want to do that,” Spirit said. The words came out more sarcastically than she’d really intended, and Loch looked hurt.
“Winters here get pretty . . . wintery,” Loch said. “I guess it’s a lot easier to take the train than it is to fight your way through snow for hours.”
Less than five minutes later, their train pulled up. Despite what the train station looked like, the engine and single car that eased into the station were Amtrak-modern.
The driver of the SUV had waited on the platform with them, and as soon as the car’s doors opened, he gestured to them to step inside. Spirit thought it was just creepy to have adults waiting on her like she was some kind of princess or something, but Loch didn’t seem to think it was all that weird. She could see that somebody had stepped out of the door at the far end of the car and was coming to collect their suitcases. Loch had two—a big one and a little one—and they looked just like hers. After a moment Spirit realized why. He would have lost everything in the hotel fire. It looked like Oakhurst had just sent him a new wardrobe rather than having him send for his clothes from home. She supposed that made sense, if there was a school uniform, but what if he’d wanted to bring his personal things?
At least Loch still had personal things.
She knew—after the Rolls-Royce and the Lear jet—she ought to be used to the way Oakhurst did things, but the inside of the train car was still a surprise. Spirit had been on trains several times, but she doubted anybody had ever been on a train like this. The whole floor was carpeted. The carpet was chocolate brown, of course. The seats were upholstered like living room furniture, in a plush gold and brown brocade. There were two seats along one aisle and one seat on the other side, so the aisle was twice as wide as normal, and there was plenty of legroom between the seats. The car didn’t run the full length of the train, though.
“Probably there’s a separate baggage car—or compartment,” Loch said, following her look. He dropped down into one of the single seats—on the side of the train facing the station—and Spirit sat down across the aisle.
“What? No dining room? We might starve to death or something,” Spirit said, and he laughed.
“I’ll check as soon as we get going. It should only be an hour from here to the school, though.” As if his words had been a signal, the engine’s whistle wailed softly, and the train jerked into motion.
“How come you know so much about this place?” Spirit asked curiously, while a little voice inside her said: You could have known just as much if you’d bothered to take an interest in anything but yourself any time in the last several weeks.
“Internet,” Loch said. “I don’t know much. I just know where it is. I’ve always been interested in geography, you know? And they weren’t exactly trying to hide. I can tell you all about beautiful Radial, Montana. Man, I’d hate to live there. I’ve gone to schools with a larger student body than their whole population.” He shuddered.
The train quickly picked up speed. Soon they were traveling through a lot of vast, green, empty landscape. There were roads, but Spirit didn’t see any cars on them. Occasionally they’d cross a road—or a road would cross the tracks—and the engine would blow its whistle loudly. After about forty minutes, she was thoroughly bored. She finally turned back to the orientation packet. The folder contained pamphlets from the McBride Chamber of Commerce. Reading them, she found out that McBride County was filled with dinosaur bones, and Radial was known for its winter wheat, its spring wheat, its barley, cattle, lambs, and (apparently) one church per 100 residents. The pamphlets also mentioned that local wildlife included deer, grouse, pheasants, prairie dogs, eagles, and coyotes.
“A hunter’s paradise,” Loch said.
“You don’t approve of hunting?” she asked, because there’d been actual contempt in Loch’s voice.
“I don’t like guns,” Loch said flatly. “They’re just another way for people to turn themselves into bullies.”
“Sometimes they’re necessary,” Spirit said. Not because she believed it, but because she wanted to see what he’d say.
“Sometimes a lot of things are necessary,” Loch said after a pause. “And sometimes people do a lot of things that aren’t.”
It was another hour before they reached Oakhurst. It was bigger than it had looked in the brochure—now that they weren’t seeing it all cut up into a bunch of photographs they could see that the grand manor house had gotten a couple of wings built onto it. On its right there was a building that had to be the gym because the glass-enclosed pool was clearly visible and it had tennis courts next to it and a track field with covered bleachers beside it. There were some people running on the track, and two people playing tennis. On the left of the manor house (not that close) were the stables, and what looked like a big sandlot in front of them where three people on horseback were doing something. There was an actual road that went past the school, and another road that went through its front gates, but the train went on past it for about a mile as it made a long gentle curve back around in the direction of the school.
But a few moments later the train pulled up about half a mile from the back of the manor house, into a station that made the one in Terry just look cheesy. It was all done in wrought iron and leaded glass—she saw as they approached—and the train pulled into it like it was pulling into a garage. If it happened to be raining that day—or snowing, or whatever—the entire platform would be perfectly dry. Only the ends were open. And of course there was no ticket office.
There were two people already waiting on the platform. One of them was a guy in a blazer with the school crest on the pocket and gold slacks, and the other was the same woman who’d been in the video, only this time she was wearing a black suit, not a red one.
“Here comes trouble,” Loch said under his breath.
When the train huffed and shivered to a stop, the two of them got to their feet and walked over to the door.
“Lachlan Spears and Spirit White.” The woman nodded at them, but didn’t offer her hand. “Please follow me.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked off.
The two of them looked at each other and shrugged, but there wasn’t really any reason to argue. The man who’d been standing with her had gone straight to the luggage compartment and gone inside; Spirit guessed that they weren’t going to be expected to do something as mundane as carry their own suitcases.
The woman didn’t really seem to care if they kept up with her or not, and at least Spirit didn’t have to worry about trying to stay warm. The path from the “train station” to the front of the house was red brick, and it even had streetlights. There was a back entrance—a wide fieldstone terrace with a wall of French doors—but apparently they were going to be entering through the front door.
The front entrance, now that Spirit got a good look at it, looked more like an enormous and expensive “wilderness” hotel than either a house or a school. The architecture was geometric and sort of Art Deco, but it was all done in native stone and peeled logs that had been heavily varnished.
“Arts and Crafts ‘Lodge,’ ” said Loch, with a nod at the front entrance. “I’d bet a lot that Gilbert Stanley Underwood designed this.”
“I’d be more impressed if I knew who that was—” began Spirit, when the door was opened by yet another guy in a blazer and they walked into the Entry Hall.
It was impressive in pictures.
It was stunning in real life.
The focal point of the room was the biggest single tree trunk that Spirit had ever seen in person. Probably only one of the giant redwoods could dwarf it. It held up the ceiling, which was crossed with peeled-log beams, but between the beams were panels of wood inlay done in vaguely Egyptian patterns. Behind the tree-pillar a balcony stretched the breadth of the room, and it was embraced by two half-circle staircases with peeled-log banisters and chocolate-colored carpeted steps that led up to the balcony. Seven chandeliers made of what must have been hundreds of deer antlers hung from the ceiling.
The floor was moss green stone, also inlaid with thin strips of brass that outlined more vaguely Egyptian geometric designs in white, cream, gray, and black stone. To the right of the enormous room—it must have been sixty feet across if it was a foot—was a blonde woman behind a reception desk that seemed to fit in perfectly with everything else here, although Spirit was pretty sure there hadn’t been a reception desk here originally. To the left there was a fireplace made of rough stone that was more than big enough to park a horse in, with a huge half-log mantelpiece and peeled-log couches with buckskin cushions in front of it. Rugs made up of several sheepskins pieced together were spread around the floor in front of the fireplace, and there was a huge banner with the Oakhurst crest, the red-and-white shield with the oak tree with the gold snake coiled in the branches. It should have looked gaudy at that size. It didn’t. If anything, it looked rather sinister.
Everything was as clean as if an entire army of people spent all their time polishing every crevice. There was a faint smell of wood smoke and pine in the air from the fire in the fireplace, and the air was cool, though not as chilly as it was outside.
“He’s ready for them, Ms. Corby,” the woman at the desk said before Spirit quite got through taking it all in.
The woman with them just nodded, and headed for a pair of huge brass-studded wooden doors next to the reception desk. One of them opened at her touch, and she motioned to Spirit and Loch to go inside. They stepped past her cautiously, and even Loch looked a little daunted by now.
The walls of the room were almost solid floor-to-ceiling bookcases, with books arranged in mathematical precision. Between the books—and along the tops of the bookshelves—there were statues, bits of pottery, things Spirit couldn’t even identify, but which looked expensive. The floor was carpeted with thick moss-green carpet that was so plush her feet sank into it. There were two more of those deer-horn chandeliers, and tall bronze floor lamps in the corners of the room. They were all necessary, because it didn’t have any windows.
Dominating the room was a huge desk that Spirit decided had to have been built right here, because as wide and tall as the double doors were, there was still no way it could have come in through them. Its top and sides were inlaid with more of those Egyptian-y patterns in different colored woods, and there were two of the peeled-log-and-leather chairs in front of it, set side by side. There was a fireplace behind it, a little smaller than the one in the Entry Hall, with a fire burning in it. And seated behind the desk was a man in a gray double-breasted suit.
His hair was pure silvery white, combed straight back, and long enough to brush his shoulders. His beard was the same color, and it was just a little bit longer than anybody but modern-day hippies wore them these days, but despite that he didn’t remind Spirit of any of her parents’ friends—or of a kindly, blue-eyed, rosy-cheeked Santa Claus. He looked as if he should have been wearing wizard’s robes instead of a modern-day power suit. He regarded them for a moment as Ms. Corby closed the door behind them. Finally he spoke.
“Spirit White. Lachlan Spears.” He had a very compelling voice; deep and sonorous, with a faint British accent. Despite his silver hair and beard, his voice didn’t sound old at all. “I am Doctor Ambrosius. This is my establishment. Please sit down.”
He indicated the two chairs in front of the desk. Gingerly, Spirit took a seat in the right-hand one, leaving Lachlan the left. Doctor Ambrosius regarded them both with the same detached interest that some of the doctors in the hospital had used—as if she and Loch were “interesting cases” and not people. Well, okay. It wasn’t as if she had to like him. She just had to make sure that from now until she was twenty-one she didn’t give him any reason to make things hard for her. So she put on her best poker-face, the one she’d learned over the last few months as she’d fended off social workers and counselors and everyone who’d wanted to “help” her “come to terms” with her “loss.”
Doctor Ambrosius leaned forward a little. “What is in the video you saw on the plane,” he said, his voice taking on a confidential tone, “was not—quite—the whole truth. Yes, you are Legacies. Yes, we do keep track of our Legacy children. And yes, if something happens to their parents, we see to it that the children are well cared for until they are twenty-one. But”—he held up a finger—“we don’t bring all of them here. However you—like the rest of the young people here at Oakhurst—are very special.”
Spirit exchanged a glance with Loch. Any minute now he was going to tell them they were Jedi Knights, or lost members of an alien race, or . . . something.
“Special how?” Loch asked neutrally.
Doctor Ambrosius smiled slightly. “You, and all the others here, are—or rather, one day will be—magicians.”
Spirit broke into a disbelieving laugh. “Right,” she said, starting to stand up. Mean, she could deal with; crazy was something else. “Thank you, Professor Dumbledore. I hope that train hasn’t left yet, because—”
Doctor Ambrosius made a careless gesture, and suddenly Spirit was shoved back into her chair. It felt as if someone had pushed her—hard!—but there was nothing she could see. Before she could react, Doctor Ambrosius crooked his finger, and two of the bookcases slammed together across the door with a hollow boom. She could see that Loch was struggling to get up, too, and not having any success.
As the force continued to hold both of them down in their seats, Doctor Ambrosius got to his feet. “You don’t believe in magic, of course. And I am sure that in a few moments, you will have convinced yourselves that I am holding you in place with magnets, or some other such nonsense, and that some artifice moved those bookcases in front of the door.” Behind him, the fire in the fireplace suddenly flared up, only now the flames were blue and green. “And you will tell yourselves that chemicals—and not the exercise of Power—are the cause of what is happening behind me. But the world, young magicians, is a very, very dangerous place for our kind. That danger comes not from discovery by the ordinary, humdrum mortals we live and move among, but from others of our own kind. And I am going to show you just how dangerous a place it is for the unwary.”
Suddenly he spread his arms wide, and his eyes blazed as the fire behind him roared up, in blues and purples now. In seconds, he and his desk ballooned gigantically, and Spirit squeaked in dismay. And squeaked again in fear, as she realized it was not Doctor Ambrosius who’d grown, but she who had shrunk, and when she looked over frantically at the other chair where Loch had been, she didn’t see Loch—
She saw a small and very terrified white mouse.
He’s a mouse! That means I’m a mouse, too! Spirit squeaked again—this time in terror—and leaped without thinking toward the floor. But she wasn’t used to having four legs instead of two, or seeing the world this way—flat and with all the colors dimmed down, and seeing almost all the way behind her instead of just straight ahead—and her uncoordinated limbs went out from under her as she landed. She tumbled like a bit of trash, her nose assaulted by a thousand sharp intense smells from the carpet. She looked around in a frenzy of fear, trying to spot Doctor Ambrosius—
And the biggest owl she’d ever seen in her life dropped down on top of her and seized her in its talons. They were several feet long and sharp as razors. She went limp with terror as pain burned down her—arm?—foreleg. She heard strangled squeaking, and saw that the owl had the other mouse—Loch!—under its other foot.
The bird’s beak opened, and a kind of hooting, hissing speech came from it. “You see, young magicians, just how unprepared you are for the ones that would eat you alive, just as quickly and easily as an owl would eat a mouse.”
The owl flapped its wings, carrying them upward, and as it got over the chair that Spirit had been in, it opened its talons and dropped her into it. She landed on the cushion, bounced once or twice, the breath driven out of her and seeing stars, and then—
Then she was herself again, sprawled over the chair in an awkward and uncomfortable pose, her long blonde hair a tangled mess. She scrambled around into a sitting position, pushing it out of her eyes. Everything hurt.
“Son of a—” Loch held onto one of the arms of his chair with both hands for a moment.
Doctor Ambrosius was standing behind his desk again just as if nothing had happened. He cleared his throat, and they both swiveled their heads to stare at him. “Now you see why you were brought here, and why it is inadvisable for you to leave before you are properly trained.” He made another of those little gestures, and the bookcases slid back from the door. The fire in the fireplace shrank, and turned from purple to blue to green and then to the normal yellow. “I trust that now I have your full attention.” Doctor Ambrosius sat back in his chair.
Spirit nodded.
“Yes sir,” Loch said in a shaky voice.
Doctor Ambrosius did not smile. “There are all manner of magicians,” he said. “The power expresses itself in many ways. We won’t know just what you can do until we have finished testing you. Once we know, you can begin your training in the Arcane Arts. But regardless of your powers, there is a great, wide world out there into which you must fit and remain undetected—and to that end, Oakhurst is as much the school you saw in the brochure as it is a school of Grammery.” The way he said that last word made it clear without explanation that he meant magic. “Now, on that note, I shall return you to Ms. Corby’s capable hands. She will show you to your rooms and acquaint you with what you can expect from here on. We will have another interview in a few days when you have settled in. Good day.”
The doors opened at another of Doctor Ambrosius’s gestures. He turned his chair so that it faced the fire, with his back to them. Spirit and Loch slowly got up and walked back out into the Entry Hall. The door closed behind them. The receptionist wasn’t at her desk, and Ms. Corby wasn’t there either. In the echoing silence, Spirit and Loch looked at each other.
“Did I just have a really vivid hallucination?” Loch asked.
Spirit swallowed hard. “If you did—” she began.
“Hey!” Loch said. “You’re bleeding.” He nodded at her right arm.
As if him saying the words made it real, suddenly her arm twinged with a sharp pain. “Ow!”
She held out her arm and stared at it. She’d worn a sleeveless blouse to leave the hospital, and had been regretting it ever since she arrived in Montana. I guess it’s just as well, she thought, half-hysterically, they say it’s impossible to get bloodstains out of a white blouse. . . . From wrist to elbow her arm was scored with a deep, angry-red scratch. It looked exactly like a cat scratch—if the cat had claws as long as her arm.
Or like an owl’s talons—if you were the size of a white mouse.
“Um . . . maybe not a hallucination,” she said quietly.