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 t
he 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 y
ou 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.
THREE
When Ms. Corby appeared a minute or so later, she had a man in a business suit with her. “Miss White, with me. Master Spears, with Mr. Devon,” she said with detached pleasantness. “The Young Ladies’ Wing is to the right, the Young Gentlemen’s to the left.”
For a moment, Spirit felt a flash of panic. Loch was the only person in this whole place she knew! But then she forced herself to be calm. It wasn’t as if they were being incarcerated, and after that interview with Doctor Ambrosius, it was pretty clear that being separated from Loch was the least of her worries. The four of them walked back beneath the balcony to where there was a perfectly ordinary set of double doors—a far more ordinary set than those that led into Doctor Ambrosius’s sanctum.
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