ONE
Spirit looked listlessly out the window of her room. It wasnt much of a view, just the roof of the next building, part of a parking lot, and some struggling trees beyond. But ever since the accident, there didnt seem to be much point to anything, and one view was as good as another.
Footsteps at the door made her turn her head. It was the orderly, a college guy who was in premed. Neil was cute enough to be a television doctor, not a real one, and spent time with her that he didnt have to. Once Spirit would have welcomed the company. Now, Neil was just one more irritating person who kept wanting her to do things. Like get better. What was the point? Why should she bother to get better? But the people wouldnt leave her alone. Probably they just wanted her out of the nursing home so they could use the bed for someone else.
“Spirit, Oakhurst telephoned. The car is on the way. Theyll be picking you up in about half an hour, and Ill bring your chair then.” Neil gave her that brown-eyed compassionate look that always made her give up and do or say what he wanted. Hell make a good doctor someday, she thought.
“Im ready,” she said, since it was what he wanted to hear. Of course she was ready. She didnt have anything to take with her, anyway. Everything she had now was really Oakhursts.
When shed finally woken up after the emergency surgery, the hospital had sent in a social worker and a minister to tell her that Mom and Dad and Phoenix had died in the crash, and that “it was a miracle” she had survived. Whod want that kind of miracle? She couldnt even go to the funeral. Shed have been the only one there anyway: both Mom and Dad were only children, so no relatives, and, as far as Spirit knew, she didnt have any grandparents. Mom telecommuted—had telecommuted—to someplace on the other side of the country, and Dad had worked at home, in the workshop and kiln in back of the house. Theyd been coming home from a craft show that night. So, no coworkers. And she and Phoenix had both been homeschooled for the last two years, ever since Dad got into a fight with the school board about the curriculum. So, no classmates.
And then, not three weeks later—like a brick falling on someone whod been thrown off a building—a sheriffs deputy came to Spirits hospital room and told her that thered been another accident, that her parents empty house had caught fire and burned to the ground. There werent any neighbors near enough to see and call it in, of course. Shed seen the photos hed brought her. The only thing left was the chimney and a few heaps of crumpled metal that had been the furnace and major appliances. The fire marshal said he thought “kids” had done it.
Shed been so drugged up the catastrophe really hadnt registered until later, when shed realized that if she ever got out of there, there was no home to go back to. And why would she want to go home anyway? There was no one there.
That was when the lawyer showed up.
He wasnt her Dads lawyer, or an insurance company lawyer. He wasnt anybody local at all. He could have been a lawyer on a TV show, all slick and polished and without a hair out of place. He talked to her as if she was six instead of almost sixteen and told her that her parents had set up a “trust” for her, that the trust was administered by this “Oakhurst Foundation,” that the Foundation was covering all her bills until the insurance could be sorted out, and that when she was fully recovered, Oakhurst would be sending for her, because shed be living at “The Oakhurst Complex” until she was twenty-one. And she didnt need to worry about a thing, because shed have everything she needed.
Never mind that what Spirit needed these people could never give her. Never mind that her parents had never said anything to her about Oakhurst or a trust. Things were already being done, what was left of her life had already been taken over, and Spirit didnt care enough to fight it. Things kept arriving from Oakhurst—both while she was at the hospital and when—six weeks after the accident—she was moved to a “rehabilitation facility.” Flowers she told the nurses to take. Books she didnt read. Clothing she didnt bother to wear. Stuffed bears she told the nurses to give to somebody else. She didnt want anything. Why should she? Her parents had always taught her that people were important, not things, and all of her people—everyone who counted—were gone. There was nothing left to fight for.
All Spirit wanted to do was to lie down and go to sleep and never wake up again.
Neil was still standing in the doorway.
She was trying to make up her mind about saying something when he broke the silence. “Look, Spirit. Get mad at me if you want, but this moping around youre doing has got to stop.”
She stared at him. “What?” she demanded, lifted out of her apathy by the bite of anger. “Im not supposed to be depressed? In case you hadnt noticed, my whole family is dead, Im being shipped off to some dumping ground in the middle of nowhere, and nobody cares!”
She felt the tears start then, burning her eyes, burning her cheeks, and she wiped them angrily away. Of course nobody cared! Maybe even Mom and Dad hadnt cared, if this was their idea of what should be done with her—the treacherous thought had been eating at her for weeks, no matter how hard she tried to suppress it. They couldnt have cared, they hadnt told her about any of this, hadnt consulted her—
“Have you got any idea how much your rehab cost, not to mention your surgeries?” Neil asked, scowling. “Did you know the insurance cut off after ninety days, and Oakhurst picked up after that and paid for everything? And all the extras, too—private duty nurses, your physical therapy sessions, your private room at St. Francis and here—trust me, those things dont come cheap. Without that rehab you wouldnt be walking now. So whoever these people are, what ever the school is like, its not going to be a dumping ground. But thats not why youre being emo—”
“Emo! I am not—”
“What would your folks think?” Neil interrupted ruthlessly. “You! Sitting around hoping to die! They went to a lot of trouble, thinking about what might happen if they were gone, planning for it, finding the place they did! You know how many kids with both parents gone end up in the system, tossed around to group homes, foster homes . . . forgotten? No. You dont. And you never will. Your parents took the time and planned ahead, even though they hoped it would never come to this, and now there you sit, wanting to throw away their last gift to you like it was nothing. What do you think theyd think if they saw you like this?” Neil shook his head. “Its not what theyd want for you. And its not respectful to them.” With that, before Spirit could think of a retort, before any of the angry replies she wanted to make could actually form into words, Neil turned and left.
It was as if a fire had kindled inside her. How dared he! How dared he say those things! She hated him! But the anger was having a strange effect on her. She began to feel more alive than she had in . . . months. By the time a nurse came to tell her that the car had come for her, Spirit felt almost as if she had awakened from a drugged daze.
The orderly brought her wheelchair—the fancy one that Oakhurst had paid for. She hadnt needed it in weeks, but she knew it was the facilitys policy that she wouldnt be let to make the trip from her room to the curb on her own two feet. Shed expected the orderly to be Neil, and had been looking forward to giving him a piece of her mind. Money couldnt make up for the loss of her parents, her little sister, her life. But she didnt even see him anywhere on the floor. Good riddance, she thought sourly.
She scanned the curb as they emerged into the bright light of a September afternoon, looking for the sort of car she expected would pick her up to take her to an orphanage. She was looking for some kind of van, but all she saw was a limousine—an actual Rolls-Royce in a rich chocolate brown. She frowned; the nurse had been very specific that her car was here.
Her car.
Her—
She took a closer look. On the front door of the car there was a design in gold leaf. She peered at it. She couldnt tell what was in the fake-English coat of arms, but she could read the words Oakhurst Academy that were underneath it in Old English letters.
The door opened, the chauffeur—he was even wearing a uniform!—got out and opened the passenger door, then offered her his hand to help her up out of the chair. She blinked at him in disbelief.
“Im here to take you to the airport, Miss White,” the man said with grave formality and a faint trace of an English accent. “Your luggage is already in the boot.”
Stunned, Spirit let him take her hand and help her up and into the back of the car.
“It will be a long drive, miss, and the refrigerator is fully stocked. Please help yourself to what ever youd like,” the chauffeur said. “Oakhurst has sent along some orientation literature, if youre interested in perusing it during the drive.” And with that, he closed the door behind her.
Feeling out of her depth, Spirit settled back and fastened her seat belt as the chauffeur walked around to the drivers side, got behind the wheel, closed his door, and the limousine pulled smoothly away from the curb.
“Hi, Im Loch,” said a voice from the shadows on the far side of the limousine. “Lachlan Spears, but, you know, call me Loch. I guess youre Spirit White.”
She strangled on an “eep!” and stared at the corner. Somehow Lachlan Spears had turned off the interior lights on the other side of the limousines back seat, and the tinted windows made it dark in here, even in daylight. When he leaned forward, though, and Spirit got a good look at him, what she saw was a thin, handsome guy about her age, with the sort of flyaway hair only a good haircut got you, and melting blue eyes. He was holding a big folder—like the kind she had for her school stuff, the kind that had pockets on both sides. He held it out and she took it automatically.
“Thats the school stuff,” Loch said diffidently.
Spirit made a sour face—because it wasnt a school, it was an orphanage—but opened it anyway. It was full of . . . stuff. On one side was a bunch of Chamber of Commerce pamphlets about the area around Oakhurst. She opened one about someplace called Radial, which was apparently “the jewel of McBride County.” Spirit wrinkled her nose. According to the facts and statistics in the little pamphlet, Radial had a population of 700 and was four hours away from Billings, which was the largest city in Montana. She gave up and turned to the school literature. It was a very slick booklet that looked more like something youd get from a pricey private college than an orphanage. On the front was the expected view of the orphanage-slash-school . . . except it didnt look like anything Spirit expected. Oakhurst School looked like one of those big manor houses that got used in movies set in En gland.
The schools coat of arms had been on the front of the folder, and it was on the cover of the booklet, too, only here it was in color. It was pretty fancy. Spirit bit her lip, thinking of the rude things Phoenix would have said about it. Phoenix had adored every dumb movie about King Arthur and Camelot to come along, from The Sword in the Stone to First Knight to A Knights Tale.
On top of the shield there was a bears head on a plate, which was weird just to start with. On one side of the shield was a gold upside-down cup, and on the other was a broken silver sword. She frowned. The design was decidedly unsettling. On the shield itself, which was mostly red, there was a broad white stripe going from the top right to the bottom left, and on top of that was an oak tree (for Oakhurst, she guessed) in bright green and brown. Only when she looked more closely, there was a gold snake coiled in the branches. Maybe it all made more sense if you were English. She turned the page quickly. More pictures of the manor house. It was huge. And unless theyd Photoshopped the heck out of it, there wasnt a chip in the stone or a blade of grass out of place.
She paid no attention to the text . . . it was just a bunch of stuff about the guy whod built the place back in the early 1900s. Instead she stared at the glossy photographs. They looked like a set for one of the Harry Potter movies, not like anything Spirit could imagine being actually real. There was the “Great Hall,” done up in the kind of grand Art Deco scheme she remembered from visiting the Empire State Building in New York City once. There was a “refectory”—which looked pretty much like a dining room, with white linen tablecloths and enormous chandeliers; a library—which could have been pulled right out of another of those fake British Stately Homes; and a couple of pictures of classrooms. It looked as if there were school uniforms. Spirit frowned. She thought she was going to get pretty tired of brown and gold before she was done with this place, though. She turned the page quickly, intending to skip the rest of the boring stuff (if this was an orphanage, who was this supposed to impress?) but something caught her eye.
“Oakhurst residents will be encouraged to explore information technology in our state-of-the-art facility in order to prepare themselves for the challenges of the future.” Spirit knew computers, so she frankly stared at the full-page spread on the computer lab, because the descriptions of what was available for the students use was mouth-watering. The whole school had WiFi, and its own servers, and the servers ran on a T1 line to the outside world—a full-duplex circuit transmitting 1.544 megabytes per second concurrently. Uploads, downloads, and netsurfing would take place at the speed of light. And the brochure said that each arriving student was “issued” their own laptop. She turned the page. There were photos of a tennis court and an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool. And there were riding stables! A gymnasium! An exercise room with more equipment than an athletic club! Each picture just made her stare harder. Finally she looked up at Loch.
“What—?”
“I keep thinking it cant be real either, but . . . this is the schools own Rolls.” Loch shrugged. “And I cant think of any reason theyd want to fool us. I cant touch a penny of my trust fund until Im twenty-one, and, uh, its not like Im anyone important. All Fathers stock and everything just got bought back by the partnership and the money was put into the trust. And neither of us has any place else to go anymore.”
Shed thought she was cried out by this time. But that reminder of why she was on her way to this place was enough to crack Spirit open all over again. To her dismay, her eyes brimmed up and spilled over, and when she tried to catch her breath, she heard herself give a long shuddering sob. Loch looked helpless as he handed her the box of tissues set into the armrest next to her.
“I . . .” Loch gulped. “Im sorry, Spirit . . .”
She struggled to get control of herself, and Loch kept talking, stumbling through a long rambling explanation of how hed ended up here in the back of this limousine with her because he was obviously mortified at having made her cry.
Excerpted from Shadow Grail 1 by Legacies.
Copyright © 2010 by Mercedes Lackey and Rosemary Edghill.
Published in 2010 by A Tom Doherty Associates Book.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.