Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,3

door of the car there was a design in gold leaf. She peered at it. She couldn’t 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.

“I’m 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 whatever you’d like,” the chauffeur said. “Oakhurst has sent along some orientation literature, if you’re 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 driver’s side, got behind the wheel, closed his door, and the limousine pulled smoothly away from the curb.

“Hi, I’m Loch,” said a voice from the shadows on the far side of the limousine. “Lachlan Spears, but, you know, call me Loch. I guess you’re 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 limousine’s 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.

“That’s the school stuff,” Loch said diffidently.

Spirit made a sour face—because it wasn’t 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 you’d get from a pricey private college than an orphanage. On the front was the expected view of the orphanage-slash-school . . . except it didn’t look like anything Spirit expected. Oakhurst School looked like one of those big manor houses that got used in movies set in England.

The school’s 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 Knight’s Tale.

On top of the shield there was a bear’s 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 they’d Photoshopped the heck out of it, there wasn’t 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