Legacies (Mercedes Lackey) - By Mercedes Lackey Page 0,5
the same for her. It wouldn’t have hurt so badly.
“I wish I’d had a family like yours,” Loch said forlornly. “At least . . . at least I’d have something to miss. I’ve just got . . . nothing.”
He might have said more, except the limousine started to slow, and then took the airport exit. When it entered the airport itself it turned off into what was obviously the private aviation side of the airport. Loch glanced out the window. “I guess there’s no direct flight from anywhere to Oakhurst. They sent me a ticket to here from Albany, and the lawyer-dude put me on the plane yesterday.”
The limousine pulled up beside a private hanger and the chauffeur came around and opened the doors for them. As Spirit got out, she saw that a couple of men in bright blue jumpsuits were loading what she recognized as her suitcases into a private jet. She blinked at it as Loch got out, just a little relieved to see that it didn’t have the same school insignia on it. Suddenly Spirit had the feeling that her entire life had just started a fast downhill run that she had absolutely no control over.
“Master Spears, Miss White, the plane is ready for you to board. If you would please be so good as to follow me?” the chauffeur said discreetly.
With a lump in her throat and a matching one in her stomach, Spirit followed the chauffeur over to the steps, and then climbed them into the cabin and tried not to gawk at the luxurious interior. She might just as well have been dropped into a book. Spirit White, whose parents kept their cars running until they couldn’t be repaired anymore, whose house had been filled with furniture her parents had gotten at garage sales and estate auctions and refinished in the garage, who’d learned how to sew so she could finally have clothing her mom didn’t get at Walmart or Goodwill, did not belong in a private jet that looked like it was owned by Donald Trump!
But Loch just glanced around as if this was all familiar to him, chose a seat, and buckled himself into it. “This should be pretty fast,” he said quietly, as Spirit fumbled with her own seat belt. “Four hours, maybe, with the routing around commercial airspace. This is a Lear.”
“Okay,” Spirit replied, as someone outside put up the stairs with a heavy thud. Immediately the jet’s engines began to whine up to speed. It turned in place and taxied to the runway, and before she could ask Loch anything more, suddenly the thing was hurtling down the runway at a speed that pressed her back into her seat. She hardly had time to begin to feel terror at the speed of the tiny thing when it hurtled upward at an angle so steep that she clutched the armrests of her seat and shut her eyes convulsively.
When she opened her eyes again, she saw Loch leaning forward and looking out the tiny window. She forced herself to do the same. The ground seemed impossibly far away, and the plane was still climbing. Loch was saying something.
“What?” she asked, turning back to look at him.
“I said, Lear jets can cruise at about eight miles up,” he repeated. “That’s probably where we’ll level off.”
She couldn’t tell if it was eight miles or not, but when the jet did ease into level flight, she couldn’t even see any roads or buildings on the ground below. She was about to ask Loch if he traveled like this all the time, when suddenly the flatscreen mounted in the front bulkhead came to life. It showed a cool-looking woman, a brunette in a red suit, with an expensive haircut. Was anything associated with Oakhurst not expensive? She had a professional TV-newscaster smile.
“Welcome to Oakhurst Academy,” the woman said, in a cool clear voice that made her seem even more like a TV announcer. It gave Spirit the sharp scary feeling that she’d somehow wandered into a movie version of Real Life. “And if you had not wondered before this, by this point it has certainly occurred to you to wonder why you are here, and why you have never heard of us before this. Certainly you must be curious about the reasons your parents had for arranging for Oakhurst to become your guardian.”
“Well, duh,” Spirit muttered, that anger starting to smolder in her again, resentment pushing out the fear.