Blood Moon (Book Three - The Ravenscliff Series) (16 page)

One of the most ingenious manifestations of Horatio Muir’s sorcery, the Staircase Into Time appeared and reappeared throughout the house, taking those who descended or ascended its steps into the past or the future. It had once taken Devon to fifteenth-century England so that he could uncover the origins of the demon witch who was threatening his friends. Where, he wondered, would it take him now?

The answers are in the past.

This is what Clarissa meant.

Devon started down the dark staircase. It descended for quite a way, so far down that Devon could not see the bottom of the stairs through the darkness. He was not frightened. Rather, he was pumped with excitement, certain that the lasting wisdom of Horatio Muir’s great magic would protect him and take him where he needed to go. And then, after he had found what he needed, the staircase would bring him back here, armed with information that would help Marcus as well as ward off the Madman’s attempts to break free of the Hell Hole.

But after about fifteen minutes, as the stairs continued to descend into the darkness with no end in sight, Devon began to have second thoughts.

“Either I’m going so far back in time that I’ll end up with the dinosaurs,” he whispered out loud, “or this is some kind of trick.”

But he’d have sensed if it was a trick. Wouldn’t he have? His intuition would have warned him. Wouldn’t it have?

He felt heat suddenly. Not a good sign. Heat was the sign that demons were close by—or another sorcerer. Devon considered turning around and heading back up the stairs.

But now he could see light, finally, rising from below. The stairs became more recognizable. Instead of plain wood, they were carpeted. A familiar carpet.

It was the staircase leading down into the foyer of Ravenscliff. A staircase he used every day …

Music. He could hear music. Pop music.

Devon reached the final step. He was indeed in Ravenscliff’s foyer. But it looked slightly different. The drapes were a different color. There were chairs placed against the far wall that had never been there before. And the phone on the center table had a
rotary dial
.

The music came from the parlor. Peering inside, Devon observed that the room looked pretty much the same as he’d always known it, with Horatio Muir’s skulls and crystal balls wedged among the books on the shelves, the suit of armor standing in the same place it had always been. But the furniture was different. The sofa was low, with a floral print. Mrs. Crandall’s wingback chair was nowhere in sight. And there was a dark-haired girl in the middle of the room, playing what looked like cassette tapes on a big black stereo, dancing and singing along with the music, which sounded like Madonna. Very early Madonna. Something about a lucky star…

Devon took a look at the girl singing along to the music. She was dressed in a green plaid skirt and pink leather boots that came up to her knees, swinging and swaying to the song. She was totally unaware that Devon was standing in the doorway watching her. The girl looked to be a few years older than Devon but no taller, and she wore a chunky, oversized crucifix around her neck. Her eyes were outlined with very dark mascara.

Suddenly she noticed Devon. “Well,” she said, “it’s about time.”

“Uh, you were expecting me?”

“Of course I’ve been expecting you,” the girl said testily. “I’ve been waiting all morning. We have a lot to do if we’re going to prepare the house before they get here.”

Devon was eyeing the room. The portrait of Horatio Muir hung over the mantel as it always had, but there was something missing from the opposite wall.

“Where’s the portrait of Emily Muir?” he asked.

The girl made a face at him. “How can there be portrait of her before anyone has even met her?”

Devon turned to look at her. Suddenly he knew where—or
when
—he was. The rotary phone, the cassette player, the girl’s clothes. He’d gone three decades into the past—to the year Emily Muir first came to Ravenscliff!

“It’s she who’s coming, isn’t it?” Devon asked. “Emily Muir. She’s the one we’re supposed to prepare the house for, isn’t she?”

The girl nodded. “She and her husband, yes. The prodigal son returned with his new bride after many years away in Europe.”

“Jackson Muir,” Devon breathed.

“Now what’s your name? Montaigne promised a special boy, one with all the right training, so I expect I won’t have to teach you anything.”

Devon’s intuition told him to play along as best he could. “My name’s Teddy,” he said, a picture of his father, Ted March, flickering through his mind.

“Okay, Teddy Bear, then we have a lot to do—”

“I would say so,” came a familiar, arrogant voice.

Devon turned. Standing behind him, having arrived in that stealthy, cat-like way she had, was Mrs. Crandall. But it couldn’t be. Not here, some thirty years in the past.

“We were just getting to work, Mrs. Muir,” the girl assured her.

Devon looked closer at the newcomer. It wasn’t Mrs. Crandall; it was Greta Muir, her mother—who, three decades from now, as an old, frail woman, would save Devon from the undead sorceress Isobel the Apostate, and die in the process. But here in this time she was young and vital—and the spitting image of her daughter Amanda Muir Crandall.

“Turn off that music, Miranda,” she snapped. “What is the boy’s name?”

She asked the question as if Devon wasn’t even standing there, as if he were a nonperson. He could see where Mrs. Crandall got her imperious attitude.

“His name is Teddy,” the girl, Miranda, replied, hitting the stop button on the stereo. “Montaigne assured me he’d have all the training we need.”

“They will be here by six,” Greta Muir said. It was all she needed to say. The command was there: everything needed to be ready by then.

“What do we have to do?” Devon asked after the great lady had departed.

“What do you mean, what do we have to do?” Miranda looked at him with distrust. “When a Sorcerer of the Nightwing returns to his family there is ceremony to be had. If you are going to be a Guardian, you had best know the basics.”

She thinks I’m a Guardian-in-training. She must be, too. Montaigne—that would be Rolfe’s father—must have sent for a young assistant to help with the ceremony marking Jackson’s return to Ravenscliff. And Miranda thinks I’m him!

“Come on,” she said. “I’m bringing you to Montaigne, and he can figure out whether you’ll do.”

She gestured for him to follow. They headed out the front door and across the grounds. It was the same time of year as it was when Devon had left the present. Spring was in the air, with the grass turning deep green and the buds on the trees starting to pop. The tangy scent of the sea rose up from the cliffs beyond. Out here, most everything looked the same; the woods and the paths would not much change in thirty-plus years.

As they walked, Devon studied this girl, this Miranda. He felt drawn to her, somehow. And her name—

Something clicked in Devon’s mind.

When he first came to Ravenscliff, he and Cecily had pored through the old records at the Misery Point town hall to see if there was any mention of his birth, any clue as to his origins. Nothing—except one name.

“Miranda,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder. She stopped and looked around at him.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Your full name,” he said. “What is it?”

“What should that matter to you? You are just a temporary ward here. Once your job is complete you will go back to the Guardian you were training under.”

“Still,” Devon said, “I’d like to know.”

She smirked. “You’ve guessed it, haven’t you? That I’m not just an ordinary girl training to be a Guardian. You’ve guessed that I’m part of quite an illustrious family, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” he said, flattering her. “Yes, I can see that.”

“My name,” she said, her dark eyes finding his, “is Miranda Devon.”

He felt the shudder pass through him like an electrical charge.
Devon
—it couldn’t be a mere coincidence. This woman was his kin—he was certain of it. The dark hair and eyes, the slight olive coloring to her skin.

Might she be—his mother?

No, his intuition told him immediately. He wouldn’t be born for almost another twenty years, and sadly, the records of Misery Point had revealed to him that Miranda Devon would die before then. But there
was
a connection. He felt certain there was some kind of bond between them.

“The Devons are from the island of Martinique,” Miranda told him. “We are an old family, originally from France. We are not mere Guardians. We have powers of our own. Nothing compared to the sorcery of the Nightwing, mind you. But powers still. Enchantments, really. Spells, incantations … My father was considered a great shaman on the island.”

“But why are you working here, then, as a servant at Ravenscliff?”

She bristled. “They wanted a female to help train little Amanda, and naturally they wanted the best. Long ago my family came into contact with the Nightwing of the New World, and we have been allies ever since.” Miranda lifted her chin. “We aren’t just Guardians. We are
partners
with the Nightwing.”

Devon suspected the girl had some delusions of grandeur; Greta Muir had certainly not treated her as any partner. Still, he indulged her; he was certain this history of the Devons of Martinique was his own heritage.

But she was through with background for now. “Come along,” she insisted. “Montaigne is waiting.”

Rolfe’s father lived in the caretaker’s cottage—a place that thirty years from now would be converted into a garage for Edward Muir’s collection of sports cars. In the future it would smell of oil and grease, but now, as they pushed open the door and headed inside, it was the fragrance of incense and tobacco that greeted Devon.

“Here he is,” Miranda announced. “His name is Teddy Bear.”

A man looked up from a chair where he sat smoking a pipe. It was uncanny how much he resembled his son—or rather, how much his son would one day resemble him. Devon could swear it was Rolfe looking up at him with the same deep-set eyes.

“Younger than I expected,” said Jean-Michel Montaigne, a Parisian accent to his voice. “Teddy Bear? I think it is a name given you by our feisty Miranda, and unfortunately, my friend, it will stick.”

“It’s okay,” Devon said as he shook hands with the older man.

“Strange clothing,” Montaigne observed, looking at Devon’s Tommy Hilfiger jeans and long basketball shirt. “And you do not speak like an Englishman.”

In an instant Devon intuited that the boy they had sent for was from England, probably a connection from the Muir family’s history there. He quickly thought up an explanation.

“My mother was American,” he said, “so I learned how to speak with an American accent.”

“Pity,” Montaigne said, standing from his chair.

For a moment, Devon considered what had happened to the real boy who’d been summoned—the actual English Guardian-in-training who had been sent to Ravenscliff for this special occasion. Would he still show up, ruining Devon’s story? Would their paths ever cross?

But such speculation faded as Montaigne set them onto their tasks. Devon quickly absorbed the fundamentals of the Ravenscliff of this era. The master of the house was Randolph Muir, father to Amanda and Edward, and one day grandfather to Cecily and Alexander. Montaigne was Randolph’s able right-hand man, the Guardian who had raised him, and who now oversaw the training of his children. Guardians lived to very advanced ages; though Montaigne looked to be no more than mid-thirties, he was certainly several decades older at least, if he’d already been an adult when Randolph was a boy.

From Montaigne, Devon learned more of the day’s special significance. Jackson Muir, Randolph’s elder brother, had been a rebel in his youth; his father, Horatio, had despaired of him and given Ravenscliff to the more obedient Randolph. Jackson had been consorting with all sorts of nefarious characters, using his sorcery for his own gain. He had made himself rich, carousing through Europe with a succession of petty witches and wizards—even (it was rumored) intelligent demons set free from their Hell Holes. Horatio had begun the proceedings to have the Witangemot—the governing body of the Nightwing—declare his son an Apostate, a renegade sorcerer. He had died, however, brokenhearted, before he could go through with it.

Now the family was celebrating—because Jackson had seen the error of his ways and repented, proving his sincerity by sealing off several Hell Holes throughout the easternmost reaches of Siberia and the Korean peninsula. He had proved a noble, trusted ally of the Nightwing there, and they had all written to Randolph attesting to Jackson’s reformation. He had married a girl he’d met in Copenhagen who, by all accounts, was decent and kind. Now he was returning to Ravenscliff to ask his brother’s forgiveness and to be reinstated within the family.

“But won’t he expect to be Master of Ravenscliff?” Devon asked, surprising Montaigne with his question.

“Of course not,” Montaigne replied. “That was an honor conferred onto Randolph Muir by his father.”

“But Jackson will see it as his birthright,” Devon insisted. It was knowledge he had gained in his own time, when he saw how the idea had became an obsession for the Madman. “After all, he’s the eldest son.”

Miranda was grinning at him. “Rather impertinent boy, aren’t you? I like that.”

“Don’t be spreading such talk,” Montaigne scolded him. “The brothers are reconciling, and nothing but harmony exists between them.”

Devon sighed. How much should he give away? He could trust them, he felt; yet he felt certain he must keep his true identity a secret for now, if he wanted to learn what he needed to know.

Just then they were interrupted by a small voice. Devon looked down. Standing at Montaigne’s side, tugging at his pants, was a small boy.

“Papa,” the boy said. “I play?”

It was Rolfe. Devon stared down at him. He was not more than two, with big brown eyes and peanut butter on his cheeks.

“Have you finished your breakfast?”

The boy nodded. “I play outside?”

“Wash your face first,” his father instructed him. “Then you can play outside, but don’t go far.”