The Dragon Heir (15 page)

It was that time of day when
the world holds its breath, awaiting the return of the light. To the east,
beyond the mountains, it was already morning. The edge of the escarpment was
iced with brilliance as the sun prepared to break overtop. Mist hung in the
valley, like sheep's wool caught between the peaks. Each clump of grass, fern,
and shrub was layered in ice, and Madison was wet to her knees before she'd
crossed the home yard.

Her hands shook in the predawn
chill as she squeezed paint onto the aluminum pie pan she used for a palette.
She was lucky she hadn't broken her neck on the way up the mountain in the
freezing dark. Any sane person would take a photograph and paint in the parlor,
where it was warm and dry.

But then, everyone knows
I'm crazy.

The moment arrived. The sun
crested the east shoulder of Booker Mountain and splashed onto the slopes,
setting each bejeweled twig and branch aflame. Madison loaded her brush and splashed
paint onto the canvas she'd started the day before. Only two more days, she
judged, and the sun would've changed position enough to ruin the effect. So she
painted like one possessed.

By ten o'clock, she was on her
way back down the mountain, following the ravine cut by Booker Creek, the
cleanest stream in Coalton County. A half hour more, and the house came into
sight.

It was two stories, with five
big pillars in the front, and wide porches that wrapped nearly all the way
around the house on both levels. There were red brick chimneys at either end,
because it was built at a time when wood-burning fireplaces provided the heat.
It had always been painted white, though after five years in Carlene's care it
could have done with a paint job. Though the house had good bones, it had the
kind of beauty that needed constant care, or it began to look shabby.

It definitely looked shabby,
now.

The house had been built by
Madison's great-great-grandfather, Dredmont Booker, when he was courting her
great-great-grandmother, Felicity Taylor. He was a prosperous farmer. She'd
been a wild thing, a legendary blond beauty, who had no intention of staying in
Coalton County and marrying a farmer, prosperous or not.

He swore he'd die if he
couldn't have her. He built her the house, and a rose garden with a brick wall
and gazebo and a path to nowhere. He bought her a black mare with four white
stockings and a blaze on her forehead. He gave her the opal pendant that had
belonged to his grandmother—blue and
turquoise and green, with broad flashes of fire. It was the talk of the county
because it was no proper gift from a man to a woman who was not his wife. Felicity Taylor had
ignored the whispers and worn it whenever she liked.

Knowing what she knew now
about inherited power, Madison wondered if Felicity had been an enchanter.

Word was, the view had finally
won Felicity's heart. You could sit on the second floor porch and look right
over the Ropers' place and see all the way to the river.

The pendant and Booker
Mountain had been left to Min, who'd left them to Madison in turn, skipping
right over Carlene. Min had left Carlene some money, which was long gone, and
trust accounts for Grace and John Robert, to pay for their college.

The house and land would come
to Madison later in the year. Ray McCartney had set it up. He might be in love
with Carlene, but he was loyal to Min, too.

Madison would be land rich and
money poor, once she gained control of Booker Mountain. Unless she sold it off,
which everyone seemed to think she should do as soon as possible. If she sold
out, she could attend the Art Institute of Chicago and shake the rocky soil of
Coalton County right off of her shoes.

She reached under her
sweatshirt and touched the opal, reassured by its solid presence. Maybe it was
too fancy to be wearing around the house, but Madison wore it anyway. It was a
tie to the past and it represented a possible future. It also felt like a link
to the stone she'd left behind in Trinity.

The Dragonheart. She'd tried
to put it out of her mind, but whenever she tried not to think of something, it
seemed like she thought about it more. The only thing that could distract her
from Seph McCauley was the Dragonheart. And vice versa. Some days her mind
seemed to reverberate from one to the other, making her sick to her stomach. You'd think
being far away from both of them would help, but not so much.

Once or twice a week, she went
into town. She'd stop in at the library and find a clutch of e-mails from Seph.
They were somewhat formal, polite, a little restrained, like old-fashioned love
letters in digital text, where you had to read between the lines. It was as
though he was afraid he'd scare her off, if he undammed his feelings.

Sometimes, she e-mailed him
back, but these days she mostly wrote letters. She knew it was weird and
archaic, but she didn't want to say just anything that came into her head.
Instead, she'd sit up in bed and dwell over each word, as if she could infuse
them with the power to untie the knots that plagued their relationship.

As for talking on the phone,
that was totally out. She couldn't trust herself not to say something that
would bring him flying down the interstate.

Nothing was stirring in the
home yard, except Hamlet and Ophelia, the golden retrievers, who dutifully
stood and swished their tails at Madison's appearance.

Lifting her canvas high out of
danger, Madison squeezed between the dogs and went into the barn. It was a
sturdy stone-and-wood building, once the home of Dredmont Booker's horses.
During some prosperous period in the past, someone had put in water lines and
servants' quarters. Now it was used as a sometime garage for Carlene's car.
Madison had claimed the second floor as a studio and peopled it with dreams.

She should never have come
home. Booker Mountain had a way of grabbing onto you, clouding your mind, and
making you forget your intentions. Just like it had Felicity Taylor more than a
hundred years ago.

Since she'd been away from
Seph, her work had lost that lurid, dangerous quality and settled back into
what Sara called ethereal exuberance. It could mean the hex magic had
dissipated. She'd written to Seph, asking if he was feeling better, but he
never responded.

A set of three small canvases
glittered from the corner— each a view of
the changeable Dragonheart stone against a matte black. The Dragonheart Series.

She cleaned her brushes in the
sink and walked back to the house, skirting frozen puddles and patches of mud,
followed by the dogs, their tails wagging hopefully.

She paused at the foot of the
porch steps to look over the flower beds. New shoots were poking up from the
prickly skeletons of the tea roses, and the climber on the trellis by the porch
was leafing out bravely.

It was Saturday. Carlene had
worked late the night before, and her door was closed. She'd still be in bed.
There was breakfast debris on the table, signaling that Grace and John Robert
were loose on the mountain. Rounding them up was like herding cats or
butterflies. But they'd show up hungry any time now.

She'd take them to town for
lunch, she decided. They could wander around Main Street and she'd buy some
fertilizer for the garden.

Madison pulled the truck into
the angle parking in front of the courthouse. The kids were out of the truck
almost before it rolled to a stop.

She shoved two twenty-dollar
bills into Grace's hand, taken from her dwindling supply of waitressing money.
“Robertson's is having a sale,” she said. “Why don't you look for clothes in
there? Then take J.R. to to the five-and-dime. I'll meet you at the Bluebird in
an hour, and we'll have lunch.”

Grace studied the money as if
it might be some kind of trick, then folded the bills and put them into her
tiny purse.

“Stay together and don't
wander off Main Street, so I can find you when I'm done.” Madison turned
away.

“Where are you going to
be?” Grace had a tight hold of John Robert's hand. He was pulling away
like a puppy on a leash.

“Hazelton's. I'm going to
get some fertilizer for the flower beds.”

Madison went into Hazelton's
Implements. Josh Hazelton was behind the counter, as she knew he'd be. He'd
been in Madison's class at school. Once they'd been friends and told each other
secrets. He'd even kissed her under the stands at a football game. They'd
awkwardly bumped lips like two goldfish meeting.

That was before he'd gotten in
with Brice and them. Funny. Ordinarily, Brice wouldn't give Josh the time of
day. So Josh was flattered to be invited into Brice's crowd.

Madison didn't have a crowd.
Only Josh. And then not even him.

When Josh looked up and saw
her, a guilty blush spread from his collar all the way to his ears. “Hey,
Maddie!” he said, turning away from three other customers, all of whom
Madison knew. “I heard you were back in town.”

“For a -while,”
Madison said, running her hand over a display of mailboxes painted with flowers
in colors unknown to nature. “I need some fertilizer.”

“Here, I'll show
you,” he said, eagerly pushing past the swinging gate at the end of the
counter.

She raised her hand to stop
him. “You've got customers. Just tell me where it is, all right?”

Josh pointed to the back right
corner of the store. “Back there. Regular and organic. Five- and ten-pound
bags.”

She chose a bag of organic
fertilizer and some gardening gloves, and brought them to the counter. By then
the other customers had left. Josh rang them up for her.

“So how do you like it up
north?” he asked, handing her the receipt.

“I like it.”

“As well as here?”

“Better.” She went
to turn away.

“Uh, Maddie?” Josh
hesitated, and then the words tumbled out like cats from a bag. “I thought
maybe, you know, that you left because…because of all that crap last
year.” He waited, and when she didn't say anything, added, “Look, I'm
sorry if…Some of us were just having some fun, you know?”

“I didn't realize we were
having fun.” She looked him in the eyes until he looked away, ears naming.

“I never believed it.
What they said about you,” he mumbled.

“Really? I never heard
you speak up.”

“Well. Anyway. I'm glad
you're back.”

“Not for long,” she
said, pretending to look at purple-martin houses.

Josh still hovered. “Have
you seen Brice since you've been back?” he asked.

“Yeah.” She tried
not to make a face. “You still hang around with him?”

He shook his head, coloring
again. “Nah. I guess he's really busy.”

“Right,” she said.

“I hear he has some new
friends who don't go to our school.” He paused, then said, awkwardly,
“You never liked him.”

“No. Still don't.”
She didn't see any point in lying.

“He never could figure
that out. Why you wouldn't go out with him.”

Madison blinked at him.
“He told you that?”

Josh shook his head. “Not
exactly. But I knew. He thought you'd be … he thought you'd say yes.”

Madison snorted. “Come
on. I don't think having me as a … as a friend was ever high on his list.”

Josh licked his lips.
“You're wrong. I think it really bugged him. You always want what you
can't have. And people— people listen to
him, you know?”

First, she thought, Why are we
talking about Brice Roper? And then it came to her, a revelation. “What
are you trying to tell me? That he was behind the…people calling me a
witch?”

“Well. It didn't take
much to convince people. I mean, you're kind of different. You dress
like a gypsy and always walk around with a frown on your face like you're mad
at the world.” He held up his hand. “I'm sorry, but it's true. And
you were always painting all those pictures, and you lived up on the mountain
in that spooky old house.”

“It's not spooky,”
she retorted, then shut her mouth. Who cared what everybody thought?

Josh shrugged. “Your
grandmother read the cards and hexed people, and your mom is … kind of
wild.”

“Shut up, Josh,”
Madison said, feeling the blood rush into her face. She turned away, staring
out through the window at a boarded-up storefront across the street.

But Josh would not be
silenced. “So one night a bunch of us guys were talking, and some of us
had asked you out and been turned down. So Brice just started saying, what if,
you know? And we were cracking up, we couldn't help it, he just has a way of
putting things. So. I guess we … I guess we all kind of got it started. We put
out notes and started texting people and then it sort of took on a life of its
own, you know?”

Madison swung around and took
a step forward and Josh flinched, like he thought she might hit him or spell
him or something. “Why do you think I turned them down when they asked me
out? Because some guys like to brag about things that never happened. All
except you. I knew…you would never … I thought you …” She stopped,
unwilling to trust herself to go on. It was really ironic that Brice Roper with
his Persuasive hands and sleazy layer of wizardly charm would be accusing her
of being a witch, when she didn't have a stitch of magic in her.

No magic of her own, anyway.

Josh cleared his throat,
looking like somebody with his hand in a vise who can't wait to be released.
“Anyway. I'm really sorry. I never believed you burnt anything down. I've
been wanting to tell you.”

She cleared her throat.
“Well. Thanks. I guess.”

“Want me to carry that
out for you?” he asked, handing her the receipt for the fertilizer.

“I can manage.” She
rested the bag of fertilizer on her hip and turned toward the door.

“Um. Maddie? You know,
prom's coming up.”