The Wizard Heir (22 page)

One night, Jack and Ellen invited Seph to something
called a plaisance at heavily wooded Perry Park. Jack parked the Subaru
in a secluded spot, and he and Ellen retrieved their swords from the trunk. The
three of them hiked more than a mile through the woods to a hidden meadow. Jack
paced the perimeter, throwing up a kind of magical barrier with quick,
impatient gestures, while Seph trailed behind, making mental notes on the
charms he used.

Ellen stood, relaxed, waiting at the center of the
field, the late-day sun glinting off her blade. When Jack was finished, he
strode toward her, stopping a short distance away, facing her. They both
inclined their heads, grinning like they were about to be married. Seph had his
instructions, and when he saw they were ready, he said, “Go to.”

It was the remarkable dance of two gifted athletes,
evenly matched. They covered the meadow, moving furiously forward and back,
thrust and parry, attack and then retreat, calling challenges to each other,
trading insults and promises. The forest rang with the clash of their blades,
and flames spun and sparkled among the trees. Seph called time every fifteen
minutes, and they battled to a draw after four bouts.

Although the heat of the day had gone, they were both
soaked in sweat, practically steaming. Ellen drank long and deep from her water
bottle and wiped her mouth with her gauntleted arm. “Are you feeling all
right, Jack? Your play's flat, all in all. I was hoping to give Seph more of a
show.”

Jack tested the edge of his blade with his thumb.
“Actually, Ellen, I wondered if you were coming down with something. You
were downright lethargic. I nearly dozed off once or twice.”

“Well, that explains it. You looked like you were
asleep.”

With that, they threw down their weapons and it
dissolved into a wrestling match. In the end they were kissing each other.

It was certainly a different kind of courtship, but
there was a chemistry, an understanding, a kinship between Jack and Ellen that
Seph envied.

The Weir colony of Jefferson Street embraced him, and
he made the most of the opportunity, marshaling weapons for a battle that might
never take place.

Mercedes Foster, weaver and sorcerer, invited him into
her garden, being careful to warn him away from the poisonous plants that grew
there. In the kitchen of her cottage, she made dyes and love potions and memory
cures. Soon Seph was helping her with potions and extractions, scanning through
her recipes for poisons and hypnotics, committing them to memory. He asked
questions about talismans like the dyrne sefa and borrowed her books on
the subject.

She was less cooperative when he asked about Flame,
the drug Alicia had used on him in Toronto. They were in her kitchen, drying
trays of plants in her oven.

“I hear sorcerers make it for the trade,”
Seph said. “It's also called Mind-Burner.”

Mercedes fixed him with her sharp, birdlike gaze and
put her hands on her bony hips. “I don't know how to make it, and I
wouldn't tell you if I did. I don't believe in trading away your future for a
little extra power in the present.”

She wouldn't say anything more about it, but he found
several recipes for it in old texts, written in Latin.

Blaise Highbourne, seer and silversmith, demonstrated
the art of lost wax casting and showed Seph how to make silver wire jewelry. He
also explained the irony of prophecy: the fact that it is always true, but
often misleading. Iris Bolingame, wizard and glass artist, showed him how to
capture space with blown glass, to wrap bits of glass with copper foil, and
solder them together. She also shared charms and incantations from her own
Weirbook. While Nick carefully edited the information he shared with Seph, Iris
did not.

It wasn't long before a walk down Jefferson Street was
like running a gauntlet. Mercedes had a new plant to show him, or berries to
send back to Becka. Blaise wanted to share a book with him, and Iris had
another trick of wizardry for him to try. He couldn't make a move out of the
house without reports flowing back to Becka and Linda.

“Welcome to life in a small town,” Jack said
dryly. “Where everybody makes it their business to put their noses in
yours.”

The perpetrators of the sacrifice on the commons were
never apprehended. Ross Childers dropped by occasionally to update Linda and
Seph about it, but the investigation went nowhere. Seph saw no more signs of
the alumni.

Seph joined St. Catherine's, the Catholic church by
the university. He usually attended on Friday nights, when the masses were in
Latin.

Though Jack had said that Linda never lingered very
long in Trinity, she seemed in no hurry to leave. Seph helped Nick finish
wallpapering the room upstairs, and Jack helped him pick out a new sound
system.

Linda still refused to allow Seph to leave the
sanctuary. When Becka invited Seph to go to Niagara on the Lake with her and
Jack for the Shaw festival, Linda kept Seph in Trinity with her.

He argued with her to let him go to Canada.
“Don't you think it's safe now? I can't stay locked up in here
forever.” It had been more than a month since their encounter with the
alumni, and there was no sign of invasion of the sanctuary. But Linda was
unmoved.

When he wasn't working, Seph spent long days at the
public beach with Jack and his friends once the weather turned hot. It was
lorded over by cliffs, with clear, cold water and pebbled sand that sparkled
with quartz when the water retreated. Jack taught Seph to windsurf, and he
found he had a talent for keeping the frail board upright and driving forward
in long slaloms, parallel to the shore.

Best of all, after his long dry season at the Havens,
there were girls.

“Anaweir women can't resist wizards,” Jason
had said. Once, the notion had made Seph feel uneasy. Now he flexed his wizard
muscles in every way he could.

He flirted with the year-round residents and summer
girls, ate their chocolate-chip cookies and fruit salad, and smoothed sunblock
into their sun-warmed skin. He danced with them at the beach pavilion on Friday
and Saturday nights and stole kisses under the pier. He stayed out late, since
Linda was unaccustomed to enforcing curfews.

Despite his late hours, most mornings he rose early
and walked to the lake, grappling with memories that kept him from sleep.
Jason, Jason's father, and Trevor were dead, but Gregory Leicester still lived,
spinning his intrigues, effectively imprisoning Seph within the Sanctuary. Seph
was building his arsenal of magic, but he had no way to use it against his
enemy—and no way to connect with the Dragon, who might be able to use the
information Seph had.

When he walked in the mornings, he often saw the same
girl sitting on the rocks at the water's edge, her fair head bent over her
sketchbook, one knee up, the other straight, her bare feet braced against
stone. Her hand danced over the page, laying down shape and color. She frowned
as she concentrated, her lower lip caught behind her teeth. Sometimes she
swiped at her face with the back of her hand, leaving a smear of color.

He began to look for her, and she was there most days.
She usually brought her sketchbook, but sometimes she sat and read, the book
tilted to catch the slanting light, drinking coffee from an insulated travel
cup. Some days she wore jeans and a T-shirt; on others she wore long tiered
flowered skirts and sheer cotton blouses that slipped off her shoulders.

He thought she noticed him, but she was careful not to
look at him, and something in her expression and body language kept him at bay.
He began bringing books along, an excuse to linger, sharing the same stretch of
beach. Finally, after a long, frustrating afternoon in the hot sun, he decided
to introduce himself.

As soon as his shadow fell over her, she clutched the
sketchbook to her body as if to protect it.

“You're in my light,” she said, without
facing around. Her accent reminded him of Trevor's, with its soft southern
vowels.

“Sorry.” He circled around, squatting next
to her. She'd hitched her skirts up to mid thigh, exposing her legs to the sun.
The wind had torn locks of her hair free from the elastic, and she tucked them
behind her ears. Up close, he saw that her hair was all different colors, like
butter and sugar and caramel, painted by the sun. “I see you here all the
time,” he said. “I was wondering what you were drawing.”

“Your being curious don't make it your business,
now does it?” Her eyes were watercolor blue in her sun-gilded face.

Seph blinked and sat back on his heels. “Well,
no, I guess not. …”

She laughed. “You should see your face. You
aren't used to girls saying no to you, are you?”

He shrugged and rested his arms on his knees. “We
haven't even come to the hard questions yet.”

“Save them for someone else. I come up here to
sketch, not to flirt with the summertime boys.”

“You're not from around here, are you?” No.
He couldn't believe he'd said that.

“No. I'm not.” Sand adhered to her long
legs, to the tops of her feet. Following his gaze, she scowled at him, then
redistributed the fabric of her skirt, covering herself to the ankle. She wore
a ribbon with a familiar cameo around her neck, and he suddenly realized where
he'd seen it before.

“You work at the Legends?” The Legends was
an inn and restaurant in a Victorian mansion overlooking the lake. Linda and
Becka liked to go there for brunch.

“I'm waitressing there, okay? I'm from Coalton
County, a place I'm sure you never heard of.” She snatched up the case of
pastels and snapped it shut, shoving it into her tote bag, following with her
sketch pad.

Seph watched this, unsure what he'd done wrong.
“Look, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to run you off.” Why was he always
apologizing?

“Never mind. The light has changed, my mood is
ruined, and my shift is about to start.” She stood, brushing sand off the
back of her skirt.

A pile of drawings sat nearby, anchored by a large
rock. Seph reached for them.

“No! Leave them alone!” She shoved him,
hard, and the pages went flying, caught by the shore breeze.

Bewildered, he scrambled after them, snatching some of
them practically out of the waves. When he had them all, he turned and found
she hadn't waited for him. In fact, she was already a good distance away,
striding down the beach, shoulders hunched, head thrust forward. “What the
… ?” He looked down at the wad of paper in his hand. The drawing on top
was a face in charcoal, a three-quarter profile, long, curling dark hair, high
cheekbones, a Romanesque nose, half smile, eyes set under a smudge of dark
brows.

His own face.

He pawed through the others. Seph McCauley sprawled on
his back in the sun in his bathing trunks, muscles picked out under the skin of
his chest, one arm flung over his eyes. Seph walking along the shore, a tall,
angular figure silhouetted against the bright water. Seph sprawled on the rocks
at the water's edge, looking toward Canada. Studies of his back and shoulders,
his arms and hands, tendons and muscles faithfully rendered.

In each, he was surrounded by a nimbus of light, as if
illuminated from within. Like images of the saints in the old manuscripts. They
were all of him, save a few still lifes of shells and rock at the bottom.
Thoughts surfaced, as from a dark pool.

Why is she drawing pictures of me?

She knows I'm a wizard.

And then he was running, pounding down the beach after
her, leaping over boulders and half-submerged driftwood. He was perhaps a
hundred feet away from her when she heard him coming. She didn't look back, but
increased her speed until she was running herself. Her hair escaped from its
elastic and streamed out behind her as she dodged around tree stumps and
late-day beach strollers.

He ran faster.

He'd almost caught up with her when she tripped over a
tree root and went sprawling, sliding forward in the sand.

He fell to his knees next to her. He put his hand on
her shoulder and she flinched at his touch. “You okay?” She didn't
reply, but folded into herself as if she wanted to disappear. He rolled her
over onto her back and wiped the sand from her face with the hem of his
T-shirt. She squinched her eyes shut, like she could pretend he wasn't there.
Her white lace blouse was smeared with wet sand, her chest heaving as she
fought for breath.

“Who are you, really?” he demanded.

“I … told … you. I'm a waitress.”

“What's your name?”

“Madison Moss.”

“Did Leicester send you?”

Now she opened her eyes and squinted at him. “I
don't know what you're talking about.”

“How did you know that I'm … a wizard?”

She said nothing.

He dropped his hands onto her collarbone on either
side, fingertips pressing lightly against her skin. Her stealing of his image
somehow gave him permission. “Now you're going to tell me the truth,”
he muttered. He released power into her—gentle persuasion. At first it felt
good, like a long breath exhaled. A trickle at first, and then a flood, and
then he tried to pull away and couldn't. And more, and more, until he was
drained and nauseous and dizzy, like his very essence was being pulled out
through his fingertips.

Finally she reached up and pulled his hands away, then
rolled him over on his back, folding his hands across his chest like a corpse
laid out on a bier. Black spots circled through his vision like vultures,
blotting out the sun.

She leaned over him. Touched his cheek gently and
kissed him on the forehead. “Good-bye, Witch Boy,” she whispered. She
stood, retrieved her bag, slung it over her shoulder, and walked away, not in
any hurry this time, as if she knew he couldn't follow.

He wasn't sure how long he lay there, unable to move.
Like a drunk on the sidewalk. Or a creature that had washed up in a storm.
Finally, he propped up on his elbows. His head swam, and he thought for a
moment he might be sick, but it passed. He rolled to his hands and knees.
Several of the drawings had been trapped under his body. He folded them
carefully and stuffed them into his back pockets, then stood, listing a little,
shaking the sand out of his hair. He felt empty. He looked up and down the
beach. The sun had passed midday, and the beach was crowded. No sign of Madison
Moss.