The Magickers (2 page)

But he had no choice as the passage continued to narrow behind him, nudging him forward. The stone coffin became clearer, a man lying on its top, arms crossed over his chest, himself granite or as still as stone. Etched into the side were two words: Jarred Adrian.

His father's name.

Jason could feel every inch of him raise in goose bumps. No! This wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to see them both alive! Alive and warm, and his. . . . He stopped in his tracks. He wanted out! Out or . . . he put his head back, looking to where the moonlight rayed through from above . . . out or up! He could hear the tap-tap of the dead tree in the cemetery overhead. Looking into the shadows, he could see black roots, twisting down, splitting the stone. There had to be a way out. Up! Yes . . . up! He jumped, grabbing the roots, and began to pull himself up hand over hand. The tree felt slimy and slippery, bark and stubs catching at him, snagging, but he shinnied up stubbornly as the tree tried to wrap itself about him. The roots surged around him like giant wings, trying to hug him and hold him. He swore he could see yellow crow's eyes in the winged darkness pecking and grasping at him. He fought back. Up! Up!

 

“Wake up!”

Jason bolted upright in his bed, blankets twisted around him, gasping. “Wake . . . up.”

He took a deep breath. Sharp moonlight sprayed across his bed, as white as the bright sun, striking his face. He shook, then drew in another deep breath.

He rarely slept through an entire night. Jason sat there for a moment, forcing himself to calm down. He turned his head, trying to read his clock despite the dark, shifting shadows that filtered through his room in the still of the night. Rays of light like silvery swords guided his glance. There in the corner was a wooden rocking chair, the only thing he had left of his mother. His soccer gear sat neatly folded on the seat, his backpack hanging from its arm. Bookshelves stretched across one entire wall. He could read some of the titles:
The Sword in the Stone, The Dragonriders of Pern, The Last Unicorn, The Dragonbone Chair,
and others. Too many to actually see, but he knew them all well.

They were braced in their places on the shelf by stuffed animals here and there. Three teddy bears, a fat stuffed cat, and two bunnies. In the sunlight, all would look rather well loved and with a bare spot here and there. On the top shelf lay a squadron of toys from
X-Men
and
Star Wars,
squared off to contest one another. There was a small CD player on the nightstand next to him with a collection . . . well, a stack, of CDs, two of which needed to be returned to Alicia. A book lay folded back on the nightstand, too, its chapter heading reading: DRAGONS BARRED THE WAY to the kingdom of the dead.

So that's where he got that nightmare from this time. He should know better.

Everything was familiar. Jason felt a little better and prepared to scrunch back down in bed.

Then . . .

Tap. Tap. Tap.

He froze in place. From the north end of the house came the light, fluttering snore of his stepmother. Punctuating it like a big kettledrum came the booming snore of his stepfather. The McIntires slept in what Jason referred to as the Heavy Metal part of the house. Of different blood, he apparently didn't have the snore gene. Or, at least, if he did . . . he slept through it.

Ker-ack! At the window again. Jason peered down the length of his attic bedroom, gloomy in the deep night. No trees reached this high. Something was at the porthole window, the only one in the odd-shaped attic that had no screen. It wasn't really meant to be opened and shut, although he could . . . and did.

He slept in the attic, undeniably the best room in the house, with its porthole window that faced the dimly seen ocean, and its second bay window facing the foothills. The door to his room was in the floor, not the wall. Jason rather liked the idea that he could pull up his ladder and lock himself away from the world. He didn't really belong here, not really. He was here by default.

Not that he could get away with hiding for long. William “Dozer” McIntire would stand in the hallway and bellow until the ladder was lowered.

“Boy,” he'd roar. “Come down here and join your family!” Then Jason would risk having his teeth shaken out of his jaws by one of his stepfather's enormous bear hugs.

William “Bulldozer” McIntire stood tall enough that his thinning brown hair threatened to scrape the ceiling that led to the attic. His great tough hands felt like catchers' mitts on Jason's shoulders and he looked like he could carry a building on his back. Jason's stepfather was in construction. He tore things down, so he could rebuild them twice as big and four times as expensive.

Then there was Jason's stepmother Joanna. Dainty, petite, with wide blue eyes and a seemingly innocent stare. She could wrap the Dozer around any of her slender fingers. Daughter Alicia took after her mother, with quick, small hands and eyes that looked at you while she made secret plans.

Yet once he'd had two parents like everyone else. It was so long ago, he didn't remember his mother dying. He remembered being alone with his dad, the two of them together. After a while, his father had married Joanna, giving him a stepmother and a stepsister. Then his father had died, and Joanna had married William McIntire. She liked to look fondly at her third husband and declare, “Third time's the charm!” Which, although it seemed okay to say, always made Jason feel funny deep down. It wasn't his father's fault that the second husband hadn't lasted. Jarred Adrian would have lived if he could have!

McIntire had thrown open his home, his heart, and swept all of them inside without even asking if it was what they wanted. But how could they not want it? McIntire enjoyed life. Hale and hearty, loud and laughing. Even Alicia seemed happy. At any rate, she was the darling of both now, and he was . . . what was he? A leftover? If he was loved, it was rather like a stray cat, he thought. And if he sometimes thought that Joanna had married awfully quickly after losing his father, he never said anything. It would not, he knew, have made a difference. Everyone else was happy. What did it matter if there were great, yawning gaps in his own feelings? What did it matter if he remembered, although dimly, far happier times?

Ker-ack!

It sounded as though the window itself had split! Jason rolled out of bed, his sandy blond hair sticking out all over. His pajamas were rumpled from the restless night. His feet stuck out like great clumsy things, and he stared at them and his bony ankles in dismay. He'd grown again?

A weed, Jason Adrian,
he told himself.
That's what you are. A stray weed that wandered into the McIntire garden. . . .

Jason dragged his desk chair over to the window and knelt on it, pulling aside the shutters. Silver light shot through, practically stunning him with brightness. It flared up from the brilliant moon outside and . . . he leaned on his knees. Someone was down below. Someone with a mirrorlike flash in her hands, gazing back up at him.

He rubbed his eyes to clear them. It looked like . . . Mrs. Cowling . . . his English teacher. Jason squinted down at the neighborhood street and the woman, whoever it was, disappeared, briskly walking down the sidewalk, behind trees and out of his view. One last bright flash illuminated his window. What the heck? Jason leaned his chin on the brass sill, nose almost to the glass.

Ker-ACK! Yellow-eyed blackness swooped at him! Crow! His heart jumped in his chest. Was it? How could it be?

Black wings fluttered; shadow filled the window, then disappeared. He pushed his face back to the window again.

Silently, it came at the glass and swerved away at the last moment before smashing into it. Frowning, Jason unscrewed the great brass clips that held the window firmly in place, and swung the glass out. He leaned out, looking. Warm spring air washed across his face as though the yellow moon hanging low in the sky exhaled at him. He wasn't still dreaming . . . was he?

Pain slashed through his scalp. “Ker-aw!”

“Yeow!” Jason swatted wildly. His hand jabbed at the air, then connected heavily. Feathers flew, followed by a dull thump on the roof.

Now what had he done? Killed it? If it wasn't dead, just hurt . . . well, he couldn't leave it there. With a grunt, Jason levered himself out the porthole and onto the rooftop. Crouched barefooted on the shingles, he swept his gaze about and saw nothing.

Streetlights glowed a soft yellow, muting the nearly colorless colors into drab beige. Nighttime cloaked the entire neighborhood. The walking woman could not be seen anywhere. His head stung. He was almost a hundred percent positive he was awake, yet . . .

He leaned away from the porthole window a bit more. His pajama sleeve caught on the framing and, as he yanked his arm to free it, the window swung shut. With a hollow sound, it fell into place.

Jason groaned. Locked out, and on the roof! What mischief he'd get blamed for, he wasn't quite sure, but he was definitely in trouble.

The brass frame to the porthole window rattled coldly under his hand, refusing to budge. Jason stifled a groan. He'd have to get in through the front door somehow. He'd done this in reverse once before, up the back of the house, inching up on a rain gutter which was scarcely used in Southern California, and swinging across the roof gable. And where was the bird anyway? Nowhere. It had probably flown off, cackling at waking him from a deep sleep and making him fall out of his nest of a bed.

Jason took a deep breath and began to scramble sideways until he reached the gutter. As the metal took his weight, it creaked and swayed in protest. It threatened to bend away from the house entirely and send him crashing down.

Jason bit his lip, looking down. Was a jump out of the question? The faraway ground suggested that was the case. Maybe a mild thud into the flower bed of creeping charlies planted in this shadowed side of the house? He might even be able to do it without waking everyone. He might make it back to bed and sleep without getting a stern lecture and Joanna watching him sorrowfully as though she had somehow failed in her duties. He might even do it without hurting himself so badly he'd miss soccer tryouts, providing he hadn't been grounded. He hung his head over, considering the options.

No, at this point, a climb at least partway down seemed best.

The roughened metal of the rain gutter scratched his bare feet as he climbed, scraping his toes raw. The warm night hung over the neighborhood, and the sinking yellow moon could now barely be seen over the rooftops. Something black and swift darted at his head!

“Ow!” Jason twisted his head around. Back again! He glanced up. Scalp smarting, he shinnied down the gutter a little more carefully. Where the eaves jutted out and the second story began, he had to stop. Bare feet and ankles wrapped tightly around the coarse, pitted metal, he lifted both hands to pull himself over.

Then it came at him again, as intent as if protecting a nest of eggs or fledglings.

It sailed back, yellow eyes shining and talons outstretched. Jason ducked, smothering his yelp of alarm. His whole body swung wildly away from the house. The gutter moved with him, creaking horribly. With a
skkkkrink
and a
skkkronk,
it tore lose. For a moment, he swayed wildly as though on a single giant stilt. It swayed toward the house. He scratched at the siding, trying to catch hold. It swayed away. His heart pounded. Back. Forth.

The rain gutter shuddered like a wild beast and then tossed him. He soared downward through the air, arms and elbows flying, and crashed into the hedge surrounding the yard with an
oooof!

Good news. The hedge stopped his fall. Bad news. It prickled through his pajamas with a hundred nasty little thorns and forced the air right out of his solar plexus. The wind fled his lungs for a moment or two. He lay faceup, looking at the night sky and the golden eye of the huge moon and gulped for air like a beached guppy. After long moments, he finally inhaled deeply. Once he could breathe, he lay still, both his heart and his head pounding, and worried whether the crash had been heard.

With no dog or cat in the house, there was nothing to sound an alarm but the sharp ears of the McIntires themselves, yet the only sounds reaching him were a thunderous snore chased by a faint one.

He sighed. The gutter wobbled in the night air, waving at him, but it looked as if it would stay partially attached, now that his weight was gone. However, there was no chance he could shinny up it again.

Jason was done for, as far as sneaking back in the house. The moon hung over him, and as plain as could be, a shadow glided across the face of it. Glistening blackly with spread wings, it turned and came for him.

Jason sat up abruptly, gathering his feet under him.

The creature dove right past his eyes, stalled in mid-flight, and landed. It folded its wings about its body, an immense crow, as yellow-eyed as if it had absorbed the moon. The bird cocked his head, then hopped forward. It blinked and studied him. Took another crow-hop nearer.

Jason tensed.

With a gleam in its yellow eyes, the bird darted forward, pecked the back of his hand, and launched itself into the air with a great “Ker-aww!” Feathers and something white were shed as it soared skyward.

He snatched his hand back, but the bird's peck hardly amounted to anything compared to the stinging assault of the hedge's prickles. His hand was a mass of scratches already and his skin crawled with itching. Stupid hedge.

Strange crow.

He stood cautiously, eyeing the night sky to see if the shadow had come back. Nothing.

He bent over to see what the crow had dropped into the dewy grass. A scrap of paper. Jason retrieved it. The moon seemed to sit on his shoulder, illuminating spidery writing: