The Wizard Heir (10 page)

Weirbooks. They must be. Seph lifted one down and
leafed through it. The first part was taken up with a family tree, all
handwritten, going back centuries, illuminated in bright colors. Another
section of the book was entitled “Charms and Incantations.” Something
about the books struck a chord with Seph, stirring up a memory he couldn't
quite capture. Reluctantly, he returned the book to its place on the shelf.

He finally found what he was looking for under the
windows at the back of the room. There were six computers lined up on tables
and networked to a cable plugged into the wall. They shared a common printer.

Seph couldn't shake the feeling that he was being
watched. The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and his arms prickled with
gooseflesh. The building creaked and complained under the assault of the wind.
He peered over his shoulder, seeing only books and dust and narrow aisleways.
Shrugging, he hit the power button on one of the PCs. It sounded jarringly loud
in the stillness as it booted up.

The computer hadn't even made it through its startup
routine when he heard running feet. Swearing softly, Seph hit the power button
again and the screen went dark. The door slammed open, and the lights overhead
nickered, then kindled into brilliance.

“I saw someone moving around in here,”
someone said breathlessly.

“You stay by the door,” the other replied.
“I'll check it out.”

Seph slipped between the rows of shelves and
cat-footed up the aisle along the wall toward the exit. Peter Conroy waited by
the door, nervously scanning the aisles, forehead gleaming in the overhead
light.

“You sure you're not seeing things again?”
The other voice was familiar and startlingly close at hand. “You'd better
not have dragged me up here for nothing.” Seph could hear the sound of
feet moving toward him. He was trapped.

Someone clapped a hand over his mouth and grabbed him
by the arm, pulling him back against the wall. “Be quiet!” a voice
hissed in his ear. It said something else Seph couldn't make out.

At that moment, Warren Barber came around the corner
and walked toward them. He still looked a bit green from last night's drinking.
Seph didn't struggle. He stood quietly, wondering what the penalty for breaking
into the alumni library would be.

To his amazement, Barber walked right past them toward
the front of the library. “Nobody's back here now.”

“I swear I saw someone on the monitor.”

“Yeah? Well, maybe he flew out the window. As if
someone would break into a freaking library.”

“Keep still!” the voice whispered again.
Seph turned his head slightly so he could see who had hold of him. To his
shock, he saw nothing but the shelves of books behind him. There was no one
there. The hand over his mouth tightened, smothering his exclamation of
surprise.

He felt sick. He was hallucinating again. He must be.
His palms went clammy with sweat, and he wiped them on his jeans.

Barber and Conroy met up at the front of the room,
then walked up and down the stacks again, passing within inches of Seph and his
invisible captor. Barber still reeked of beer.

“You're delirious, Conroy,” Barber said,
shaking his head. “You must've blundered onto the Sci-Fi Channel.”
Conroy was still protesting as they walked out and closed the door behind them.

“Just be cool a minute,” Seph's captor
instructed him. “Make sure they're really gone.” Seph stood as still
as he could, although he was beginning to tremble, his heart pounding wildly.
After a minute, the hand was removed from his mouth.

“Come on,” the disembodied voice said.
Someone shoved Seph up the aisle to the front of the room, then to the right,
toward a door marked AV Storage. “In there,” the voice said, and Seph
pushed the door open. It was a large closet, lined with projection equipment,
AV carts, and a couple of old computers. Seph stepped inside and the door was
pulled shut behind him.

“No cameras in here,” the voice explained,
following with something that sounded like Latin. Suddenly, as if assembled out
of the air, he could see the body that went with the voice.

He looked to be seventeen or eighteen, slightly built,
dressed in a black T-shirt and jeans. His hair was dark, but had been bleached
out at the tips and spiked, an amateur job. He had two earrings in one ear and
one in the other. He was grinning as if delighted.

“So you're the newbie,” he said. “I
heard you were here. Not that anyone offered to introduce us, of
course.” He swept an arm toward an audiovisual cart. “Welcome to the
catacombs,” he said gravely. “Have a seat.”

Seph sat down on the cart with a bump and put his head
in his hands. He'd thought he was clearheaded after two nights of sleep.
Apparently he'd thought wrong.

“Are you all right?”

Seph looked up to find the stranger staring at him.
“I … I'm not sure,” Seph replied cautiously. “I … ah … I haven't
been well.”

The boy leaned against the wall. “Allow me to
offer you a belated welcome to the Havens—where all your dreams turn into
nightmares.”

Seph laughed in spite of himself. It struck him that
it had been forever since he'd laughed, forever since he'd actually heard
anyone make a joke. “I'm Seph McCauley.” He hesitated. “How'd
you do that? Are you one of the alumni? I don't remember you from Christmas
dinner.”

The stranger rolled his eyes. “No, I'm not
planning to join that particular club. I'm just the poltergeist in this haunted
house. I'm Jason Haley.”

Jason. According to Trevor, he was the one who'd
instigated the ill-fated rebellion. Who'd gotten Sam killed.

“You're gifted, but you're not one of them?”

“Nope.”

“That's not what I heard.”

“Well, you heard wrong. By the way, if you're
going to be sneaking around in here, you ought to know that they have cameras
just about everywhere. Matter of fact, I wouldn't do or say anything in your
room that you don't want to share.”

“Then you're a student?” Seph persisted.

“So to speak,” Jason said dryly. “I'm
not supposed to be up here, either, but I'm doing a little independent
research.”

“So what'd you do in there? It was like we
were invisible.”

“Oh, we were better than invisible,” Jason
replied. “We were unnoticeable.” He laughed as if this were a
fine joke. “How long have you been here, Seph?”

“Since September.”

“You've been here almost four months, and you
haven't given in?” A note of respect crept into Jason's voice. “And
they've been doing you?” He touched his head with his fingertips.

“Almost every night now.” Seph laced his
fingers together and stared at the floor.

“You must be damn tough,” Jason said.
“But they're getting to you, aren't they?”

Seph nodded, without looking up.

“And you're clueless about what's going on.”
It was not a question.

“It's like they're trying to make me crazy.”

“If you think they're trying to make you crazy,
it's because they are. Crazy enough to join them.” Jason pushed away from
the wall and came and sat next to Seph on the cart. He stared at him for a long
minute at close range. “Can't your family get you out?”

Seph shook his head. “I don't really have any
family. Only a guardian. A lawyer in London.”

“What were you doing in the library?”

“I'm trying to reach my guardian. Dr. Leicester
won't let me call him. I've been sending letters, but no response. So I thought
I'd email him from the computers out there.”

Jason shook his head. “Won't work. They batch
everything and go through all the messages before they go out, even in the
Alumni House. You'd need to use one of the machines in administration. And you
can forget about your letters. If they didn't go straight to the shredder,
Leicester's been reading them in bed.”

Seph blinked. Jason Haley was matter-of-fact,
authoritative, convincing. “What about you? Why haven't you joined?”

Jason stood. “Look, I've been warned against
having any contact with you. If they find out we've been together, there'll be
hell to pay.”

“You're saying I might end up like Sam?”

Jason nodded, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if it
hurt. “Yeah. Or I might.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway. Nice
meeting you, Seph. Good luck.” He turned away.

Seph slid between Jason and the door and put his back
against it. “No. Tell me what's going on. I can't fight them if I don't
know what I'm fighting. If I stay here much longer, I will be
crazy.” He cast about for a weapon. “If you don't help me, I'll tell
them about the invisibility thing. I've got nothing to lose.”

Jason stood, hands in his pockets, lips pressed
together, looking off to the side as if he might find his answer written on the
wall. “Listen,” he said after a long pause. “Let me think about
it. Meet me in the woods by the outdoor chapel tomorrow at six. And you'd
better not let anyone follow you.”

Seph nodded, and stepped aside. Jason brushed past him
and was gone.

The next evening, Seph left the dorm, avoiding the
paths and cutting through the woods. The air was cold and clear, prickling his
nose, and his breath emerged in clouds of vapor. The winter sun had already set
and the moon hadn't risen, but the snow reflected back what light there was and
made it easy to pick his way through the trees.

Trevor had said Jason was with the alumni now. But
Jason said he wasn't, and Seph hadn't seen him at the ceremony in the woods or
at dinner. It was as if Jason had been hidden away from Seph, and perhaps from
everyone. Why had Jason been told to stay away from him?

Now Jason wanted Seph to meet him at the outdoor
chapel. He couldn't help wondering if it was a trap.

He approached the chapel from the woods on the right
side. Surrounded by soaring pines, it had the look of a primitive cathedral.
Someone had been there before him. Snow had drifted over the seats to the rear,
but several rows of stones at the front had been brushed clean. The clearing
was quilted with tracks, and the snow around the seats was beaten down, as if
by many feet. The notion of a trap returned.

He climbed onto the stone platform. There were signs
of recent activity there as well. Someone had constructed a ring of weathered
gray stones in the center, and left blackened remnants of a fire within. Had
there been another ceremony? The bonfire must have happened within the past
week, because it had snowed a few days before Christmas.

Seph shivered, and not from the cold. The wind sighed
through the trees.

He grabbed up a fallen branch and poked it through the
ashes and chunks of charred wood on the makeshift hearth. Something glinted in
the pale moonlight that filtered through the trees. He caught it on the branch
and lifted it. It was a gold chain with a pendant, blackened from the heat of
the fire. It looked familiar, but he couldn't place it. He put it in his
pocket.

“Someone was celebrating the solstice.” Seph
spun around to see Jason standing a few feet away. The moon was behind him, his
face hidden, his shadow tall and angular as it stretched across the stone
toward Seph. His gelled hair stood up a bit from his head like a crown. He
looked like a shaman from an ancient tribe, in a leather jacket and blue jeans.

“Solstice?”

Jason nodded. “It's the best time to conjure old
magic. Leicester'd better be careful or he might get burned.” Stooping, he
picked up a piece of the wood from the fire and put it into his jacket pocket.
“I'm surprised they didn't clean this up.”

He sat on one of the stone benches, his shadow
compressing itself, and motioned for Seph to sit next to him. Warily, Seph
complied.

Jason stared into the cold hearth for a long moment, a
muscle working in his jaw. But when he began to speak, the words poured out in
a rush, as if he had already made his decision, and just wanted to get it done.

“Look. I'm going to tell you some things. But
you'd better know now that I'm dead if Leicester ever gets a whiff of this. God
knows what he'll do to you. After what happened with Sam and Peter, I swore I'd
work alone.” He paused again. “So what I'm saying is, if I help you,
and Leicester twists your arm and you spill your guts, I'll kill you.” He
opened his eyes and looked directly at Seph, and Seph believed Jason Haley when
he said it.

“So the question is, are you strong enough to say
no to him?” Jason's eyes were like bright blue crystals.

Seph nodded. He had already said no to Leicester, and
he was paying for it, every night.

“Good,” Jason said. He sat thinking for a
moment, as if he weren't sure how to begin. “How much do you know about
the magical guilds?”

“A little. Nobody's trained me, if that's what
you mean.”

Jason grinned. “Truly. I've seen your work. Nice
job on the chemistry lab.”

“You said you had something to tell me.”

Jason's smile faded. “All right. Leicester is
trying to get control of young, ignorant wizards like yourself.” Jason
threw him a sideways look. “Wizards born into Anaweir families. Mostly he
gets your common hoodlum. A lot are referred from the courts. The program up
here works well for them. Leicester shows them a few of his nighttime videos,
and they settle right down. So his success rate is very high.” Jason
pushed himself up and off his stone seat, pacing back and forth in front of the
dais. “But every so often he turns up a pearl in his oyster. That's you,
Seph.”

Seph nodded toward the stone platform. “He
brought me up here right after I came. I was the guest of honor at some kind
of… of ritual.”

Jason rested his hand on the altar. “It's Old
Magic. He wants you to link to him. You've seen the faculty and the alumni. All
former students, all wizards, all under Leicester's control. I guess it's an
easy sell for most of them. You're a teenager, you've been in trouble all your
life, and he promises to make you 'one of the most powerful magical practitioners
of the age.' I mean, why would you read the fine print?”