The Dragon Heir, Page 4

Madison straightened, lifted her chin, cleared her throat. “Actually, there’s something I’d like to take back, for now, anyway.” Madison shuffled through the bin of matted drawings, pulled one out, and slid it into her portfolio. She brought the sticker to Iris, who noted it on Maddie’s card. “I have a few other prints back in my room. I’ll bring them in tomorrow.”

  She left Magic Hands and turned down Maple, kicking at chunks of ice thrown up by the snowplow, heading for the high school.

  With any luck, she’d bring in some tips that evening at the Legends. Business was usually slow in the winter, but not this year. This year Trinity was like Aspen at the holidays. That’s what cousin Rachel said, anyway. She’d been there, once, at an innkeepers’ convention.

  Classes were just letting out at Trinity High School, and students were clattering down the steps, splintering off into adjacent streets and climbing onto buses. A few of them waved—it was a small town, after all, and they’d seen her with hometown boy Jack Swift and his friends Harmon Fitch and Will Childers.

  Some of the girls studied her appraisingly, no doubt wondering what the exotic Seph McCauley saw in her. But most of the faces were empty of opinions about her. Trinity might be a small town, but compared to Coal Grove, it was a metropolis.

  Clutching that welcome cloak of anonymity around her, Madison cut through the school’s crowded lobby to the main office.

  She pulled a manila envelope out of her portfolio and handed it to the secretary. “For Mr. Penworthy,” she said. “Progress reports from Dr. Mignon for the grading period.”

  “Dr. Mignon is supposed to send those directly to me, Miss Moss,” Mr. Penworthy said from the doorway of his office. “I’ve told you that before.”

  The Trinity High School principal wore high heeled boots, a Western belt with a silver buckle, and a string tie. Madison glanced down at her own fancy boots and shrugged. It was all about scale and context. That’s what she told herself, anyway.

  Madison paused before she spoke, afraid of what would leak out. “I . . . I’m sorry, sir,” Madison said. “She insisted I give this to you. Said she wanted me to be in the loop. Said to call her if you had any questions.”

  The principal hadn’t liked the idea of supervising Madison’s post-secondary program from the start, even though all he had to do was handle the paperwork.

  Mr. Penworthy snatched the envelope away from his secretary and waved it at Madison. “How do I know your grades haven’t been tampered with?”

  Madison bit back the first words that came to mind. “Well. Um. I guess you could call her. Sir.” She practically curtsied as she backed out of the office.

  You can’t afford to get into any more trouble, she said to herself. You came up here to make a fresh start.

  It had started at Coal Grove High School, with notes left on her locker and slipped into her backpack, and text messages flying around. Stories that claimed Madison Moss was a witch. Not the white witch or granny woman traditional in those parts. No. Maddie was an evil, diabolical harpy who would suck your soul out through your ear and hex your garden or ensnare your boyfriend.

  She had no clue where it was coming from, but the gossip was widespread and persistent. Kids made signs against the evil eye in the hallway when she passed. Girls tried to get a lock of her hair to use for love charms. Boys dared each other to ask her out.

  It wasn’t even like people still believed in that kind of thing. It was more like everybody was moonstruck or something. Madison tried to ignore it, hoping it would wear off or that some other scandal would come up to talk about.

  Then the fires started. At first, it was tumbledown barns, sheds, and haystacks that went up like tinder, all around the county. Later, it was occupied barns and hunting cabins and country churches. There was no putting the fires out. Everything burned to the dirt. The perpetrators marked each site with a witchcraft symbol—a pentacle, an elven cross, a chalice. Madison didn’t even know what they meant until she looked them up at the library.

  Fear swept across the county, and suspicion focused on Booker Mountain, fed by the rumors that had gone round before. The police came out and looked for clues, though they didn’t seem sure what to look for. Someone left a cauldron filled with blood in the barnyard. People left threatening messages on their phone (when they had a phone.) Someone sneaked into the family graveyard on Booker Mountain and broke some of the headstones, scribbled threats and profanity on others. A delegation from the Foursquare Church performed an exorcism in front of their gate until Madison brought out Jordie’s shotgun and waved it at them.

  That didn’t help.

  It was a nightmare that got worse and worse. Carloads of thrill seekers started following her around, hoping to catch her in the act. People refused to serve her in restaurants, and refused to be served by Carlene. What friends she had melted away.

  Carlene was finally moved to action when it looked like she’d lose her job. She called Rachel, and Rachel offered Madison room and board and a job in Trinity. And her art teacher, Ms. McGregor, told Madison how she could use college credit to graduate from high school. Madison left Coalton County at the end of her junior year.

  And just like that, the fires stopped. Which confirmed her guilt, some said.

  Her gut twisted up and she shoved the memory away. She was done with that.

  The hallways had cleared by the time she left the office, and the busses were gone. She eyed the students hanging out on the front steps, thinking she might see Seph’s tall, spare form among them. But no. He’d said he’d meet her at Corcoran’s and she was already late. Luckily, it was just down the block. She crossed the parking lot and headed up the street.

  She stamped the snow off her boots in front of Corcoran’s Diner, glaring at the plastic reindeer mounted on the door, its lighted nose glowing cheerfully in the waning afternoon light. The bells mounted on its collar jangled as she pushed the door open.

  Didn’t anybody in this town get that the holidays were over?

  Corcoran’s was jammed with the usual after-school crowd. Madison scanned the room—the red leatherette booths along the side, the battered stools at the soda fountain.

  No Seph.

  Madison checked her watch. She was twenty minutes late. Maybe he’d come and gone? She flipped open her cell phone. No messages.

  Harmon Fitch and his girlfriend, Rosie, were huddled over Fitch’s laptop at their usual table in the front window.

  Fitch looked up. “Hey, Maddie. Pull up a chair.”

  He turned the laptop toward Rosie, who flung back her long dreadlocks and began typing furiously. Probably hacking into the Pentagon.

  Madison shook her head. “Thanks. I can’t stay. I have to get to work.” She shifted from one foot to the other.

  Rosie passed the notebook back to Fitch. He studied the screen and grinned savagely. “Brilliant. Let’s try this.” His fingers flickered over the keyboard, entering strings of letters and numbers.

  “Um. Have you seen Seph?” She tilted the portfolio toward Fitch. “He was supposed to meet me here. I have something for him.”

  Fitch’s fingers never stopped moving. “Last I saw him was second period, sleeping through class, as usual. He cut Calculus this afternoon.”

  “He what?”

  Fitch left off typing and leaned back in his chair, regarding her thoughtfully. “He didn’t show for Math, and he wasn’t on the absent list. You been keeping him up late or what?”

  Madison flinched, feeling the blood rush to her face. “Wasn’t me.” Then who? She fought back a wave of jealousy. She’d been avoiding Seph, making excuses. She couldn’t complain if he hung out with someone else.

  Fitch shrugged and leaned over his computer again. “Anyway, he’s in trouble. Garrity was pissed. It’s the third time this semester.”

  Fear pricked at her, warring with guilt. It wasn’t like him to miss class.

  Maybe he was sick.

  Even worse, maybe he was sick because of her.

 
; But how could that be, when she hadn’t seen him in days? He’d texted her yesterday, asking for help with an art project. He wouldn’t ask unless he was desperate. She couldn’t say no.

  “Well, if he comes in, could you tell him to call me?”

  She tried his cell phone, but it went to voice mail. She left a message.

  Where else could he be? Could he have forgotten?

  In desperation, she walked all the way to Perry Park, though it was little used in the wintertime. Seph was nowhere to be seen, but she came upon the warriors Jack Swift and Ellen Stephenson, drilling their ghost army in a secluded clearing in the woods.

  She found them by following the sounds of combat. Jack had put up one of those wizard enclosures to keep nosy people away, in the unlikely event that nosy people were out walking in the woods in the middle of winter. But Madison was an elicitor. Magic and its illusions didn’t work on her. She just sponged it up, then it dribbled back out, totally out of her control.

  There in the meadow was Jack Swift, his long gold-red hair tied back with a leather strip, leading two dozen warriors across the snowy field in a howling charge. To be met by Ellen Stephenson and her two dozen, a bristling wall of swords and shields.

  There was no sign of Seph.

  It was a motley collection of soldiers, with armor and weaponry drawn from two centuries of warfare. Their weapons glittered in the frail winter sun, their breath was pluming into the cold air. The warriors collided with a bone-shattering thud into a melee of arms and legs and deadly weapons. Blood splattered across the snow, and vintage curses and challenges in a half-dozen languages rang through the trees as individual warriors tried to free themselves from the press of bodies so they could use their swords.

  Jack extricated himself, clearing a great space around him with his sword, Shadowslayer. The blade flickered like a flame in the gloom under the trees. Ellen spun in under his reach, her sword somehow finding an opening in his defenses. The flat of her blade slammed into his ribs, raising a spray of snow.

  “A hit!” she crowed. “A palpable hit. Do you yield?”

  “Barely palpable,” Jack growled, driving her back furiously. Sparks flew as their blades collided and their heated bodies steamed in the frigid air. Their boots churned the meadow into a thick pudding of mud and ice.

  Madison was fascinated in spite of herself. Tall, muscular Jack was a pleasure to watch any time. He and Ellen were longtime dancing partners whose bodies moved to a savage melody no one else heard.

  It was like a lifesize video game, a gut-wrenching bout between the living and the dead. They might be injured— even mortally during these skirmishes—but everyone rose whole at the end of the day, if not without aches and pains.

  Finally, Jack pivoted and struck Ellen’s sword a massive, two-handed blow, sending it flying out of her hands. Jack came on, grinning, sword extended, backing Ellen into a tree. “So, Warrior, do you yiel . . . hey!” he yelped as Ellen let fly with her sling, and a fist-size rock struck him on the shoulder.

  Ellen hated to lose.

  Jack finally noticed Madison, lurking in the fringes of the trees. “Madison! Where’d you come from?” Side-stepping a tall warrior in buckskins who lunged at him with a hatchet, he raised his hand. “Hold!” he shouted.

  The fighting dwindled into late hits and skirmishes, then subsided.

  The spell was broken. Madison jammed her hat down over her ears. “Don’t let me interrupt.”

  Jack and Ellen looked at one another, as if each hoped the other would speak. Madison didn’t approve of any of the frenetic preparations going on in Trinity, and they knew it. The gifted were a club from which Madison was excluded.

  Jack cleared his throat. “We’re, you know, drilling. In case the other Wizard Houses try to break into the sanctuary.”

  Madison hunched her shoulders like she could disappear into her coat. “They’re not coming here. They wouldn’t.”

  “They’re fighting other places,” Ellen pointed out. “Kidnapping sorcerers to help in the war. Stockpiling weapons.”

  True. But. Madison jerked her head at the motley army. “If the Roses do come—which they won’t—what are you going to do? Do you really think you’ll be able to hold them off with this sorry lot?” As soon as she said it, she regretted it. Her mother, Carlene, always said Madison’s manners were two steps behind her wicked tongue.

  Like Carlene was an example for anyone.

  “Well,” Jack said. He and Ellen exchanged glances again. “We have to try.”

  “Maybe you should buy some assault rifles, then,” Madison suggested sarcastically. “And rocket-propelled grenades.”

  “Assault rifles don’t work against wizards, unless you take them by surprise,” Ellen said. She’d been raised by wizards, outside of the usual teen social circles, so sarcasm often went right by her. “Their shields can totally turn non-magical attacks. But a warrior can take a wizard in a magical battle on a level playing field.”

  “Well, I think it’s a waste of . . .” Sensing a presence, she swung around. The buckskin-clad warrior was right behind her, rudely eavesdropping on the conversation. “Did you want something?”

  He swept off his hat and managed a creditable little bow. “My name’s Jeremiah Brooks, ma’am,” he said. “I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

  Madison squinted up at him. He was very tall and smelled of sweat, leather, and gunpowder.

  “I’m Maddie Moss.”

  “Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am. If I may say so, you just might be the prettiest girl in town.” Jeremiah Brooks smiled, a long, slow, droop-lidded smile.

  “Jeremiah lived near here in the 1780s,” Jack explained. “He was kidnapped by the Roses and died at Raven’s Ghyll in 1792.”

  “Is that so, Mr. Brooks?” Madison asked, for lack of anything else to say. Of course it was so. Mr. Jeremiah Brooks was a ghost. She was being hit on by somebody who’d been dead for more than 200 years. These sorts of things were a dime a dozen in Trinity, Ohio.

  Brooks dismissed his death with a wave of his hand. “Miz Moss, if you’d care to go dancing with me tonight, you’ll see there’s some life left in me yet.”

  “I don’t date dead people,” Madison said, glaring at the ghost warrior. “That’s where I draw the line.” These ghosts were just a little too substantial as far as she was concerned. They ate, drank, fought . . . and danced, apparently. Except for their odd mode of dress and the weapons they carried, you couldn’t tell them from live people.

  Jack grinned. “Better watch yourself, Brooks. Maddie’s going out with my cousin. The most powerful wizard I know.”

  Brooks paled under his stubble of beard. “I’m sorry, ma’am. No offense meant. You didn’t seem like the kind to ... I had no way of knowing that ...”

  “We’re not going out.” Madison scowled at Jack, who shrugged and raised his eyebrows at Ellen.

  Madison tried again. “I mean, we’re just ...friends. Good friends. To be honest, I’ve barely seen him lately.” You’re running on at the mouth. Stop it.

  Brooks lifted an eyebrow. “Well, watch yourself, Miz Moss. I don’t know that you can be friends with a wizard. They’ve been known to take advantage of young ladies. If you take my meaning.”

  Madison gave him a look, then turned to Jack and Ellen. “Anyway.We were supposed to meet an hour ago. You haven’t seen him, have you?”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t see him anymore, either. He and Nick are totally caught up with maintaining the boundary.”

  While the warriors played their war games, the wizards of Trinity had established an invisible barrier to suppress attack magic within the sanctuary. The maintenance of it seemed to demand a huge amount of energy. And time.

  “I still don’t get why we need a special boundary now, when we never did before,” Madison said.

  “Well, the ban on attack magic is written into the Covenant, but I guess now nobody knows whether it’s in force or not,” Jack said, “
or when D’Orsay might consecrate his new Covenant. Things are kind of up in the air.”

  Madison stamped her feet, finding that her fancy boots were not much protection against the cold. “Well, I was supposed to help him with an art project, but he didn’t show.”

  Jack and Ellen shifted their feet in the beaten-down snow, obviously eager to get back to their scrimmage. “If we see Seph, we’ll tell him you’re looking for him,” Ellen offered.

  Madison jammed her hands in her pockets, trying to warm them. “It’s getting late anyway. I need to get to work. See you.”

  The clatter of fighting resumed before she made it out of the clearing.

  Now she had only an hour before her shift started. She’d try Seph’s Aunt Becka’s, then move on to the waterfront. If he wasn’t at either of those places, she’d have to go on to work.

  Nothing could have happened to him. He’d just gotten hung up. Like usual. He had to be safe within the sanctuary. There was a boundary up, after all. No attack magic.

  All the while knowing that, within the sanctuary at least, the biggest threat to Seph McCauley was Madison Moss and the magic that leaked from her fingers.

  A memory surfaced, the battle at the inn at Second Sister, a scene painted in lurid orange hues. Gregory Leicester smiled, extending his wizard hands, launching flaming death at Seph. Maddie had stepped between them, catching the full force of the attack. She’d reeled in the magic while the wizard struggled on the end of her line like a bluegill at Jackson Lake. Leicester had fallen, along with all of his captive wizards.

  She’d been left contaminated. The bitter taste of hex magic lingered on the back of her tongue and seeped out through her pores, a virulent and deadly poison made just for Seph.

  After their return from Second Sister, he’d complained of headaches, stomach pains, fatigue. He broke out in welts and rashes, and grew thin and pale and hollow-eyed, as if he had some wasting disease.

  At first Madison thought it was the aftermath of the ordeal on the island. She assumed time would heal him, but he only got worse. His hands shook and his changeable eyes went cloudy and dull and twice he fainted at school.