The Wizard Heir (15 page)

It was one of those times when the body seems to act
without the counsel or approval of the conscious mind. Seph McCauley bunched
his quivering legs under him and launched himself at Gregory Leicester. He hit
him hard, in the midsection. It was very much like hitting a concrete wall, but
Seph was able to land at least two good punches before Leicester pinned his
arms to his side with one massive arm and wrapped the other around his neck,
cutting off his air supply. He increased the pressure until black spots
appeared before Seph's eyes, then relaxed it enough to keep Seph from passing
out completely.

As soon as Seph had enough air to do so, he launched
into one of the attack charms he and Jason had memorized in the library. But he
was cut off mid sentence by blinding pain like a current that flamed through
his body and left him limp and trembling when it was finally over.

“Don't be a fool,” said Leicester.

But Seph was reckless with anger. “You'd better
kill me,” he gasped, “because if you don't, I swear I'll kill
you.”

Leicester was speaking into his ear. “Why would I
kill you, Joseph, when I have so many other options?” He laughed softly.
"You think you've had dreams? I can give you a nightmare that will last a
week. Why, I can give you a nightmare that will last the rest of your life. We
call it going insane.

“Now, the question is whether we need to keep you
around in case someone responds to your message. I think not. You won't be in
any condition to talk to them anyway. You threatened to kill yourself, Joseph,
and I think you're going to succeed. You'll cease to exist as far as Sloane's
is concerned. Think of it. We'll have you all to ourselves. A wizard's
lifetime. No more paperwork, no pesky correspondence going back and
forth.” He touched Seph's damaged face, running his thumb down his
chinline. “No need to keep you pretty in case someone conies to
call.”

Leicester tightened his grip and spoke a charm. The
flames raked through Seph again, and he screamed, all of his muscles seizing
with the pain of it. He couldn't say how long it went on, but Leicester
suddenly released his hold on him, and Seph dropped to the floor like a rag
doll, whimpering, desperately sucking in air.

“At last, perhaps, you begin to understand. You
see how restrained I've been. Now the gloves come off. I won't make the same
mistake I made with Jason. You're going to beg for the chance to give me what I
want. I promise to take my time. We'll learn so much, you and I, about your
capabilities. You've been a tough little bastard. Now we'll find out just how
tough you are.”

Seph lay with his face against the varnished hardwood,
his breath coming in ragged gasps, his heart pounding in his ears. His skin was
slick with sweat, and he was shivering. He could think of only one way out of
his predicament. He had to find a way to make Leicester kill him.

Gradually, he became aware of a commotion in the outer
suite of offices. Raised voices, like an argument. Seph turned his head
slightly so he could see. Leicester turned toward the door. Peter Conroy
slipped into the office and spoke, quietly and urgently, to Leicester.
Leicester listened, with his eyes on Seph. He nodded, said a few words, and
Conroy left again.

Leicester lifted an upholstered chair like it weighed
nothing and set it in front of the door. Then he slid his hands under Seph's
arms and hauled him into it. Seph bit his lip to keep from crying out. He tried
to retreat into the chair, to curl himself around his many hurts like an
injured animal. But the headmaster gripped his chin hard and lifted his head so
Seph had no choice but to look him in the eyes.

“It appears there's been a response to your
message. Sloane's has sent someone to inquire after you.” Leicester
dropped his hot hands onto Seph's shoulders. Power roared into him again,
different from before, power that drove the strength from his muscles and
bones, leaving him totally conscious but helpless—too weak to hold up his head.
An immobilization charm. He couldn't speak or move a muscle.

Leicester arranged Seph's body in the chair, making no
attempt to be gentle. He raked Seph's curls back out of his eyes and looked
down at him, apparently satisfied. “Now you can listen while I send her
away.” He paused. “And when I return, I promise I will make you wish
you'd never been born.” Then he was gone, the three alumni following him.

So Sloane's had sent a woman. Seph had hoped they
would send someone he knew, Denis Houghton, even. He didn't know any female
associates of the firm. Seph swallowed down his despair. These wizards could
outfox or overpower any lawyer. He didn't want to have to hear it.

The group outside must have moved closer to the door,
or perhaps Leicester engineered it so, because suddenly the voices came through
clearly. First a woman's voice. "We received his message at our offices

Sunday night. I'm not leaving without talking to
him."

“I'm afraid that won't be possible just
now,” Leicester replied.

“What do you mean?” the woman demanded.

“Joseph has disappeared. No one has seen him
since supper last night. He left this in his room.” There was a brief
silence, as if the woman were reading something.

“This doesn't sound like him. How do you know he
wrote it?”

“It was in his room, Miss …”

“Downey,” the woman said.

“Are you a relative?” Leicester asked, like
a coroner seeking the next of kin.

“I am the boy's legal guardian,” the woman
said. “That's all you need to know. I fail to understand how you could
lose my ward overnight.”

“One of the boats is missing,” Leicester
said. “He might have taken it out last night.”

“I find that hard to believe,” the woman
replied. “Seph has never been fond of the ocean.”

There was something oddly compelling about her voice.
It was like a song that you can't let go of. Seph was struck by the use of his
private name, her confidence in her knowledge of him. She claimed to be his
guardian. But Denis Houghton was his guardian. Downey? He'd never even heard
her name before.

“Why haven't you called the police?” she
demanded. “Why didn't you call us before now?”

“We've only just discovered he was missing,”
Leicester said. “We're conducting a search ourselves. It wasn't unusual
for him to disappear for hours at a time. He liked to walk alone in the
woods.” He was already speaking in the past tense.

“First you imply he's gone boating in the dark,
now you tell me he's been walking in the woods all night. Do your students
never stay in their beds?”

The woman was persistent, but it wouldn't matter. She
couldn't force them to produce him if they claimed he was missing. And Seph
knew he would never be found.

“Why don't you come down to the cafeteria and
have some coffee,” Leicester said. “The search parties will be
reporting back here. As soon as there's any news—”

“Seph said you wouldn't allow him to call us. He
said you were holding him prisoner here.”

Seph could almost see Leicester shrugging his
shoulders. “I don't know where he gets these ideas,” the headmaster
said. “Frankly, Miss Downey, we've done our best to work with Joseph. You
can tell by the note he left that he's unstable. In fact, we've come to believe
that he's psychotic. Yet we were told none of this when we admitted him.”

“You make it sound like he's been a problem since
September,” she said. Papers rustled. “I have all his progress
reports here, and they suggest nothing of the kind.”

Soon enough, the dance would be over. They would
maneuver the woman out of the office and down to the cafeteria. Then they could
tuck him somewhere out of the way, and his chance would be gone. He'd
sacrificed so much, perhaps everything, to get Sloane's to send someone to
rescue him.

I can't
let her leave without seeing me, he told himself. He tried to move, to
twitch a finger, but nothing happened. Frustration built up in him, and then
something else, more familiar. He focused his attention on the door,
concentrating, pushing energy into his extremities. And then it happened. A
cascade of blue flame erupted from his fingertips and blew down the door
between the offices with a bang like a gunshot.

There was a brief, stunned silence. “What the
bloody hell was that?” the woman cried.

A clamor of voices erupted. Explanations and protests.
Someone appeared in the doorway.

She was small, with short, layered hair, like silver
and gold spun together. She wore a tailored black suit with a very short skirt,
and had amazingly long legs for such a small person. When she moved, Seph found
it impossible to look away. She seemed to shimmer, sending sparks in every
direction. She looked like no lawyer Seph had ever seen.

“Thank God,” the woman said. He could tell
she recognized him immediately. She shook off Leicester and came toward him,
the others trailing behind her like the tail of a comet. Warren and Bruce
blundered into each other in their eagerness to get near her.

It was an exquisitely awkward moment, the wizards, the
woman, the briefly lost and suddenly found Seph. For his part, Gregory
Leicester looked like he might just murder Seph, right then and there,
regardless of witnesses and the representative from Sloane's.

The woman's eyes never left Seph's face. Now that she
was closer, he could see that they were deep-blue violet flecked with gold.
“Dear God, what have they done to you?” Seph was desperate to reply,
but all he could do was stare at her helplessly.

Gregory Leicester found his voice. “We … ah …
didn't want you to see him like this. He's heavily medicated. He's been
uncontrollably self-destructive these past few days.” Leicester looked disconcerted,
something Seph had never expected to see.

She was finally within arm's length of Seph, but now
she looked back at Leicester for the first time. “I see what you mean.
He's given himself a brutal beating. Most unusual.”

She looked upset, distressed, angry, yet she was not
making as much fuss over his appearance as he might have expected. She's not
shocked, he thought. Not even surprised. Like she knows what's up. And with
that came a fragment of hope.

“Hello, Seph. I'm Linda Downey.”

Seph kept staring at her, spinning out silent pleas. Find
a way to get me out of here. And then the tears washed over the great dam
of his eyes and streaked down his face.

Linda Downey nodded, almost imperceptibly, as if she'd
heard, and understood. She leaned in and gave him a light kiss on his forehead
and whispered, so only he could hear, “Courage, Seph.” Then she
turned back to Leicester and the others.

“Clearly, this placement has been nothing short
of a disaster. I'm taking him back to see his regular therapist. I'm hoping he
won't require hospitalization.”

Therapist?

She gestured to Hays and Barber. “You two. Help
me get him into my car.”

They stepped forward obediently. But Leicester shook
his head. “The boy stays here,” he said. “As you can see, he's
in no condition to travel.”

The woman sighed and changed tactics. “Dr. Leicester,
I think it's time we were frank with each other. I do believe you all are
wizards and you have this boy under a spell.”

She might as well have said the law firm of Sloane,
Houghton, and Smythe believed in fairies. Seph squinted at her in disbelief.
The alumni stirred and muttered, but Leicester seemed unimpressed.
“So?” he said, letting the word drop between them like a gauntlet. He
was making it clear that what Linda Downey knew, or didn't know, was
irrelevant.

She shook her head and regarded Leicester with a look
of pity. “Do you have any idea who this boy is?”

Leicester frowned, opened his mouth, and then closed
it again, looking from Linda to Seph.

“Obviously, you don't.” She put her
fingertips under Seph's chin and tilted his face upward. “Look at him!
Look at his eyes, the shape of his nose.”

Leicester studied Seph, but his scowl said he was
clueless as before.

“I find it hard to believe you can't spot
it.” She cleared her throat. “Joseph McCauley is the natural child of
one of your colleagues on the Council of Wizards. A delicate matter, as he is
married to someone other than the boy's mother.” She paused again.
“His wife is a powerful wizard and has been unforgiving of such
transgressions in the past. The boy has been kept ignorant of his background,
for fear the story would come out. But Seph's father takes a strong interest in
his welfare and upbringing. Seph is his only son.”

She knows who my father is. Despite Leicester and the Alumni, despite his
desperate situation, despite everything, Seph waited breathlessly for Linda
Downey to say his name.

Leicester seemed to be rummaging through some kind of
mental list. “Who is it?” he demanded. “Tell me. Who's his
father?”

Linda said nothing.

“You don't mean … Ravenstock?” The wizard's
face transitioned from incredulity to cunning conviction. “It is, isn't
it?”

She hesitated, then said, “It's really none of
your business. But you'll find out soon enough if you don't unbind the boy and
let him go. His father flew into Portland yesterday. You can imagine his
reaction when I forwarded Seph's message. If I don't show up with his son in
Portland by this afternoon, his father will take this place apart, stone by
stone, until he finds him. No excuse will be good enough to satisfy him. And
you can be sure he'll bring the matter to the Council next week.”

Leicester clenched and unclenched his fists. “Why
didn't Ravenstock come himself, if he's so concerned?”

Ravenstock. Joseph Ravenstock. Hey, I'm Seph Ravenstock.
Seph tried out the name in his mind.

“Considering his position, he wishes to keep the
matter private. So he sent me as his representative. If he'd expected a
problem, I'm sure he would have come himself.”