Sorcerers of the Nightwing (Book One - The Ravenscliff Series) (10 page)

“Yes,” she said, more to herself than him. “He sent you here.”

Devon
couldn’t tell what inflection her words carried, if she was bitter or grateful or resentful of that fact. He continued, “I’m certain that my father sent me here because this is where I’ll find the truth of my past.”

Mrs. Crandall turned to face him, leveling her eyes down at him. “I told you the night you arrived here that this is a house with many secrets. I also told you we respect those
secrets. We do not pry. I can offer you one piece of advice, Devon, and I hope you take it. The answers are not in the past but in the future. If you want to be happy here, you’ll look forward, not back, and not into every shadow and every closed door of this house. There are reasons that the doors are closed.”

She excused herself then, saying she had work to do, that Cecily could find her
in her room if necessary. Devon nodded, watching the flames crackle in the hearth, sending shadows across the marble floor that danced with all the agility of spirits.

Mrs. Crandall definitely knew more than she was saying, he thought. But the Voice added that Devon must be on his guard around her. Whether she was friend or foe wasn’t yet clear, but in either scenario, asking her too much right
now would be unwise. Once again, Devon realized the information he sought would need to be unearthed on his own.

That night, the first dry, peaceful
night since his arrival, Devon took a walk across the grounds, listening to the roar of the waves below, allowing the sound to soothe him as he made his way along the cliffs.

The moon was bright upon the ocean. He lapsed into a sort of timelessness as he watched the waves, feeling the cool October air on his face. The moonlight mesmerized him as it flickered on the sea, a ballet of light. He
found a smooth, flat rock near the edge of the cliff and sat down, his feet dangling in the air below. It was a hundred feet or more of a sheer drop to the beach below. This was Devil’s Rock, he realized; perhaps this was the very stone from which Emily Muir took her final leap. Suddenly Devon was consumed by a horrible sadness, one that settled deep into his body. He thought of Dad, of finding
him in bed, still and cold, his eyes open as if he’d been frightened to death.

“Stop it, Devon,” he whispered to himself, but it was too late. The tears flowed. In the few months since his father had died, Devon had thought of finding his body many times, and the image was impossible to push away. Dad had lay there, staring up into the emptiness of death, his blue-veined hand over his heart.
He’d been in bed for several weeks, and Devon had become accustomed to their routine: sitting with him until he fell asleep, then crawling into his own bed for a few hours sleep, only to return at dawn to be there when Dad awakened. Only on this morning Dad had never opened his eyes, and when Devon had touched him, he’d been cold and hard. He’d knelt beside the bed and wrapped his arms around the
cold body and cried.

“If the ghosts of Ravenscliff can come back,“ Devon whispered into the night, “why can’t you?”

But he can, and does,
comes the Voice.

Devon reached down into his pocket and gripped the medal of the owl and the lady in his hand.

“If you ever feel lost, that medal is your talisman,” Dad had told him just a few days before he died.

Sitting there overlooking the
sea, Devon squeezed the small, round, flat silver medal tightly in his palm.

He took out his phone. One flickering bar offered a tenuous connection to the world beyond. And he saw he had a message from Suze. Suddenly happy, he clicked on the notification.

“Dear Devon,” Suze wrote. “I wanted to tell you that Tommy asked me to go out with him and so were are dating now. I hope you are doing
good and that you—”

He couldn’t read anymore. Wouldn’t you know it? The one time he had reception it was to get a message from Suze breaking up with him.

Except they’d never really been dating. So what was there to make Devon feel so bad? Only the fact that Tommy and Suze and Max all had each other, and he was all alone.

It’s so hard,
Dad, Devon told his father.
It’s hard because I’m
in a place I don’t know, with people I’m not sure I can trust. Dad, I miss you. I wish you were here so much. I’m trying to discover why you sent me here, but there are so many mysteries. And the demons, Dad—they’re here, and they’re far stronger than they ever were back home …

He wrapped his arms around his torso, rocking himself, swaying his legs in the weightlessness below the cliff. He
imagined Emily Muir standing here in this very spot, her heart racing in her ears, her tears still wet in her throat, her heart broken by her savage, selfish warlock-husband—and then jumping, plunging onto the rocks below, the white water staining red, her mangled body being claimed by the sea …

Carefully Devon stood and looked away from the waves. His knees suddenly felt weak, as if he might
fall, following Emily’s path, and he pushed himself up onto the grass. Away from the cliff, he felt sturdier, and he walked back across the estate, the well-manicured lawns and shrubbery a testament to Simon’s skill. To his left the tennis court stood silent; to his right the gardens stretched lazily toward the sea. Their flowers were mostly withered, although several large round pumpkins caught
the moonlight.

Devon looked up at the great house, looming in bleak silhouette against the night sky. Once again he spied the same light in the tower he had seen before, this time from another angle. Whipping out his phone, he snapped a picture. He’d show Mrs. Crandall that he wasn’t seeing things. But despite taking one picture after another, not one image of the tower showed up in his camera
roll. Devon tried taking pictures of the sea and the cliffs and the gardens and captured all of them. But every time he tried to take a picture of the light in the tower, all he got was a white overexposed rectangle.

“The tower has been locked for years,” he said.

Yet what were locks, he reasoned, to those who had already managed to break out of the grave?

Cecily looked at him with amusement. “I think I’ve told you one too many stories about our ghosts.”

They were at breakfast, seated at the great long polished oak table that accommodated twenty-six, though it had been a very long time since Ravenscliff had hosted gatherings of such numbers. Devon and Cecily looked even younger than their years as they huddled together at the far end of the
table, eating cereal and fresh fruit and whispering between themselves.

“No, Cecily, it was there. I’m sure of it. I saw a light in the tower.”

She made a face, clearly troubled, as if she preferred not to delve much deeper.

“Have you ever seen a light up there?” Devon asked her. “You admitted you’ve heard the sobbing.”

“And maybe I shouldn’t have.” She frowned. “Look, Devon. I try
not to see too many things in this house. I look the other way.”

“But why, Cecily? You can’t deny—”

“Why?” She looked at him, very upset now. “Because I’d go crazy otherwise! Imagine growing up here. Imagine what it must have been like.”

“You look the other way because that’s what your mother always told you to do.” He leveled his gaze at her. “Isn’t that right?”

She pouted. Her silence
told Devon he was indeed correct.

He laughed. “Since when have you done what your mother has told you?”

Cecily’s eyes fluttered up to find his. Years of denial shone there—a denial of anything not easily explained. “In this one area,” she explained, “it’s been easier to merely go along with Mother. Devon, I’d wake up at night with such nightmares as a little girl. Terrifying. Horrible. I
had to believe Mother when she told me the sobbing was only the wind, that the figure in the hallway was just a trick of light and shadows in an old house. I had to believe her when she said nothing here could harm me. And I can’t stop believing that now.”

She pushed aside her bowl of cereal and headed upstairs.

Devon hadn’t meant to upset her, but he needed somebody to confirm what he’d
seen and heard. After breakfast, when he found Mrs. Crandall in the library, he decided to confront her again.

“You are a determined young man,” she said, her neck high and arch as she listened to his story. She wore a simple black dress and a single strand of pearls around her throat. In her hands were three old volumes: one was Twain’s
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
, he could see, but
the other titles were obscured. The library smelled dank and dusty, but in a good way, a comforting fragrance of old books and knowledge. Yet in that moment, he felt neither comforted nor literary. Determined was precisely the word he, too, would have used: determined to find out just what this family was hiding from him.

“I know I saw a light both times,” he insisted.

“Then I’ll have to
check,” Mrs. Crandall replied, idly flipping open the top book and scanning the page. “Perhaps there is a short in one of the old light fixtures up there. The wiring hasn’t been updated for nearly fifty years.” She closed the book. “I should thank you, Devon. You may have alerted us to a potential fire hazard.”

So that was her answer. He accepted it, for now.

“By the way, Devon,” she said
nonchalantly. “I spoke with Alexander. He said you assaulted him.”

“That’s crazy—”

“You needn’t try to explain. I understand the boy’s imagination. But I suggest you try to make friends with him. Remember, I had hoped you’d provide a good influence.” She handed him
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
. “Here. Would you bring this to him? I told him I’d send him some books to read. Until we
decide what to do about his schooling, I want his mind on something other than television and the Internet.”

She swept out of the library. Devon sighed, not relishing another encounter with the Bad Seed. But he trudged on upstairs anyway. Perhaps he could determine more of what the boy knew.

He found Alexander once again in the playroom, stretched out in his beanbag chair, holding his iPad
in front of his face. Devon peered around to see what he was looking at. It was that ugly old clown again.

“Is that show on Netflix or something, too?” Devon asked.

Alexander ignored him, keeping his eyes glued to his iPad.

Major Musick was once again comparing the letters “M” and “N.” “Listen to how they sound almost the same,” the clown rasped.

“Is this a rerun?” Devon asked.

Alexander hit the stop button on his video, leaving Major Musick in extreme close-up, baring his ugly teeth. The boy looked up at Devon. “I don’t need to watch my show if you want to hang out,” he said.

Devon looked at him oddly. “You want to hang out with me?”

“Sure. Why not?”

Devon smirked. “You didn’t seem all that willing yesterday.”

“Hey, I could use an older brother.” Alexander
smiled. “Did you think we wouldn’t be friends?”

Devon just studied him.

The boy laughed. “I’m a tough kid to break through to,” he said, and something danced in his eyes. It was that challenge—that defiance, that secret knowledge—Devon had seen the first day.

“I think you’ll enjoy this book,” Devon told him, handing him Huck Finn. “It was one of my favorites when I was your age.”

Alexander
accepted the book. “I can’t imagine you at my age.”

“Well,” Devon said, “I was.”

“Did you get into trouble like I have?”

Devon considered his answer. “Well, I didn’t set fire to any curtains, but I had my share of trouble.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there was this old corridor in this old churchyard. Sometimes we’d go there to hang out, my friends and I. We weren’t supposed to go there
because it was old and the bricks were loose and there were bats that lived in the eaves. But of course, everybody liked to hang there. But this one time—it was Halloween—one of the priests came out and found my friend Suze and me there—”

“What were you doing? Screwing?”

“No,” Devon responded, struck by the child’s presumption. “We were just hanging out.”

Alexander grinned deeply. “I’ll
bet
you were just hanging out.”