Sorcerers of the Nightwing (Book One - The Ravenscliff Series) (15 page)

He nodded. “And I think Alexander knows something. Maybe not consciously even—but he’s got some connection. Cecily, he locked me in that room in the East Wing for a reason.”

“Yeah,” she said, “to scare you. Devon,
I’ve told you that Alexander is a screwed-up kid. Has been all his life.”

“But how much now is his own screwed-up-ness and how much is Jackson Muir?”

“Jackson Muir? You think our so-called warlock has something to do with your demons?”

“I’m starting to think so.”

Cecily frowned. “Devon, I can’t deny something weird is going on, not after seeing you in action at Gio’s and what you just
did to Pearlie Mae. But why do you think Jackson Muir is involved? He’s just a legend. I should never have encouraged that warlock talk—”

“I know it was him that I saw in that locked room. The Voice tells me I’m on the right track, and the Voice has never failed me yet.”

“Well, if any of our ghosts were to go psycho on us, it would be Jackson.” She looked over at Devon. “How much do you
think my mother knows about all this?”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But she knows something, I’m sure. Something about who I am.”

“Do you think she knows about—what you can do?”

“I don’t know.” He considered the idea further. “No, I don’t think she does. And I don’t think she
should
, either, for now.”

“Okay,” Cecily agreed.

They heard the first pitter-patter of raindrops on the stable
roof. “We should get going,” Devon said.

They secured the doors to the stable tightly in advance of the storm.

“Devon,” Cecily said, whispering in the damp dusky air.

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for trusting me.”

He grinned. He reached down and took her hand. Together they hurried back up to the main house.

The storm hit just before dinner, rocking the house like the slap of a giant hand. Great purple fingers clawed across the sky, bringing darkness early to the coast. The rains pounded the earth with a force strong enough to release stones from their lodgings, sending tiny avalanches of rock and soil down the steep cliffs along the roads. Echoing claps of thunder set the dogs all to howling;
ferocious lightning crackled against the sky, silhouetting the spires of Ravenscliff above the village below.

When Alexander failed to come down to dinner—a rare gathering his aunt had intended for the whole family, minus (of course) old Grandmama—Mrs. Crandall sent Simon up to fetch him. When the caretaker returned to report that the boy wasn’t in his room, the matriarch of the house let out
a long sigh. “That incorrigible child. I’ve told him repeatedly not to be late for dinner.”

Simon served their roast turkey, carved on an enormous silver platter. Devon was famished, and he ate heartily—but something about Alexander’s absence unnerved him. There was a sense of something amiss, something wrong.
There’s your sensitivity again,
Dad was telling him in his mind.

After dinner,
as Simon cleared away the plates, Devon asked Cecily to accompany him through the house to search for Alexander.

“Do you think he might have snuck back into the East Wing?” she wondered.

“Simon said he nailed that panel shut,” Devon told her. “But who knows if there are other ways into that place.”

The thunder startled both of them then, and the lights went out. “Ever wonder why they
call this Misery Point?” Cecily laughed.

“I figured it out the first day I was here,” Devon replied.

They both lit candles and made their way through the dark. They searched every room in the main part of the house: the kitchen, the dining room, the parlor, the study, the library, the bedrooms, the playroom. But no Alexander.

“Could he be outside?” Cecily asked, looking out the parlor
window just as a great flash of lightning illuminated the vast stretch of the estate leading out to Devil’s Rock.

Devon was looking out too. “Hey, I think I just saw someone out there,” he said. “When the lightning came—”

Cecily unfastened the hook and opened the panes outward. “Alexander!” she called. “Are you out there? Are you crazy?” She pulled back in. “Duh. Like I don’t know the answer
to that question.”

“Let’s look in his room and see if his coat is gone.”

Indeed it was. “Oh, Devon, I hope he’s all right,” Cecily said, finally genuinely concerned about her young cousin. She lifted a teddy bear from the boy’s bed. “This storm is awfully intense.”

Devon felt a shudder but suppressed it. “It’s not the storm I’m worried about.”

She managed a smile. “Hey, if Jackson
Muir is behind this, as soon as he gets a hold of that brat, he’ll send him back!”

Devon looked at her. “Stop making light of this. I believe Alexander is in danger.”

She looked back squarely, suddenly terrified. “You really do, don’t you?”

“Yes,” he said. “At least, I believe it’s worth—”

He paused. Alexander’s laptop computer sat on a table next to his bed. Devon peered down at it.
A Word document was open, containing just one line of type, in all capital letters.

HELP ME. HE’S COMING.

Cecily saw it too. “What do you make of that?” she asked.

It was precisely at that moment, beneath the steady pounding of the rain, just before a thunderclap shook the very foundation of the house, that they heard the unmistakable sound of a child’s scream.

The storm raged all through the night like a lover spurned. As he searched for Alexander near the cliffs, Devon came to understand why the villagers claimed to hear Emily Muir on stormy nights such as this. Behind the wind, the echo of her screams remained high and clear. Devon was even sure he saw her once,
in that portentous second when the lightning illuminated the dark woods: a shrieking figure in a long white gown, fingers clawing the night.

He feared approaching Devil’s Rock any closer: what if, in his terror, Alexander had plunged from its edge?

Cecily drew closer to him. She was bundled in a bright yellow raincoat, the hood pulled tightly around her face. Wisps of her red hair poked
from beneath the elastic, dripping down into her eyes. Devon carried a large flashlight. Its beam swung through the shadows, exposing tree trunks with limbs now as bare as the arms of skeletons, their fiery-colored leaves blown away by the wind. But despite calling the boy’s name over and over for the last hour, there was no sign of Alexander Muir.

“You heard the scream, too, didn’t you?” Devon
asked. “I’m not imagining it?”

“I heard it,” Cecily admitted. “Oh, Devon—where could he be? Why would he come out in a storm like this?”

Thunder rattled them both suddenly, and they paused in their steps. The flashlight sputtered, then dimmed. Cecily made a small cry, but Devon shook it, bringing the flashlight back to life. Ahead of them somewhere was Simon, whose raspy voice calling after
the boy had now faded into the steady beat of the rain, which exploded the earth with its ferocity, splashing mud up onto their shoes and pants.

Raw terror burned in Devon’s gut. Cecily was right to wonder what had possessed the boy to come outside on a night like this. Even more disturbing was the scream they’d heard. Had he fallen from Devil’s Rock? Had he—Devon shuddered—been led there by
Jackson Muir and then pushed?

In his mind he couldn’t shake the image of that decomposing face, the maggots in its teeth, its rotting breath in Devon’s ear.

Help me
, Alexander had written.
He’s coming
.

Who else, Devon feared, but Jackson Muir?

“We’ve got to look down at the beach below Devil’s Rock,” Devon shouted through the driving force of the rain.

“Oh, Devon,” Cecily cried.

Through the mud they pushed onward. They’d have to be careful themselves: at the edge of the cliff the wind rushed and swelled with a force far greater than anywhere else along the coast. Cecily had told him that a tourist trespassing on the Muir estate two summers ago had been swept off the peak by a sudden and malevolent gale. His broken, mangled body had been found six miles down the coast
twelve days later. His camera was still in its bag over his shoulder.

Cecily steadied herself at the brink. “Even if he fell, we couldn’t see from up here,” she gasped into the wind. “It’s too dark.”

“Maybe I should go down,” Devon said.

“No need,” came the deep, coarse voice of Simon. He stepped out of the shadows beside them. A fog suddenly rolled in off the sea; it obscured the little
man’s features. But his unkind eyes still bore through the night like red embers. Devon recoiled.

“What do you mean, no need?” Cecily asked.

“I’ve just been down there,” Simon told her, his unevenly cut black hair plastered down around his face and into his eyes. “There’s nobody on the rocks. If the boy fell, he’s washed out to sea. We’ll have to wait until morning, see what turns up.”

“Oh,” Cecily muttered, putting her hands over her face and starting to cry.

“Come on,” Devon said, placing his arm around her and leading her back across the estate.

About three o’clock in the morning, the storm finally abated. The rain turned soft, hushed, and nearly invisible. Now the only sound was the mournful call of the foghorn, warning ships not to come too close to this place.

Mrs. Crandall had finally called the sheriff. At first, she was uneasy about summoning the law onto the Muir estate. The Muirs regarded their grounds as a private fiefdom,
a sovereign state, Devon had come to learn. “I don’t like policemen prowling around my property,” Mrs. Crandall had sniffed.

But she’d finally relented when Devon and Cecily had stumbled into the foyer of the great house, drenched and dispirited. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Simon had said from behind them. “I wish I could give you better news, but the boy just wasn’t no where to be found.”

In Misery
Point, when Mrs. Amanda Muir Crandall called the sheriff, there was no delay. There was no paperwork to be filled out, no excuses about the lack of personnel at three in the morning. Precisely seven minutes from the time she hung up the receiver, a sheriff’s deputy was knocking at the front door of Ravenscliff. Cecily let him in, still towel drying her hair.

“Good ev’nin’, Cecily,” the deputy
said, smiling. He was a good-looking youth, no more than nineteen or twenty, sandy blonde hair and a blush of acne on his chin.

Cecily sighed. “Hello, Joey.”

Her mother ushered the deputy into the parlor. “Devon,” Mrs. Crandall called. “Please give Deputy Potts your account of last seeing Alexander.”

Devon hesitated. How much should he say?
Well, Deputy, I believe the child was abducted—maybe
tossed off Devil’s Rock—by the avenging ghost of Jackson Muir …

“I saw him last late this afternoon,” Devon said. “He was getting ready to watch television. But he seemed frightened about something—”

“He scrawled a message,” Cecily interrupted. “Here.” She had gone up to the boy’s room and retrieved his computer. She held it out so they could all see. “Read what he wrote.”

“Help me,”
the deputy read dispassionately. “He’s coming.”

“What could it mean?” Mrs. Crandall fretted.

“Well,” Joey Potts said, “looks to me like he might be playing a joke on you.”

“No,” Devon insisted. “This isn’t a joke.”

“Could he be hidin’? Come on, Cess, we know that kid’s been in his share of trouble before. He wants ya to believe someone’s after him.”

“No,” Devon repeated. “I think
he’s really in danger.”

“Why do you think that?” Mrs. Crandall asked, her eyebrows arching, her back going stiff.

“Because—” Devon paused. He crossed the room, standing in front of the large glass doors looking down onto the now-placid sea. The moon hung high and round and bright. The rain came in a leisurely silence. The night seemed very still, very peaceful, and eminently rational.

“Because I believe there may be a force in this house that—wants to get to him.”

He turned around to face the others. Deputy Joey Potts simply twisted his eyebrows at him.
Who is this dude, anyway
, he seemed to be thinking.

Mrs. Crandall’s lips narrowed into a thin straight line. “Devon. Your talk of ghosts is becoming wearying. Please—”

“We heard him scream,” Cecily insisted.

The
deputy shrugged. “A trick of the wind. You know how it sounds up here, Cess.”

Devon leaned forward. “If there’s a little boy really lost out there, Deputy, you’ll have to eat those words.”

Joey stiffened.

“Deputy,” Mrs. Crandall intoned grandly, “I want you and your men to search every inch of these grounds, as well as the beach below Devil’s Rock.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Meanwhile, Simon
and I will search every room in this house,” she said, looking over at Devon. “Including the East Wing.”

She brushed out of the room and up the stairs.

Deputy Potts sighed. “Guess I’ll be seein’ ya, Cess,” he said, tipping his hat. She gave him a wry smile. “You too, buddy,” he said to Devon. Devon didn’t respond.

Once he was gone, Devon said to Cecily, “I think that creep was looking
at you.”

“Oh, I know.” She giggled. “Joey’s always flirting with me.”

Devon frowned. “Yeah, well, he could get statutory thrown at him.”

Cecily laughed. “Why, Mr. March. I do believe you’re jealous.”

He snorted. He looked out the window as Misery Point’s finest began to crawl across the estate, their orange searchlights casting unnatural glows through the windows of the house.

Cecily
came up behind him. “Okay, let’s suppose your theory is correct. Why do you think Jackson Muir would want Alexander? I thought you were the one with the powers, the one who stirred all this up.”

Devon shook his head. “I don’t know. I’m just convinced Alexander knows something. Maybe he stumbled upon something in the East Wing. Maybe—”

He suddenly thought of something.

“Maybe Jackson’s
trying to get Alexander to open the bolted door!”

“The way you described it, no little kid could break through that.”

Devon shrugged. “Well, maybe he can’t do it himself because he’s a ghost, and he needs human help.”

Cecily scrunched up her face. “Why would somebody who’s dead want to let demons out of hell?”

“Maybe because he’s in hell, too …”

Cecily shuddered. “Okay, that just
sent ice through my veins.”

“All I know is, Jackson Muir wants Alexander for something. He’s trying to work through him. I know that. And when the Voice tells me something, Cecily, I believe it.”

“I
want
to believe you, Devon,” Cecily told him, but he could see she was struggling with all of it. “I really do.”

Devon suddenly moved out into the foyer, fetching his still-dripping raincoat
from the coatrack. He pulled it on, smelling the dampness of the rubber and the clinging aroma of mud and leaves.

“Where are you going?” Cecily asked.

“I think I know where Alexander might be,” he replied. Then he pushed head first out into the rain.

The crooked white stones in the old Muir cemetery caught the glare of the moon. They stood out in stark contrast to the deep purple of the night. Devon approached the graveyard with an energy that surprised him. He felt determined, driven, and only the slightest bit fearful.

“Alexander!” he called.

The soft mist clung to his hands as he cupped them around his lips. The fog had thickened,
tasting of sea salt. It was low tide below the cliffs, and the tanginess of rotting crabs and seaweed reached his nostrils. He called the boy’s name again.

His voice echoed now, bouncing off the stones. Devon waded into the high wet grass of the cemetery, catching a glint of moonlight from the tall obelisk in the center, the stone that bore his name. But that wasn’t the marker he sought tonight.
His destination was the grave of a boy he suspected might exist: a boy who should have become master of Ravenscliff.

Why do you think Jackson Muir would want Alexander?

He couldn’t be sure exactly, but the Voice had given him a clue. It came as clear as a bell as he stood there in the parlor with Cecily.

Jackson Muir had a child.

But somehow Jackson Muir died without an heir. Somehow
the estate passed to his brother’s family, from whom sprang Mrs. Crandall and Cecily—and Alexander. But it was the descendants of Jackson Muir—the eldest son—who should rightfully rule this house and the secrets it held within.

He wants to reclaim what he feels is rightfully his
, the Voice told him.

Devon felt certain there must be a grave here of Jackson’s child. A son who should have become
master of Ravenscliff—but through some unknown nefarious act was kept from his fulfilling his fate. Where exactly the pitiful remains of the young Muir rested Devon couldn’t be sure, but he assumed it would not be far from the elaborate monument honoring his parents.

It was in that direction Devon headed, dangerously near the sheer drop from the cliff.

“Oh, Dad, help me now,” Devon whispered.

He felt the heat.
Yes, he’s here
, Devon realized.
Alexander’s here
.

Jackson Muir wanted to use Alexander as his own son—to replace the heir he lost—and to prevent Devon from uncovering the truth.

Up ahead he saw the monument with its broken angel. Devon steeled himself. What if Jackson Muir deigned to show himself again? What might he do? Devon had been powerless before him in the East
Wing. Would he prove stronger now?