The Wizard Heir (3 page)

Methodically, he unpacked his bag, put away his
toothbrush and paste and the rest of his washroom supplies, and took two
ibuprofen. He located the electrical outlets, set his MP3 player in its cradle,
and placed the speakers. He had the best sound system money could buy. He
turned the music up loud, hoping it might draw visitors. It didn't.

His clothes only occupied three drawers out of six. He
moved his books from the box to the bookcase, running his fingers over the
familiar titles in French and English. Maybe he didn't need to carry so many
books around with him, either. How often did he read a book more than once?
He'd learned to pare down, to simplify, like a business traveler trying to
force his life into a carry-on.

By four o'clock his headache had eased somewhat.

He wanted more than anything to lock the door and
collapse into bed. But it was his custom to get introductions over quickly.

There was no answer at any of the nearby rooms, until
he knocked on the door of the room at the far end of the hall, on the other
side of the staircase. A solid, athletic-looking black student answered, clad
only in swimming trunks. A silver amulet hung from a chain around his neck: a
stylized Hand of Fatimah.

Protection against the evil eye.

Seph smiled and stuck out his hand. “I'm Seph
McCauley. I just moved in at the other end of the hall.” Good social
skills, it always said in his evaluations, along with Excels
academically.

“I'm Trevor Hill,” the boy replied, grasping
Seph's hand, then flinching and letting go quickly. “Whoa, you shocked
me!”

Seph shrugged, accepting no credit or blame. How often
had he heard that one?

“I heard someone new was coming this week.”
Trevor's voice was like a slow-moving river: warm and rich with Southern silt.
“Would you like to come in?”

Trevor stepped aside so Seph could enter. It was a
mirror image of Seph's room, but seemed smaller, because it was crowded with
extra furniture: a small refrigerator, a television, posters of sports figures.
Seph's room was spartan in comparison.

“This is cool!” Seph said. “Did you do
all this in the last three weeks?”

“Nah, I've had the same room for three
years.” Trevor glanced nervously at his watch. “I guess we have a
little time. You can clear the stuff off of that chair and sit.”

Seph sat in the desk chair. “Are you a
senior?” he asked, trying to put the other boy at ease—knowing he could do
it with a touch of his hand, but best not to try that with someone he'd just
met.

“Junior,” Trevor replied. “I'm from
Atlanta. Buckhead area. Got no business being so far north. I about freeze to
death every fall.” He snatched up a heavy sweatshirt from the bed and
pulled it over his head.

“I'm a junior, too,” Seph volunteered.

Trevor asked the inevitable question. “Where're
you from?”

“Toronto, but my last school was in Switzerland.
So I'm used to the cold.”

“Switzerland, huh?” Trevor stopped looking
nervous and started looking impressed. “Why'd you leave?”

“It didn't work out.” Seph rolled his eyes.

Trevor nodded, as if this answer wasn't unexpected.
“The Havens your parents' idea?” He gestured vaguely at their
surroundings.

“My parents are dead. I have a guardian. A
lawyer. He set it up,” Seph replied, thinking that he should buy a T-shirt
that said, ORPHAN from TORONTO.
It would save time in these situations.

“So what's the deal here? How do you get along
with the staff?” Seph continued. Not that Trevor's advice was likely to be
helpful in his case.

Trevor leaned forward, putting his hands on his knees.
“Oh, I was in trouble a lot before I came here, too. You just need to
follow the rules. Do that, and you'll be okay. They specialize in boys who've
had problems at other places.”

“Really?” Great, Seph thought. I've landed
in some kind of upper-class reform school. Trevor seemed normal enough, though,
and he'd been there three years. “Do they kick you out if you get in
trouble?”

“No one gets expelled from the Havens,”
Trevor said. “You'll see. Their program is very—what they call—
effective.”

Something in the way he said effective sounded
almost sinister. It made Seph want to change the subject. Trevor's laptop
caught his eye. “I have my computer set up, but I don't see any jacks in
my room. Is the cabling included or do I have to pay for wiring?”

“We don't have our own Internet access,”
Trevor said.

Seph stared at him. “Why not? It's so easy. They
could use a campus-wide wireless network if they didn't want to lay
cable.”

Trevor shook his head. “No, I mean, we're not
allowed. They have computers in the library. You can do searches in there if
you want, but they screen the sites.”

“That's crazy. They can't do that. I have friends
online.” Seph didn't remember that being mentioned in the glossy
brochure.

Trevor shrugged and looked at his watch again.
“Well, it's about time for swimming. You'd better get changed if you don't
want to be late.”

Seph rubbed his aching temples. “I'm going to
pass. It's been a long day already.”

Trevor's eyes widened in surprise. “Dr. Leicester
excused you?”

“Not exactly.”

Trevor stood up. “Then you'd better get
ready.”

It seemed that the visit was over, so Seph stood also.
“Oka-ay, guess I'll get ready, then,” he said.

“I'll wait for you, if you hurry up.”

But Seph didn't hurry fast enough, because a few
minutes later he heard Trevor at his door. “I'm going ahead. I'll see you
down there.”

Seph changed into his trunks and pulled his sweatshirt
and jeans on over them. Descending the stairs two at a time, he left the
building and followed a wood-chip path back through the woods toward the
waterfront. He didn't see any students around; they must've already gone down
to the cove. A sign at the dock pointed him to the right, down the shoreline,
to a well-worn path along the water. A cold slither up his spine said he was
being watched. Twice, he turned and scanned the path behind him, then shrugged
and walked on. Finally, the path turned back into the woods. Hey.

He turned again, and this time a stocky boy with
wire-rimmed glasses and a ruddy complexion stood in the middle of the path. He
wore husky-style jeans and a sweatshirt, and blinked his eyes really fast, like
he was nervous.

“Hey,” Seph said. “You late for
swimming, too?”

“No, I … ah … I d-don't …”The boy began
coughing, struggling to draw breath. He groped in his pocket and produced an
inhaler. He took a long pull off of it, and put it back. Then, with a
determined look on his face, he extended his hand to Seph.

“I'm Seph McCauley,” Seph said, thinking
maybe you got excused from swimming if you had asthma. He gripped the other
boy's hand, then flinched as he recognized the sting of power. “Hey! Are
you … ?”

“Listen. I n-need to talk to you.” The boy
looked up and down the path, mopping sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of
his sweatshirt.

“I'd really like to talk to you,” Seph
said, unable to believe he'd met two wizards in the space of a few weeks.
“But I have to get to swimming. Could we meet later, maybe at
dinner?”

“No. I c-can't … That won't …”

“Hello, gentlemen.” Seph looked up to see a
handsome young man in a tweed sport coat with leather patches on the elbows,
carrying a battered leather briefcase.

“H-hello, Aar … M-Mr. Hanlon.” The other
student looked petrified, like he was about to wet himself. Or have another
asthma attack.

“Joseph. Aren't you supposed to be at
swimming?” Mr. Hanlon asked, smiling.

“I was just on my way.”

“Good. Best be going. Dr. Leicester doesn't like
it if you're late.” Hanlon placed a hand on the boy's shoulder and
propelled him down the path the other way.

“I didn't get your name!” Seph called after
him. But the boy only hunched his shoulders and kept walking.

That guy has issues, Seph thought, continuing down the
path. I don't know how much help he'll be. But I'll try to find him at dinner.

Eventually, the path broke out of the trees at a place
where the ocean cut back into the shoreline, creating a protected inlet, lined
with stones, out of sight of the school buildings.

There must have been sixty boys in the water, their
heads sleek and dark against the gray surface. A few more were stripping off
their sweatshirts on the shore. All of them looked miserably cold. Seph spotted
Trevor treading water ten yards out.

Dr. Leicester stood on the shoreline, dressed in a
heavy sweatshirt, jeans, and windbreaker. When he saw Seph, he blew sharply on
a whistle to get everyone's attention. “Boys, meet Joseph McCauley. This
is his first day at the Havens, and he is late for swimming.”

The reaction to this was remarkable. The other boys
all looked away or looked down, as if they wanted to avoid any connection to
his transgression. Some of them peered back toward him, when they thought
Leicester wasn't looking.

Seph smiled, lifting his hands in apology.
“Sorry. I got confused. I was waiting for everybody at the spa.”

Laughter floated across the water, then quickly
dwindled under Leicester's disapproving gaze. The headmaster didn't seem
susceptible to Seph's legendary charm.

Seph left his clothes on a pile of rocks some distance
from the water's edge, and hobbled over the stony beach to the water. He'd
hoped that the water would be warmer than the air, but was disappointed. It was
like stepping into snowmelt. His feet went numb immediately. He waded out to
his knees, then to his waist, gasping.

The water was murky and unpleasant. The rocks along
the bottom were slippery and invisible, so that even in the cove the waves
threatened to knock him over. Something squirmed under his left foot and he
thrashed backward, into unexpectedly deep water. His head went under, and he
swallowed a mouthful. He came up like a sounding whale, spraying water
everywhere.

He'd had enough. A few quick strokes took him back to
the shallows. Shivering, teeth chattering, he hauled himself onto the shore.
He'd almost made it back to his muddle of clothes when someone gripped his arm.

It was Trevor, covered in gooseflesh, lips pale with
cold, water sliding off his dark body onto the rocks. “Get back in the
water, Seph,” he said, without meeting Seph's eyes. “Just do it. Come
on.” He put a cold hand on Seph's shoulder as if to urge him along.

Seph blinked at him. He looked over his shoulder at
Dr. Leicester, who stood expressionless, watching. All right, he thought. If he
was going to try to stay here two years, it was best not to get into a battle
of wills on his first day. Gritting his teeth, he picked his way back across
the beach and waded out into the water, not looking back to see if Trevor was
following.

This time the water seemed more tolerable. Maybe he
was getting used to it. His extremities tingled as the feeling returned, and he
was no longer shivering. He strode ahead more confidently, continuing until the
water lapped at his collarbone. Though the sun was gone, intercepted by the
surrounding trees, he felt almost warm.

He looked around. The other boys stood as if frozen,
staring down at the water in disbelief. Another minute passed, and the surface
of the water began to steam in the cold air. He might have been neck deep in
the warm Caribbean.

No. This can't be happening. Seph looked over at Leicester, who was in conversation
with one of the boys on shore. He hadn't noticed that anything was amiss. Seph
splashed toward a crowd of boys standing to one side, near the shoreline,
positioning himself so that his head was just one of many pocking the gray
surface. Now, just relax, he commanded himself, closing his eyes, trying
to loosen his muscles, to empty his mind.

How long could he last? He was in trouble already, and
it was just the first day.

He sorted through a litter of memories from his school
career. The homicidal ravens at St. Andrew's. The explosions and fires in
Scotland. The wolves that had startled the nuns in Philadelphia.

By now the water was close to spa temperature. All
conversation in the cove had died. The swimmers looked down at the vapor
collecting at the surface, rising up around them like morning mist on an upland
lake. No one said a word, to each other or to Leicester.

Finally, the boy who had been speaking with the
headmaster broke away and stepped into the water. He stumbled backward with a
yelp of surprise and sat down, hard, on the rocks. Gregory Leicester swung
around and stared at the boys in the water and the steam boiling up around
them. Then he began searching the faces of the boys in the water until he found
Seph.

Try as he might, Seph couldn't look away. The
headmaster stood, studying him like a specimen on a slide. No questions, no
disbelief, no challenge or confusion, only this intense and clinical scrutiny,
as if he were looking into Seph's soul with full knowledge of what lay within.
Then Leicester smiled like it was Christmas.

Shuddering, Seph took a step backward.

The headmaster's gaze shifted to include the whole
group. “Gentlemen, perhaps it is a bit brisk for swimming after
all. You are dismissed to your own pursuits until dinner.”

For a moment, no one moved. Then the exodus began,
silent as lemmings in reverse. Seph left the water on the far side of the cove,
keeping as much distance between himself and Leicester as possible. He pulled
his sweatshirt and jeans over his wet skin and picked up his shoes, unwilling
to linger long enough to put them on. Slinging his towel about his shoulders,
he followed the others toward the woods.

“Joseph.”

Seph froze in midstride and stood waiting without turning
around. The headmaster's gaze pressed on the back of his neck.