They burst through the last of the brush into the parking lot. Madison was standing by the car, frantically punching numbers into a cell phone, when Seph and Ellen materialized out of the air, Ellen carrying her bloody sword.
Madison looked up and saw them. “You found him!” She shoved her cell phone into her purse. “Thank God! Are you okay?” She gripped Seph’s elbows, peering anxiously into his face, touching his forehead where the rock had hit him. Then she looked over his shoulder at Ellen and said fiercely, “I hope you chopped them into little bits.”
“Do you two know each other?” Seph asked, looking from Madison to Ellen.
Ellen was in a ready stance, facing the trailhead, watching for signs of pursuit. “Let’s get out of here. We can chitchat later.”
There were two more cars parked in the lot than when Seph and Madison had arrived. One was the old Jeep that Will and Ellen shared. The other one was unfamiliar, a black minivan with a rent-a-car sticker. It must belong to the alumni, Seph thought. At least he hoped so, because he melted all four tires.
Seph rode with Madison in the pickup. Ellen followed behind in the Jeep. Madison seemed accustomed to negotiating country roads; she drove fast, scarcely slowing for the curves and corners.
What a disaster. He’d been a fool to take a chance with Madison. If not for her odd resistance to wizards, she would have been killed, hurt, or kidnapped.
If Ellen hadn’t shown up, he might be on his way back to the Havens by now. Which reminded him. “You didn’t seem surprised to see Ellen. And her sword.”
Madison glanced at him, then back at the road. “Is that her name? I was on my way to the parking lot when she stepped out of the trees with that thing and demanded to know where you were. I thought she was standing watch for those creeps. She thought I’d led you into some kind of trap. It took us a while to sort it out. Then she went tearing down the trail after you and I went to the car to call 911. Only, I couldn’t get my cell phone to work. It’s like, fried.”
She swerved around a slow-moving van. “What the hell happened back there, anyway? Does this kind of thing happen to you all the time?”
Seph was scratched and scraped and bruised and his head was throbbing. He rested it back against the seat and closed his eyes. “Not too often. Let’s just say I made a mistake.”
“Those men were all witches.”
“Wizards.”
“Whatever. So. Are you in some kind of magical gang war?”
He eyed her glumly, wishing she were susceptible to wizardry so he could just wipe her mind clean. “I used to go to school with them. Now they’re after me. I don’t know why.” He hoped they hadn’t noticed anything special about Maddie. He hoped they wouldn’t think about her at all.
“You want to go straight to the police station? Or we could look for a pay phone . . .”
He shook his head, staring straight ahead. “The police can’t help.” She opened her mouth to speak, and he held up his hand. “What am I going to tell the cops? I was attacked by wizards who tried to snare me in a spider web? And then that nice Ellen Stephenson, who plays forward on the girls’ soccer team, cut two of them to pieces with her magical sword?” He thought of Ross Childers and imagined his reaction. Not pretty. “Just take me home.”
“Do you think they’ll give up, after today?”
“No.”
“Well, you can’t just wait for them to try again.”
“I don’t intend to.” He had no real choice. He’d known that all along. He could remain a prisoner in the Sanctuary, waiting for Leicester to target someone he cared about, or he could act.
She put her hand on his arm. “I’m worried about you.”
“You should be worried about yourself. People who get involved with me tend to get hurt.”
“Maybe I can help you.”
He couldn’t believe it. They’d only just met, and they’d just had the date from hell, and she was still on his side. “It’s not up to you.”
By now, they’d passed the city limits, the classy stone gateway for Trinity College and the sign that said TRINITY HIGH SCHOOL DIVISION III STATE SOCCER CHAMPIONS. Seph wondered if the soft barrier worked both ways, if the alumni knew he’d returned to the Sanctuary. Maybe they could track his movements all the time. The back of his neck prickled.
Madison swerved into Seph’s driveway. Ellen pulled up behind them, but made no move to get out, giving them a moment of privacy.
Madison helped unload the picnic gear onto the side-walk. “Here, I’ll help you carry it inside.”
“That’s all right. I’ll get it.”
Madison leaned against her truck, twisting one of her tiny braids between her fingers. “I have to say, that was my most eventful picnic in a long time.”
Seph looked away and swallowed. “No doubt.”
She gripped his hands and looked up into his face. “But I had a good time before . . . ah . . . before the mayhem.”
Seph shook his head, bewildered. “I don’t get it. I had to practically bribe you to get you to go out with me in the first place.”
“Who says we’re going out?” She pulled back her hair, and the beads clattered softly together. “For one thing, my drawing’s not done. I need you to sit some more.” She touched his face gently, as if mapping the bone structure underneath. “Plus, I think we could maybe be friends. You’re not nearly as arrogant as I thought you were at first.” She grinned. “You better call me, Witch Boy, or I’ll come find you, now that I know where you live.” She climbed up into the seat.
Seph stood watching until the pickup disappeared around the corner at the end of the street.
Ellen vaulted over the side of the Jeep. “Need some help?” She shouldered one of the coolers and stuffed the quilt under her arm. They managed to carry everything into the kitchen in one trip. No one was around, but based on the debris left behind, Jack and his friends had passed through. Ellen drained two bottles of water while Seph put the food away.
Ellen was a mess. She was muddy and her clothes were torn. She had a nasty cut over one eye and her cheekbone was turning purple from the rockfall. She also looked positively elated. Seph was beginning to realize that Ellen liked nothing better than a good fight, well concluded. He brought the first-aid kit from the downstairs bathroom, and they sat at the table, methodically treating each other’s wounds.
“You were really good today,” Ellen said, lifting the dyrne sefa from around her neck and handing it to Seph. “I couldn’t keep track of all the charms flying around. Those guys definitely got the worst of it. Too bad we had to split, because I think we could have taken them.”
“Yeah.” Seph swept back Ellen’s chin-length brown hair and dabbed at her bloody ear. “Not that I’m not grateful, but . . . why were you at the park?” Seph asked.
“I was—you know—out hiking.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Ellen opened the freezer, scooped up a handful of ice, dropped it into a plastic bag, and handed it to Seph. “Put that on your head,” she suggested.
He pressed it against the knot on his forehead. “So?”
Ellen licked her finger and rubbed at a splatter of blood on her arm. “It was my day to watch you, okay?”
“What?”
“We trade off. Jack and Nick and Linda and me. Today, Jack was playing soccer, Linda was out buying a house, Nick had just been on duty two days in a row and . . .” her voice trailed off.
“You’re saying you’ve been following me around all summer?”
Ellen cleared her throat. “Linda was afraid something like this would happen, or they’d find a way to scare you enough to make you bolt. So . . .” She shrugged her shoulders.
“I don’t believe this.”
“Believe me, it hasn’t been the most exciting duty, up until today. Seph goes to church. Seph goes to the symphony. Seph gets hit on by girls at the beach.” Ellen nibbled at a broken nail. “This afternoon, I felt like some kind of chaperone, following yo
u and your girlfriend around. So I dropped way back. Guess I shouldn’t have.”
“Maybe they could’ve seen you if you’d been closer.”
“Maybe. Look, I’m sorry about your . . . ah . . . date.”
“You saved my life. Thank you.” Seph was glad that it was Ellen and not Jack. “You’ve always treated me like I’m not, you know, the enemy.”
Ellen finished tweezing bits of gravel from her skinned knees, and picked up the washcloth. “We have a lot in common, you know,” she said, bending her head over her work. “I never knew my parents, either. I was raised for the tournaments by wizards of the Red Rose.”
“Did they have some kind of warrior school?” he asked.
She snorted. “There aren’t enough of us left to fill a school. I had a warriormaster—a wizard who specializes in training warriors. What you might call the coach from hell. We were constantly on the move, being hunted by the White Rose. So I’ve always been the stranger. New kid at school. Kind of like you.” She shook back her shining helmet of hair, as likely to seek sympathy as any leopard.
“So how’d you meet Jack?”
“The Red Rose wizards learned that the White Rose had a warrior hidden away in Trinity. So I came here to kill him.” She said this matter-of-factly. “Only, I didn’t know who to kill, and he didn’t know who I was. He sat behind me in homeroom, of all things. He was . . . you know ... I saw him and I went, whoa! I guess I had this major crush. I’d never gone out with anyone, really. He’d just broken up with that . . . that Alicia Middleton.” Her inflection gave the name another meaning. “I’m not—you know—good with people. And he was, like, Mr. Popular. But we kind of clicked, and one thing led to another....” The color had come up into Ellen’s cheeks.
“When did you figure it out?”
“Jack gave himself away in a street fight before we left Trinity. He didn’t figure out who I was until we met on the field at Raven’s Ghyll.” She grinned. “I’ll never forget the look on his face.” She carried the basin of soapy water to the sink and dumped it out.
“Well, I don’t think he likes me much.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Jack’s just less open than he used to be, before Raven’s Ghyll. It takes longer to win him over.” She sat down across from Seph again.
“I mean, here he was, living this storybook life in Trinity. And then, in the space of a few months, he finds out that everyone he knows is someone else entirely. His surgeon is a wizard who turned him into a magical freak. His aunt is an enchanter with a past. The old caretaker who lives over the garage is his four-hundred-year-old wizard bodyguard. His former girlfriend is a treacherous, bottom-feeding, double-crossing trader who’s had him under a spell.”
Seph bit the insides of his cheeks to keep from laughing.
“Even his warriormaster, Hastings, has a secret plan— to play him in the Game and win dominion over the Wizard Houses. Jack goes to the tournament and finds out his opponent is the girl he’s been going out with, who, by the way, came to Trinity to assassinate him.”
Seph shook his head, rendered speechless.
“Yet despite all that, I’ve never met anyone who was so . . . so pure. I don’t mean he’s a saint or anything,” she added quickly, rolling her eyes. “He just . . . knows who he is and what he believes in. He doesn’t change his story day to day and week to week. He’s the one you want to have next to you when the bad thing goes down.”
Seph wished he had the same certainty, the same sense of trajectory. He’d lost something important at the river. Something he hadn’t realized was his to lose: a growing sense of security.
He’d left the Havens with the intention of taking revenge on Gregory Leicester, but he’d allowed himself to be seduced by the magic of a midwestern college town. Leicester had warned him not to talk, and, for the most part, he hadn’t.
Leicester wouldn’t give up. It was only a matter of time before he tried again.
Unless Seph got to him first.
“So what did those guys want?” Ellen asked. “You never said.”
“They said they came to take me back to school.”
“I don’t get it,” Ellen admitted. “Do you think they’ve been stalking you all this time? Why?”
“I don’t think even the alumni know,” Seph said.
“The what?”
“The alumni. The ones who attacked us today. They used to go to school at the Havens; now they work for Dr. Leicester. I don’t think they have a clue why he wants me.” He took a breath. “But Aunt Linda does.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I think Aunt Linda knows why they’re after me. That’s why she has you all watching me every day.” He tossed the ice pack from hand to hand. “I don’t suppose what happened today could be kept just between us?”
“No way. Are you crazy?” Ellen stretched out her long legs. “Come on, Seph. You’re in danger, and you need help. Don’t you think Linda deserves to know her instincts were right?” She looked sheepish. “For weeks, we’ve been trying to convince her that she was being paranoid and tailing you wasn’t necessary.”
“I already feel like a prisoner,” Seph said. “It’ll only get worse if she finds out what happened. Follow me around all you want. I promise I won’t leave Trinity. I won’t put you in danger again. You could’ve been killed today, too.” He reached over and closed his hand over hers, looked her in the eyes. “Ellen. Please don’t tell.”
Her eyes widened and she tried to withdraw her hand. “Hey!”
He increased the gentle pressure, the flow of persuasion, feeling guilty as he did so. Finally she nodded. “Okay. Our secret.” And Seph smiled, satisfied.
Chapter Fourteen
The Wizard Council
Linda Downey was in town only intermittently over the following two weeks. She seemed distracted, a bundle of nerves. Maybe it’s the idea of being tied down, Seph thought. She’d closed on a house on Washington Street, one block north of Jefferson, overlooking the lake. It was a small Victorian, a former summer cottage that needed considerable work. She stayed in town long enough to hire a squadron of contractors, then put Seph in charge of supervising them. “You’re good at this kind of thing,” she said. “Pick out some paint and wallpaper, and keep them honest.”
So he spent a lot of time at the new house and also working with Fitch and Harold. He avoided the beach in the early morning, and when Madison left messages on Seph’s cell phone, he didn’t call her back. When it came to keeping secrets, he had the experience of a lifetime to draw upon. He was determined not to allow her or anyone else to become entangled in his personal vendetta. He remembered Leicester’s warnings.
But the girls at the pavilion were no longer appealing. The image of Madison always intruded: her floppy hat with the long ribbon, the long vintage skirts and lace blouses, her sprinkling of freckles and sun-painted hair. Even the way she looked down her nose at him when she thought he was being arrogant.
Leander Hastings returned to town the second week of August. The meeting of the Council of Wizards had finally been scheduled. It was to be held in Trinity.
He had spent an afternoon at the meadow with Jack and Ellen, coaching them through their routines. It was a hot day, and it had been a tough workout. Now the warriors were collapsed into the Adirondack chairs on the front porch, having put away about a gallon of iced tea. Hastings sat on the cool concrete of the porch steps with Seph next to him.
They were talking about the upcoming meeting. Jack disapproved of the location. “Create a sanctuary for the rest of us, then throw open the doors to wizards. That makes sense.”
“It’s actually a good thing,” Hastings replied. “It must be, because Gregory Leicester and Claude D’Orsay are opposed.” His glance rested on Seph a moment.
“Why is it a good thing?” Seph asked. Tiny, late-summer gnats rose up around him. He released a bit of power to keep them at bay.
“There’s considerable pressure on the council right
now. Some members want to throw away the Rules of Engagement and put down the rebellion.” He smiled at Jack and Ellen. “Go to war against the Anaweir. Put these warriors and enchanters in their places.” He paused. “Others want to convene an Interguild Conference as the new rules direct, and come to a workable agreement. Here in Trinity, all voices are likely to be heard, with no trickery, sorcery, or black magic going on. Well, trickery perhaps.” He smiled again.
“Where’s it being held?” Ellen asked. She pushed her sweaty hair behind her ears.
“They’ll have it at the Legends Inn.”
“How many wizards are coming?” Seph asked.
“There will be twenty altogether. That’s a lot of power and spark for a small town.”
“Will the Dragon be there?” Seph couldn’t help asking the question. He saw the Wizard Council meeting as the classic example of the mountain coming to Mohammad.
Hastings turned and faced Seph, resting his hands on his knees. “I don’t know, Seph,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
Seph shifted uncomfortably under the wizard’s scrutiny. “Like I said. I’d like to meet him.”
“I see.” Hastings continued to gaze at Seph until he shifted his eyes away. “As I told you before, the Dragon is not on the Wizard Council. He prefers to work behind the scenes.” He still had not answered Seph’s question, and obviously didn’t intend to.
Seph was determined to meet the Dragon if he came to Trinity. Surely, he would come. But then, he wouldn’t know him if he saw him on the street. “I was hoping you could introduce me.”
“If I see him, perhaps I’ll tell him you’re looking for him.”
“Will Gregory Leicester be there?” Seph persisted.
“Dr. Leicester is on the council, yes. Despite his disapproval of the location, I’m sure he wouldn’t miss it.”
Maybe there would be an opportunity to take Leicester by surprise.
Hastings was watching him, green eyes intent under the dark brows. It was almost as if he could read Seph’s mind. “I think you should all stay away from the inn during the meeting.”
The Heir Chronicles: Books I-III Page 58
