Sorcerers of the Nightwing (Book One - The Ravenscliff Series) (25 page)

It was a small television set. An old, vintage 1970s portable TV, probably black-and-white. Devon saw the reason for Alexander’s tears. The television’s cord snaked off along
the floor like the tail of a dead animal, ending in a splay of wires. Its plug had been snipped off long ago, for forgotten reasons.

Except, as Devon suddenly remembered, there was another time in this house when the television proved a danger to little boys …

He sat down beside Alexander and put his arm around the chubby kid’s shoulder. He felt terribly sad for the boy, as if he were some
addict needing a fix only to find his supply shut off. The analogy, he realized, wasn’t far from accurate.

“It’s okay, buddy,” Devon whispered. “It’s going to be okay.”

“No, it’s not,” Alexander whimpered in a soft, pathetic little voice. “It’s never going to be okay again. They took away all the TVs and this one is broke.”

“It’s for your own good,” Devon told him. “I know that’s easy
for me to say, but it’s true.”

The boy stiffened. “Yeah, that’s what adults are always telling me. That it’s for my own good. They say they know I don’t understand, but it’s for the best. Except it never feels that way. It never feels for the best.”

“What do you mean, Alexander?”

The little boy hugged the television set. “I remember my father saying I couldn’t see my mother anymore, that
it was for the best. But it felt yucky. I haven’t seen her since.” He heaved a little, catching his breath. “Then my father said I couldn’t stay with him anymore, that sending me away to school was for my own good. But I hated that place. Then, even there, the headmaster sent me away cuz he said it was for the best.”

Devon smiled sadly. “And it hasn’t turned out that way, huh?”

Alexander
shook his head. He began crying again.

Devon pulled the boy in close to him. This was a different Alexander Muir, down here in the damp shadows of the basement. Away from the ghosts, away from his own demons, the boy was just what he was: a small, terrified, lonely eight-year-old.

“Alexander,” Devon told him, “let me tell you something. I can relate to a lot of what you say. They took me
away from my mother, too. I never knew her. I used to look at other boys with their mothers and I’d wish I had one, real bad. You know, like the mothers on television. I always wanted a mother who would make me a lunch and pick me up after school and do all that sort of stuff.”

The boy just sniffled against Devon’s chest.

“But, see, I was lucky in one regard. I had a really good dad. He
taught me something really important, and that’s that you’ve got to let kids know they’re loved. And safe. And all that.”

“My father never did that for me,” Alexander said.

“Hey, I’m sure your dad loves you a lot. He’s just busy.” Devon looked down at the top of the boy’s blonde head. His hair was matted, sweaty. “But maybe we can hang out, Alexander. Maybe we can be friends after all.”

Alexander caressed the television set in his lap. “But I already found a new friend,” he said quietly, dreamily.

“No, Alexander. He wasn’t real. He wasn’t a friend at all.”

The boy pulled his head away from Devon’s chest to glare up at him. “He was, too! What do you know? Major Musick was the best friend I ever had!”

“Listen to me, Alexander. Major Musick is bad. He wants to hurt you.
And me. And everyone in this house.” Devon paused. “But I won’t let him.”

The boy made a face, as if he might cry again. Instead, he just yanked the cord up to his lap and fingered the loose wires where the plug once was.

“Come on,” Alexander said gently. “Let’s go up to your room and talk some more. It’s cold down here.”

The boy said nothing but put the TV down on the concrete floor
and followed Devon up the stairs. Once in bed, Alexander merely listened as Devon sat on the edge and described what they might do the next day: take a walk along the cliff, go into town, play some video games. When Devon noticed the boy’s eyelids getting heavy, he told him to sleep well, that he was safe now.

And when he leaned across to the switch off the light, Alexander reached up and embraced
him, taking Devon by surprise.

Devon hugged him back.

The house settled into an uneasy quiet over the next few days, but Devon didn’t trust it.
He knew Jackson Muir was just biding his time.

At school, D.J. looked at him with even more awe. Devon swore his friend to secrecy, and felt confident he could trust him.

They whispered outside the cafeteria. “Man, this is some crazy shit going down,” D.J. said. “What’s up with that thing? What’s it got against you?”

“I can’t explain everything now, and certainly not here.” Devon looked
around as kids passed by in the corridor, many of them looking over at him. He’d already gotten a reputation as a mystery man, and the bandage across the middle of his face only added to that image. “Just be on guard, okay?”

“No problem there, dude. But why do you think it didn’t just take me out? You know, instead of going to the trouble of tying me up and stealing my clothes?”

“As near
as I can figure, it probably wants to keep its options open. You’re my friend. It may want to disguise itself as you again. That’s why I’m telling you to be on guard.”

D.J. shook his head. “Freaky, man.”

“To say the least.”

He looked over at Devon. “Look. I know you and Cecily like each other. I admit I wanted to hang on to her, but you’re a cool dude, and so I’m not gonna try and come
between you or anything. Just promise me one thing, okay? Don’t let any of this get to her, you know?”

Devon smiled wanly. “Believe me, I’m trying.” He sighed. “Hey, I’m sorry about Flo.”

D.J. shrugged. “Mostly fender damage. The glass tops are the biggest bummer.”

“I’ll find a way to pay to replace them.”

“Don’t worry about it, man. I got some friends down at Sonny’s Autobody. They
can hunt me down some new ones. I was thinking of getting all the glass tinted anyway.”

Devon smiled. “You’re a good friend, Deej. There’s got to be some kind of spell a Nightwing uses to protect his friends. I promise I’ll look into it.”

D.J. gave him a jaunty salute. “Rock on.”

But how could he look into anything if Mrs. Crandall kept him away from Rolfe? He had to trust that Rolfe
would find a way to get in contact with him. And in the meantime, he had to find a way into the East Wing.

He kept his promise to Alexander. For
the next few days they did hang out. The boy, while quiet, seemed to be coming around, no longer the nasty little precocious brat he was when Devon first met him. Devon took him into town, bought him a handful of comic books at Adams’ Pharmacy. They carved jack-o’-lanterns from the pumpkins Simon brought in from the garden, and Devon promised to take the boy trick-or-treating in the village on Halloween,
something Alexander had never done in his life.

And every night Devon talked with him before he went to sleep, sitting on the side of Alexander’s bed like Dad used to do with Devon.

“Can I ask you something?” Alexander said one night, after Devon had stood, getting ready to turn out the light.

Devon looked down at him. “Sure.”

“You’re not going to go away or anything on me, are you?”

Devon smiled. “No way, buddy,” he assured the boy. “I’m not going anywhere.”

By the fourth day—with things still quiet and peaceful and Alexander blossoming more and more—Devon began to wonder if maybe he was wrong. Maybe, in fact, the ditching of the television sets did stop the Madman in his ghostly tracks, and the whole nightmare was over.

Yet it can’t be
, he reasoned: Jackson didn’t
need a dumb old TV screen to appear to them. Still, Devon thought, maybe he was frustrated in not being able to claim Alexander, and he’d retreated.

Dream on,
the Voice told him.

Devon pulled back the sheets to his bed and slipped beneath them, telling himself that what he should be doing was memorizing those English kings for his history quiz tomorrow, not attempting to figure out the motives
and machinations of Jackson Muir. He closed his eyes. “William the First,” he whispered to himself. “William the Second. Henry the First. Stephen …”

He was asleep before he could get to the Plantagenets. He dreamed of the books in the East Wing. He was sitting before a fire, with the books piled high beside him.

“Of these enchanters,” Devon was reading aloud, “the most noble, powerful and
feared have always been the Sorcerers of the Order of the Nightwing. Only the Nightwing have discovered the secret of how to open the Portals between this world and the one below, the realm of the Demons. For nearly three thousand years, the Nightwing have been a proud and honorable clan, using their powers for good. They have jealously guarded the secret of the Portals, which, in common parlance,
have come to be known as Hell Holes.”

“Devon,” came a voice from somewhere in the mists of his dream.

He looked up from the book in his lap. In the swirling distance was a woman. Who she was, he wasn’t quite sure, but she was definitely familiar …

“Devon,” she called again.

“Who are you?” he asked.

But she didn’t answer. She just beckoned to him with her hands through the fog.

Was it Emily Muir?

“Devon,” she called again.

Or maybe she was the spirit he’d seen in the cemetery … the woman crying over that mysterious grave …

“Devon.”

“Who are you?”

“I am your mother, Devon.”

He woke up with a start. His heart thudded in his chest.

The woman in his dream had been neither of the ghosts he’d seen at Ravenscliff.

It was my mother.

Yet even awake
Devon could still hear the woman calling his name in the night—soft and almost musical. The wind had risen outside, and it whistled through the eaves. Just below the wind, the lilting voice of the woman from Devon’s dream continued to call to him.

“Devon … Devon …”

He sat up. Yes, it was there, all right. He was not imagining it.

“Devon …”

He threw off the blankets and placed his feet
against the floor.

“Devvvvonnnn …”

Like music.

It was coming from outside.

He padded across the floor to the window. Through the gauzy curtains he could see the light burning once again in the tower room. He unlatched the window and pushed it open.

There, looking back at him from the open tower window, was the silhouette of a woman—and she was indeed calling his name.

Devon stared over at the woman in the tower just as the light went out behind her and she disappeared.

There was a soft knock at his door.

“Who—who is it?” Devon asked.

“Cecily.”

He opened the door. She was in her nightgown.

“I heard someone calling you,” she told him.

“You heard it too,” he
said.

She nodded. “I’m not going to just pretend I don’t see and hear things in this house anymore. I couldn’t sleep—I haven’t been able to sleep since that thing in the car—and I was certain I heard a woman’s voice calling your name.”

Devon looked back out his window. “It was coming from the tower. I saw her.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What did she look like?”

“It was hard
to tell. Just a woman—in white, I think. Long blonde—or maybe gray—hair.”

“It must have been Emily Muir,” Cecily reasoned. “She’s trying to warn you about Jackson.”

“Possibly.” It was as good a scenario as any, but Devon wasn’t sure. “I saw someone in the tower when I went in there before. I’m sure it was a woman.” He sighed. “But investigating the tower again won’t do us any good. It’ll
either be locked or else Simon will take a pickaxe to the back of my head.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Nothing. Until I can learn more about this Nightwing stuff, I’m through investigating. Because I have a feeling, Cecily, that once I have the knowledge, no one will be able to hide anything from me ever again.”

Her eyes twinkled. “Do you mind if I kiss you goodnight, Mr. Wizard?”

Devon looked at her. He’d missed kissing her. He wondered if this was what falling in love felt like. He wondered if, in spite of demons and warlocks and everything else, he could still feel anxious and flushed taking a certain person into his arms.

He grinned, and Cecily moved into his embrace. They did kiss, for several minutes, until the wind knocked a shutter loose, startling them.

“You’d better go back to your room,” Devon told her huskily.

She looked into his eyes dreamily. “Why is that, Devon?”

He smiled awkwardly. “Because I think our budding hormones are itching to do some damage, and I’m just trying to contain the fallout.”

Cecily pouted.

“Look,” Devon said. “I like you. A lot. I didn’t expect to at first, but I do. So I don’t want to rush things. I want
whatever happens between us to be special, and when we’re both ready for it.”

Cecily seemed touched. “You are so romantic, Devon March,” she told him. “I love that.”

She kissed him once, briefly. Then she was gone.

Yeah
, Devon thought to himself.
Romantic
.

But I also want to be absolutely, positively, one hundred percent certain that you are not my sister.

He climbed back into
bed, trying to make the Voice tell him for sure whether or not Cecily was his blood kin. But it was quiet. Devon closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep. Cecily’s scent lingered and he could still taste her lips on his own. The warm feeling that spread through his body as he thought about her made him forget everything else, and he fell into the best sleep he’d had in weeks.

The next day he even aced his history quiz, and for the first time, had a truly good day in school. He felt caught up. He felt he fit in. Even the seniors nodded in the corridor to him. In the caf, Jessica Milardo, one of the cheerleaders, invited Devon and the gang to a Halloween party at her house later in the week, something that likely wouldn’t have happened without Devon’s heroics at the
pizza joint. Natalie accepted enthusiastically for all of them.

“I am not going to that stuck-up Jessica’s party,” Cecily vowed. “As a feminist, I have to take a stand. She and her airhead cheerleaders perpetuate a notion of female subservience that I find appalling.”

“What are you talking about?” Nat asked, scrunching up her face across the lunch table. “I’m a cheerleader.”

“Precisely
my point. You and the whole squad are out there cheering the boys on in football and basketball and whatever other balls they throw around.”

D.J. and Marcus spit out their Coke laughing at her pun. Devon smiled, not sure Cecily had intended it.

She was on a roll. “Seriously,” she was saying, flicking her long red hair back with her long red fingernails. “When’s the last time a squad of boys
cheered on a girls’ team?”

“You are such a spoilsport,” Nat griped. “Jessica is a nice girl.”

“Then why don’t you hang out with her and the other cheerleader bimbos instead of us?” Cecily asked.

“You know why. I don’t feel completely at home with them. They’re all from rich families—”

“Cess is from the richest family in town,” Marcus reminded her.

Natalie smirked. “Yeah, but it’s
a weird rich family. All these other girls are all so white-bread and prissy. But I like them. Or at least most of them.”

“You don’t like them,” Cecily told her. “You just want to
be like them
. You’re ashamed of being the daughter of a poor Portuguese fisherman. Admit it.”

“I am not!”

“Well, I hope you’re not. Because your father is one awesome guy and I’d give anything to have had a
father like that, to have known a father at all.”

Devon reached under the table and took Cecily’s hand.

“All I want,” Natalie said, “is to bridge the gap between my cheerleader friends and you guys.” She looked around at all of them. “You guys are my family. Like blood. But these girls …. Well, I’d like to show them how special you all are. Please, Cecily. Will you go?”

Cecily sighed
dramatically. “You’re going to owe me big time.”

Nat beamed.

The boys all agreed they wanted to go. D.J. said he’d drive; he was getting Flo’s glass tops replaced this afternoon.

“What are you going to go as?” Natalie asked him.

“I’ll have to put my thinking cap on,” D.J. replied.

Cecily and Marcus exchanged a look. “A thinking cap for you, Deej, would have about as much effect
on you as it would the headless horseman,” Marcus quipped.

D.J. made a confused face as if he didn’t get the joke.

“I’m going as a harem girl,” Natalie chirped, batting her lashes.

Cecily laughed. “Harem girl? Cheerleader? And the difference between them is—?”

“You’re supposed to go dressed as something scary,” Marcus told her.

“Then just go as you are then,” D.J. cracked, the joke
at his expense having finally sunk in.

Marcus landed a mock blow to D.J.’s gut. “The scariest thing is driving over there with you.”

“I think,” Devon said, “there are scarier things than that.”

“What are you going as?” Natalie asked him.

“Haven’t really given it much thought,” Devon said.

“I know just the place we can look for ideas,” Cecily told him.

After school, she showed
him what she had in mind.

Climbing the creaky the stairs to the attic of Ravenscliff, Devon choked back dust. Parting cobwebs, Cecily led the way. She made a beeline to a couple of old trunks stacked against a far wall.

“The Muirs have always been such pack rats,” she said. “They never threw away anything. We’re sure to find costumes in here.”

They opened the first trunk and were nearly
knocked over by the heavy odor of mothballs. Inside they found women’s clothes: turn-of-the-twentieth-century dresses, bonnets, corsets, gloves. In the next there were military uniforms from World War II.

“I could go as a Newport belle and you as her Army captain suitor,” Cecily gushed, batting her eyelashes ridiculously.

Devon grimaced. He’d never much liked playing war; he hated G.I. Joe
as a kid. He wondered if that had something to do with his Nightwing blood: he suspected the sorcerers of the Order of the Nightwing only fought to defend themselves, always in the cause of good. Damn, he needed to read those books.

As Cecily pulled out lacy dresses and pantaloons, holding them up against her, Devon wandered through the attic. Against the far wall, just below where the roof
came to a point, he spied an armoire.

Look inside
, the Voice told him.

He approached it. He expected the knob to be hot, but it wasn’t. He turned it and peered inside the armoire.

There were several dark suits hanging there. The shoulders looked a little mildewed. He touched one, feeling along the length of the material. It was a cape, he realized.

Taking hold of the hanger, he lifted
the cape out of the armoire. Hanging with it were black wool pants striped up the side in blue. The black cape was lined with red satin. Looking back into the armoire Devon spotted tall black leather boots, still shiny under the blotches of mildew.

“What’s that?” Cecily asked, coming up behind him.

“My costume,” he told her.

“But what is it?”

He ran the fabric of the cape through his
fingers. “It’s the ceremonial dress of the Nightwing,” he said, not knowing how he knew this, but certain it was the truth. “It’s what I’m going to wear.”

They spent the rest of the evening cleaning the clothes. Devon buffed the boots to a high polish. Cecily had to pin the dress she’d chosen to make it fit, but Devon’s suit could have been tailor-made for him. He fit into the pants and white
lace-up shirt perfectly, and the boots slid on with ease. The cape was the pièce de résistance, and he looked at himself in the mirror with a slightly embarrassing sense of awe.

“It’s you,” Cecily declared.

Yes
, Devon thought.
It is.

After school the next day, he told Cecily he had to see Rolfe. Finding the costume had cinched it for him. “I’ve got to know about my heritage,” he said. “It’s time. I need to learn the truth of the Nightwing.”

“But Devon, the danger’s passed. Alexander is okay.”

He shook his head forcefully. “Cecily, I don’t believe for a minute that Jackson’s gone for good. He’s just biding his time.”

She sighed. “I’m past the point of doubting you, Devon.”

“Cover for me?” he asked. Cecily nodded. He snuck off down the cliffside staircase and hurried into town.

He recognized Roxanne at the front desk at Fibber McGee’s. “Good afternoon, Mr. March,” she said, her voice warm like syrup.

“Hi,” Devon said. Roxanne’s golden eyes seemed to glow. Devon wondered exactly what her story was:
Rolfe had hinted she was something special. And not just on account of her awesome body, which was right then encased in a form-fitting gold satin dress.

Devon’s mouth had gone a little dry. “Is … is Rolfe here?”

“He’s at the house,” Roxanne told him.

Devon sighed. It was too far to walk.

“That doesn’t matter, not to you,” Roxanne told him.

He looked at her oddly. “What do you mean,
it doesn’t matter?”

She smiled. Her eyes glowed. “That it’s too far to walk.”

Devon was astounded. “How—how did you know I was thinking that?”

Roxanne laughed gently. “Just click your heels, Devon March,” she said, the cadence of the islands in her voice. “Isn’t that how the fairy tale goes in your culture? Click your heels three times and you will go where you want to go.”

He didn’t
know what to think. But he knew he could do it. He knew he had the power. He remembered how he’d leapt onto D.J.’s car as the demon drove it off down the road. Rolfe’s house was much farther away—three, four miles—but that didn’t matter.

“Not to you, Devon March,” Roxanne repeated.

He looked up at her. She smiled.

Then he closed his eyes.

When he opened them he was in Rolfe’s den,
the late afternoon sunlight slanting through the glass. Rolfe was sitting in a wing chair with a book in his lap. He looked up at Devon without much surprise.

“Getting the hang of this sorcery stuff, huh?”

Devon blinked. “Guess so,” he said, then looked down at himself, dissolving into laughter as he realized how easy it had been to transport himself from the restaurant. “Okay, that was
totally awesome!”

“I was wondering when you’d pop by,” Rolfe said, closing the book. “I figured sooner or later you’d appear.”

“Can I do that all the time?” Devon asked excitedly. “Heck, I won’t need to get my driver’s license!”