Neither Eric nor Magnus had been thrilled with the idea of Magnus's enrollment there—Magnus, because he hadn't wanted to go to school at all; Eric, because he'd never had a good experience with private schools, and knew perfectly well that his younger brother hadn't either.
It was Ria who had pointed out—patiently, firmly, and, as usual, inarguably—that Magnus's academic background was spotty at best, and moreover, the false history they were constructing for him in order for Eric to gain custody of him meant that they couldn't use his real background anyway. He'd need a solid grounding at a good prep school to bring him up to speed if he wanted to get into any college at all—and according to Ria, the New York City public schools were a horror. The C&A had small classes and good security, and an excellent record of college placement for its graduates. And unlike the previous schools Magnus had attended, the security was to keep trouble out, not students in.
It was also, as Eric had quickly discovered, dauntingly expensive and impossible to get into. The first was no problem for him, and the second, as he'd discovered, was no problem for Ria. A place had been found for Magnus, who'd started at the beginning of the winter term.
Eric had fought Nightflyers, Unseleighe Sidhe, and rogue government agents long before discovering that he had a teenaged brother he needed to take responsibility for.
There were days when he thought that the Unseleighe Sidhe were less of a challenge.
Much less.
The C&A required a blazer and tie. Not only did Magnus never get tired of complaining about that, he also never exhausted the possibilities of skating near the edges of the dress code, since the C&A left the choice of tie for third- and fourth-year students—and Magnus was a third-year student—up to them.
But the major almost-fights—no actual full-scale fights; Eric had been spared that much—were always about Magnus having to go to school at all. Magnus's stated intention was to become a drummer in a rock band. Drummers in rock bands were not known for flouting their CVs. Most of the drummers in rock bands that I've known were barely able to speak three articulate words in a row.
Maybe it was like his theory about sopranos—in the case of sopranos, the cranial cavity was naturally empty in order to help them reach the high notes with resonance. The vibrato, much like the pea in a whistle, was the small piece of brain rattling around in the skull. In the case of rock-band drummers, the cranial cavity was naturally empty due to being so close to the amps. Any brain material left alive after the amps got done with it was compacted into the size of a thumb.
Oh that wasn't fair. There was Neil Peart and the early Phil Collins. . . .
Then again, there's Sigu Sigu Sputnik. Wonder if Magnus has ever heard of them.
There were times when Eric really felt his actual age. Dropping a reference to something he remembered as being a household word, only to have Magnus stare at him blankly, tended to invoke those times.
He reached the block of the school just as the doors opened and the students came swarming out. Some of them headed directly for the waiting vehicles—Lincoln Town Cars were the limousine of choice—others clustered on the sidewalk to talk to friends. Magnus stood at the top of the steps, looking around.
He knows I'm here, Eric thought with a pang of realization.
He wasn't sure how to feel about that. Magnus hadn't known he was coming today, but he obviously sensed Eric's presence on some level. Eric knew Magnus had the same Bardic Gift he did, though so far it hadn't made its presence known in any obvious way. And Magnus knew that Eric was a Bard, though they hadn't talked about it much. They were going to have to talk about it sometime, though—just as Magnus's Gift would have to be evaluated and trained.
But not yet. And you should just be thankful that it's Bardcraft you're going to have to talk to him about, and not the birds and the bees!
Magnus spotted him at last, and ambled over. Eric noted with faint resignation that today's tie had some sort of anime characters on it that he didn't recognize—and lit up besides, with a little flashing balloon that said "Blah blah blah." Magnus pulled it off and stuffed it in his pocket as soon as he was clear of the building.
"Checking up on me?" he asked with a cocky grin.
That, at least, was something Eric never had to do, or even think about. Magnus kept his word. He hated school, and thought it was a waste of time, but if he said he'd be there, that was where he'd be.
"Sure, I figured I'd catch you pulling a Ferris Bueller," Eric said insincerely, with the shrug that turned it into a joke. Fortunately Magnus had seen Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Unfortunately, it had been when the movie was on heavy rotation on one of the cable channels. Eric forbore to mention that he had seen it in the theatrical release. No point in hammering home the certainty in Magnus's mind that his older brother predated dirt. "I figured we could grab a taxi back Uptown, check out the homework situation, then decide what to do about dinner."
"We should go over to Ria's," Magnus said instantly. "I bet Ace would cook something. And Ria wouldn't mind. She wouldn't even be there, probably, and Ace hates wasting food."
True on both counts, Eric thought, as they headed away from the press of waiting cars. Ria Llewellyn was the original workaholic, spending far too many hours in her penthouse office at LlewellCo. And Ace—who had taken in Magnus when they were both runaways on the street and helped him survive, and been rescued along with him—was not only a much better cook than Eric was, she liked to cook. She cooked for Ria, on the rare occasions Ria was ever home to eat.
"Maybe," Eric said cautiously, as they stopped for a light.
His cellphone rang.
He pulled it out and saw that it was Ria's private office number.
"Hi," he said cheerfully.
"Try to remember you'd been having a good day up until now," Ria said, her voice at its most neutral. "Where's Magnus?"
"Right here," Eric said. "I, ah, take it you have a problem?"
"No." If she'd sounded neutral before, now Ria sounded irritated—or disgusted. Eric wasn't quite sure which. "You have a problem, and it's sitting here in one of my less-desirable conference rooms with its lawyer demanding the return of an object that you and I have gone to a great deal of trouble to assure them doesn't exist, if you follow me. And I think you'd better see them."
"Oh. Oh." Ria was right. It had been a good day up until now. Because it wasn't that difficult to decode her cryptic comments.
When Magnus had surfaced last winter, Eric had promised him that, no matter what, he would never have to go back to their parents. He'd decided the easiest way to arrange that—and keep Magnus in the World Above, because it was always possible to stash him Underhill, though no one really wanted to do that, Magnus included—was to simply adopt Magnus himself. But to do that, he needed a legal claim on Magnus, and after some discussion with Ria, he'd decided the simplest thing would be to simply say that Magnus was his son—he was eighteen years older than his brother, after all, and it wasn't impossible that he'd fathered a child Magnus's age.
But filing the adoption papers meant surfacing as Eric Banyon, son of Michael and Fiona Banyon of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Fortunately, Eric didn't have to worry about the government arrest warrants that had driven him and Beth Kentraine Underhill themselves all those years ago. He'd discovered that those were a dead issue in Washington, buried by a change of administration and the death of the Eighties. The statute of limitations had run out years ago, and the projects that had caused the warrants to be filed in the first place had gotten a bad rep on Capitol Hill and a lot of ridicule in the press. The fact that he looked so much younger than he ought to could be ignored most of the time, mostly chalked up to good genetics, or really good plastic surgery, and covered up by a little Bardic glamourie when absolutely necessary.
What Eric hadn't taken fully into account was his parents' sheer idiotic tenacity.
When he'd popped up as what he still thought of as the "real" Eric Banyon, he'd discovered that they were still
looking for him—although not as hard as they were searching for their other missing child. Magnus, the trophy-child replacement for Eric. Still not of legal age, still young enough to be controlled. Or so they thought. They wanted their investment back, and they weren't going to let a little thing like Eric stop them from getting it.
And even more unfortunately, adoption proceedings were a matter of public record. They'd decided (they happened to be right, though none of the paperwork supported them) that Eric was trying to adopt his brother, not his son, and had been doing their best to block it for the last two months. Ria's lawyers had been doing a good job of keeping them away from him and Magnus so far, but unfortunately, even if he and Ria convinced everybody that Magnus wasn't their son, he'd still be Michael and Fiona's grandson, and the State of New York held that grandparents had certain rights.
Which was probably why Ria hadn't just thrown them and their lawyer out on their collective ears when the three of them had shown up at LlewellCo Tower. Eric had hoped to avoid the whole horror of a custody fight with his parents by saying Magnus was his son, not theirs, but it looked like he was getting one anyway.
"Hello?" Ria said into the silence.
"I'll be there as soon as I can," Eric said grimly, tucking the phone away.
Magnus regarded him quizzically. His brother was already as tall as he was, and there was some indication Magnus wasn't done growing yet. "You don't look happy."
"Mom and Dad showed up at LlewellCo with a lawyer. I need to go over there and get things straightened out."
"I'm going with you," Magnus said firmly.
Eric hesitated. He'd been going to send Magnus home.
"I have to face them sooner or later," the boy said stubbornly, though he looked just as unhappy as Eric felt. "I can do just what you told me. I'd have to do it in court—again—anyway. I did all right the first time, didn't I?"
Well, that was certainly true. Magnus had been deposed when they'd filed the original papers, and interviewed by a court-appointed psychologist as well. He'd stuck to their cover story perfectly. Of course, the parents hadn't been there at the time, but still . . .
"You did. Okay. Feel free to back out any time, though."
Magnus made a rude noise.
* * *
LlewellCo Tower occupied a prime piece of commercial real estate on Upper Sixth. When Ria Llewellyn had decided to move the main focus of LlewellCo's operations east, she'd bought a suitable building, gutted and renovated the top five floors, and reserved them entirely for LlewellCo's use, renting out the rest of the building. Every year, though, LlewellCo offices took up more space.
Eric had been here enough times to know the drill. He went directly to the security desk, showed his ID and Magnus's, and was directed to the bank of elevators that went directly to the penthouse floor.
When they opened, Ria's PA, Anita Sheldrake, was there to meet them. She was wearing a black and white hound's-tooth-check suit right out of Hedy Lamar's closet; Anita liked to project a persona straight out of vintage film noir. Anita had come from the Midwest, where she'd been in security, and those job skills transferred very well to her new profession.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Banyon, Magnus. Ms. Llewellyn asked if you would join her in her office."
* * *
Ria was on the phone when they came in, speaking rapidly in flawless Japanese. She waved them over to the bank of long leather couches that lined two corners of the room, and continued without missing a beat.
It must be a conference call, Eric decided after a moment, hearing her switch, first to Russian, then to French. She didn't seem to be doing a lot of listening.
A few moments more, and she hung up.
"Sorry," she said unapologetically. She pressed a button on her desk. "Derek? We're ready for you now. Sorry about the wait. Gus? Are you sure about this?"
Magnus assumed an expression of pained boredom. "My mom's name was Melissa Freewoman. Or at least, that was what she said her name was, but she was such a rampant feminist that she never would give me the name she was born with. She was an artist, a weaver. We never really settled down anywhere. I never went to school or anything. We traveled all over Europe with friends and things. I was born on a commune in Mexico—at least that's what she always told me. She never told me who my father was for most of my life. About two years ago she got sick. We came back to Canada and stayed with some friends of hers. She wouldn't see a doctor or anything but these crazy homeopathy guys and herbalists and crystal people, but when she got really sick and she got thrown into a hospice and knew she wasn't gonna make it, she finally told me my dad's name was Eric Banyon, and that I should try to find him. She said he'd told her once that he'd gone to Juilliard, so . . . I started there."
Eric assumed an identical expression. "When I was, well, about Magnus's age, after I left Juilliard, I went down to Mexico for a while, and stayed on a commune there. There was a girl there named Melissa." He shrugged. "I didn't have any idea she was pregnant when I left. When Magnus found me, I was restarting my life with my lottery winnings. If I'd known he even existed, I'd have adopted him years ago."
Ria applauded slowly. "Very good, both of you. Come on. Derek will be waiting for us."
* * *
Derek Tilford was one of LlewellCo's numerous lawyers. The year before, he had helped Kayla and Hosea cut through a lot of red tape when Eric had been lying in a spell-induced coma in a New York hospital. When Eric had needed a general counsel who wasn't fazed by the unusual, Ria had been more than happy to offer his services once more, pointing out that all her legal staff was expected to devote a certain amount of hours to "pro-bono" work, and she certainly felt that this qualified.
Eric felt that this was stretching a point, but he wasn't going to quibble with Magnus's future at stake. And as it had turned out, it was just as well he hadn't.
The four of them walked into the conference room together.
The Banyons were seated at the far end of the table, their lawyer between them. Eric had met Charles Fulton Vandewater before and hadn't liked him. He looked like a slick lawyer. In ten years, if Vandewater wasn't a judge, he'd probably go into politics.
Both Eric and Magnus strongly resembled Fiona Banyon; they had her coloring and her fine-boned auburn beauty. She was not ageless by any stretch of the imagination, but carefully tended to mask the footprints of age as far as possible. Michael Banyon was a dark Celt; age had given him distinguished silver wings at the temples—and deepened the lines of temper at forehead and mouth. If Fiona's rages ran cold and quiet, Michael's roaring Irish furies could rattle windows.
"That's my son," Fiona said briefly, looking at Magnus and then looking away again.
Hi Mom, hi Dad, gee, it's good to see you again after all these years, Eric thought, holding down his anger with an effort.
"I'm sorry," he said evenly. "Much as I hate to admit it, I am your son, but Magnus is my son."
"This is ridiculous," Michael Banyon said irritably. "You're not even denying his name is Magnus. That's lame, Eric, even for you."
And here we go again, Eric thought with weary anger. It had been over twenty years by the world's time since he'd "officially" last seen his parents—though he'd paid them a clandestine visit last year, which they didn't remember, thanks to Bardic Magic. But they were behaving as if he was still eighteen.
"Melissa named him after my great-grandfather, obviously, just as you named this supposed brother you say I have. I talked a lot about him. I liked my great-grandfather," Eric said, allowing his irritation to show. Great-Grandfather Magnus had died when Eric had been very young. He wondered if anything would have gone differently in his life if the old man had lived longer.
"Why don't we all sit down?" Derek said pacifically.
They sat. Eric reached out under the table to take Magnus's hand. His brother's hand was cold in his, but the boy's face was blank and hostile, giving nothing away.
"Now," Derek said, when they were all settled. "You
've seen Mr. Banyon's petition to adopt his son. You're aware of the circumstances surrounding his birth. I understand your own son is missing, and has been for some time. You have our deepest condolences. But surely that has nothing to do with your grandson?"
There was a whispered consultation at the far end of the table.
Eric knew he ought to feel worse about this, but in fact the only thing he felt bad about was having to see his parents again. The way his mother had said "that's my son,"—as if she were identifying an item at the Lost and Found. Hardly the way grieving parents ought to react upon being reunited with a child who'd been missing for the last eight months!
Mr. Vandewater cleared his throat. "Mr. and Mrs. Banyon are not prepared, at this time, to accept that this is not their son Magnus. But they also wish me to inform Mr. Banyon that they intend to file a countersuit to his adoption petition to sue for custody of their, ah, 'grandson' as well."
Eric felt Magnus twitch violently, but the boy managed to stay in his seat. Fortunately, he'd been looking down, and no one could see his face.
"I see," Derek Tilford said blandly. "May we ask on what grounds?"
"The full particulars will be in the deposition, but certainly we expect the State of New York will find that Mr. Banyon cannot provide a fit home environment for a teenaged boy."
"Then there's nothing more to be said at this time," Derek said, managing to sound almost cheerful. "Good day, Mr. Vandewater, Mr. and Mrs. Banyon."
He got to his feet, escorting them out. Magnus stayed seated until the door closed behind them.
"They can't do that!" he exploded, lunging to his feet. "You told me they couldn't do that!" He spun around in place, as if he were looking for a direction to run.
"The court is going to find in our favor." No matter what he had to do to make that happen, Eric vowed silently. "You aren't going back to them. That's what I promised you, and that's what I'm going to deliver."
Magnus stared at him, wild-eyed.
"Magnus," Eric said, taking his brother by the shoulders. "If we lose the court case—which we won't—I'll send you Underhill, to friends of mine. But you aren't going back to Boston."
Music to My Sorrow Page 3