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

by Geoffrey Huntington

  Devon looked at Cecily. “You fill him in, okay? I’ve got to get back up to Ravenscliff.”

  She nodded, helping D.J. stand.

  “Hey, man,” D.J. said, looking at Devon’s bloody face. “What happened to you?”

  “Tell you later. Just be on your guard, okay? Things may not be as they seem. Don’t trust anybody.” He winked at Cecily. “See ya at the big house.”

  He bounded off toward the road. Within minutes he was at the cliffside staircase. He took three steps at a time. He emerged into the cemetery cautious, feeling quite certain Jackson Muir would be standing once again in the tall grass. But there was nothing there except the moonlight on the gravestones.

  He passed the flat stone marked “Clarissa” and realized he hadn’t had a chance to ask Rolfe about that name or about the marker called “Devon.” There was so much he hadn’t had a chance to ask, so much he still didn’t understand.

  But he knew one thing: their time grew short to save Alexander Muir.

  He rushed into the foyer, out of breath. Ahead of him in the parlor he could see Mrs. Crandall sitting in her chair in front of the fire, with Rolfe Montaigne standing over her.

  They both looked up at him as he entered.

  “Devon!” Rolfe exclaimed. “What happened to you?”

  “I—had a little run-in,” he said, sitting down on the couch.

  “Dear God,” Mrs. Crandall was saying, on her feet now, looking at the boy’s face. “Simon!”

  The servant seemed to appear from nowhere at the door to the parlor.

  “Bring me a bowl of warm water, a cloth, disinfectant, and some bandages. Quickly!”

  She stooped down in front of Devon, inspecting his wound. “It’s not too deep,” she said. “If we clean it, bandage it, and keep using vitamin E, it’ll heal quickly and not leave a scar.”

  Rolfe was looking down at him intently.

  “Did you tell her?” Devon asked. “Did you tell her about Alexander?”

  “Yes, he told me,” Mrs. Crandall said, but Devon couldn’t tell what emotion lurked behind her words. Anger? Gratitude? Indifference?

  Simon had arrived with the first aid. Mrs. Crandall took the cloth, dampened it, and began patting Devon’s face. “Does it hurt, Devon?” she asked.

  “A little.”

  He sat there and allowed her to tend to him. It was a side of her he hadn’t seen before: caring, nurturing, compassionate.

  Dare he say maternal?

  And the thought struck him, as Mrs. Crandall tenderly treated his wound, gently reassuring him—could this woman be my mother?

  The idea startled him. It would make sense—more sense than her husband being his father. His powers, inherited through her, through Horatio Muir. Mrs. Crandall was Nightwing—just like him.

  That’s why my father sent me here. Because Mrs. Crandall is my mother!

  And then—Cecily—Cecily really is my sister!

  He tried to get the Voice to confirm the idea—to tell him whether it was true or not. But the Voice remained stubbornly silent.

  Devon looked at Mrs. Crandall as she sat back to observe his bandaged face. “There, Devon. You’ll be all right now.”

  Such concern in her voice. Was it possible, this crazy idea?

  Cecily …

  “You can fill me in later on the details of your little run-in, Devon,” Rolfe said. “In the meantime, I think we’ve got things under control here for now.”

  Devon pushed aside the thoughts about Mrs. Crandall. They were too much to consider right now. Way too much. He’d rather have thought about demons and Jackson Muir masquerading as that crazy clown than think about Cecily being his sister.

  “So,” he asked. “Alexander’s okay?”

  “We just came downstairs from talking with him,” Rolfe said. “He’s spitting mad, but he’s okay.”

  Mrs. Crandall had stood, resuming her more usual air of chilly grandeur. “Rolfe has some silly idea that watching television is dangerous for Alexander. While I agree about the harmfulness of TV, I think we’re talking about different things.”

  “Very different,” Devon said.

  “Amanda did, however, see the wisdom of removing the televisions from both the playroom and Alexander’s bedroom,” Rolfe said.

  Mrs. Crandall looked at him icily. “And now that all that is settled, I thank you for your concern, Rolfe, and I’ll show you to the door.”

  “Wait,” Devon said, standing up. “That’s not the end of it. I mean, Jackson Muir is still out there. He’s not going to go away so easily.”

  Mrs. Crandall sighed. “Devon, this talk about Jackson Muir has gone far enough.”

  Devon looked over at Rolfe. “Is she still denying it? Even after everything you told her?”

  “I’m not denying anything, Devon,” she said coldly. “There are just things I will not have discussed in this house. And certainly not with Mr. Montaigne present.”

  Rolfe laughed. “You’re an ostrich, Amanda. As vain and as obtuse.” He was putting his coat back on. “You have three young lives under your care. Think about them, if not you.”

  She bristled. “If I were you, Mr. Montaigne, I wouldn’t lecture anyone about putting young lives in jeopardy.”

  What Devon saw next startled him, caused him to gasp: Rolfe, in a sudden rage, bounded toward Mrs. Crandall, got right up in her face. She shrunk back in fear, and there was a part of Devon that thoroughly enjoyed seeing her composure broken, even for a moment.

  “I’ve told you this before, Amanda, and I’ll tell you this again,” Rolfe seethed. “I will find a way to prove my innocence—and then I’ll make you pay dearly for the five years you stole out of my life.”

  “Get out,” she spit.

  Rolfe turned to Devon. “Remember,” he said, “you’re stronger than any of them.”

  With that, he turned and stalked out of the house, slamming the door behind him.

  The seconds after Rolfe left felt like minutes—long, drawn-out minutes. Devon at first said nothing, then finally ventured over to the woman glaring out of the windows at the sea.

  “Mrs. Crandall?”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t want you to be angry with me. I want you to understand.”

  She turned to face him. “What am I to understand?”

  “Rolfe told me about this family’s legacy. I know about the Nightwing.”

  “He had no right.”

  Devon sighed. “Maybe not. But he did. So I know that these things that have been happening aren’t just my imagination.”

  “Listen to me, Devon. I am your guardian.” She smiled. “Lowercase. Guardian with a small ‘g.’ And with the legal admonition to watch out for your welfare. I am telling you only what you need to know. Anything else you must simply trust me about.”

  She pulled herself up to her full height, looking down at him. “And I assure you that no matter what frightens you in this house, nothing will hurt you. I have seen to that.”

  “That’s what you always told me, Mother,” came the voice of her daughter.

  They both turned. Cecily stood in the doorway.

  “But it’s not true,” she said calmly, never taking her eyes from her mother. She walked into the parlor, approaching them. “I was almost killed earlier tonight. If it wasn’t for Devon, I’d be dead.”

  “Killed!” Mrs. Crandall grasped her daughter’s face in both her hands. “Cecily! Are you all right?”

  “I told you, thanks to Devon.”

  Mrs. Crandall looked over at her young ward. “Devon …”

  He patted his bandages. “You never asked how I got the wound. It was as if you didn’t want to know.”

  She seemed as if she might break then—as if her body was on the verge of trembling, collapsing, her emotions ready to shatter into uncontrollable tears. But she didn’t, and Devon marveled at the woman’s control. He could see her struggle quite clearly, the yearning to surrender—but he could also see the invincibili
ty that ultimately forbade it. She took hold of the back of her chair to steady herself, drawing in and then exhaling a very long breath.

  “Long ago,” she said, “terrible things happened in this house. Maybe your friend Rolfe told you about them. Whether he did or not, it suffices for me to remember them only in their terror, not in their specifics.” She looked off toward the fire. “Why do you think my brother wanders the globe? Why do you think my mother cannot bear to leave her room? Because they are trying, each in their way, to cope with the past. As I am. As I must raise the three of you to do.”

  Devon walked up to face her plainly. “But how can we do that if we don’t know what that past is? Especially me, Mrs. Crandall. I’m not a Muir. I never even knew such a place as Ravenscliff existed until a month ago. And suddenly here I am, dropped down in the middle of it, and you expect me not to ask questions, not to demand answers!”

  She looked at him sadly. “I know it’s difficult, Devon. But that’s all I can I say for now.”

  “No, you can say something else,” Devon said. “You can tell me what you know of my parents. My real parents. You can tell me who I am and how I fit into all of this.”

  She sighed. “I’ve told you, Devon. I can’t help you there. I don’t know …”

  “You knew my father. He lived here under the name Thaddeus Underwood. He was a Guardian here, teaching you and your brother in the art of the Nightwing.”

  “The Nightwing?” Cecily asked.

  Devon didn’t answer. He kept interrogating her mother. “Why did my father change his name? Why did he take me to New York to raise me?”

  Mrs. Crandall clapped her hands to her ears. “I don’t know, Devon! Stop badgering me with these questions. I don’t know why he changed his name! I had no contact with him after he left Ravenscliff. I have no idea why he moved to New York or why he adopted you or why he sent you here!”

  The face nearly cracked, but she pulled back again. Mrs Crandall closed her eyes, sighing heavily, dropping her hands again to the back of the chair for support.

  “Mother,” Cecily said, near tears, “I’m frightened.”

  Devon saw the maternal love emanate from Mrs. Crandall’s eyes. She let go of the chair, approached Cecily, and clutched her daughter to her bosom. Devon watched them and felt very alone. He’d never known a mother’s love. As a young boy he used to dream about his mother. She was an angel, with golden hair and a long flowing white dress. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen, lithe and lovely and ethereal. In his dreams, she’d sing to him and hold him the way Mrs. Crandall now held Cecily.

  If she’s my mother, he thought sadly, she has no interest in consoling me.

  Mrs. Crandall took Cecily’s cheeks in her hands again, looking at her. “I promise you, Cecily, as I promised you when you were a little girl. I will not allow anything in this house to harm you. I promise you I will redouble my efforts in keeping you safe.”

  Redouble her efforts? Devon wondered what she could mean by that.

  “But Mother,” Cecily added, “it wasn’t in this house that I was almost killed. It was on the village road.”

  Mrs. Crandall let her go. She drew herself up again. “Let us speak no more of it. No more mention of such things in this house.”

  “But, Mrs. Crandall—” Devon insisted.

  She held up a hand to silence him. “That’s my final word, Devon. I don’t know why such things are happening again, but I will do my best to put an end to them.”

  Devon considered revealing his powers to her—after all, that might help explain the why—but for some reason the Voice cautioned him. It might be wise to keep one last card up his sleeve in dealing with her.

  But Mrs. Crandall had another hand to deal herself. She leveled her gaze at Devon. “One other instruction,” she told him. “One that I expect to be followed completely. Under no circumstance are you to have any further interaction with Rolfe Montaigne. As your guardian, I forbid it. Is that understood?”

  “Mrs. Crandall—”

  “Is that understood?”

  It was no use fighting her here and now. “Yes, ma’am, it’s understood.”

  “Classic example of major denial,” Cecily commented after her mother had swept out of the room.

  Devon had filled her in briefly about what he’d learned from Rolfe, as much about the Nightwing and the demons and the Hell Holes as he could in the space of a few minutes.

  “No doubt about it,” he agreed. “But if her father died fighting Jackson Muir in the Hell Hole, I guess maybe I can understand her reluctance to bring it all up again.”

  “I can’t, not if it puts us in danger.” Cecily sat down in front of the fire. “Like, how can I concentrate on my algebra homework now?”

  Devon grinned. “Oh, yeah. Forgot about that.”

  They got out their books and worked their way through a few problems. But Cecily was right: it wasn’t easy to concentrate.

  “You know what really makes me wonder?” Devon asked suddenly. “How she said she’d redouble her efforts.”

  “Yeah,” Cecily agreed. “She said she’d do her best to put an end to all this.” A thought seemed to strike her. “Do you think my mother still has the powers of the Nightwing?”

  Devon shrugged. “Rolfe told me the family renounced all their powers, their whole Nightwing heritage.”

  “We’ve got to learn more about all this,” Cecily said.

  Devon nodded. “I’ve got to talk with Rolfe again. There’s so much I still need to know.”

  “Mother will atomize you if she found out.”

  He smirked. “Or maybe cast a spell on me.”

  “Turn you into a toad. Hey, can you do that?”

  He laughed. “Never tried. And don’t think I will right now either.” He considered something. “You know, if I can’t get to Rolfe, I’ve got to get back into the East Wing. There are books there.”

  She shuddered. “Yeah, and that door.”

  “And the portrait that looks like me.”

  It was all too confusing.

  They managed to get through their homework and wolf down a little dinner: Simon’s prepared roast ham and butternut squash. After that, Cecily headed off to bed, though she admitted she wasn’t likely to sleep much.

  She went to kiss Devon goodnight, but he stopped her.

  “What?” she asked, bewildered.

  “It’s just … there’s too much weirdness right now,” he said.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Devon,” she replied, rolling her eyes.

  “What am I thinking?”

  “You’re thinking we’re related.”

  He lifted his eyebrows at her. “Well, you gotta wonder about it.”

  She frowned. “What does that Voice thing of yours say about it? Wouldn’t that tell you if we were brother and sister?”

  “It doesn’t always tell me stuff. I think it only speaks up when it thinks I can handle it.”

  She sighed. “Well, we don’t look anything alike.” She winked. “Anyway, thanks for saving me earlier, Spider-Man.”

  Devon watched her close her door. He wished he could have kissed her. He really did. In the midst of all this craziness, he had really started liking her. A lot. He’d never felt this way about a girl before. Suze didn’t even come close. He remembered Dad saying that things would start changing now that he was fifteen. He would start to feel differently. He’d see girls in a whole new way.

  Well, they have, and I do.

  Devon knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep right away. So he decided to pay a visit to Alexander who, sulking about the lack of TV, had refused to come down for dinner.

  He wasn’t in the playroom. Not in his room either. Devon worried at first that the boy might be in East Wing, but the Voice told him otherwise.

  Try the basement, it said.

  He found Alexander in the cold, damp darkness, behind a forlorn dressmaker’s dummy and several trunks plastered with stickers from foreign countrie
s. The boy was crying.

  “Hey,” Devon said gently, approaching him.

  Alexander didn’t look up. In the dim light from the overhead bulb, Devon discerned that the boy was holding something—cradling it, in fact—in his lap. Devon’s eyes strained to make out what it was, and then he saw.

  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.