The Wizard Heir (The Heir Chronicles #2)

The Wizard Heir (The Heir Chronicles #2) Page 4

“But I'm going to UTS. It's all set.”

“That is no longer possible.”

“What about St. Michael's, then?”

“No.”

Seph saw where this was going. He needed to stay in Toronto. He needed to find that girl Alicia and get some answers. She was the only lead he had.

He was reduced to begging. “Please. Let me stay here for school. There has to be someplace that'll let me in. I swear, I won't get into trouble.” He extended his hand toward Houghton. If he could just make contact…

Houghton put up his hands and leaned away, as if to fend Seph off. “Don't … It won't work. Not this time. Our hands are tied. The police have made their position quite clear.”

“Let me talk to them.”

“You'd better leave well enough alone. Thank God they've lost interest in you. It's time you learned that you cannot talk yourself out of every situation.”

“I already know that.”

“Besides, it's all arranged.”

“What is?”

“Your new school.”

“Where?”

“Maine.”

“Maine?”

“Seems a lovely place from the photographs. It's right on the ocean.” Houghton thrust a brochure into Seph's face. “Luckily for us, this came in the mail right after the warehouse story broke.”

Seph took it reluctantly. “I hate the ocean.”

“Perhaps you'll grow to love it.”

The front cover featured a sailboat. He scanned the text and shook his head. “A boys' school?”

Houghton shrugged. “Beggars can't be choosers. And perhaps the absence of young ladies will help you…focus.”

“You never asked me what I wanted.” Seph scraped the toe of his sneaker over the hand-knotted rug.

“As I said. We didn't have a lot of options this late in the day.”

“Is there even a city in Maine?”

“Yes, I think so. Portland, I believe it's called.” He frowned and rubbed his chin. “Or is that in New Hampshire? Well, no matter,” he said briskly. “You'll need to leave immediately. The term's already begun.”

Seph shrugged and slid the brochure into his pocket. Ordinarily, he would have continued to argue the matter. But just then he felt like he might deserve to go to Maine. Or any other place with a scarcity of people.

Houghton looked at his watch, relieved that Seph hadn't put up more of a fight. “So. Well. Do you have any questions?”

“Yes. Who were my parents?”

Houghton sighed. “Not that again. You've seen the documents. The photographs. I don't know what else you—”

“I know they're fake. I've checked it out. I've been online. It's made up.”

Houghton stood and fussed with his cuffs, straightened the crease in his trousers, put a little more distance between himself and his client. “I know these past three years have been trying. It is difficult to lose one's parents at a young age. And it is likely that your foster mother's death has renewed your feelings of abandonment…”

Seph came to his feet, and Houghton took a hasty step back. “You're a lawyer. No one's asking you to be a bloody psychiatrist.” Power prickled in his hands and arms, and he struggled to damp down his anger. It doesn't matter, he told himself. It's not worth it.

“… and now this…event at the warehouse. So tragic. That young girl. What was her name again?”

“Maia.”

“You knew her?”

“Yes.” He was back to one-word answers.

“Well, best not to noise that about. It could complicate matters just as things are settling.” Houghton hesitated, then cautiously draped an arm around Seph's shoulders. He smelled of expensive tobacco, wool, and aftershave. Seph resisted the urge to flinch away.

“It may be that this is just what you need, Joseph. Go to Maine. Focus on your studies. Get away from all this for a while.” The lawyer's voice was not unkind. “You've managed to come away without a police record. Your grades are good. See if you can finish strong at the Havens. Then we can begin to talk about University. Perhaps you can even come back to Toronto for school.”

Two more years, Seph was thinking. Two more years, and I claim the trust fund and dismiss Sloane, Houghton, and Smythe. Two more years, and I'll have the time and money to find out who I really am.

Two years sounded like an eternity.

Chapter Two

The Havens

Seph pressed his face against the cool glass of the airplane window, watching the rugged New England coastline pass beneath him. From this altitude, the Atlantic seemed a gentle lake, a deep gray-green with a delicate frosting of lace where it broke against the beaches.

The music pounding through his headphones was not enough to occupy his relentless mind.

He thrust his hand under his sweatshirt, pulling free the half-melted cross Maia had made for him. Surprisingly old-fashioned for a free spirit like Maia. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the ropy intensity of her embrace.

Seph didn't consider himself particularly attractive. He knew enough about art to realize he met no classical standard of beauty. His face looked like something he needed to grow into: all bony prominences and sharp angles. His hair tumbled into unruly loose curls if he didn't gel it into submission. He'd grown so recently that he still felt awkward and poorly put together. But girls still made excuses to touch him, to play with his hair. Maia had always talked about his eyes: how they changed color with the light— brown, and then green or gold.

And now she was dead. Because of him.

He stared down at his hands. Murderer's hands, though they looked like normal flesh and bone. He was… pathological. Was it merely a lack of knowledge, or was it some kind of fatal flaw?

He pressed his fist against his chest, imagining that he could feel the weight within. “Vous avez un cristal sous votre coeur,” Genevieve had said. You have a crystal beneath your heart. A source of power that is different for each of the guilds. For sorcerers, enchanters, warriors, and seers, the use of power is more or less hardwired.

But wizards needed training in order to use and control their power. Genevieve had told him that when magical accidents happened. So he wouldn't think he was possessed, as the Jesuits had claimed when he was still small.

But she hadn't told him the truth about his parents. And for that, he felt betrayed.

He needed a teacher. If he couldn't learn to control his gift, it was "better not to have it at all. Could the stone be removed, like a diseased gallbladder?

At least Genevieve had not had to deal with the warehouse. She would have gone to church and lit a candle and prayed for him. She would tell him that in God's eyes he was perfect, though how she knew this, Seph couldn't say.

Seph's ears told him they'd begun their descent. The aircraft was a sixteen-seater, with only six other passengers—hunters and tourists, by the looks of them. Seph liked the intensity of small planes. Perhaps he'd buy a plane now that he was old enough for flying lessons. He smiled at the thought, his first smile of the day, and pulled off his headphones.

The plane banked and circled. The ground rushed toward them and bumped down on the grassy runway. Before they had rolled to a stop, he was on his feet, pulling his bag from the overhead compartment.

He closed his eyes and centered himself, as Genevieve had taught him. You can do this. You've done it before. You're good at meeting people. Only, this new school was small, about one hundred students, according to the brochure. He'd never done well at small schools. He made too many waves to survive in a small pond.

Somehow, he had to find a way to succeed here. Two years, and he could go back to the city and disappear.

The airport boasted one battered, sheet-metal building. Grass feathered the asphalt of the parking lot.

A man waited by the metal fence that surrounded the landing strip. He was tall—taller than Seph by at least half a foot. He was absolutely bald, but whether he was naturally so or shaved his head, Seph couldn't tell. Despite the brisk weather, he wore a white, short-sleeved golf shirt that showed off his muscular arms. He looked to be about fifty, but it was hard to tell with bald men.

Seph waited until the crew had unloaded the baggage compartment, then pulled his other bag from the cart, swinging it over his shoulder. As he walked toward the gate, the man stepped forward to meet him.

“You must be Joseph McCauley,” he said in an upperclass British accent. “I'm Dr. Gregory Leicester, headmaster of the Havens.”

Up close, the headmaster's eyes were a peculiar flat gray color, like twin ball bearings. The absence of hair and the fact that his lips were the same color as the rest of his face gave him a strange, robotic quality.

Relieved that the headmaster didn't offer his hand, Seph conjured a smile and said, “Pleasure to meet you, sir.” Must be a small staff, he thought, if the headmaster comes to collect you at the airport.

“Is that all you have?” Dr. Leicester asked, nodding toward the luggage.

“That's all. I shipped some books ahead, and my computer.” Seph traveled light, which was convenient when you moved around as much as he did.

Of the half dozen vehicles clustered in the lot, Dr. Leicester directed Seph toward a white van with THE havens and a sailboat stenciled in gold on the door. The van was unlocked. The headmaster took Seph's bags and tossed them easily into the backseat. He motioned Seph to the shotgun position, and climbed in on the driver's side.

“We're just about an hour away from school,” Leicester explained. “It will give us a chance to get to know each other.”

They pulled out of the gravel parking lot and turned onto a two-lane highway. From the maps, Seph knew there was a small town south of the airport. But their destination was about fifty miles north, with nothing much in between. Why would anyone build a private school in such a remote location? A hunting lodge or a prison, he could understand.