The Wizard Heir

Page 16

“This happened to you?” Seph gestured weakly, taking in the trashed room.
Trevor swallowed hard. His dark face was nearly gray, the brown eyes muddy with remembered pain, his hands clasped tightly together. “I acted out a lot when I first got here.”
“He uses this … as punishment?”
“He calls it therapy,” Trevor repeated. “If you don't cooperate, I guess he thinks you need more therapy. So … in a way …”
“And other people have dreams? The Ana … other students? Not just us?”
“Everybody has dreams, at least at first. He says they're working through their hostility. Only, I figured you were different. I mean, you're like him. You and the alumni. Y'all have … some kind of power. Elsewise, why would the alumni stay? I'd leave, quick as I could.”
Seph was only half listening. He wasn't crazy. It wasn't his own power that was destroying his mind. It was a spell. It must be. Leicester was spelling him, making him think he was crazy, make him desperate enough to agree to … to … what?
“Just do what he says,” Trevor said, as if reading his mind. “Whatever he asks. I can tell you from experience what will happen if you try to fight him. It's up to you, but my advice is to sit up and speak and roll over, whatever it takes. Sucking up ain't that hard, once you get the hang of it.”
“Doesn't anybody complain?” Seph asked.
“What're you going to say?” Trevor lifted his hands, palms up. “You had a nightmare at school and Dr. Leicester did it? Who would believe a story like that from someone with a track record like mine?”
“Leicester says this is a place for … for psychiatric cases. He told me we're hallucinating.”
“I guess it's possible. I was a little rough before I got here, but nobody ever said I was crazy. Before I came to the Havens, all I dreamed about was girls.”
“Couldn't your parents get you out of here, if you asked them?”
Trevor laughed bitterly. "Look. My parents love the Havens. This is the first school that didn't expel me inside of six months. All of my bad behaviors have been—what's the word—extinguished. I'm getting good grades. I'm probably going to college. I'm not a problem anymore. How'm I going to convince them to bring me home?
“A few times, since I've been here, parents have come to campus all fired up about something they've heard. Leicester meets with them, and they go away satisfied. Or, at least they go away. He can be very persuasive, I guess. Anyone who complains really pays for it later.” He cleared his throat. “Besides, it ain't so bad if you don't give him a reason to mess with you.”
Seph remembered their visit to the Alumni House, Trevor begging Warren not to tell Dr. Leicester. “So what are Leicester and the alumni up to?”
Trevor shook his head. “I don't know, and I don't want to. Tell you the truth, he don't seem interested in the other students. I'm not sure he could pick me out of a lineup. But I'm not stupid. I figured out that if I cut class and messed with the teachers and smoked in the locker room, I'd pay for it. So I stopped. And since then he's left me alone.”
Seph pushed back his sweat-matted hair. “Listen, how can I call out of here?”
“You can use any of the campus phones,” Trevor said. “If you have a calling card, the office makes the call for you.”
“No, I need a phone I can use myself.”
“There's some kind of code to call direct. The office makes the calls.” Trevor hesitated. “Who you going to call?”
“I need to reach my guardian. I've got to get out of here. Leicester won't put the calls through.”
“Just be careful, Seph. Leicester knows everything. What he doesn't know, he'll get out of you somehow.”
“So if he asked you about this conversation, you'd tell him?”
Trevor raised his hands, palms up. “Look, man, don't blame me. It's like you can't help it. He's a hypnotist or something.”
Or something. Of course. Which meant Seph couldn't confide in anyone, or ask anyone for help.
“You mentioned someone named Jason. What'd he do? What happened to him?”
“Look, forget I ever said anything about him.”
Seph rested a hand lightly on Trevor's shoulder, looked him in the eyes. “Tell me.”
Trevor swallowed hard, as if trying to stop the words. “He was stirring things up. Wanted people to fight back against Dr. Leicester. Him and Sam and Peter. Then Sam drowned, and Peter and Jason are with the alumni now.”
“Sam drowned?” Seph repeated. “Do you think …”
“I don't think anything.” Trevor gave Seph a look. “And don't you push, because that's all I know.”
Seph had to find a way to escape. Leicester had made it clear he wasn't going to let him go until he got what he wanted. With Leicester torturing him every night, Seph didn't know how long he could keep saying no.
After the conversation with Trevor, Seph began waging a very small, very unequal war against the Havens. He tried to run away three times in October, but they seemed to have an uncanny ability to track his movements. He hid in a delivery truck, but was intercepted at the gate. He tried to steal the school van, but the electrical system shorted out when he put the key into the ignition.
His class attendance deteriorated. He took a case of beer from the Alumni House, and drank until he passed out, hoping to anesthetize himself. The first part of November, he set a fire in the art and music building after hours. When they dragged him into Leicester's office, he said, “Expel me.” Instead, they confined him to his room and the dreams intensified.
Night and day began to merge into a long and painful continuum. If he stayed up all night, he hallucinated during the day. Several times, hopelessly confused, he begged Trevor to tell him whether he was awake or asleep.
Trevor seemed to have forgiven Seph for the sin of being gifted. He tried to help by cooperating with all of Seph's experiments. On the theory that his dreams were being triggered by something in his room, Seph spent the night on Trevor's floor. The dreams followed him. Trevor stayed over in Seph's room, so he could wake him when the dreams began. But it was impossible to wake Seph from his nightmares, and Trevor couldn't bear to be anywhere near while they were going on.
Meanwhile, Leicester and the alumni watched him, like predators stalking wounded prey, waiting for him to falter so they could close in for the kill.
Gregory Leicester sat in his favorite chair and gazed moodily out to sea. It was unnaturally dark for that time of day, and the lights were already ablaze out on the dock. They were predicting a northeaster, one of the first of the season. Leicester could always detect the drop in pressure when a storm was on the way.
Joseph McCauley was both extraordinarily powerful and amazingly resistant. He'd been at the Havens for more than three months under intensive pressure. Save the one previous failure, no one had ever held out so long. Could Joseph have had some contact with Jason? No. He'd been careful to keep the two apart.
As always, Leicester was impatient with the process, more so in this case, given the prize that lay within his grasp. Recruitment was messy and uncontrolled, and there was always the chance that the intended would escape by taking his own life. This his continuing rebellion was a warning. He resolved to have the staff keep a closer eye on Joseph.
He was sure the matter could be handled more efficiently. He had no doubt he could quickly get what he wanted, given a free hand with the boy. It was D'Orsay who had insisted on this tender approach, the dreams that marked the soul and not the body. D'Orsay believed it would be difficult for the Wizard Council to trace this kind of slow poison to them, if it came to that. It was splitting hairs, but then that was a politician's job.
Leicester wished he had Joseph's Weirbook. It would help to know a little more about him, his strengths and weaknesses. That might bring some insight, provide a strategy. He hungered for the opportunity to put that remarkable power into play.
He drained his glass, feeling a little better. The boy knew there was a way out; he couldn't help but be tempted to take it eventually. It might take a little research, a little more pressure, but Leicester was confident he would be successful in the end.
Chapter Seven
Jason
You don't have to understand. You just have to survive, Seph told himself.
He dreamed every night now, and the nightmares were longer and more intense than before. He felt wasted mentally and physically, yet he forced himself to get up out of bed and walk over to the cafeteria and eat breakfast. Sometimes he went to class, sometimes he just returned to his room and lay staring at the ceiling.
They were coming in the daytime too, striking out of nowhere, splitting him cleanly from reality in an instant. He would awaken screaming in math class, crying out in the middle of government, muttering and twitching in chemistry class. He nearly blew up the building when he ignited the chemicals in the lab.
Everyone pretended not to notice. It was as if he traveled around campus with a dreadful disfigurement, and those around him had been told not to stare and point. It was impossible to learn anything. He no longer fought back, no longer spun any plots against them. The spark of resistance was extinguished in him, save his refusal to give them the one thing they wanted. He was like a prisoner under torture who refuses to surrender the password long after he's forgotten why. It was all he could do just to be in the world.
The only thing that helped was walking. As long as he kept moving, the demons couldn't catch him. At first he walked restlessly from building to building. Later, he put on snowshoes and walked for miles through the woods. Once he made it as far as the wall that bordered the property. But he couldn't find the gate and he couldn't seem to get a grip on it to climb before they came and took him back.
Or maybe that was just a dream.
Christmas was coming, but Seph wasn't looking forward to it. Trevor had invited Seph to spend Christmas in Atlanta, but Leicester vetoed the idea. Seph's condition was too delicate, he said. Seph had to admit that anyone who saw him would have to agree. He looked terrible. He continued to lose weight despite eating all he could.