Seph shuddered, looking about the chapel. “How do you do it? How’ve you lasted so long? He’s been at me night and day with dreams and hallucinations. I’m literally going crazy. I don’t know how much longer I can take it.”
It didn’t make him feel any better to know that Leicester would be back in a few days.
“You promised you wouldn’t give in, remember? We’ll both be screwed if you do.”
“I’m doing the best I can.”
Jason smoked in silence for a few minutes, flicking ash onto the snow. He seemed to be grappling with an important decision. Finally, he shrugged. “Okay. I’m already halfway in, I might as well go all the way.” He stared up at the sky. “Look, Seph, I can teach you how to deal with the dreams. But if Leicester finds out I’m helping you, we’ll both end up in his zombie army.”
Seph straightened, suddenly hopeful. “If I could just get some sleep, I think I could hold out indefinitely,” he said.
Jason took a long drag on the cigarette, released a spiral of smoke. “How do I know you’re not a spy for Leicester?”
Seph shrugged. “I was thinking the same thing about you.”
Jason put his hand on Seph’s shoulder and stared into his eyes.
“I’m guessing you’re for real,” Jason said finally. “You don’t have that dopey look I’m used to seeing. All right.” He stood, grinning crookedly, and stubbed out the cigarette. “Now I’ll take you to my lair.”
They walked back through the woods toward the Alumni House, following the path Seph had broken through the snow on his way out. When the wind caught the tops of the pines, snow cascaded down around them, some of it finding its way under the collar of Seph’s jacket. Under the clear sky, the heat of his body bled away, leaving him shivering. Jason’s light jacket hung open, and he didn’t react to the cold at all. He stopped just inside the edge of the trees.
“Hold on to my arm, and be quiet.” Jason muttered his words of magic and disappeared, but Seph could still feel his arm under his fingers. “No one will notice you, either,” the voice said. The invisible, or rather, unnoticeable Jason led Seph out of the woods and across the lawn to the Alumni House. They entered the front hallway and passed through the common room. Martin and Peter were sprawled in front of the TV, playing cards, but they didn’t acknowledge their passage. Jason led Seph to the staircase at the back of the building, and then down the steps to the basement.
There were workout rooms at the base of the stairs, then more offices and storage rooms. Jason went on past them down two intersecting corridors to a door at the end. The door opened, and he was propelled inside. The door slammed shut behind them, and a bolt slid home on the inside. There was more scrambled Latin, and then Jason reappeared, laughing at the startled expression on Seph’s face.
“If they have cameras everywhere, aren’t you afraid we’ll be spotted in here?” Seph asked, looking around the room.
“Oh, I handled that. I’ve provided them with an alternate sound and video. Wizards call that a glamour. It’s a sensory charm that works whether you’re there or not.” Jason hit a button on his CD player and music erupted from the speakers. Despite being in the basement, his room was comfortable. He had his own refrigerator and private bath. Ceramic tile covered the floor, and rows of bookshelves, mostly empty, lined the walls. A computer desk stood against the far wall. The open walls were papered with music posters. Jason pointed to an upholstered chair. “Have a seat.”
Seph dropped into the chair. “Why are you staying over here if you’re not one of the alumni?”
“Leicester needs to keep me away from newbies like yourself. They think they can keep track of me better. As far as they know, I spend most of my time sulking in my room.” He opened the refrigerator and rummaged inside. “Want something to drink?”
“Soda’s good.” Seph accepted a can of orange.
Jason sat down on the bed and gestured toward a CD rack next to the sound system. “Pick out something else if you don’t like Irish punk.” There was an eagerness about his hospitality that suggested Jason had been lonely, too.
“This is fine.” Seph gestured at his surroundings. “Nice place.”
“For a prison.” Jason leaned forward. “Now, about your dreams. If I teach you how to block them, there can’t be any change in your behavior. Do you understand? You’ve got to convince him that you’re still at the end of your rope and beginning to swing. If you start bopping around campus, chipper and carefree, he’ll know something’s up.”
“I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”
“The thing is, you have to follow directions, or you may end up dead.” Jason slipped his hand into the neck of his shirt and pulled out an object attached to a chain around his neck. He lifted it over his head and handed it to Seph.
It was a stone circle, heavier than Seph expected from the size of it, in a flat black color. It was covered with faint markings scratched into the surface. There was a sense of depth to it, as if he were looking through a window. But when he peered through the center, he was looking into . . . nothing. When he passed his hand behind it, there was still nothing.
“What is it?” he asked, trying to hand it back to Jason.
The other boy shook his head. “The general term is dyrne sefa, meaning heartstone, or secret heart. They are objects that act as assist devices to the gifted,” he said. “They were made by sorcerers a long time ago. They’re the experts when it comes to materials. But no one knows how to make them anymore.”
He sailed on, warming to his topic. “This one is called a portal. It’s a piece from my mother’s collection. It’s very old magic. Not well known today. I don’t even know all the things it can do. And I can guarantee you there’s nothing in the alumni library about it. Dr. Leicester thinks of himself as a scholar, but he dabbles in things he doesn’t understand.” Jason snorted in disgust.
“Really?” Seph touched the talisman with his forefinger as if it might bite.
“Portals are used for illusion and spiritual travel. I use it to cast the unnoticeable charm. Dreams are just a kind of brain chemistry. You’re going to use this to step away from your body so you can escape Leicester’s enchantments. I’ll go over the charm with you until you get it right. Put the portal on the table while you practice.
We don’t want any screwups.”
Seph hastily set the piece down on the table, resisting the urge to wipe his hands on his jeans.
In terrenus sanctum. The charm was a kind of bastard Latin. It wasn’t too difficult. He had always had a facility with languages, anyway. It didn’t take him long to master the incantation. He had to say it five times correctly before Jason was satisfied.
“What does it mean?” Seph asked.
“Into the sanctuary,” Jason replied. “The way I understand it, you’re retreating into your Weirstone. Where Leicester can’t intrude. The talisman allows you to go and return. Before you go, you need to decide when you want to return. If you don’t, well, you never come back. Okay, put it on under your shirt,” he said, gesturing toward the dyrne sefa.
Seph scooped the portal from the table and dropped the chain over his head. He shoved the stone into the neckline of his sweatshirt so it rested against his chest. He expected it to be cold, but it felt warm and heavy against his skin.
Jason pointed to the bed. “Now lie down here and tell me how long you want to sleep.”
“Do we have to do this now?” Seph assumed the position anyway.
“No worries,” Jason whispered. “Trust me.”
“An hour, then.”
“An hour.” Jason ran his finger over the runes on the dyrne sefa. “These can be read as numbers, if you know how to read them. For example, this is a one. You can choose one, two, three hours and so on. I can do it in the dark, but I don’t recommend you try.” He grinned. “Wizardry is a kind of anti-tech thing. Meaning it’s not that exact. But time passes quickly.
“Now say the charm. You don’t have to s
ay it out loud.”
All right, Seph thought. Choose an hour and say the charm. He touched the stone circle as Jason had done, found the symbol for one hour, spoke the charm carefully, moving his lips but not speaking aloud.
Seph felt as though he had plunged into an icy pool. The shock of it drove the breath and blood from his body. Then the cold was gone and he was light, very light, a vapor, an idea in the void, a glimmer in the darkness. Free. He was conscious of a boundary, an enclosure, no more than a thickness of the air.
He was aware of a spreading warmth, a tingling in his extremities, inrushing sensation. He opened his eyes to find Jason sprawled in the chair, headphones on, fingers steepled together, studying him.
“It didn’t work,” Seph said.
Jason laughed and pulled off the headphones. “You’ve been out for an hour. Check your watch.”
Seph did. It was after nine o’clock. He blinked, opened his mouth, closed it again.
Jason looked gratified at Seph’s reaction. “Not exactly like sleeping, but close enough. You get some rest. Your mind is safe from Leicester.”
“And you can do this for eight hours?”
“Or ten,” Jason said. “Here, I’ll show you.” He pointed out the relevant symbols on the portal. “Only, best if no one finds you’ve checked out, since you’ll look like you’re dead. So you’ll want to lock up before you use the charm, and don’t plan on sleeping too long.”
Jason was right, Seph thought. Sleeping without dreaming. It was a miracle. Only, he wouldn’t be sure until he tried it overnight. His hand found the stone, traced the shape of it under his sweatshirt. “Do you have any more of these?” he asked, feeling hopeful for the first time in a long while.
“Keep that one. I have something else I can use. Just don’t lose it. Like I said, they don’t make them anymore.” He frowned, biting his lower lip. “We’ll need to build a glamour so Leicester’s convinced you’re still dreaming.”
Seph straightened. “I thought you didn’t know much about wizardry.”
“My mother specialized in illusions, glamours, spirituality, traveling around outside the body using talismans,” Jason replied. “I grew up on this stuff. Unfortunately, she never taught me much about how to kill people.” Seph looked up, startled, but Jason was staring down at his hands, and Seph couldn’t see his expression.
“What else can you teach me?” Seph asked.
Jason shrugged. “Like I told you, I don’t know a lot. I’ll be glad to teach you what I know. But you can’t go showing off all around the campus. Remember what I said: as far as Leicester and everyone else is concerned, you need to stay scared and stay stupid.”
“No problem,” Seph replied.
Chapter Eight
Through the Portal
Jason spent an hour or more in Seph’s room, prowling around, weaving his “glamour,” as he called it. First he blocked the cameras, then constructed a complicated multilayered charm, parts of it triggered by the assault of the dream spell. When he was finished, Seph’s room was a fortress against prying eyes, and his dreams were his own.
Seph used the portal when he went to bed. He would lie down, choose the duration of his absence, and spin out the charm in his head. Sometimes he woke up when the charm wore off, and lay quietly in the dark. Sometimes he kept right on sleeping. Jason warned him not to use the charm twice in one night. “You know how sometimes you go to hit the snooze alarm and hit the wrong button? If you blow this one, you’ll never wake up.”
Whether it was the magic in the stone or the charm Jason taught him, or both, it worked. The portal was the talisman that kept the dreams at bay and kept Gregory Leicester out of his head for as long as the charm was in force. Sometimes the dreams came on toward morning, after his return. Sometimes they caught him during the day. But the fact that he could sleep peacefully for six or eight hours, could keep the nightmares away when he chose, that made all the difference. Before the encounter in the library, Seph had felt himself dissolving, as if he would eventually cease to exist. Now he slowly reassembled himself, and his head was clearer than it had been since Thanksgiving.
Jason had a second stone pendant, hexagonal in shape, and good for some of the same purposes. He used the unnoticeable charm to roam all over campus, lurking, as he called it, while his glamours convinced the school administrators he was holed up in his room. He spent much of his time in the library, studying the attack charms and sorceries Leicester had collected for the alumni.
Seph never knew when Jason would be waiting outside his door in the morning, or touch him on the shoulder as he crossed the campus. “Unnoticeable is better than invisible,” Jason pointed out. “It acts on the observer and not the observed. Ergo, unnoticeable doesn’t leave footprints.”
And so, the unnoticeable charm was the second charm Jason taught him, so they could sneak back to his basement room. Jason cautioned Seph to speak the charm out of sight of the ubiquitous cameras. Seph was already known to have a habit of walking in the woods. He would walk a distance into the forest, in a different direction every time, speak the charm, and then walk back to the Alumni House.
They generally met in Jason’s room where he kept notes and papers on his research as well as books of charms. Jason seemed almost as hungry for companionship as Seph, since he didn’t go to classes and didn’t interact with either the alumni or the Anaweir. He lived life in the shadows—studying wizardry as best he could out of books, and spying on Leicester and his coconspirators.
Seph had no interest in going to war against anyone. He knew that once the distractions of the holidays were over, Leicester would turn his full attention back to Seph. Although he felt stronger after only a week of uninterrupted sleep, he worried about his ability to hide it from the headmaster.
Students trickled back during the last weekend of winter break. At the end of fall term, Seph had felt himself sliding into the abyss. Now he was eager to see Trevor, wondering if his friend had contacted Sloane’s and what the response had been. Though he checked his room several times, Trevor still hadn’t arrived by late Sunday night.
A message had gone out over the intranet that there would be a student assembly in the auditorium of the art and music building early in the morning on the first day of the term. So Monday morning, Seph knocked at Trevor’s door just before eight o’clock to see if he wanted to walk over to the assembly together. Still no answer. Probably already gone, afraid he’ll be late, Seph thought as he slogged through the snow to the art building.
The auditorium was nearly full when Seph arrived, so he sat in the back. The hall reverberated with voices grumbling about being back at school, exchanging stories about the winter holidays. Seph nodded to Troy and Harrison, who were sitting toward the middle. Even Jason slipped into the room at the last minute, taking a seat close to the door.
Gregory Leicester mounted the stage at the front and called for quiet. He looked out over the students, as if mapping the faces in the crowd. Seph thought the headmaster had picked him out before he started speaking. He wondered if he’d noticed Jason in the back.
“This morning I must welcome you back to the Havens on a sad note. I regret to inform you that we’ve lost one of our students in a tragic episode over winter break.”
Seph knew who it was before the words were spoken. He wanted to run from the room before he heard, but it was as if he were bolted to his chair.
“Trevor Hill took his own life while he was home for the holidays.” Leicester paused. “Trevor was a boy with a great future ahead of him. He was a junior, an honor student, and a Havens success story. He was especially known for his generosity of spirit, for his willingness to help others without regard for his own safety.” Leicester’s gaze settled on Seph.
“We cannot know what was in his mind at the time of his death. But his passing represents a great loss to the school and to all of his many friends. Let’s all observe a moment of silence in memory of Trevor Hill.”
A hush fell over
the auditorium. Some of the students closed their eyes; others stared at each other, stunned. Seph slumped in his seat, eyes wide open, watching the man in the front of the room.
After a moment, Leicester spoke again. “We sent a floral arrangement on behalf of the faculty and students. We also have contact information for those who would like to send a card or letter to the family. Thank you for coming.” And then Leicester was gone out the side door.
Seph sat without moving as the rest of the students shuffled out. A series of disconnected scenes ran through his head like an endlessly repeating video. He half hoped he would wake up to find that it was all a dream.
He recalled the last time he saw Trevor in his room, before he left for the holidays:Trevor offering to contact Sloane’s from his parents’ house, and Seph agreeing. Then Jason telling him that all the student rooms were wired by the administration. Finally, the night at the amphitheater, pulling the gold chain and pendant from the remains of the fire. Now Seph knew where he had seen it before.
He pushed himself up out of his seat and forced his way through the small knots of students who still lingered in the back of the auditorium, buzzing with scandal and voyeuristic grief. He went outside and headed for the administration building at a trot, his boots crunching in the snow, his breath pluming in the clear air.
He was just passing the Alumni House when someone reached out and grabbed his arm, pulling him into a doorway.
“Where do you think you’re going?” It was Jason, of course—unnoticeable Jason.
“Leave me alone.” Seph tried to rip his arm free.
“Where are you going?”
“To see Leicester.” Seph struck out at the air, but it seemed that Jason had more than his share of arms and legs. It was like fighting an invisible octopus.
“No, you’re not, and you’d better chill out or I’ll spell you.”
Seph stopped struggling.
“Now come downstairs where we can talk.” Jason kept a tight grip on Seph’s arm, maneuvering him into the stairwell.