Free Blood Moon (Book Three - The Ravenscliff Series) by Geoffrey Huntington Page B

bind the basement room with mystical energy to keep her from breaking free, energy that would also surround her even on walks we might take in the courtyard.”
    “No,” Devon said. “I’m not putting her back in the basement. Or in the tower, either. Now that we know she exists, she ought to live in a normal room. She can’t be treated like a prisoner, even if she is. She needs help. There must be some kind of help we can get for her.”
    Mrs. Crandall laughed derisively. “What? Like some Nightwing psychiatrist?”
    “Well, yeah.” Devon turned to Bjorn. “There are doctors for sorcerers, aren’t there? There must be.”
    “Well, yes,” Bjorn said, nodding his little head, “there are shamans and other practitioners of the mind and body who work with Nightwing. In fact, ma’am, I recommended one for the lady when I first came here …”
    “She needs no quack doctors, Nightwing or otherwise,” Mrs. Crandall insisted, cutting him off. “Devon, you may put her in my mother’s old room. I’ll allow that. It’s well appointed, with a lovely view, but far enough removed from the rest of the house so as to keep us out of harm’s way.”
    Devon figured for now that was as much as he’d get out of her. “Okay,” he said. “So what do I do? Just concentrate …?”
    “There was a time,” Mrs. Crandall said, a certain wistfulness creeping into her voice, “when all I would have had to do was blink one eye and all this would be accomplished. It’s an easy task, easily performed, when one has had the best teachers.”
    “Which you did , right, Mother?” Cecily asked, eager for stories of her mother’s Nightwing past, stories she was usually so reluctant to reveal.
    “Oh, yes,” said Amanda Muir Crandall, a faraway look in her eye. It was the first time Devon had ever seen her nostalgic for her days as a sorceress. “Thaddeus brought in some wonderful teachers …”
    “Thaddeus,” Devon said softly. He knew Thaddeus Underwood was the name his father, Ted March, had used while he was a Guardian here at Ravenscliff. If only he had taught Devon in the way he had taught the Muirs, educating him in all the mysteries and majesty of the Nightwing, rather than keeping his heritage a secret for so long …
    “Oh, Mother, I so wish you hadn’t renounced your powers,” Cecily said. “Then I could be a sorceress, too …”
    “No!” Mrs. Crandall snapped out of her reverie. “It was too dangerous a life! We are better off as we are, living as ordinary people.” She stood and pulled her daughter to her. “I couldn’t bear losing any more of my family.”
    She looked over at Devon deliberately.
    “And that means you, too, Devon,” she said, her voice tender. “So please be careful. Do what you must, and then let us be done with it.”

    Devon didn’t have time to ponder Mrs. Crandall’s words long, whether by calling him a part of her family she was admitting he was her son. She was out of the room before he could say another word, hustling Cecily upstairs and leaving Devon in the parlor to concentrate on corralling Crazy Lady.
    Everybody seemed to have forgotten it was his birthday.
    He sighed. It was a lot to ask a guy to do: summon energy to contain a fellow sorcerer, all before getting ready for school. School —it hit him that his books and geometry homework were on his desk. They were just smoldering ashes now. Great, just great.
    “Concentrate,” he told himself, trying to block out any other thoughts. He stood in the middle of the room, surrounded by the relics of the Muir family’s Nightwing past. Horatio Muir’s eyes stared down at him from the wall. Devon took a deep breath. “Concentrate on finding Crazy Lady.”
    But he couldn’t see her. He wasn’t concentrating hard enough, he supposed. He pressed his palms against his temples and closed his eyes. “Come on, Crazy Lady, wherever you are,” he murmured. “Fun and games are over. You went too far this time, trying to burn the