The Dragon Heir Read online

  Madison hadn’t said a word about Brice Roper or the shed. What good would it do? It wouldn’t turn either one of them into different people, people who agreed on anything. Madison would own Booker Mountain in three months. It would be up to somebody else to make the next move.

  Brice had told Carlene some of what had happened at the Ropers—Madison was sure of that. Carlene would sneak rabbity looks at her from the corners of her eyes as if expecting some kind of confrontation. Not that they saw much of each other, what with Carlene’s work and sleep schedules and Madison’s habit of spending her afternoons secluded in the barn. That kind of kept their encounters to a minimum.

  Madison opened the refrigerator, scanning the meager offerings, wondering what to fix for supper.

  And then Carlene asked, “Who’s that boy you got stashed in the barn?”

  Madison yanked her head out of the refrigerator and swung around, banging her elbow. “Ow! What?”

  “He your boyfriend?”

  “Ah . . . well, no,” Madison stuttered. “He’s just a friend who needed a place to stay.”

  “Well, tell your friend he can stay in the house if he wants. There’s plenty of room. That’s rude, making him stay out there.” Carlene gestured toward the other chair with her cigarette. “Sit down a minute, honey.”

  Madison shut the refrigerator, came and sat down at the table. “Okay. I’ll tell him, but I think he’s leaving pretty soon.” She hesitated. “Please, Mama, don’t tell anybody he’s here.”

  Naturally, Carlene didn’t commit to anything. “You don’t even have a crush on him?”

  Madison tore the paper towel that stood in for a napkin into careful strips. “No, I don’t. What makes you say that?”

  “I’m trying to figure out why you don’t like Brice.”

  “Mama, there are a hundred reasons why I don’t like Brice, beginning with the fact that he’s a self-centered, arrogant . . . jerk.”

  “But good-looking. And rich.” Carlene waved away self-centered and arrogant like his other stellar qualities canceled them out.

  “Maybe you should marry him, then.”

  Carlene considered this, then shook her head. “He likes you.”

  “He likes Booker Mountain. If you owned it, he’d like you.” Careful, Madison, she thought. Just calm down.

  “If I did own it, I’d sure consider selling it to him.”

  “Where would you live, then?”

  Carlene looked around the kitchen, with its battered linoleum floors and tired flowered wallpaper, everything glazed over with years of propane residue. “Anywhere. Anywhere but here.” She paused. “Think what it would mean to Grace and John Robert if they could move someplace with good schools, where they’d have friends close by to play with.”

  She stubbed out her cigarette. “They’re talking serious money, Maddie, enough to pay for college, for a new house, for . . . for everything. We’d be millionaires. We could move wherever we wanted and make a fresh start, where people don’t have . . . attitudes.”

  Booker Mountain is mine, Madison wanted to say, though she felt like it belonged to Grace and John Robert, too. But it wouldn’t belong to any of them if they sold it away. If Min hadn’t been so stubborn, it would be gone already.

  Madison imagined the bulldozers coming in, the draglines scraping the top off her mountain, all of Coalton County dusted black from the blasting.

  “Mama, you know what they’re planning to do to the mountain,” Madison said. “Brice told you about it. How could you ever let that happen?”

  “Now, baby,” Carlene coaxed. “Don’t exaggerate. They’ll fix it up, after. Besides, there’s other mountains. We could move out west somewhere, like Las Vegas. There’s mountains all over out there.”

  Madison thought of the little graveyard upslope in the hollow, the crazily tilted headstones like crooked teeth where the frost had pushed them out of the ground. There was the cave by the waterfall where she’d found Native American petroglyphs and never told anyone because she was afraid somebody would sneak in and wreck it, the way people always did. The old iron furnace by the creek, built by her great-grandfather, one of his crazy, money-making schemes.

  She felt like she was under siege, between Brice Roper and Carlene and Children’s Services and Seph and the onrushing wizard war and the Dragonheart pulling at her asleep and awake.

  “Do we have to talk about this now?” she asked wearily.

  “Madison.” Carlene looked her in the eyes. “Do you want to wait until Grace and John Robert are growed up? We’re not the kind of people who can afford to be romantic about things. We have to be practical.”

  Practical. Coming from Carlene. “Did Mr. Roper ask you to talk to me?” Madison demanded.

  Carlene nodded. She snapped and unsnapped her cigarette case. “I told him I would. It don’t make sense, the way you’re treating him and Brice.”

  “Well, If I have to decide now, the answer is no.”

  “Don’t decide now, then.” Carlene stood and picked up her pocketbook, fished inside and pulled out a twenty. “I have to go to work. Here. Go on and take the kids to the movies in town tonight. And don’t be stubborn. Sometimes you have to think of someone besides yourself.”

  Torches guttered in sconces along the walls, painting the great stone hall in reds and yellows. Prisoners processed up the aisle to the altar at the front, chains clanking, clad in rough-spun hooded robes that bore the insignia of their Houses. The Red Rose. The White Rose. The Silver Bear. The Dragon. In an endless line.

  The executioner stood beside the altar, holding a great staff with the Dragonheart mounted at the tip. A clerk stood alongside, reading from a parchment, calling names, confirming the sentences. Many of the names were familiar: Leander Hastings. Linda Downey. Claude D’Orsay. Jessamine Longbranch. Jackson Swift. Jason Haley. Joseph McCauley. The charge: Anarchy. Rebellion. Murder. Each of the condemned knelt at the altar and mutely laid his head upon the stone. The executioner raised the great staff, pointed it at the prisoner. Flames erupted from the Dragonheart, incinerating the condemned in an instant. The stench of burned flesh filled the hall.

  The executioner’s hood fell back, revealing her own face.

  “Maddie, wake up! Maddie, you’re dreaming.” Someone pulled at her arm, practically yanking it out of its socket.

  Maddie opened her eyes and Grace’s worried face came into view—solemn gray eyes and a sprinkling of freckles, straight brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. “You’re scaring me, yelling like that.”

  “Oh.” Maddie propped on her elbows and tried to swallow away the bad taste in her mouth. She went to sleep thinking of Seph. She woke up thinking of the Dragonheart. Now they were invading her dreams. “Sorry. What time is it, anyway?”

  “I don’t know; it’s late,” Grace said, switching on the lamp. “You must’ve fell asleep on the couch after supper. Did you ever take Jason anything to eat?”

  Madison shook her head. “No, I . . . drat!” She focused on the kitchen clock. “It’s after eight o’clock. I was going to take you and J.R. to the movies tonight.”

  “Can’t we still go?” Grace begged.

  “It’s too late tonight, there’s just an eight o’clock showing. We’ll go tomorrow, to a matinee, and then we’ll have enough money for popcorn, too. Okay?”

  “Okay. I guess.” Grace sat on the edge of the couch. “What’d you dream about, anyway?”

  The Dragonheart, Madison almost said. She massaged her forehead with the heels of her hands. Even when she didn’t focus on it, it shimmered in the periphery of her mind, stirring up the kind of longing she associated with art. And Seph McCauley.

  When she didn’t answer, Grace said, “You never used to have nightmares.”

  “Maybe I was just less noisy about it.” Madison shook her head, trying to rattle loose the images that remained. “Thanks for waking me up, Gracie,” she said, forgetting that Grace now officially hated to be called Gracie. “I’d better take Jason s
omething to eat.”

  Madison poured iced tea into a metal Thermos—the one her father used to carry to the mine. She slathered leftover biscuits with butter and honey and rolled them in a napkin, wrapped leftover fried chicken in waxed paper. She supposed she should ask Jason to come up and eat at the house, but it didn’t matter now, anyway. He’d have to leave. Carlene couldn’t keep a secret as well as Grace and J.R. The whole town would know about Jason inside of a week.

  Surely Warren Barber must’ve gone back to wherever he came from. Nobody in town had mentioned seeing him. He would stick out wherever he was, but especially in Coal Grove.

  The security light created a little oasis in the black woods. The outbuildings threw long shadows across the grass as she crossed the yard, past the flowerbeds where Min’s peonies and bearded irises were pushing their way out of the ground. Bats fluttered like black handkerchiefs among the trees at the edge of the clearing.

  Hamlet rose and dog-stretched in greeting, nudging his food bowl with his nose.

  “This isn’t for you,” Madison said, scratching him behind the ears with her free hand. “You already had your dinner, remember?”

  Hamlet stiffened and pointed his graying muzzle toward the woods, the hair around his collar ruffing out. He growled and drew his lips back from his teeth, which was a surprise, because he was stone deaf and half blind.

  “Hey, Hamlet,” Maddie said, shivering a little, peering into the trees. “What’d you spot? A ghost? A raccoon?”

  She saw several shapes moving in the trees, and for a moment, she thought it really might be ghosts, since they had a spooky glow about them. And then she realized what they must be, and dropped Jason’s supper in the dirt.

  Four wizards stopped just inside the cover of the trees and stood, looking toward the house. They hadn’t seen her yet, hidden as she was in the shadow of the barn.

  That they were there for mischief, she had no doubt. The fact that they were all wearing black hoods with eyeholes cut out confirmed it. They must have left their car down the road a way.

  Her truck was parked inside the barn, but Grace and J.R. were watching TV in the house and there was no way she could collect them and get back to the barn and out of there without being intercepted. She could wave the shotgun at the intruders, but that was in the house, too.

  She stood frozen, thoughts spiraling. It might be the Roses coming after her. Seph had warned her that might happen. Or it could be the Roses, or Barber, or practically anybody at all, coming after Jason.

  The wizards left the trees and moved silently toward the house, walking purposefully. They were dressed all in black, framed in light.

  “I thought you said nobody’d be home,” one of the wizards said. “The house is all lit up.” To her surprise, his voice said he was local.

  Madison hadn’t realized she was holding her breath, until she let it out. Okay, she thought. At least this problem is homegrown.

  “Don’t worry,” the tallest wizard said. “They probably just left the lights on.” His voice sounded familiar, but it was hard to tell, muffled through the hood.

  “You’re sure there’s no kids in there,” the first wizard persisted.

  “Will you shut up!” the tallest wizard hissed. Madison thought he must be the leader. “We came all the way up here, let’s do it and go.” They continued moving toward the house.

  Then Madison remembered Grace’s story about the burning of the shed. There were four or five of them, out here in the dark. They had torches....

  No. I will not let this happen, she thought. Not on my mountain.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing on my property?” She shouted it out really loud, hoping to warn Grace and J.R. in the house and Jason in the barn.

  The wizards jumped at the sound of her voice and milled around in confusion, peering into the darkness, trying to figure out where she was.

  With any luck, Grace would be levelheaded enough to grab J.R. and leave out the back door. She’d know better than to come out and get mixed up in this.

  “I knew it. I knew somebody was home,” the first wizard said. “Look, she can’t stop us. What’s she going to do?” The tall wizard continued walking toward the house, trailed by his accomplices, who kept looking back over their shoulders.

  “What are you doing?” Madison called. When he didn’t answer, she screamed, “There are kids in that house!”

  “Well, then you’d better get them out now,” the wizard said coldly. “Because we’re going to burn this dump to the ground.” He extended his hands, and fire coalesced around his fingertips.

  And then she knew for sure. “Brice Roper! You come away from there or I’ll have the sheriff all over you!”

  That brought him up short. He stood frozen for a moment, then shrugged and swung around, yanking off his hood and raking a hand through his mashed hair. “Hello, Madison.”

  “Brice,” one of the other wizards whined. “This isn’t what we ...”

  “Shut up, I said,” Brice muttered. “I should have just handled this on my own. Don’t make me sorry I brought you along.”

  “I’m warning you,” Madison said. “You’ll never get away with it.”

  Brice laughed. “Who’s going to believe you? This place is a firetrap. It’ll be your word against mine, and I’ll be sure and have an alibi and ten witnesses to put me someplace else. If anyone does believe you, I’ll persuade them they don’t.”

  “People know me around here,” Madison said, trying to sound more confident than she felt. “They’ll believe me.”

  Right. When have they ever believed you about anything?

  “Really? You think so? I say the word, and you’re a witch. I say the word, and you burned your house down yourself.

  The people in this town are sheep, Madison, and I can drive them wherever I want.”

  “You’re the ones who set all the fires last year,” Madison breathed.

  Brice bowed mockingly. “Proves my point, wouldn’t you say? Here we were, burning up the whole valley, and these idiots are blaming you. If the whole town turned against me, I’d sell out and move away. But you didn’t. Oh, no. Instead, you pull a shotgun on them. You’re stubborn as a rock. And about as smart.”

  In that moment, the gut-clenching sensation went away and she was just really, really angry. She strode toward them, into the light. “People know what you are. Some of them, anyway.”

  “I’ll tell you one thing they know,” Brice said. “My father provides jobs for half the county—anybody who’s making a decent living. What’s going to happen when we close up the mine? This place’ll just dry up and blow away. Booker Mountain will keep Roper Coal going another ten years or more.”

  “And then what?”

  “Well, then they’ll have a nice flat place to park something on, won’t they? It’ll be the only level piece of land in the whole county.”

  “I won’t sell,” Madison said. “Not to you, I won’t.”

  “Where are Carlene and the kids going to live, then, after I burn this place down?” Brice snorted. “You can’t even afford a phone. I bet you can’t scrape up the first month’s rent. You going to pitch a tent, or what?”

  Madison clenched her fists and took a step forward. “How can you live with yourself?”

  “It’s your fault. You should’ve agreed to sell. That’s the way the world works. Everybody knows that. But not you. You walk around like you’re royalty in rags or something. Like you’re better than me. Me!” he repeated, his voice rising.

  “Brice,” one of the other wizards said. A girl, from her voice. “Let’s do it or go.”

  Brice collected himself. “All right, Madison. You have five minutes to get those kids out of the house, and anything else you want to keep. There can’t be much worth saving.” He smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ll still give you a good price. The house doesn’t add any value, if you know what I mean. We’d just tear it down.” He paused, and when Madison didn’t say anything, added,
“You’ll thank me in a year.”

  Madison caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye, and then someone screeched in pain. One of the wizards—the whiny one—went down on the ground, clutching at his head. He lay there, groaning, pressing his hands into his bleeding scalp.

  Then Madison saw Jason, backpack slung over his shoulder, J.R.’s baseball bat in his hand, backing away from the downed wizard. A baseball bat against wizardry? She opened her mouth, meaning to shout, to say something. Jason shook his head, raising his hand to shush her.

  And then she realized—he was unnoticeable to the other wizards in the yard. Noticeable only to her, the elicitor.

  “Hey! Carl? What’s up?” Brice called. “You trip over your feet or something?”

  Carl only moaned some more.

  Jason pulled a knife from his backpack and headed directly for another of the wizards, a stocky boy in low-slung camouflage pants and those giant high-tops. Jason came in close, thrust in and up with the knife, four quick strokes, and the wizard screeched and clutched at his midsection. He ripped open his shirt, revealing a crude M scratched into his chest and belly. “Wh-wh-what’s going on?” he mumbled. “I’m bleeding! Something stuck me. It—it looks like a . . .” He looked up at Madison, eyes widening. “Did ...did you do that?”

  Thinking quickly, Madison drew herself up, tossed back her hair, and smiled at him. “What do you think?”

  The three wizards still on their feet bunched up, facing Madison. She advanced, hands extended, and they retreated. All of the anger, fear, and humiliation of the past year bubbled up inside her. She found herself wishing she did have magic, that she could incinerate them with a gesture.

  Jason kept moving. He pulled a metal can from his backpack, one that Madison recognized from the barn.

  What is he doing?

  He unscrewed the cap and upended it over the girl wizard. The girl shrieked and covered her head with her arms, fighting off her invisible opponent.

  “What is this?” She sniffed, then screamed and ripped off the hood, flinging it away, revealing a pale, horrified face. “That’s kerosene!” She backed away from Madison, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “If you think I’m going to set fire to a house while I’m drenched in kerosene, you’re crazy.” She turned and fled into the woods.