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

house down. Waking me up and singing—”
    He opened his eyes.
    “How did she know it was my birthday?” he asked out loud.
    She’s a sorcerer , he told himself. She has an inner Voice of intuition, too .
    But maybe she was there , when Mrs. Crandall gave birth …
    “Concentrate,” he commanded himself again, but now there was a sound to distract him. The soft sound of crying. His eyes darted around the room. They came to rest on the portrait of Emily Muir.
    Jackson’s wife—whose ghost haunted this house and Devil’s Rock. Whose prayerbook had been in Crazy Lady’s room …
    Devon approached the portrait. How pretty Emily had been, so blond, so innocent. And yes, the eyes of the portrait were dripping tears.
    “Are you trying to tell me something, Emily?” Devon asked. “Something about what’s happening here with Crazy Lady? What was your connection to her?”
    The tears just rolled down the oil paint, one after another.
    Devon knew the legends. He’d heard them the first day he came to Ravenscliff. How, one stormy Halloween night, Emily had found her husband with another woman and, in despair, had thrown herself from Devil’s Rock. Devon knew, having confronted Jackson Muir in the Hell Hole, that the tragedy profoundly determined the course of the Madman’s subsequent evil, so great was his grief and guilt.
    Devon returned to concentrating on finding Crazy Lady, but again had no luck. She’d kept herself hidden from him before; she clearly did not want to be found. She was pitting her sorcery against his.
    He sought out Bjorn and told him that if he couldn’t find her with his mind, they’d have to do it the old-fashioned way—with their eyes and ears. He also determined that he’d need to miss school—who knew how long finding an insane sorceress would take? It was just as well, since his homework was charred beyond recognition.
    Bjorn took the basement and first floor; Devon headed into the West Wing. It always creeped him out going in there. This was where the portal to the Hell Hole existed, in the secret room with no windows. There was a portrait in there, too, that Devon found fascinating: of a boy who looked exactly like him, in the clothes of an earlier time, further evidence of a connection between himself and Ravenscliff.
    He didn’t need to check the secret room, however; if Crazy Lady were at the Hell Hole, he’d feel it. Every cell of his body would be vibrating. Instead, he explored the passageways within the walls of the West Wing. He slunk down the narrow, cobwebby corridors, sometimes not more than a foot wide, holding his magic globe of light in his hand. What better place for her to hide out in, in a part of the house that had been closed off, unused since the time of Emily Muir.
    Of course, Devon reasoned, Crazy Lady might have discovered the sorcerer’s trick of invisibility. He could have been walking right past her and never have known it. A sorcerer could make himself or herself invisible to all senses, including the sense of intuition. Rolfe called it the “Cloak of Obscurity”—he’d read about it in one of the books. Devon had used the trick to avoid detection by Isobel the Apostate.
    So Crazy Lady knew her sorcery. She’s good , Devon thought. Mrs. Crandall might claim she’d never been trained adequately, but it was clear that she’d learned enough to remain undetected.
    There must be another way to find her , Devon told himself. If she was physically invisible and shielded from his Nightwing gaze, she was going to win their game of hide-and-seek every time. There’s got to be another way …
    How he wished he’d had a Guardian in the way most Nightwing kids had. Not that Rolfe hadn’t been trying to do his best, but he was often as much at a loss as Devon. If only Devon had been able to go to the great Nightwing school run by Wiglaf in the fifteenth century. Devon had met Wiglaf during his trip into the past and had seen firsthand how awesome it would have