The Magician: An Epic Dark Fantasy Novel: Book One of the Rogue Portal Series Read Free Page B

Thought it was something else."
                  "Oh. Well, let's go, then."
                  "Yeah," he said, not sure he heard her.
                  Turning his back for a final time toward the house, he felt pressure on his back. A shove. Stumbled, thankful that his mother hadn't seen it. The house was as happy to get rid of him as he was to leave it. He didn't stop to turn around. Never looked back as he threw his last bags into the van and shut the door. Never saw the man in the crimson and gold suit wave at him with gloved hands, or the old woman who had taken the hat's place on the porch bench beside him.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     

 
    THREE
    ⌛
     
    Connor's dorm room boasted little space and even less color, but given the fact that he'd been assigned to a room without a roommate and decorating had never been his niche, it didn't lessen his relief.  Sitting on the edge of the bed he took in the new surroundings and smiled. So this was how it felt to have a place to himself. To be able to breathe. To break free of the home that had suffocated him for so long.
                  But freedom remained elusive - he knew that. Running his hands through his hair, elbows on his knees, he imagined his mother, driving down the long tree-lined road, through the last fragments of peace she'd be able to claim before returning to the beast of a house they'd labeled a home. Would she be safe? Would the evil that he felt there, the embodied but invisible darkness, come to find her in her sleep - if it waited that long? Would it lock her in, take her mind, complete its work until it wrote its final chapter. Matching cracks in the upper banister its final words upon the tombstone of Connor's family?
                  He didn't want to think about it, but could think of little else.
                  A knock at the open door to his room interrupted his thinking, and he looked up with a start.
                  "Sorry...Connor Galveston?"
                  The man's head nearly reached the top of the door frame, his narrow limbs accompanied by thick-rimmed black glasses, a blue plaid shirt, and a mess of unkempt hair that seemed piled rather than placed on his head. He carried the appearance of a person who'd just pulled an all-nighter in a tech lab, and the laptop he toted completed the image like a period completes a sentence.
                  "Yes, that's me."
                  The man broke out into a wiry, unsure smile.
                  "Oh, good, um. S...sorry to interrupt, it's just um. They said that I was supposed to room with you. I know your room wasn't scheduled to have anyone in it but you, but I'm a last-minute addition, and they..."
                  He trailed off, offering Connor an apologetic look. He knew that look. In a single glance, years of bullying, loneliness, and friendless lunches spent in the corner of the cafeteria played across his face like a movie, and it moved him to compassion.
                  "Hey, no worries. The more the merrier, it was getting a little lonely in here."
                  Connor flashed him a smile, and the man's relief was palpable.
                  "Hey, thanks. Um. I'm Stuart McElroy."
                  He extended a nervous, thin hand, and Connor shook it, smiling again.
                  "Nice to meet you." He glanced at the man's laptop. "That all you brought?"
                  Stuart laughed and shook his head, placing the laptop on the free bed. Reaching behind the door into the hallway, he revealed a box. One he'd had all along but, Connor thought, he'd probably hidden, just in case he'd told him to get lost. Even though Connor couldn't have said no if he'd wanted to, it wasn't hard to believe that Stuart was more than used to people telling him no, even if convention