The Sorcerer Heir (Heir Chronicles) (36 page)

He wants me to testify,
Emma had said.
He wants me to support his story. I said I would, but I won’t.

But maybe the wizard had overheard Emma, that night by the lake. She and Jonah were talking while DeVries lay on the floor of the gazebo. Jonah struggled to remember what she’d said. It seemed like she’d accused Jonah of all kinds of crimes—crimes that he was mostly guilty of. He took a quick breath, braced himself, and looked up at Natalie, who was staring at him like she hardly recognized him. Because Natalie knew that Emma had witnessed a massacre of wizards at her father’s house. Natalie was, after all, the one who’d called Jonah in for the rescue when Emma was being held prisoner at the Bratenahl house. And Natalie would remember that it was Jonah who had convinced them both to keep quiet about it.

“All I’ve heard is ‘Emma witnessed this, Emma saw that,’” Rudy said. “What does Emma say?”

“Emma wasn’t at the hearing,” Charlie said. “But DeVries claims that she agreed to testify in support of his story.”

“Emma agreed to set Jonah
up
?” Alison half stood, her hands gripping the arms of her chair.

Charlie nodded. “So he says. But she didn’t show, and DeVries claims we’ve either killed her or we’re holding her prisoner.”

“That’s bullshit,” Rudy said, pulling out his phone. “Let’s call her.”

“Emma’s gone,” Jonah said without thinking.

Rudy looked up from his phone. “Gone where?”

“Away.”

Everyone looked at Jonah. Nobody said anything, but Jonah shuddered under the wave of mistrust washing over him.

Jonah sighed. “Look, I told her to leave, that I was worried that something bad was going to go down, and I didn’t want her caught in it.”

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed. “So you knew this was coming?”

“Not exactly this, but—”

“And you’re sure you don’t know where she is?”

“I didn’t want to know.”

They all looked at one another. Nobody seemed to know what to say.

“I’m calling her anyway,” Rudy said, finally, and he did, putting it on speaker. They all waited while it rang, and when it went to voice mail, he stumbled over the message. “Um. This is Rudy. If you get this, please call back. Something bad’s going down, and it’s really urgent. Call any time, day or night.” He put his phone away.

“Well,” Gabriel said, massaging his temples. “Maybe we can still sort this out.” He pulled out his own phone. “Let me call Mercedes, and perhaps we—”

“There’s more, Gabriel,” Charlie said. “DeVries is saying that
you
are the one giving the orders, that Jonah didn’t act on his own. You’re heading up a conspiracy of Thorn Hill survivors, bent on destroying the mainline guilds. It’s supposedly headquartered here at the Anchorage.”

“What?” Gabriel slammed both hands down on the table. His phone case splintered, sending shards of plastic in all directions. He pointed a shaking finger at Jonah. “This is
your
fault. What possessed you to murder mainliners in the middle of the Sanctuary, including Madison Moss’s little sister? Didn’t you realize that the blame would automatically fall on
us
?”

“I didn’t kill anyone at McCauley’s,” Jonah said. “Why is it that you suspect me instead of her?” He tilted his head toward Lilith.

“Could it be because DeVries
identified
you?” Gabriel’s voice rose to a shout. “Could it be because you’ve been arguing for so long that we should be going after wizards and not our own kind?”

Lilith looked a bit stunned at this revelation. “Is that true, Jonah?” she said.

“It’s true,” Jonah said, “but I did
not
propose that we go out and slaughter mainliners, regardless of guilt. My idea was that we should try to find out who was actually guilty of poisoning the wells—if that even happened at all.” He turned to Gabriel. “Anyway, if we’re looking at history, you said yourself that if the mainliner killings went on long enough, we would get the blame.”

“It’s not a matter of blame,” Lilith said. “It’s a matter of credit. We’ve been doing your job for you. We are all Thorn Hill survivors, damaged by the crime that was committed a decade ago, still paying the price for that. They murdered
all
of us, Gabriel—if we’re dead, then you are, too. Don’t marginalize us because
you
haven’t realized it yet.”

“That makes no sense at all,” Gabriel said, but he lacked his usual confidence.

Lilith put her hand on Gabriel’s arm. “It does make sense. It’s their guilt that feeds all these conspiracy theories. It would make total sense if we took revenge on them, and they know it. And if their dying could save the lives of those they slaughtered—isn’t that what we call justice?”

“No,” Gabriel said. Avoiding Jonah’s eyes, he added, “Perhaps we should arrange for them to question Jonah. That will give him the chance to convince them that their suspicions are misplaced.”

Jonah wasn’t sure what to make of that. Was Gabriel relying on Jonah’s charm to save the day? Or did it mean that his mentor was willing to make a sacrifice to maintain the status quo, and that sacrifice was Jonah?

Alison must have thought the same thing, because she stood up and said, “No. You can’t give them Jonah. That’s just wrong.”

Gabriel looked blindsided. “It is not my intention to give them Jonah,” he said irritably. “Did I say that?”

“Good,” Alison said. “Because that’s so not going to happen.” She sat down again.

Jonah had to admit that, under treatment with blood magic, Alison was much more like her old self. The friend he remembered.

“You’re not going to be able to go back to the way things were, anyway,” Lilith said, “even if you give them Jonah. If we can’t come up with a permanent solution, the cease-fire will be over, mainliners will continue to die, and sooner or later, the guilds will decide it’s time to eliminate the problem, just like they did at Thorn Hill. What will you do once you lose your bodies? Will you drift aimlessly in the ether, or will you join the rest of us in trying to win back some of what we lost?”

“It won’t be our decision to make,” Charlie said. “They’re coming here, and they’re planning to question Jonah—and you—and search this place, whether we like it or not.”

“We can’t let that happen, Gabriel,” Lilith said. “You know that.”

“Who’s coming?” Mike asked, apparently already strategizing.

“I don’t know most of the people at the meeting,” Charlie said. “But it sounds like the whole council is coming, including Madison Moss. You know, the one they call the Dragon.”

Gabriel and Lilith looked at each other. Then back at Charlie. Gabriel weighed the battered phone in his hand. “Do you have any idea how much time we have?”

Charlie hesitated. “I don’t know. DeVries wants to move now, because he thinks we’re holding Emma, and we might kill her if we know they’re coming after her. We’ll have some warning, because McCauley is supposed to call and try to schedule a meeting. If I had to guess, I would say in the next few days.”

Jonah tried to make a quick exit after the meeting with Gabriel, but of course Natalie caught up with him anyway. She planted herself in his path, a familiar fire in her eyes. “Talk to me, Jonah,” she said. “What have you been up to?”

“I don’t know what you—”

“Cut the bullshit; it’s me you’re talking to,” Natalie said. “I feel like I’ve been lied to and set up, and I don’t like it.”

“We all have,” Jonah said. “Gabriel—”

“Gabriel’s sins are no excuse for your bad behavior,” Natalie said. “I’m having a little trouble figuring out who the good guys are.”

“Good luck with that,” Jonah said softly. “There are no good guys.” And he walked away.

“
I
thought you liked barbecue,” Mickey said, scrubbing at his face with a napkin. It came away orange.

“I do like barbecue,” Emma said. “I’m just not very hungry.” She pushed her sandwich toward him. “You want this?”

He shook his head. “You better eat that, honey—keep your strength up.”

“I don’t want any more.” Emma stretched her legs out, leaned back against the tree, and closed her eyes. It wasn’t long before she heard the rustle of the wax paper as Mickey helped himself to her sandwich. He was not one to let food go to waste. Just like Sonny Lee. She smiled sadly.

Sometime in mid-afternoon of this long and heartbreaking day, Mickey had driven miles and miles to the nearest crossroads and brought back food. In the meantime, Emma had searched the rest of the building. She’d rooted through the small apartment with a single bed and a kitchen area, bare as a jail cell. There were closets full of clothing, cobwebby with dust. Dressy clothes, work clothes, uniforms of all kinds. Disguises. In the drawer of the nightstand, a torn photograph. It was a picture of Emma, maybe four years old, holding Tyler’s hand. On her other side, somebody had been ripped away, right through their joined hands. It was like holding up a mirror to what had happened in real life.

I don’t get it, Emma thought. Everybody else at Thorn Hill either died or got damaged or ended up with some oddball power. Everybody but me.

Why am I different? As far as I can tell, I’m just a regular person who glows. Was that what my mother intended? Or did things go wrong?

Yes, things went wrong. Things went very, very wrong.

“What are you going to do?” Mickey asked, breaking into her thoughts.

“I don’t know. All I know is I can’t go back there. I can’t face those people.” She hadn’t been real specific, but when she told Mickey that Tyler had done something terrible to people who were now her friends, he hadn’t seemed at all surprised.

“It wasn’t you that did it,” Mickey said. “It was him. You were just a little kid.”

“I know, but all this time I’ve been all high and mighty, telling people that I wanted the truth, no matter the cost, that I hated the lie. Blaming this person and that person for my troubles, never knowing that I had no business throwing rocks.” She’d thought she was cried out, but more tears escaped from under her lashes and ran down her face. Blotting at them with the backs of her hands, she said, “I just never thought that the truth would hurt this much. I don’t know how I can ever turn out to be a good person, seeing who I come from.”

Mickey thought about this for a while, then shook a cigarette out of the pack and lit up. He took a deep drag, released a stream of smoke, then said, “You ever notice how sometimes, in the middle of July, right downtown, you’ll see a flower poking up through a crack in the asphalt. And you think, What a stupid place to set down roots. It’ll get run over, or it’ll dry up and blow away. But it hangs on, and it grows, and it blooms. Somehow, against the odds, it finds what it needs and it makes that place better for being there.” He looked sideways at Emma. “That’s you, Memphis. You’re a survivor.”

Emma couldn’t help smiling, though there wasn’t much joy in it. “Why, Mickey, who knew you were a poet?”

“I’m not a poet, but I know good when I see it, and I see it in you,” Mickey said.

Emma thought about this one thing Tyler had said in the note he’d pinned to the binder of music.

I like to think that there’s a little bit of me in you: a love of music and a stubborn streak a mile wide. But we’re different, you and me, and I don’t forget it. You’re strong, and you’re tough, and you tell the truth. You’re a good person, Emma. I’m none of those things.

“You don’t have to go back up north if you don’t want to,” Mickey said, breaking into her thoughts. “But I think you might want to set things straight, because that’s the kind of person you are. You’re a quiet one. You keep to yourself, but when you do speak up, you tell the truth: in your music and every other way.”

“Maybe,” Emma said. “But if I’m going to do that, I need to do it face-to-face. Not over the phone or by e-mail. They deserve the right to ask questions, or spit at me if that’s what they want to do.”

But there was something else. She was trying to recall what Gabriel or Natalie or somebody had said about treating the Thorn Hill survivors. That because they didn’t know exactly what happened or what poison was used, it was like they were working in the dark. A spark of hope kindled within her. Maybe there was something in one of those notebooks that would help. Some clue that would help them get better, or at least hold their own. She stood, dusting off the seat of her jeans. “Can you help me carry these notebooks to the truck?”

Mickey was big in the shoulders and arms. He could carry a lot at a time, but he moved slow. There was a lot to carry, and it was dark by the time they finished. She wished she had her cell phone so she could take pictures.

Emma slept through the long drive back to Memphis, and then the two of them moved the boxes of records and notebooks from his truck to her car. It was the wee hours of the morning when they moved the last of it and stood awkwardly in the alleyway.

“Why don’t you stay here tonight?” Mickey said. “I can make up the bed in that spare room, where you stayed right after Sonny Lee passed. You can get a fresh start in the morning.”

Emma shook her head. “I’m going to hit the road,” she said. “The sooner I get moving, the sooner I’ll be there. And if I go to bed now, who knows when I’ll wake up.”

“You know I start early,” Mickey said. “I can make sure you’re up.”

“You know I’m a night person,” Emma said. “I like driving at night.”

“You got your phone?”

She shook her head. “I left that back in Cleveland. I was afraid somebody could trace it.”

“I don’t like the idea of you driving that far without a phone,” Mickey said.

“I drove all the way down here without a phone,” Emma said.

“Well, be careful,” Mickey said. “And, remember—the offer still stands. I’d be proud to have you go in with me.”