The Sorcerer Heir (Heir Chronicles) (45 page)

“That’s what makes us human,” Emma said. “Feeling things—even pain. That’s what music does, if it’s any good: it makes you feel things. You listen to a song, and somehow you know what that person was going through when he wrote it. Or maybe it puts a name to what you’re feeling. And because you can share that, you don’t feel so alone.”

She grabbed a breath. “You may think you can’t touch anybody without hurting them, but you’re wrong.” Setting her guitar aside, she crossed the distance between them and dropped to her knees in front of him so they were face-to-face. Reflexively, he pulled his hands back, balling them into fists.

“You’ve touched me, Jonah,” she said, “and I’ll never be the same.” Their eyes met, and, once again, she saw the Jonah she knew.

“How did you do that?” he whispered.

“I guess,” she said, “I’ve finally figured out what my gift is. Now, please, put your gloves back on.”

One heartbeat. Two. And then, with a quick movement, Jonah scooped up the gloves and slid them on.

Emma breathed a sigh of relief.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll do it your way. I don’t know anyone I’d rather bet on.”

Emma put her hands on his shoulders. “You know what I think? What you call
empathy
—that knack you have for putting yourself in somebody else’s place—that’s a strength, not a weakness. Never, ever give it up.”

Jonah pulled her in for a fierce hug. Emma rested her head against his chest, so she could hear the beating of his heart and breathe in his familiar scent.

“You know what
I
think?” Jonah said, after a while.

“What?”

“The ending of that song does need work.”

“Maybe,” she said, “we can work on it together.”

W
hen you bring guns to downtown Cleveland and start firing them off, sooner or later the police are going to show up, and that’s just what happened at the Keep that night. It was a crime scene that had everything but live suspects and a plausible explanation.

There was plenty to go on. CSI could have camped there for a year, given all the evidence that needed collecting. The scene could have been a training stage for murderers—some of the victims had been hacked apart, some had been shot. There were guns all around, but everyone who had used them seemed to be dead. In fact, the vast majority of the bodies looked like they’d been dead for some time, though some were remarkably well preserved. Some of the dead were people who had been missing for months.

Madison Moss was the only seriously wounded person who was still alive. They took her to Metro, but she was out in a matter of days. Too stubborn to stay, they said.

On the night of the attack, none of the witnesses had much to say, and the perpetrators all seemed to be dead. Eventually, Ross Childers arrived, one of the rare occasions when a big-city department calls on a small-town officer for investigative help. He interviewed as many survivors as he could, and so finally, like all terrible ordeals, the long night was over.

There was a big memorial service for Gabriel Mandrake, and music superstars from all over the country showed up. It would have made sense to have had it at the Keep, in the fortress he had built, but it was closed for major cleanup. So they held it in a nearby church.

The media buzzed around Cleveland for weeks; there was plenty of fodder to keep them occupied, but when nobody would agree to an interview and the police just kept saying the investigation was ongoing, after a while they had to close up shop. Merchants and restaurateurs downtown were worried that the lurid coverage of the Carnage at the Keep, as the media called it, would deter business. In fact, the demand for zombie tours increased and the entertainment district took on a kind of edgy, dangerous appeal.

The investigation was never formally closed, but the prevailing theories seemed to be that it was either a meth-fueled turf war or it had to do with some kind of bizarre religious cult.

“
H
ow come the party always ends up at
my
house?” Kenzie said, scowling as the others filed in.

“Um, I don’t know, best sound system, maybe?” Jonah said, shutting the door behind him.

“Best light show?” Emma said, setting down sacks of takeout. “Though I have to say, Kenzie, lately, the display is not up to standard.”

Natalie eyed Kenzie critically. “
Hmmm.
Show me?” She extended her arms to demonstrate.

Grumbling, Kenzie stuck out his arms. They were rock steady, showing no telltale webbing of flame.

Natalie nodded, displaying grudging approval. “Mercedes and I think we can do even better with the symptoms once your Weirstone is completely healthy.”

“What ever happened to patient confidentiality?” Kenzie muttered. “Harry! Fill the ice bucket, please.”

“You’re not supposed to rely on Harry so much,” Natalie chided. “You’re supposed to try to do more things for yourself.”

“Harry likes doing it,” Kenzie said. “I mean, we’ve been together forever. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

“How’s the walking coming?” Natalie persisted.

“Are you ever off-duty?” Kenzie pulled up his sweater to reveal the T-shirt he had on underneath. Emblazoned on the front was
NAG
in large letters with a slash across it.

Natalie rolled her eyes.

Jonah couldn’t help smiling. Just after the standoff at the Keep, when Kenzie no longer had access to blood magic, he’d hit a low point, suffering from a major rebound reaction. During that time, Jonah scarcely left his brother’s bedside. Emma was there a lot, too. Sometimes they just sat and talked and held hands, Emma’s grip firm and warm through the leather. An anchor. Sometimes, they brought their guitars and played until light leaked in through the windows. Like an old couple, finishing each other’s musical sentences.

They were still working on the ending of that song they were writing together.

For the last few days, though, Emma had seemed distant and a bit standoffish. Jonah would catch her looking at him in this perplexed and wounded way. He wondered if it was because she was leaving for Memphis in the morning. Did she expect he’d try to talk her out of it? He would not. She deserved a chance to move on, if that’s what she wanted.

Mercedes and Natalie and some of the other healers from both Trinity and the Anchorage had worked nearly round the clock on the records from Tyler’s lab. Eventually, they identified the poison Tyler had used—it was a plant native to Brazil, and not one they’d have likely chanced on without help. It was largely unknown, so there wasn’t much out there in the way of antidotes, but once Mercedes knew the mechanism, she had a scheme for treatment.

It was Natalie who had determined that the poison embedded itself in the Weirstone, which was what made it so difficult to find and treat. They tested Weirstones from savants who had died, and confirmed it. After research trips to Memphis, and trips to Brazil, they devised a two-step process: first, extract the poison from savant Weirstones, and second, a chelation therapy to take it out of the body.

Kenzie was the first patient, because he was totally out of options. At first, the extraction made him even sicker, but he began to improve as soon as the chelation treatment began. Now, six months later, he was putting on weight and muscle, what with his daily torture sessions with the physical therapists and his ravenous appetite. He’d probably always be slender, and he’d never be as tall as Jonah, but this time his glowing good health seemed real...and permanent. For the first time that Jonah could remember, it seemed safe to look forward to a future with Kenzie in it.

“Speaking of sound systems, can you get some tunes going, bro?” Jonah said.

“Harry. Favorites playlist, please.” He watched as Jonah arranged beverages on the windowsill. “Did I miss somebody’s birthday? Or are we celebrating something else?”

“We
are
celebrating,” Natalie said. “We’re waiting for a special envoy to arrive.”

As the first bars of “Untouchable” blasted through the speakers, Rudy groaned. “You never get tired of that, do you? Is it going to be all Fault Tolerant, all the time, from here on in?”

“Why should I listen to inferior music?” Kenzie said. “Anyway, you were the one who was hot to make the EP.”

The EP project had grown out of Kenzie’s recovery. It had been on the to-do list for a while, but now they had an extra incentive to record the Kinlock catalog.

“Note to self: be careful what you wish for,” Rudy said, with a mock shudder. He gave Kenzie a sideways look. “The thing is, we need more tunes.”

“They’re coming,” Kenzie said. “The creative spirit is not like a faucet you can turn off and on. Anyway, it’s not like we’ve had nothing to do.”

“Kenzie isn’t the holdup,” Jonah said, easing himself into a chair. “I’ve got a whole lot of new material from him. It’s just that the chelation therapy wears me out. As soon as I get home, I’m done.”

“Welcome to our world, Superman,” Rudy said. “People can live totally normal lives without leaping tall buildings at a single bound.”

“If things go as expected, Jonah should keep his strength and sensory acuity,” Natalie said. “What Gabriel and Lilith did changed the architecture of our stones, so some things are hardwired. If it’s true that the uncontrollable toxic touch thing is really a side effect of the poison, then the removal of the stored poison should help that. As a matter of fact—”

“Has anyone else noticed that Natalie is getting harder and harder to understand?” Jonah said. “When did she stop speaking English?”

Natalie looked at Jonah, narrow-eyed, and he shifted his eyes away. Quit pressuring me, he thought.

Just then, the doorbell pinged.

“That’ll be Leesha,” Natalie said, leaping up and keying in the okay to enter.

“I just live here,” Kenzie murmured. “Don’t mind me.”

It
was
Leesha, and, behind her, a tall, angular Anaweir boy with platinum hair. He looked familiar, but Jonah couldn’t place him.

“Fitch!” Emma cried. She hurtled out of her chair and flung her arms around him. “I didn’t know you were home. Are you back for the whole summer?”

“Unfortunately, no,” Fitch said. “I have to be back in Cambridge for summer session in a couple weeks. I’m still catching up after being gone for fall term.”

“I hope it’s okay I brought my friend Fitch along,” Leesha said to Natalie. “You’d said that Kenzie was feeling better, and we both wanted to see him again.”

Fitch had been looking around the room. When his gaze lit on Kenzie, he made a beeline for him and bumped fists. “Kenzie! My man!”

“Fitch!” Kenzie grinned. “My jailbreak partner. Welcome to my lair.”

Seeing Jonah’s confusion, Fitch stuck his hand out. “I’m Harmon Fitch. You probably don’t remember me, but you saved my life in the Flats just before Christmas.”

“Ah,” Jonah said. “I remember—you were at the Halloween party, too. Dancing with Leesha.”

“After
you
turned me down,” Leesha said.

“Make yourself at home,” Kenzie said. “Lord knows, everyone else has. Drinks are over there, snacks on that table. Empty chairs there.”

Leesha and Fitch fetched drinks. Leesha perched on the edge of a chair. Fitch declined a seat, but leaned against the wall, looking just a bit awkward and ill at ease.

“Jonah and I were with Leesha in Trinity all day today, working out some legal issues,” Natalie said. “I asked her if she would come answer any questions you might have about the outcome.” Natalie nodded to Leesha.

“Okay, well, Mercedes and I have been working with Jonah and Natalie on a plan to put the buildings, assets, and endowment of the foundation in trust for the survivors of Thorn Hill.”

“Hear, hear!” Kenzie said, and they clinked their glasses.

“So, as of today, it’s a done deal. The papers are signed, the lawyers paid.”

“Really?” Rudy said. “It was that easy?”

Leesha nodded. “Frankly, everyone was amazed at how well-endowed the foundation is.” She paused, and repeated, “Amazed. There should be plenty of money to provide support for all Thorn Hill survivors as well as fund research into treatments for free shades, assuming that becomes a priority. So. For now, the foundation will be governed by a board of trustees that includes representatives from the Interguild Council as well as students and staff from the Anchorage. Mercedes has agreed to direct health services here, for the time being, at least, and we’ll be recruiting for a school director as well. We’d prefer to hire a savant, but—” She stopped. Cleared her throat.

“But there are no adult savants, at this point,” Jonah concluded. “None of us have made it to eighteen.”

“But we will,” Natalie said. “To the future.” She raised her glass.

“What about savant representation on the Interguild Council?” Kenzie asked.

“The council has agreed to that,” Leesha said. “Ironically, Hilary Hudson and Sylvia Morrison were two of your most vocal supporters. If there’s anything you want to ask for, now is the time. I think I speak for everyone when I say the council would be willing to lynch any and all members of the Black Rose. It’s a shame that none of them survived the incident at the Anchorage.”

“A shame,” Emma said solemnly, and they toasted again.

“DeVries is going along with this?” Rudy said. “From what I heard, he seemed hell-bent on convicting Jonah of something.”

“Remember that thing Jonah said about starting a fight?” Emma smiled her street smile. “I don’t think he wants to get into it with me. He knows he’ll lose. And without my testimony, he’s got nothing.”

“One issue we haven’t settled is what to do about shades,” Leesha said. “It’s been totally quiet for the last six months—ever since the standoff. The Weir killings seem to have stopped for now. We don’t know if they’ll continue to pose a threat to us. And we don’t know anything about how to communicate with them. Or how to fight them, if we have to. That’s something we hope you can help us with.”

“We’ve talked about that, too,” Emma said. “Their leaders—some of them, anyway—know now that what happened at Thorn Hill was not an attack by the Wizard Guild, but that it was a...a case of domestic violence and revenge.” She stopped, released a long breath. “My mother was the one organizing shades against mainliners. I don’t know what she’s thinking or planning at this point.” She looked at Jonah for help, and he picked up the story.

“At least it’s blown up the argument that mainliners are fair game because they caused the problem in the first place,” he said. “But we really don’t know what they might do. I have no desire to make war on them. They didn’t deserve what happened to them. So for now, I’d advise watching and waiting. If the killings start up again, then we won’t have a choice but to do something about it.”

“Maybe Gabriel and Lilith are together again,” Emma murmured. “They deserve each other.”

“What about Madison?” Jonah said. “How is she feeling about all of this?”

Leesha stared down at her hands, as if working out what she was going to say. “Seph says that Madison is having a hard time. She blames herself for the violence over this past year—she feels like if she’d taken responsibility for her role as the Dragon, none of this would have happened. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, but...” She shrugged. “Alison and Gabriel are dead, and they are the ones most directly responsible for Grace’s death. So in that regard, justice has been done.”

“I just feel bad for Alison,” Rudy said. “I wish things could have been different for her. It’s so unfair.”

“Maybe it will be,” Natalie said. “She is still out there, you know. Maybe one day we’ll come up with a way to restore free shades in a permanent, ethical way.”

“Would you be willing to be on the Board of Trustees, Leesha?” Natalie asked. “If we nominated you?”

“I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make sure this all works out,” Leesha said. “Just so you know, I won’t be available for the month of July.”

“Vacation?” Jonah asked.

Leesha smiled, stealing a look at Fitch. “I’ve never been to Cambridge, and Fitch has promised to give me an insider tour.”