“What do we care about her? It sounds to me like she’s getting what she deserves,” Morrison snapped.
“That’s not true,” DeVries snapped back. “She doesn’t deserve this.”
It’s odd, Leesha thought, that DeVries is so quick to defend Emma, after suggesting she might have been in on the Halloween murders.
DeVries collected himself, and continued smoothly, “Besides, she’s the only witness we have, aside from the preschoolers. This is guild business. If we’re going forward with a trial, we’ll need testimony from her. Which is why time is of the essence.”
“Do you think they’ll just let us walk in there and take a look around?” Burroughs snorted. “We need to go in numbers, and we need to be ready to use lethal force if necessary. Remember, these people are mutants—monsters, many of them, who’ve been implicated in God knows how many murders. Who knows what they are capable of?”
Speaking of a rush to judgment, Leesha thought. “We need to give them a chance to respond to this testimony. We should contact Mandrake and ask him to make Jonah available to talk to us. And ask him about Emma’s whereabouts.”
“No,” Hackleford said. “We need to take them by surprise. If we alert them to our suspicions, they’ll destroy all the evidence.”
Leesha wasn’t buying the born-again Hackleford and Burroughs, ready to join hands with the “underguilds,” even to fight a common threat. It was so...unwizardly of them.
“I’m worried about Emma, too,” Leesha said. “In fact, of everyone here, I’m the only one who might call her a friend. But I don’t think it will help her to go charging in without a strategy in mind. If she is there, and they mean to kill her, she’s already dead. If not, then we probably have the time to plan more carefully.”
Burroughs snorted. “What we need is the kind of all-out magical assault that will convince them that resistance is futile. How much planning does that take?”
“They are resistant to conjury,” DeVries said. “Or at least Kinlock and Greenwood are.”
“I still find it difficult to believe that conjury doesn’t affect them,” Burroughs said. “Is it at all possible, DeVries, that you simply missed?”
“I’ll concede that, Burroughs,” DeVries said, “if you explain to me how hundreds of now-dead wizards all over the world missed as well. Or perhaps you think they were shooting blanks?”
“I agree with DeVries,” Leesha said, astonished to hear herself saying that. “We don’t really know what we’re walking into. We can’t rely on magic to win the day.”
“What are you proposing?” Hackleford said, grimacing. “Are you suggesting that we carry guns?” From her expression, it was as if she’d suggested they use slingshots and catapults.
“Do guns even work on zombies?” Morrison asked.
“Why not just drop a bomb on them?” Jack murmured. “Think of the lives we’ll save.”
“Shut up!” Leesha said in her outside voice.
To her amazement, everyone shut up.
“I’m not suggesting guns or bombs or an all-out magical assault. All I’m saying is we treat them like human beings who have the right to confront their accusers.”
“Leesha’s right,” Madison Moss said into the silence that followed.
Everyone turned to look at her.
“I know all about witch hunts, and I don’t much like them. I have more reason than most of you to want to get to the truth of the matter. Some would say that I have more reason than most of you to seek revenge on the—on those responsible for Grace’s death. That’s sure the way I felt right after the murders.” She twisted a tissue between her fingers. “But I would have to include myself in that number. If I hadn’t shirked my responsibility, maybe this would have been resolved sooner—in time to prevent all of these deaths. Life handed me a destiny I didn’t want, so I did as I pleased and left other people try to clean up this mess. Peace takes work, and I didn’t do it. I’ve paid a really high price.”
“Maddie,” Seph murmured. “It’s not like you asked for—”
“Don’t you make excuses for me, Seph McCauley,” Madison said. “You’ve been making excuses for me for way too long. Doesn’t matter if I asked for this thing; it landed in my lap, and it was up to me to use it to make things better. There are too many wounds still festering from the past. I’m finding out that you can’t just ignore them. So. If we vote to go to the Anchorage, I’m coming along—to talk to people, not to attack them. If I see this thing turning into a slaughter, I will act.”
“What if we’re the ones being slaughtered?” Hackleford said, looking around the table for support. “What will you do, then?”
“The thing is,” Mercedes said, a little hesitantly, “we know that you exert power over all guild members. But it’s not clear that you have the same control over the savants.”
“Savants?” Morrison looked blank. “Are you talking about the zombies?”
“I’m talking about the magically altered Thorn Hill survivors,” Mercedes said, acid dripping from her voice. “It may be that our links with them are broken. If it’s true that conjury doesn’t affect them, it raises questions.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Madison said. “I may not be linked to them, but I am linked to you.”
“I, for one, do not believe in zombies,” Burroughs said flatly. “That doesn’t change the fact that it’s a preposterous plan.”
“Because...?” Madison said, her voice getting that growly tone Leesha knew well.
“You need to remain in a place of safety. If you’re injured or killed, what happens to all of us? The mutants might be the only ones left with power.”
“I agree,” Hackleford said. “If you use your common sense, young lady, you’ll realize that involving yourself in this battle is an incredibly selfish act.”
Well, Leesha thought, that’s a mistake.
Madison stood, flames coming up under her skin, so bright they hurt the eyes. Ever since Grace’s death, the magic inside Madison had seemed to dim, barely smoldering, like a fire made with damp wood.
Before their eyes, she seemed to grow, until she stretched nearly to the ceiling of the sanctuary. Her clothes and hair thrashed around her as if driven by a wind that no one else could see. She resembled a pillar of flame, with glittering scales, reptilian eyes, and wings of fire trailing her arms, sparks falling all around her.
Most of those around the table had seen Madison like this—everyone except Burroughs and Hackleford. They drew back, hands raised in defense, mouths gaping in surprise, their skin reflecting back the many colors that flame can take. Then they both dove behind the table.
“Let me tell y’all something,” she drawled, her Appalachian accent clanging against expectations, coming from a creature like this. “First of all, I am in no way a lady. Second of all, I may be young, but I’m getting older by the minute. And the older I get, the less patience I have for people like you.”
Burroughs and Hackleford peeked out, ducking out of sight when they saw Madison glaring at them.
“Well? Do you have anything else to say?”
Madison waited, but no response came from under the table. Gradually, she shrank back to her usual self—tall, thin, and weary-looking. The scales on her cheeks flashed once in the light from the windows, then faded away. “You can come out now,” she said, sitting again.
The two wizards poked their heads up again, finally gaining enough courage to return to their seats. Hackleford seemed visibly shaken. Burroughs’s expression was more thoughtful. Calculating, even.
“Now,” Madison said. “How can we go about setting up a meeting?”
Burroughs frowned. “Is Mandrake really going to agree to a meeting if he knows the jig is up? That we know what he’s been up to. I mean, why would he?”
“With all due respect,” Jack said, “we don’t know if he’s gui
lty. If he’s innocent, he has no reason to be alarmed. Even if he’s guilty, he may think he can give us Jonah, and that will be the end of it. Or that Jonah will be able to charm his way out of it.”
“Me, I expect a really short meeting,” DeVries said. “We talk to Mandrake, he says he doesn’t know anything. Or, let’s say we get access to Kinlock, he says I’m lying and he doesn’t know anything and Emma’s not there. This is a waste of time unless we search the premises, too. If Mandrake is behind the Weir murders, it should be easy enough to find evidence of it.”
“All right,” Madison said. “We request a meeting, and permission to search the campus. We bring enough people to do that.”
When they took a vote, it was all yeas.
“Motion carries,” Seph said. “We go.”
“And if they say no?” Burroughs said.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Madison said.
“I’ll give Mandrake the chance to cooperate,” DeVries said. “But if he says no, and you don’t force the issue, I will bring my own team to the Anchorage, and I will turn over every rock, and I won’t leave until I get answers. I think we have to consider the very real possibility that Kinlock has already murdered Emma.”
Leesha didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all. There were just so many ways it could go wrong. And yet—Madison was right. You can’t give evil free rein because you’re afraid to confront it.
“All right,” Ellen said, as if glad the debate was over and they finally had an actionable plan. “Let’s assume they say yes. If we’re going to do a thorough search, we need information—detailed maps of the area around the Anchorage, and blueprints of the buildings.”
Jack leaned forward. “I think I know where to access some of that on the city of Cleveland Web site,” he said. “Because the school’s a nonprofit, they may have information online, annual reports, photos, and like that. The library at the college has access to—”
The conversation faded as the voices in Leesha’s head grew louder. I’m sorry, Jason, she thought. Here we are again, planning for yet another confrontation that I have to hope doesn’t turn into a battle.
Unable to sit still any longer, Leesha slid out of her seat and headed for the back of the church. As she turned toward the restrooms, she nearly collided with a tall, muscled boy in a down jacket, totally bald. He looked familiar, somehow.
“Hey!” Leesha said. “The church is closed for a meeting. What are you doing here?”
“I was just leaving,” the boy said, brushed past her, and was gone.
Beasley, Tennessee, was one of those places so far out in the middle of nowhere, it made you wonder how anyone ever decided they wanted to live there. Maybe somebody was driving cross-country and ran out of gas and there was no gas station for miles around, so they stayed put.
But maybe there had been a reason to stay there, once. Back in the day, you needed a little town like this every so often to serve the farms all around. A place to do your banking and grocery shopping and whatnot. A place you might meet a boy to flirt with, and buy ice cream on a Saturday night.
Now it was just closed storefronts and a few scattered houses around a crossroads. Not even a speed trap. Emma guessed that anybody who lived there wouldn’t blame a person for wanting to get out of town quick. And that was before they turned off the paved highway.
I’m an orphan now, Emma thought, but I might as well have been my whole life, for all I know about my family. Even as a child, she’d understood that questions about her father, her mother—any other part of her family—were forbidden. If asked, Sonny Lee would put up the shutters and start drinking until he passed right out. So she quit asking.
The address Tyler had left her wasn’t even close to town; it was twenty miles away, at the end of a dirt road. All the way there, Emma kept wondering if she hadn’t made some kind of a mistake in figuring out Tyler’s code. But then, Mickey seemed to know about this place. He didn’t bat an eye or ask a question when she gave him the address.
Maybe, in a way, she hoped it would be a mistake, because, more and more, she didn’t think she would like what they’d find at the end of that dirt road. In scary movies, that was always the scene of the crime.
“How did you know Tyler?” Emma said, picking at the cracked vinyl on the front seat of Mickey’s truck, trying to take her mind off all the bad possibilities.
Mickey stole a quick look at her. “His mama used to send him down here to stay with his grandmother—in the summers, mostly. Your great-grandmother, I guess. Even then, Tyler was a handful, and I guess she was the only one could make him mind. Sonny Lee would pick him up on the weekends to come stay with him.”
Emma eyed Mickey, wondering if he knew anything about the magical thread that ran down through the family. “Did you know my grandmother?”
Mickey grimaced. “Not well. She’s the one owned the Beasley property, and it’s a long way away when you got no reason to go there.”
“What was her name?”
“Sarah Vann. I know she was part Cherokee—her family’s lived in this county since before the Revolutionary War. Somehow they managed to avoid getting shipped off west.”
“Is she still alive?” Emma asked, with a spark of hope.
“No, honey,” Mickey said. “The farmhouse burned down when Tyler was just a little older than you. She died in the fire, and he inherited the place from her. It used to be a farm, but it’s gone back to woods. Tyler built a workshop on the property. Even after he was grown, he’d come down here several times a year.”
That made no sense. There’d been no workshop at Tyler’s place up north until Emma moved in. “A workshop? You mean—for woodworking?”
Mickey shook his head. “Different kind of workshop.”
“Is that what we’re going to see?”
“Yup.” Mickey stared back forward, through the bug-spotted windshield. He was still grinding his teeth.
“You gotta stop that,” she said.
“Stop what?”
“Grinding your teeth. You’ll wear them down to nubs.”
Mickey growled something. And then, unexpectedly, began to talk. “Sonny Lee kept a lot of secrets, so there’s a lot I don’t know. What I do know is that he was in a world of pain, and I can’t believe he deserved it. He made some mistakes. Never should have married Lucinda—there was always something peculiar about the Vanns. Kept to themselves. Some said they were granny women.”
“Granny women?”
“Healers, witches, like that. People around here say the reason they stayed when the other Cherokee were forced out was because people were afraid to mess with them.”
“Well, good,” Emma said. “From what I hear, they were robbed.”
Mickey laughed. “Sonny Lee was in over his head, that was for sure. Lucinda didn’t stick around long. Foolishness about women seemed to run in the family, though, because then Tyler married your mother.”
“And that was foolish?”
“Your grandpa seemed to think so.”
Maybe it’s just foolishness, period, Emma thought. That’s what we Greenwoods do—we fall headfirst in love with the wrong people. If there were a picture of a person she shouldn’t fall in love with, it would be Jonah Kinlock.
Then, without warning, they were there—at the end of the road. They faced a gate in a falling-down, split-rail farm fence, plastered with about a half dozen KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING signs.
“Open up the gate, will you, honey?” Mickey said.
Emma jumped down, set her heels, and dragged open the gate. It wasn’t used to being opened, and she guessed it would be next to impossible in the summer, when the weeds were grown up all around.
She climbed back up into the truck. “Is that supposed to keep anybody out? All those signs just make a person want to go in and see what’s there.”
br /> “Just hang on,” Mickey said. They drove down a narrow lane through a tangle of thin saplings and briars for what seemed like a long time, until they came to another fence. This one was ten feet high and topped with barbed wire. These signs said: DANGER! KEEP OUT! SEVERE ELECTRICAL SHOCK!
Mickey held out a tiny gadget, pressed a button, and the gate swung open silently.
Emma’s stomach boiled up with worry again. That was the kind of fence you put up when you really had something to hide.
They rattled along the rutted road a way farther, and came up on a large red barn, surrounded by yet another fence. The barn looked weather-beaten, the paint fading, like it had been there forever, but when Emma looked closer she could tell that it wasn’t as old as she’d thought, and that a lot of money had gone into it.
They pulled through another electric gate and rolled to a stop in front of the large double-entry doors.
“This is it,” Mickey said. “Tyler’s workshop.”
“Is—is there a house, or—”
“Nope. Just this.”
“You’ve been here before?” Emma asked.
Mickey nodded. “I came here a couple times with Sonny Lee, so I’d know the way.”
“Did Tyler still come here, up until—up until he was killed?”
Mickey shook his head. “I don’t think so. I don’t think he’s been here since you come to live with Sonny Lee. That was part of the deal. He wasn’t supposed to contact you, or contact Sonny Lee, or come back to Tennessee.”
“Have you been inside?” Emma jerked her thumb at the building.
“No.” Mickey looked down at his hands. “I’d rather you didn’t go in there neither. We could just drive away, honey, and never speak of it again.”
“You know I can’t do that,” Emma said. “You know I need to know the truth. I’m hoping that somehow it will help me keep the people I care about alive.” She paused. “Why didn’t you say anything about this before?”
“I was following Sonny Lee’s orders. He figured the best way to protect you from the past was to hide it from you. I wasn’t supposed to tell you about the place in Beasley unless something happened to him.”