The Sorcerer Heir

  She shook her head. “No, sir, not that I recall.”

  “Any idea why he might—?”

  “No, sir.” Childers just sat there, looking at her, questions all over his face, so she added, “I’m just guessing here, but, you know, some people make assumptions about a girl in a band. I usually have no problem setting them straight.”

  “So you’re saying that he—?”

  “No!” Emma said. “Nothing like that happened. After I hit him in the nose, things went south in a hurry. And then Jonah came.”

  Emma realized that it sounded very much like Jonah and Rowan were fighting over her. As if that would ever happen.

  “How would you describe your relationship with Jonah Kinlock?”

  “We’re in a band together. We both go to the same school.”

  “Did DeVries hurt you at all?” Childers leaned forward. “If so, it’s really important that we get it on record.”

  Emma thought about it. He tried to hex me, but his hex didn’t work. “Not really. I did fall and twist my ankle.”

  “He didn’t push you?”

  “I don’t really remember,” Emma said. “I was just trying to get out of the way.”

  “No other bumps, bruises, injuries we should make a note of?”

  “No.”

  “So DeVries was the first to leave?”

  Emma nodded.

  “And nobody had stabbed anybody up to that point?”

  “No,” she whispered. “As far as I know, he wasn’t hurt, except for...except for his nose.”

  “Where you hit him.” Emma saw the chief’s gaze drop to her hands, looking for damage.

  “I hit him with my head,” she said.

  “What did you and Kinlock do then?”

  “I left,” Emma said.

  “You didn’t talk?”

  “To tell you the truth, I was pretty mad at both of them, so I walked back up to the house alone. That’s when I thought I heard someone following me.”

  “Did either of them seem angry enough to—to want to finish the fight later? At the end, I mean?”

  Jonah had been ready to kill Rowan DeVries, until Emma talked him out of it. At least, she thought she had.

  Emma shrugged, extending her hands into the airflow from the heater. “I can’t say. I guess I’m not a very good judge of people.”

  “Emma? There you are!”

  This time the voice came from outside the car. Emma looked up to find Gabriel Mandrake, flanked by Natalie and a man Emma didn’t know.

  “What the hell is going on here?” Gabriel yanked open the passenger door, motioning to Emma to get out. She complied.

  Ross Childers opened the driver’s side door, unfolding out of the car to his full height. He spoke across the roof of the car to Gabriel. “I’m Ross Childers, chief of police, Mr.—”

  “I’m Gabriel Mandrake, head of school, and Ms. Lee’s guardian,” Gabriel said, the words sliding easily off his tongue. “This is my lawyer, Matt Green.”

  “You always travel around with a lawyer?” Childers rubbed the back of his neck as if it pained him.

  “Do you always interrogate minors without benefit of counsel or parental involvement?” Green snapped back.

  “It’s not an interrogation, Mr. Green,” Childers said. “Emma—Ms. Lee—is a possible witness to a crime, and I’m asking her some questions is all.”

  “And you had to drag her out here to your car to do that?” Gabriel said. “You don’t think there’s an element of intimidation in that?”

  Childers seemed uncowed by Gabriel’s aggressive posture. “It’s standard procedure, Mr. Mandrake, to remove a witness to a private area without distraction, where he or she can speak without worrying about being overheard. We also like to collect witness accounts individually so they are uncontaminated by what other people say. Anyway, she came willingly. The point is, we have three young people dead and one critically injured, and not a lot to go on so far. She seemed willing to help.”

  “I hope you can appreciate that Ms. Lee is one of the young people I am responsible for protecting,” Gabriel said. “I don’t know how much you know about my work with the Thorn Hill Foundation and the Anchorage, but these children are fragile.”

  “Fragile?”

  “Many of our students have been physically and emotionally traumatized,” Gabriel said.

  “Is that so?” Childers took another look at Emma. “I didn’t know that.”

  “You would know if you had gone through proper channels,” Gabriel said.

  I’m not some kind of invalid, Emma wanted to shout, but since Gabriel seemed bent on yanking her out of this web of lies she was snagged in, she could hardly complain. She rubbed her arms, missing the warmth of the jacket.

  “I take your point, Mr. Mandrake, but the sooner we can gather some preliminary information, the closer we’ll be to solving this thing,” Childers said, leaning his arms on the top of the car.

  “It seems to me your time would be better spent conducting a thorough search of the area and collecting forensic evidence than by browbeating a vulnerable young woman,” Green said.

  “I’ve got people searching the grounds,” Childers said. He shifted his gaze to Emma. “You feeling browbeaten, Emma?”

  “I just want to go home,” she whispered, tears leaking from her eyes.

  Childers nodded. “Ms. Lee, I appreciate your talking to me. I have your contact information, and once we get all the analysis done, I’ll probably want to have you back down to the station to answer a few more questions and sign a statement.”

  Emma just nodded.

  Childers groped in his pocket and came up with a battered card case. He fished out a card and handed it to Emma. “If you think of anything else—anything that might be helpful—will you call me?”

  “Sure,” Emma said. “Okay.”

  Emma watched him walk away. The Trinity, Ohio, chief of police seemed to be the kind of person you’d want to have on your side if you got into a jam: solid, methodical, and thorough. He was not the kind of person you’d want on the case if you were trying to hide something. Or if you just wanted to be left alone.

  When Jonah Kinlock woke up covered in blood in Seph McCauley’s backyard, he suspected that he’d been set up. Maybe it was the bodies scattered all around him or the bloody daggers that lay half-buried in leaves next to each hand. Anyone who happened upon this little scene would name him the prime suspect. He needed to exit the stage.

  First and foremost, Jonah thought, I have to get out of these bloody clothes. He wasn’t sure whose blood was on them, but he knew it wasn’t his own.

  It wasn’t easy to think strategically with his head swimming. Whatever drug they’d used on him was still in his system. He was staggering, stumbling, shambling more than running. It was unlikely he could outrun anybody in his present state. His vision swam and blurred, like he was looking through a rain-streaked window. Was he safe to drive? He hoped so, because he didn’t see that he had any other options.

  The van was parked where Jonah had left it, a block away from Seph McCauley’s house. He reached for the door handle with his gloved hand, then stopped. His gloves were smeared with blood, too. He pulled them off. He’d have to go gloveless for the time being.

  Jonah knew the worst thing he could do was leave a trail. He had studied forensics as a recruit to Nightshade, Gabriel Mandrake’s network of savant assassins. Known as shadeslayers, they were tasked with putting to rest the undead survivors of the Thorn Hill poisoning. Even though those they killed were technically already dead, the authorities might not see it that way. The last thing shadeslayers needed was to be hauled in for questioning by the police. It could cause Gabriel’s whole empire to unravel.

  So. It was best if these clothes didn’t come anywhere near the Anchorage. Also, it would really
help if he wasn’t carry ing around two bloody knives. He’d brought them with him on instinct, suspecting that if he left them at the murder scene, they would somehow lead to him.

  The furniture pads Fault Tolerant used to protect their equipment in transit were piled in the back of the van. Jonah spread one over the driver’s seat and one on the backseat. He laid the knives on the pad in the backseat, dropped his bloody gloves on top, then wrapped them in the padding.

  Jonah wished he could somehow leap the distance between Trinity and Cleveland, get off the road, and into hiding. He forced himself to stick close to the speed limit all the way. He made two stops between Trinity and Cleveland: first, to drop the knives into Sandusky Bay. And again, after he threw up all over himself.

  For once in his life, Jonah guessed he looked totally unappealing.

  He thought of texting Kenzie to warn him, give him a heads up, but didn’t dare. Cell phone records could be traced. Fortunately, it was his long-standing habit to keep location services turned off on his phone. By the time he got back on the road, his cell phone was pinging. He glanced down at the screen. Natalie. Rudy. Natalie. He powered it off.

  He might have a little time before they zeroed in on him. They would be searching the woods, looking for more bodies (how many were there?) and questioning witnesses (what would Emma say?) and wondering if Jonah himself were a victim. But sooner or later, when they couldn’t locate him, they’d be calling the Anchorage to find out if he’d returned. He needed to account for where he’d been.

  Being the prime suspect was different from being one of many. He had to assume he could get away with exactly nothing.

  As Jonah was passing the buff brick buildings of St. Francis High School, just off the Shoreway, he made a split-second decision. It would take a little time, but it would put some evidence out of reach. Exiting the highway, he parked in a convenience store’s lot next to the school. It was an easy matter to break into the field house. Who knew his Nightshade skills were so transferable?

  Not long after, he emerged, freshly showered, wearing sweatpants and a generic sweatshirt from the lost and found. His soiled clothing and the furniture pads and gloves had been burned to ash in the school incinerator. If he was lucky (when had he ever been lucky?), nobody would ask what had happened to the clothes he wore to the concert.

  When he arrived back at school, he parked the van on a side street, rather than in its usual parking spot behind the Keep (too many surveillance cameras there). Pulling up the hood of his sweatshirt, he walked briskly to Oxbow. He was reaching for the keypad when he realized that he would be leaving tracks. Tracks that Gabriel could follow. What if they subpoenaed records? Gabriel would cover for him, right?

  Would he? Jonah’s gut iced within him, heavy and cold. What if Gabriel truly thought he was guilty of murdering mainliners? Which he might, since they’d been arguing about strategy for a couple of years now. An argument that had led directly to Jonah’s dismissal from Nightshade. Gabriel might see this as the ultimate act of rebellion. He had opportunity; he had motive; he had the skills.

  Worse, was it possible he’d actually done it? Most savants experienced a gradual mental and physical decline, the process known as fading. But Jonah himself had been responsible for chasing down savants who’d decompensated suddenly and violently. Who’d gone rogue and needed to be hunted down before they hurt anyone else. Was it possible he’d had a psychotic episode?

  No. It must’ve been Lilith Greaves and her army of rogue shades—the undead survivors of Thorn Hill. The ones who’d been murdering the gifted for years. Lilith’s words came back to him, from when they sparred over the kidnapping of children from Trinity.

  We will destroy you. Whether you join us or not, you’ll be blamed for the deaths of mainliners. See what kind of justice you’ll get from them.

  Still. If he hadn’t done it, then he’d been convincingly framed. Meaning he could trust no one. Well. Almost no one.

  Jonah backed away from the side door, turned, and headed for Safe Harbor. He was halfway there before he remembered that Kenzie and the other residents of the skilled facility had been moved to the Steel Wool building. Right. There’d been an explosion—an attack by vigilantes who wanted Gabriel and his mutants out of their backyard. Vigilantes who likely came straight from Trinity.

  Get it together, Kinlock, or you might as well turn yourself in.

  To Jonah’s surprise, Kenzie’s lights were out, the door closed, and it took him several minutes to respond to Jonah’s knock. Finally, he heard his brother call, “Come in, already!”

  When Jonah entered, Kenzie was in bed, hair tousled from sleep. His laptop lay open beside him on top of the covers.

  “Were you sleeping? It’s still early.” Jonah crossed to Kenzie’s bedside. His brother looked pale, dark circles under his eyes. Instantly concerned, Jonah leaned close. “Hey. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” Kenzie mumbled, yawning. “Don’t be such a worrywart. I figured you wouldn’t be by tonight since you had that concert. I thought I’d read in bed. I must’ve fallen asleep.” Kenzie focused in on Jonah. “Look who’s talking. You look terrible. Did you party too hard or what?” Pulling the laptop toward him, Kenzie murmured, “Harry, wake up.” Kenzie glanced at the screen, then did a double take. “Um. Shouldn’t you still be there?”

  “I should,” Jonah said. “But something’s happened. I hate to involve you in this, but there’s nobody else I can trust.” He paused. “I need an alibi.”

  “You don’t have to ask. You know I’m in,” Kenzie said, propping up with some effort. “Bring my chariot.”

  Jonah rummaged in Kenzie’s closet and found an old pair of suede gloves. He felt more secure once he’d yanked them on. Maneuvering Kenzie’s wheelchair to the side of the bed, he helped Kenzie into it. His brother was sweating, tremoring a little. It seemed that he hadn’t totally recovered from the trauma of the explosion.

  Getting a fresh, close-up look at Jonah, Kenzie said, “I’m serious. You look half-dead. Should I call Natalie?”

  “No. She’s still back in Trinity.” Once Kenzie was in position, Jonah collapsed into a chair. “First of all, I need to know—has anyone called you to ask if I’m here?” It was all over if Kenzie had talked to anyone.

  “Nope. I’ve been asleep, remember?” Kenzie checked his phone. “Missed call from Natalie, and voice mail, an hour ago. Harry, read voice mail message.”

  Natalie sounded half-frantic, something Jonah had never associated with his best friend. “Kenzie? Are you there? Pick up. Have you seen Jonah? It’s important.” She paused, waited. “Call me back when you get this.” She clicked off.

  “All right,” Jonah said, “They’ll call back, and when they do, I’ve been here since”—Jonah checked the time—“since nine thirty, all right? I came in, all upset, because Emma and I had a big fight.”

  “You did?” Kenzie raised an eyebrow. “Just so you know, I’m on her side.”

  “You should be,” Jonah said wearily. “You definitely should be.”

  “And if you’ve hurt her, we are history.” Kenzie seemed to be reviving, regaining his usual snarky attitude.

  “No!” Jonah said. “I didn’t hurt her! I just—I don’t think I did...” His voice trailed off.

  “Stop it!” Kenzie snarled. “I was joking. You know you didn’t hurt her. You wouldn’t.”

  You’re wrong, Jonah thought. I already have.

  “Have you been back to your room?” Kenzie asked, with that distracted expression that said he was already working the problem.

  Jonah shook his head. “No. I didn’t want to be time stamped when I went in.”

  “Actually, I think you do want to be time stamped. You have been back to your room. Before you came here. When do you want to be there?”

  “You can do that?”

  “Have a little faith, bro,” K
enzie said. “Rudy and I designed most of the architecture when Gabriel upgraded a few years ago. He didn’t want to go outside to have that work done.”

  “Don’t you want to know what happened before you become a coconspirator?” Jonah asked dryly.

  Kenzie shook his head. “Let’s take care of the alibi first. I assume Gabriel’s on the outside in this?”

  “Yeah,” Jonah said. “He is.” As he said it, he couldn’t help wondering: when was it that he’d stopped trusting Gabriel?

  “Then we need to keep him out of the system until I get things set up. Which means I need to do this sooner rather than later, so he doesn’t get suspicious.” Kenzie turned back to his workstation. “Harry, go to Facilities Systems.”

  “Is there anything I can do?” Jonah asked.

  “Get us both something to drink and turn on some tunes. There’s drugs in the lav if you want.”

  Jonah swallowed two ibuprofen, then grabbed drinks from the refrigerator. He handed a bottle of fruit juice to Kenzie and settled back into his chair as Kenzie murmured orders and code to Harry.

  “Harry. Access Building Security Systems. Oxbow number 457.” Kenzie’s eyes scanned the screen. “So if the first set was over at nine, and you came straight back...we’ll put you in your room about nine thirty, right? And you came here about ten, and you’ve been here since.”

  “What about the surveillance cameras in the corridor?” Jonah said.

  “Damn cameras!” Kenzie said, slapping his hands on his desk. “They went down this morning and haven’t worked since.” He raised his eyebrows at Jonah.

  “Will anyone be able to tell you’ve been into the system?” Jonah asked. “I don’t want you to get into trouble.”

  “Gabriel’s smart about using technology to do the things he wants, but his knowledge of these kinds of systems is superficial at best.”

  “What about Rudy?”

  “I don’t think so.” Kenzie eyed Jonah. “Is Rudy in or out?”

  “Everybody’s out right now,” Jonah said.

  Jonah’s phone pinged again. He scanned the screen. Text from Gabriel. Jonah. Call me right now. Urgent.