The Enchanter Heir

by Cinda Williams Chima

  “Get in,” he said, circling around to the driver’s side. “We can’t hang out here too much longer or some busybody is going to look out her window and call the police.”

  “Wait just a minute,” Emma said, looking across the roof of the car at him. She knew better than to get into cars with strangers.

  He waited, head tilted in inquiry.

  “Before I get in, where are we going?”

  “We’re going to Natalie’s. We both live in the dorms at a private school called the Anchorage, downtown. Maybe she told you about it?” He raised an eyebrow, but she didn’t say yes or no. “I thought maybe you could stay with her until we figure out what to do.”

  “We?”

  “If you want our help, I mean. It’s up to you.” From the way he shifted his weight and constantly scanned their surroundings, she knew he was worried about being spotted, eager to get them on their way.

  Emma tried to fold her arms, but it was too painful, so she let them drop to her sides. “But…how did you know I was here? The wizards said they wiped Natalie’s mind. They said she wouldn’t remember anything about this. I thought I was on my own.”

  Jonah smiled a hard-edged, bitter smile. “There’s your first lesson,” he said. “Don’t believe anything a wizard tells you.”

  In the end, Emma got into the car, because she was soaking wet and hurt and had no other place to go. She guessed a possible risk was better than certain disaster.

  Jonah said little during the drive downtown, responding to questions with one-word answers. When Emma asked, “Don’t you want to put something over the seat so I don’t get it wet?” he said, “No.” And when she asked, “Are you a savant, too?” he said, “Yes.”

  He’s probably exhausted from dragging me through the lake, she thought. But he seemed more tense than weary, and preoccupied, as if he were already planning his next move.

  Emma tried not to stare at him. It’s really unfair for a boy to be that beautiful, she thought. Maybe beautiful wasn’t the word. He exuded a kind of charismatic pheromone…a physical and emotional heat that clouded her mind and left her breathless.

  What made it worse was that he didn’t even appear to be trying. In fact, he seemed to be doing everything he could to make himself unappealing.

  It wasn’t working.

  Get a grip, Emma, she scolded herself. She was not the kind of girl who lost her head over a pretty boy. She was too street-smart for that. And aware of just where she sat on the scale of ugly to pretty.

  Maybe this dizzy, drunken feeling was an aftereffect of the concussion.

  She jammed herself into the corner next to the door, but it was no use. She couldn’t escape whatever spell he was casting. The car just wasn’t big enough.

  So she stared out the window at the landscape along the Shoreway…dark slices of the lake broken by the brilliant stadium and the lakefront museums and marinas. Opened the window and let the cold air pour over her face, cooling her fevered cheeks.

  When they left the Shoreway at Third Street and turned down Superior into an area of old warehouses, Emma grew wary again. “Wait a minute. Your school is around here?”

  “You’ve heard of the Keep?”

  Tyler had mentioned it, once or twice. “Yes. It’s a music venue, right?”

  “Right. It’s Gabriel Mandrake’s club. The Anchorage is adjacent to it…he runs both. The school is arts-focused, so this way savants can use the studios and facilities at the club. Some are involved in promotions and production. It’s a great synergy. Everything is right here.”

  When Emma looked closely, she realized that the neighborhood didn’t look as shabby as she’d first assumed. “Apartments Now Leasing” signs fronted many of the weathered brick buildings. Others had been converted into residential and commercial lofts, with restaurants and retail stores at street level.

  Ahead, a bridge arced over the industrial flats. Far below, the river wound its way to the lake, spanned by gaunt iron bridges and lined with manufacturing and tech-company buildings. But Jonah turned off before they reached the bridge, entering an underground parking garage with a key card. He pulled into a space marked KINLOCK.

  “You have your own parking space?” Emma blurted.

  “I come and go a lot,” Jonah said. He sat there for a moment, his lower lip caught behind his teeth, staring straight ahead. Then he sighed and turned to look at Emma. “I’m going to take you straight up to Natalie’s so she can look at your shoulder. She’s here in this building.”

  “You people don’t really believe in regular doctors, do you?” Emma said.

  “I’ll take you to the urgent care if you want,” Jonah said, finger-combing his damp hair. “But you’re a minor. If you show up looking like that, they’ll start asking you a lot of questions, wanting to call your parents, and demanding to know who the hell I am. You’ll be entangled in the system before you know it and I’ll probably end up in jail.”

  “I guess you’re right, but—”

  “The truth is, a lot of our injuries and illnesses aren’t really treatable using conventional medicine,” Jonah said. “We’re usually misdiagnosed, and then the treatment makes matters worse.” He pushed open the driver’s-side door, looking back at her with the trace of a smile. “I’m not saying that a doctor couldn’t fix a wrenched shoulder. But Nat usually gets better results.”

  Entry to the building required a key card, a code, and an iris scan. They took a freight elevator up to the third floor and walked down a corridor past a series of doors. Jonah pounded on the one at the end. When no one answered, he pulled out his cell phone and began punching in numbers.

  “It’s late,” Emma whispered. “Maybe she…”

  Before Jonah had finished, Emma could hear someone through the door, fumbling with a bolt.

  Natalie yanked open the door. “Emma!” she said, looking delighted and relieved. Then she frowned, giving her a closer look. “How’d you get all wet?”

  Emma delivered the ten-word explanation while Natalie ushered her inside. Jonah followed on his own, shutting the door behind them and throwing the bolt. He seemed at home there, and Emma wondered with a ping of jealousy if he and Natalie were going out.

  Natalie’s place was high-ceilinged and spacious, a one-room apartment that lived a lot larger, with exposed brick and beams everywhere. Glancing around, Emma noticed an electronic drum set in one corner, mikes and amplifiers, a rumpled double bed, and an efficiency kitchen.

  “This is a dorm room?” Emma said. It was fancier than anyplace she’d ever lived in.

  “This?” Natalie laughed. “This is the low-rent floor. Mr. Mandrake, the school director, lives in the penthouse. And Mr. Kinlock here has a much finer place.”

  She’s been to his room, then, Emma thought. And then mentally slapped herself. This was so not her business.

  Natalie looked Emma up and down. “You’d swim in my clothes,” she said at last. “Since Jonah saw fit to throw you in the lake, maybe he has something that would work.”

  “I’ll look,” Jonah said, and was instantly gone.

  As soon as he left, Natalie helped Emma out of her wet clothes and gave her a bathrobe she could have wrapped around herself twice.

  Natalie sat Emma down in a chair and asked a million rapid-fire questions as she cleaned cuts and bruises. Then she examined her injured shoulder, gently manipulating it until the pain diminished.

  When Jonah returned, he’d changed out of his wet clothes into a cotton sweater and jeans and toweled his hair dry. Now that he was cleaned up, Emma saw that he had a nasty scrape over his cheekbone. He set a pile of clothing on the couch and sat down next to it, watching silently. Now and then he glanced down at his gloved hands.

  Why does he still have gloves on?

  Finally Natalie gathered up her used washcloths and dropped them into a hamper. Emma carried Jonah’s clothes into the bathroom and changed into them: a sweatshirt and heavy canvas pants with a drawstring waist she could pull tightly aro
und her.

  When she returned to the main room, Jonah and Natalie had their heads together, talking. They stopped abruptly when she appeared.

  “Not bad,” Natalie said, looking her up and down.

  “Thanks for the clothes,” Emma said to Jonah. She reached toward him. “Do you—did you know you had a scrape over your—”

  Jonah flinched back, avoiding her questing hand like he might get burned.

  “Jonah prefers to treat his own injuries,” Natalie said, giving Jonah a narrow-eyed glare. “He doesn’t like to be touched.” She turned back to Emma. “You should be feeling better by tomorrow. I think the shoulder’s just sprained.”

  “I feel better already,” Emma said. Which wasn’t entirely true. She felt jittery, unsettled, as if she’d careened from one unsolvable problem to another. At least when she was being held captive by wizards, she had a place to stay.

  Sooner or later they’re going to ask me to leave, she thought. Then what? Emma had felt at home on the streets in Memphis, but that was her turf. She’d known she could go back to Sonny Lee’s. There was some comfort in knowing that somebody would be looking for her if she didn’t show up.

  Now the streets seemed mean and spiteful, ready to chew her into bits. But she didn’t want to come to the attention of the county—the bogeyman of her childhood.

  She looked up to find Jonah’s eyes fixed on her, the blue eyes shading into a dusky twilight purple. “You’re wondering what the plan is,” he said.

  Something about the way he said it made the words tumble out of her, all in a rush. “I just…I don’t know what to do now. I don’t have any family…not that I know of. Tyler was all I had left. I can’t even go back home. Rowan said the killers who murdered my father might come after me, if they know I survived. I have some money in a bank account, but not much to live on. And if child welfare finds out I’m living on my own, they’ll put me in a home.” Her eyes filled with liquid misery. “When I lived in Memphis, my grandfather always worried about that. Because I was a truant, and ran the streets a lot, and he wasn’t a good role model.” She massaged her shoulder, wincing a little.

  “I feel like I should go to the police, but what am I supposed to tell them? ‘Intruders came to my house and murdered my father and eight other people. How do I know? Wizards told me. No, I can’t show you the bodies. Wizards burned them all up. And, no, I don’t really remember what happened myself, because I have amnesia.’”

  “Likely the memory is still there,” Natalie said, taking Emma’s hand. “Sometimes we just hide away memories that are too painful to deal with at first. As you recover, you’ll gradually remember more.”

  “Don’t push it, though,” Jonah said quickly. “Right now it’s probably risky to stir all that up.”

  “Since when are you an expert on memory loss?” Natalie glared at him.

  “I’m just saying that after all she’s been through, she should focus on resting, and healing, and taking care of herself.” He turned to Emma. “If you have no place else to go, you belong here…at the Anchorage. I can introduce you to Gabriel Mandrake, the founder. If you’re admitted, you can just stay here, lay low, and finish high school. Then do whatever you want.”

  “You’ve got her whole life planned out, Kinlock?” Natalie rolled her eyes. “Did you think of asking her? Or did you just plan on talking her into it?”

  “I just…I’m not trying to tell you what to do,” Jonah said.

  “But…I’ll need paperwork,” Emma said, thinking how easy it sounded when he said it, but knowing different. “I’ve been kicked out of enough schools to know you don’t just go knock on another school’s door and ask to be let in. They want to know what they’re getting into.”

  “This school is different,” Natalie said. “We’re used to taking in strays. A lot of us don’t succeed in regular schools. Our minds don’t work the same as other people’s. And some of us come from bad situations, because most of us were orphaned at Thorn Hill. I lived with family for a while before I came here, but they couldn’t deal anymore. And I guess I couldn’t deal with them.”

  “You should know that some of us are damaged,” Jonah said. “We’re on medication, to control seizures and prevent magical accidents. To allow us to live in polite society. Just so you know what you’re getting into.” He sounded unapologetic, almost defiant. Take it or leave it, he seemed to be saying.

  Magical accidents. I wonder what that means, Emma thought. “I don’t want drugs,” she said, shrinking back in her chair.

  “That’s up to you,” Jonah said, “but some of us do better with help.” He turned toward Natalie, focused the hot intensity of his gaze on her. “Nat, remember what I said. It’ll be a lot less complicated if we don’t mention Emma’s connection to Rowan DeVries and the Black Rose.”

  Natalie frowned, looking puzzled. “But if Gabriel knew about this, it might convince him that you’re right…that we need to focus more on the threat from wizards. If he realized that they have some kind of plot under way, that they’re kidnapping savants, he—”

  “He knows that, Natalie,” Jonah growled, his voice ragged with frustration. “Wizards tortured and murdered Jeanette, and he’s doing nothing about it. I think they kidnapped her because they’re planning another Thorn Hill. I begged him to take action. I even volunteered to try and find out what they’re up to. He said no. When I persisted, he kicked me out of Nightshade.”

  “Nightshade?” Emma looked from Natalie to Jonah. “What’s that?”

  For a moment, neither of them spoke. “It’s a…a kind of service club,” Jonah said finally. “The point is, all Gabriel cares about is tracking down shades. It’s like an obsession with him. A grudge match. Meanwhile, wizards do as they please, and he doesn’t care.”

  Emma’s head was swimming. It wasn’t just wizards, sorcerers, enchanters, and the like. Now it was shades, too.

  “Jonah, I’m sure if you’d just talk to him—” Natalie began.

  “I have talked to him. I get nowhere. For all I know, he’ll hand Emma right back to them. To keep the peace.”

  “No,” Natalie said, shaking her head. “He would never do that. And I’m not going to lie to him.”

  “If you’d said that a year ago, I would have agreed with you,” Jonah persisted, an undercurrent of urgency in his voice. “But these days, I can’t predict what he’ll do next.”

  “Maybe I’d be safer out running the streets,” Emma said. “No offense.”

  Jonah and Natalie both started talking at once, their protests mingling together. Emma put up her hand to hush them. “I’m joking, all right? I’ll tell whatever story you want. But, just so you know, I’m not a very good liar.”

  No problem, Jonah’s expression said. We’ll lie for you.

  “You should decide,” Natalie said to Emma. “You’re the one who has to live with this. What do you want to tell Gabriel about what happened?”

  “Emma,” Jonah said, and his voice seemed to arrow into her, as sweet and potent as Southern Comfort. “I’m just saying that the safest thing for all of us is if nobody knows you survived.”

  “Not fair, Kinlock,” Natalie said. “Not fair doing the enchanter thing.”

  He just shrugged, as if to say, Sue me.

  Enchanter thing? What had Tyler said about enchanters?

  Enchanters? Stay away from them. They can talk you into anything.

  But Jonah was a savant, right? Not an enchanter. But he’d never really said what kind of magical ability he had.

  Emma felt pinned down, trapped between Natalie’s scowl and Jonah’s blue-eyed gaze. “Well,” she said finally. “I guess the fewer people that know who I really am, the safer I’ll be.” And the less likely I’ll end up a ward of the county, she added silently.

  Natalie rolled her eyes. “Fine. We won’t tell Gabriel.”

  And, once again, Jonah Kinlock got his way.

  “So what can we say?” Emma asked. “Who am I supposed to be?”

&n
bsp; “I was at the homeless shelter today,” Natalie said. “I volunteer once a week. I could say I met you there.”

  Emma shrugged. “Sounds good to me.”

  “You can stay here tonight,” Natalie said, “if you’re okay with the couch.”

  “Good,” Jonah said. “I’ll let you get some sleep. We’ll talk to Gabriel tomorrow.” He stood and moved catlike to the door, as if he couldn’t wait to get out of there. Then swiveled back toward them. “I think those wizards were at your house for the same reason they murdered Jeanette. They’re working a plan that involves finding people who survived Thorn Hill. It may mean the Anchorage will become a target. That means all of us. From that standpoint, anyway, we’re all on the same side.”

  Yeah, Emma thought. Rowan said the same thing. With so many allies, why do I feel so alone?

  “Will I have to take an admission test?” Emma asked as they turned down the alley next to the Keep. “I’m not good at test taking.”

  “No test,” Natalie said. “Sometimes Gabriel holds auditions. To figure out how you fit in. What you need.”

  “Audition?” There it was: one more reason to panic. “I’m not ready. Guitar is all I know, and I don’t want to try out with a guitar I’ve never played before.”

  “It’s not really a tryout,” Jonah said. “More like an interview, for placement. If you get stuck, just let us do the talking.”

  How is Mandrake going to find out about me, if they do the talking? Emma wondered.

  Maybe that was the idea—the only way Emma was going to get in was if Mr. Mandrake knew nothing about her.

  They climbed a narrow staircase to the second floor. Natalie and Jonah ran identity cards through a scanner and the outside door hissed open. Then they went through three staffed security checkpoints.

  “Is there a lot of crime around here?” Emma asked.

  “Gabriel’s careful, for a lot of reasons,” Jonah said, exchanging glances with Natalie.

  An assistant of uncertain gender with blue hair, bronze skin, and multiple piercings met them in the outer office. “Jonah! Natalie! And you must be Emma.”