The Sorcerer Heir (Heir Chronicles) (12 page)

Eager to get off the subject of her gifts, Emma said, “Going back to what we were talking about before...Do you know anyone else who was at Thorn Hill, and left before the poisoning? Anyone like me. What’s their stone like?”

Natalie and Rudy looked at each other.

“Hmm,”
Rudy said, frowning. “After what happened, I think anyone who escaped the massacre went underground.”

“There’s Gabriel,” Natalie said. “He spent time there, off and on, but he was away at the time of the massacre. I don’t know if there was anyone else.” She studied on it a moment, then pulled out her cell phone and punched in a number. Someone picked up on the other end, and Emma soon figured out it was Gabriel, though she could only hear Natalie’s side of the conversation.

“I just sent you the—you already got that? What do you think?” Pause. “That’s what I think, too, but it doesn’t make sense.” She listened a while longer. “Well, she says she wasn’t there that night, that she left beforehand....Listen, we were talking, and wondered if it was possible people had different kinds of Weirstones even before the poisoning. You know, like they were different to begin with, and then damaged....” Emma could hear Gabriel’s voice, sharp as plucked notes. After a few more minutes of conversation, Natalie hung up.

“Well,” Natalie said, “he had a lot to say, but the bottom line is no, that’s just not possible.”

L
eesha Middleton lived in a mansion on the lakefront. It might have brought back Emma’s nasty memories of being held captive by Rowan DeVries, but the atmosphere was totally different. For one thing, the house was pink stucco in a wood-siding kind of town, which made it seem like it had a built-in sense of humor.

Emma liked Leesha’s Aunt Millisandra from the start, even though she was dangerous to be around and often said things that everybody else was thinking, but nobody else said out loud. Things that made people cringe.

Aunt Millie always told the truth, even when it wasn’t polite. And she was totally nonjudgmental. When Leesha first introduced them, Millisandra surveyed Emma with narrowed eyes. “My dear, I want to hear all about you. Were you the product of a mixed marriage?”

Leesha’s smile froze on her face. “Aunt Millie, I don’t think we—”

“I am, I guess,” Emma said. “My grandfather was black, my father biracial, my mother was white. I even heard there’s some Cherokee in the—”

“Oh!” Millisandra’s elegant hands fluttered. “My dear girl, I’m not talking about race. I meant, a marriage across guild lines. Like a sorcerer and a seer. Usually that results in one or the other, but Alicia says you are a mongrel.”

“I didn’t say
mongrel
, Aunt Millie,” Leesha said, her face as pink as the stucco. “I said
savant
. That’s someone whose Weirstone has been modified, who has different gifts than the standard guilds.”

“Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I don’t approve of all this tampering with Weirstones,” Millie said. “Swapping them from person to person, creating designer Weir, and all that. You never know what you’re going to get. Though I must say, that Jack Swift is a very well-endowed young man. I wonder, though, if he’ll be able to reproduce.”

Leesha interrupted this with a fit of coughing. “Why don’t I show Emma to her room, Aunt Millie? You can get to know each other—”

“You began life as a sorcerer?” Millie persisted. “Sorcerers are good with their hands, I understand.”

“Well. I guess so. I’m a luthier. And a musician.”

Aunt Millisandra clasped her jeweled hands in delight. “A luthier? Do you build violins, then?”

Emma shook her head. “Guitars.”

Millisandra’s delight seemed undimmed. “I’m something of a musician myself.”

“Used to be,” Leesha muttered. “She’s hard on her instruments.”

“Don’t mutter, Alicia,” Aunt Millie said. “Speak clearly.”

“What do you play?” Emma asked.

“Violin and cello. Cowbell, when it’s called for. Which it almost never is. What do
you
play?”

“I play a little guitar,” Emma said, then dared to add, “and piano.”

“Well, then,” Aunt Millie said. “Perhaps we can have a recital after dinner.”

“Well, I—”

Leesha took Emma’s elbow, tugging her away. “We’ll see, Aunt Millie.”

They walked down a marble-floored hallway, trimmed in pink and purple. It resembled a bubblegum cathedral.

“Look, I’m sorry about my aunt,” Leesha said, her cheeks still flaming. “She has no filter.”

“At least you always know what she’s thinking,” Emma said. “I’m a little tired of secrets, to tell you the truth.”

Leesha rolled her eyes. “You’ve heard the expression
TMI
? Sometimes you don’t need to know.” But she said it in the way you talk about a vintage guitar that’s always going out of tune, but you love it anyway.

“Maybe I should get a look at the kitchen and see what kind of food is on hand,” Emma said, to change the subject. “I was thinking I should plan on making dinner mostly, since it’s going to be hard for me to make breakfast or lunch. If it’s all right, I’ll make a list, and you can look it over.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Leesha said casually. “Barbara’s off on the weekends, so we’ll order takeout.”

“Who’s Barbara?”

“The cook and housekeeper.”

“But I thought you—”

“We’re looking for more of a companion than a cook,” Leesha said. “It will take all three of us to keep an eye on Aunt Millie.”

Emma mulled this over, trying to decide whether she’d been offered charity in the guise of a job. Beggars can’t be choosers, she thought.

Leesha’s house was so big that Emma guessed they never had to see each other if they didn’t want to. Emma practically had a wing to herself. It even had its own small kitchen area and a private entrance.

“When the house was first built, this was meant to be a guest suite or servants’ quarters,” Leesha said.

Am I a servant or a guest? Emma thought, but didn’t say aloud.

She and Leesha carried in the rest of her things, which didn’t take long. She arranged her meager wardrobe in the closet and put Tyler’s notebook on the empty bookshelf by its lonely self.

“What’s that?” Leesha pointed.

“Oh. My father wrote out tablature—guitar music and lyrics—for a lot of old blues songs and ballads,” Emma said, realizing that she hadn’t really looked at it since she’d brought it back from Tyler’s. She’d been so busy learning the Fault Tolerant playlist that she’d nearly forgotten about it.

“So he was a musician, too?” Leesha said, running a polished fingernail over the binding.

“Yes,” Emma said. “He was.” The room got a little gloomier, as if a cloud had passed over the sun.

Now it was Leesha’s turn to change the subject. “So you decided to commute to the Anchorage for school after all?”

“If the weather’s too nasty, I just won’t go,” Emma said, pulling stacks of T-shirts out of her duffel and layering them into the dresser drawer. “But I need to stay there for school. With my track record, it won’t help to be changing schools again.” Unpacking her backpack, she plunked her math textbook onto the desk. “I wouldn’t mind dropping this class, though,” she muttered. “Which reminds me. I’ve got homework to do for tomorrow.”

“Oh!” Leesha said. “I’m sorry if I put you behind with—”

“Don’t worry,” Emma said. “You’re not the problem. I mean, I could work on it all night and I still won’t figure it out.”

As far as Emma was concerned, the conversation was over, but Leesha made no move to leave. Instead, she sat down on the edge of the bed. “I was hoping I could ask you some questions about savants.”

“Oh,” Emma said, embarrassed. “I probably know the least of anybody.”

“Don’t assume that,” Leesha said. “Most gifted just don’t know much about Thorn Hill. It’s like the whole thing was buried. I lived in the UK at the time it happened, but still. I heard nothing about it until I came here.”

“What do you want to know?” Emma said.

“Okay. A preschool class from Trinity was kidnapped in downtown Cleveland. The kids say it was zombies. So, I’m wondering...if you’ve ever heard anything about zombies at the Anchorage. You know—corpses up and running around. The walking dead, like that.”

“Zombies?”

“Just bear with me,” Leesha said, picking at the bedspread. “I have reason to think they’re telling the truth.”

“You think the poison turned us into
zombies
? That’s what people are saying?” Emma’s voice was rising, and she struggled to bring it back under control.

“That’s what
some
people are saying. There’s two versions. Some of the kids said that the zombies were led by a boy dressed in black with a sword. Others said the boy with the sword was fighting the zombies and protecting the kids.”

Emma glared at Leesha long enough to suggest just how crazy that was. “Okay, now, remember, I haven’t been there that long. But I’ve never seen any zombies at the Anchorage. I’ve just seen a lot of kids who were badly hurt by whatever happened at Thorn Hill. And some that could pass for normal at any regular school. And some who are really, really gifted in different ways.”

“You don’t have to convince me,” Leesha said, backtracking. “I’ve heard the band, remember? I’ve met Jonah Kinlock and Natalie Diaz. Still, as soon as the kidnapping happened, some of the gifted here in Trinity were ready to blame it on the Anchorage—because it happened close by.”

“Is that why they blew up one of the buildings?”

Leesha’s eyes widened. “I heard about that on the news. Are you sure it was someone from here?” she asked, leaning forward, hands on knees.

She sure isn’t afraid of the truth, Emma thought, with grudging admiration. “We can’t prove it. But that’s what we suspect.”

“See?” Leesha rolled her eyes. “Both sides are doing it. Jumping to conclusions. Somehow, we have to break that cycle.”

Giving up on putting clothes away, Emma leaned her hips back against the dresser, arms folded, lips pressed together to keep herself from saying something like,
When did
I
turn into
we
?

“So. Leaving off zombies, is there anything else you want to know?”

Leesha seemed to be casting about for a less tricky subject. “You’re a savant. If you were originally a sorcerer, then...what’s your gift now?”

“Music, I guess,” Emma said. “And woodworking. It’s the only thing I know, the only thing I’ve ever been good at. Any other magical thing I had going on must’ve been turned off.”

“What if you could choose what gifts you had?” Leesha said, a wistful look in her eyes. “What would you pick?”

“I’d still pick music,” Emma said. “No point in thinking about anything else.” She hesitated. She wasn’t used to prying in other people’s business. “What gift would you choose?”

“I’d like to be able to go back in time and change the past,” Leesha said. “So if you mess up, you can fix it.” Just for a moment, the shutters opened, revealing pain and guilt.

“If you used to live in the UK, then how did you end up here?” Emma asked, thinking she should change the subject.

“Back in the day, the wizard houses used these brutal tournaments between warriors to allocate power. Warriors died in droves, and the few warriors left were in hiding. Word got out that there was a warrior hidden in Trinity. I came here to find him.”

“Jack Swift?”

Leesha nodded. “He was, like, a junior in high school, and this was all news to him. So. I betrayed him to some people who planned to auction him off to the highest bidder.”

“What?” Emma stared at Leesha. “But—but—but—”

“Full disclosure: I am a terrible person. I guess I should have told you before you moved in here.”

Emma figured it was safest not to say anything.

“I didn’t learn my lesson,” Leesha said. “After running around Europe for a while, I got involved in another nasty scheme. I came back here, and that’s when I fell in love with Jason Haley. He was a wizard, another banged-up survivor—we had a lot in common.” She cleared her throat. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me. But I was in a bind, and I betrayed him. And when he found out, he dumped me. Which he totally should have.” Leesha looked up at Emma, and cleared her throat. “Then he was killed in the Battle of Trinity. That was a big battle between wizards and a coalition of the other guilds two years ago.”

“I’m so sorry,” Emma said, wishing she knew what to say. She wasn’t used to these heart-to-hearts. The only conversations she had were the practical kind that got you from A to B.

“I never got to say I’m sorry. Not really.” Leesha touched a pendant that hung from a chain around her neck. “Words can hurt,” she said, “but sometimes it’s the words you never got to say that hurt the most.”

“Well,” Emma said, “there’s nothing you can do to change the past.”

“You’re right,” Leesha said. “But there might be something I can do about the future. More and more, I’m thinking that what happened at Thorn Hill needs to be talked about. That it’s still affecting us now. That it might be destroying whatever hopes we have of peace. It’s kind of like when they whitewash history in school, and so you make the same mistakes all over again.”

“What do you care about savants?” Emma hunched her shoulders, trying to recall when she’d begun feeling like a part of that group. “I mean, nobody else around here seems to.”

“I
don’t
care about savants,” Leesha said. “Not savants in particular. I just don’t think I can stand any more bloodshed. See, I’ve already survived one magical battle. The boy I loved gave his life to end it. That was supposed to be his legacy—permanent peace among the Weirguilds.” She sucked in a quick, shuddery breath. “Well, guess what? It’s two years later, and we’re going down that same road again unless somebody does something. And if we go to war again, it’ll mean that Jason died for nothing. I won’t have it. I just won’t.”