The Sorcerer Heir (Heir Chronicles) (30 page)

T
hey rode the elevator up in silence, past the eighth floor, where Emma’s room still waited for her, to the twelfth, where Jonah’s room was, one floor below Gabriel’s.

She waited while Jonah went through the security routine, opened the door, and stood aside so she could enter.

Following her in, he shut the door and disappeared into the studio.

Emma planted her feet, waiting until he returned, carry ing Tyler’s notebook in his two hands. He’d replaced the leather gloves, she noticed, as if he felt naked without them.

“How is Kenzie doing?” Emma asked, as he handed it over. “Is he any better?”

Jonah’s eyes tightened in pain, and he shook his head. “He just keeps losing ground.”

“What about that new medicine?” Emma clutched the notebook like it was some kind of life raft. “That seemed to help.”

Jonah spun away from her, staring out the window into gray smears of snowflakes. “That’s not an option.”

“But if it—” Emma stopped talking when she saw the granite windowsills crumble under Jonah’s hands. She cleared her throat. “What are you going to do?”

“About—?”

“Gabriel. And Lilith. All that. Where do you go from here?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Jonah said. “Like I said, I’m all out of wisdom.”

Emma took a quick breath. “What you need to do is leave here. Now.”

“You think I
want
to stay here?” Jonah said, his voice edged with desperation. “I’d love to go someplace else—but I can’t.”

“Because of Kenzie?”

Jonah just looked at her, lips pressed together, because, frankly, it was a really dumb question.

The conviction came back to her, stronger than ever.
This is not a person who could kill a twelve-year-old girl. An innocent.

“Look here,” Emma said. “The committee that was looking into the Montessori thing is now checking into the Halloween murders. They’re going to want to talk to you about it.”

“I’ve already spoken to the police,” Jonah said.

“I know. This—this is a separate investigation. By the council.” Emma licked her lips. “Rowan DeVries is going to accuse you of murder.”

“DeVries?” Jonah’s eyes narrowed. “I thought he dis appeared.”

“He’s been in hiding. Now he’s recovered enough that he’s ready to testify that you attacked him and tried to kill him at McCauley’s. There’s a hearing scheduled for next week. Saturday.”

“How do you know?”

Emma knew that she was on a slippery slope, beginning that long slide, with no way to grab a handhold. “He told me.”

“Why would he tell you that?”

Emma ran out of words. She just froze like a small animal caught in the headlights.

“Why would he tell you that?”
Jonah repeated, his voice piercing her soul like splinters of ice.

“He wants me to testify,” Emma said. “He wants me to support his story.”

“And will you?”

“I told him I would, but I won’t.”

“But you won’t. So who did you lie to, Emma?” Jonah asked. “Him or me?”

“Him,” Emma said, realizing it was a lot harder to go through life telling the truth than she’d ever thought.

“That’s reassuring, because I didn’t do it.” He showed his teeth in a bitter smile. “If it had been me, he would have stayed dead.”

He closed the distance between them, and all at once Emma was acutely aware of being in the presence of a predator. Some part of her mind heard the thud as the notebook hit the floor.

Jonah rested his gloved hands on her shoulders, gently encircled her neck with his leather-clad fingers. Her skin pebbled and burned under his touch, sending
do something
signals to her brain, a mangled mix of terror, guilt, and desire.

Should she tell him that DeVries had grabbed her off the street and threatened to turn her into the police? That he had threatened to implicate her in the Halloween murders if she didn’t play nice?

No. Jonah would go after DeVries for sure. Emma could see the tragic ending of that story, and she didn’t want to go there.

“Why are you here, Emma? Are you spying on us? Gathering a little more evidence before the hearing?”

“No,” Emma said. “I came here to see you—to see everyone. And tell you what was going on.”

“Maybe,” Jonah said, “or maybe DeVries sent you here to lead me into a trap.”

“That’s what he wanted,” Emma said. “But—”

“But now that you’re here with me, you’re having second thoughts, aren’t you?” His voice was a caress, like a melody that went straight to the soul.

“Don’t,” Emma said, cheeks burning, trying to keep her head above water. “Don’t you get it? I’m on whatever side you’re on.”

“Of course you are,” Jonah murmured. “I’m irresistible. When you’re with me, you’re on my side. All I have to do is turn on the charm. Once you leave, no doubt you’ll regain your senses.”

“That’s not it,” Emma said, planting her hands in the middle of his chest and pushing. She might have been pushing against a brick wall.

“It’s so much easier to kill the living than the dead, Emma.” Jonah’s lips were so very close to her skin, his eyes all blue ice and shadow, like the kind of death that comes in the wintertime, when the cold creeps into your bones. “So many ways to do it, and I’m good at all of them. I’m a monster by design.”

Emma wished she could say something that would convince him that he was wrong, but she had no skill for that. So what she said was, “Just shut the hell up.”

Jonah stared at her, the blank, hard expression on his face nudged aside by surprise.

“I’m so sick and tired of you talking crazy shit like that.”

“Maybe I
am
crazy,” he said.

“These are hard times,” Emma said. “It’s hard to know who or what to believe in. But I believe in you, and it has nothing to do with your damn pretty face and your big, blue eyes. Do you take me for that kind of a fool?”

For once, smooth-talking Jonah Kinlock seemed to be at a loss for words. “N-no,” he said. “It’s just that I—”

“Now, I’ll admit, it took me a while to figure it out—what I saw in you. You had me convinced that it was all about your good looks and your whiskey voice. That I was being enchanted or charmed or something. I’m not good with people, and so I doubted my own common sense.

“Now I know. It’s not about what you look like. It’s who you are. Don’t forget—I’ve seen you in action. I’ve seen you with Kenzie. I’ve seen you risk yourself to save other people. And I have heard you. I have heard your music. I’ve listened to those words that come straight from your soul, and I am here to tell you that they come from a
good
place.” She took a quick breath. “A good place.”

She slid her arms around him and pulled his body close, pressing her face into his shirt so that she could feel his wildly beating heart just inches away. His body rigid, as usual. Her frustrated tears soaked into the fabric.

“You are not a monster. This is real. If there’s anything in this world that’s real, this is it. This is not about the magic. It’s about you.”

His hands fell away from her neck and he wrapped his arms around her, crushing her to him. “Don’t you see?” he whispered, each quick breath warming her ear. “This just makes it worse.”

“We could leave together,” she said. “We’ll take Kenzie—we’ll work out something. Find a cabin in the mountains somewhere. I—I have a little money.”

Jonah shook his head. “You can pass as a mainliner. Kenzie can’t. I can’t take Kenzie out of the only place he’s ever been safe. And if they ever find out about—about me, the mainliners will hunt me down. You know they will.”

“That’s why you have to leave,” Emma persisted. “They
are
coming after you.”

Jonah shrugged. “Let them come. I’m not going to run from them. I’ll stay and fight. But I won’t get you tangled up in it.”

“It’s already happened,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “Too late.”

“No,” he said. “It’s not too late. Not this time.” He gently peeled her away from him. “If you play it smart, you can survive this. Leaving is a really good idea—for you. Something bad is about to happen, and my advice is to be as far away as possible when it does. Keep your head down, blend in, and survive.”

Scooping the notebook off the floor, he shoved it toward Emma. “Now, go.”

E
mma turned her back to the rising sun and headed toward Trinity, so tired and distracted by worry she nearly went the wrong way on the freeway.

One thing she knew, and had known from the start: she was not going to go into a hearing and help Rowan DeVries make a case against Jonah Kinlock. Even if she did it by telling the truth, there are ways to tell the truth that end in a lie.

If she’d made a mistake, it was listening to Rowan when he’d told her that it was Jonah’s gift of persuasion that had turned her head. It wasn’t about his blue eyes—it was what lay behind them. She did not believe that Jonah would murder a twelve-year-old girl. And if it was somebody else, there was a whole piece of the story she didn’t know. And another murderer out there.

She didn’t want to walk out on these people who had come to mean so much to her. Jonah. Kenzie. Natalie. Rudy. Leesha. Even Alison. If she ran away, they’d think she was guilty for sure. And a girl on her own can get backed into the wrong kind of corner. Besides, she had nowhere to go, other than Memphis, where the police were still looking for her.

But what was the alternative?

She thought about Chief Childers, how kind he had been. But that would change once he knew who she really was, that she had a police record, that she’d left Memphis after her grandfather was murdered.

By the time she exited the highway downtown, she’d decided. She would leave. DeVries couldn’t make her testify if he couldn’t find her. The police couldn’t arrest her either. She could take her few thousand dollars and find a hole to hide in.

Nobody was home at Aunt Millie’s. Emma changed clothes, washed her face, and scraped her hair back into a rubber band. Then carefully sorted through her clothes, picking out socks, underwear, a few shirts and pairs of jeans, and stuffing them into a duffel bag. She slid her money stash into a side pocket. It was the cash she’d been saving to set up her own woodshop. If she lived cheap, she could make it last a while.

That’s what happens to dreams, she thought. They get sanded away by real life.

When she’d finished packing, she looked around to make sure she’d left enough behind that her room still looked lived-in. That should give her a little time. It helped that the council didn’t mean to involve the police, so there wouldn’t be some kind of bulletin put out on her.

She loaded the little she was taking into the Element, then did a quick look-around. That’s when she spotted Tyler’s notebook. It still lay where she’d dropped it on a table by the door. Running her fingertips over the plastic cover, she debated. She didn’t really need a big old binder to carry around. But it was, after all, the only remnant of her father left to her. Lifting it from the table, she saw that one section bristled with those tiny sticky notes. The section dedicated to Emma. Pinned to the divider was a note from Kenzie.

The note was typed—she imagined Kenzie dictating it to Harry, his face illuminated by the light from the screen.

Emma—

Harry and I analyzed it every which way. Also took a whack with Sibelius. The one pattern I identified was that the time signature is not consistent. In other words, some measures are longer than others—some are 4:4 time, some are 4:5 or even 4:8, because some of the notes are the wrong duration and pitch. There didn’t seem to be any repeating pattern. Here’s a list of all the messed-up songs. You’ll see that I went through and highlighted all of the inconsistent measures. I tried a mathematical analysis on the music. Still nothing. I think it’s code that you might know the key for. Hope it means something to you.

—K

This was followed by a winnowed-down list of songs. Emma scanned them, looking for a clue. Kenzie had transcribed the titles in order as he went through the notebook. They weren’t alphabetical—the arrangement didn’t make any sense that she could see. Sometimes three or four songs were clean, followed by two annotated ones.

Emma flipped through the tagged songs, one by one, studying the marked measures. Finally, she grabbed a tablature notebook and an ink pen. She went through and wrote down all the mistimed notes. When she had a list, she looked it over. Nothing came to mind. Scooping up her guitar, she plunked them out. The sound was random, off-key, not any tune she’d heard before.

She went through the songs again, this time recording the lyrics opposite the extra notes in each marked measure. When she’d finished, she scanned the results, her pulse quickening.

Emma: 324 Venable Chapel Rd, Beasley, TN. Mickey has the key. I’m sorry.

Beasley? Where the hell was Beasley? She was firing up the computer to look when she stopped cold. Couldn’t that kind of thing be traced, what you search for on a computer?

It was someplace in Tennessee, anyway. Now Emma knew, without a scrap of doubt, that she had to head south, though that was exactly what everyone would expect her to do.

She weighed her phone in her hand. Cell phones could be traced, too. But she didn’t want to leave it here, because when she didn’t show up, they’d be calling it and realize she hadn’t taken it with her. So she packaged it up and addressed it to herself at the Anchorage so it would be waiting for her if she ever came back. She pasted all of Aunt Millie’s stamps on it, and left a twenty to square things.

She knew she should slip away while she had the chance, without answering any questions or risking getting into a tangle. But she couldn’t leave without saying good-bye to Leesha, who’d been kinder to her than just about anybody.

So she wrote a note and left it on the dining room table.

Leesha, I’m staying over in Cleveland for a few days, but I’ll be back on the weekend. I just want to say thanks again for being such a friend to me. Your friend, Emma Lee.

On her way out of town, she dropped her packaged up cell phone into a mailbox.