“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?”
“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?
Chapter Thirty-six
Audition
“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.”
“Hey, Patrick,” Natalie said, which answered one question, anyway. “Can we go on in?”
“Mr. Mandrake is expecting you,” Patrick said. “But he’s had some unexpected visitors. Let’s wait a few moments, shall we? Would you like green tea? Juice? Springwater?”
They shook their heads, so Patrick motioned them to seats and returned to his workstation.
Emma couldn’t settle down, though, so she circled the room, looking over the photos displayed on the walls, mostly of Gabriel Mandrake with the royalty of the music business.
With up-and-coming bands. At various benefit concerts. Here were framed covers of Rolling Stone and Time magazine, featuring Mandrake, alongside display cases full of medals, gold records, and awards.
“Where was this taken?” she asked, pointing to a grainy black-and-white photo of Mandrake next to a remarkably beautiful child with shaggy black hair and long-lashed blue eyes. They stood outside a tent, against a jungle background, a guitar between them.
“That’s Gabriel and Jonah,” Natalie said. “It was taken at Thorn Hill, not long before the massacre.”
“So they knew each other before Jonah came to school here?”
“Obviously,” Jonah said drily.
Emma studied the photograph, trying to divine if the setting looked at all familiar. Which it should be, since she’d lived at Thorn Hill.
“He has his own artist-edition Stratocaster?” she asked, pointing to a later photo of Gabriel holding another guitar.
“He does,” Natalie said, grinning at Emma’s fascination with Mandrake’s show-off wall.
“Jonah,” Patrick said, in a low, urgent voice. He was staring at the screen on his workstation. “Mr. Mandrake suggests you wait in the washroom until his visitors have left.”
Emma looked for Jonah, but he was already gone. How does he move so fast?
The door to Mandrake’s office opened, and a man and a woman emerged, followed by a man Emma recognized as Gabriel Mandrake. The two strangers were dressed in street clothes, but Emma had spent enough time on the street to recognize police officers when she saw them.
Mandrake was dressed in blue jeans and a white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His exposed arms were covered with tattoos, and Emma could see more designs peeking out of his shirt collar.
“I assure you that I’ll talk to the students. If they noticed anything suspicious, we’ll be in touch,” Mandrake was saying.
“It would be better if we could talk to them directly,” the woman said, as if continuing an argument that had started inside. “Perhaps they saw something that would help us . . . even if they don’t realize it.”
Mandrake’s lips tightened in what looked like annoyance. “Then you’ll have to come back with a court order,” he snapped. “Our children are fragile, Detective. Can you imagine how traumatic it would be if they were questioned by the police about monsters and zombies?” He raised an eyebrow.
The male detective bristled. “We’re not saying there were actual zombies on the bridge,” he said. “Children have fertile imaginations, and they’d been through a harrowing experience. But somebody kidnapped a dozen preschoolers. And somebody seems to have emptied a graveyard and left a couple hundred corpses in the Flats. The media is going wild. We need to find out who and why.”
“I agree,” Mandrake said, “which is why it’s a shame to see you wasting your time here.”
“Is it true that Lisbet’s coming here for a concert in the spring?” the female detective said eagerly. “I saw them in Pittsburgh two years ago.”
“They are,” Mandrake said, glancing at his watch. “I believe Patrick here has some courtesy tickets, if you know anyone who could use them.”
When the detectives had gone, Mandrake turned his attention to Emma and Natalie. “I’m sorry about that,” he said, his voice still edged with irritation. “The police don’t always make appointments, and I figured it was easier to handle it now than to ask them back.”
Jonah emerged from the washroom and quietly rejoined them, as if being asked to hide in a bathroom when there were visitors at the school was something that happened all the time. Clearly, nobody was going to offer an explanation to Emma.