Hudson was looking at the building floor plan on her tablet. “It’s better to use the stairs, right? If we go right and then left, we should be able to take the stairs to the ground floor and go out through the back door.”
They descended the stairs, Jack in the lead, Highbourne taking the rear, the two wizards in between. At the foot of the stairs, Jack motioned the others to the side, and tried the stairway door. Locked.
“Can’t we shoot it open?” Highbourne asked.
Jack shook his head. “That works in the movies, not so much in real life. Besides, it’s a steel door. The bullets will probably ricochet and kill us.”
“And it’ll make too much noise, right?” Morrison said, examining the hinge side of the door. “Stand back,” she said. Extending her hand, she ran a thin line of wizard flame along the hinges, sweeping up and down until the metal softened, then melted, running down the side of the door until it hung loose in its frame. Jack managed to wedge his fingers into the opening and pried it open a few inches. Waited. Then pried it open farther. Nothing. Stuck his head out for a look-around. And was met by a withering volley of gunfire.
Jack jerked his head back in. Swore.
“What about those little bottles you had?” Morrison said. “What’s in them?”
Jack shook his head. “I’m thinking some kind of poison. Since we don’t know what it is or how to use it, we might end up poisoning ourselves.”
Hudson was studying the floor plan again. “There’s a side door that lets out into the alley alongside the building. Can we get out that way?”
“Depends on whether they’re working with the same intel we are,” Jack said. “Let’s try it.”
Leesha didn’t buy everything Gabriel Mandrake was selling. Maybe he was a principled philanthropist, but he gave off some slick hustler vibes, like he couldn’t help but present himself in the best possible light. She knew the type—she’d once been a hustler of sorts herself. He might be telling some of the truth, but he sure wasn’t telling all of the truth.
Still, she tried to keep an open mind as she sat through his description of the founding of Thorn Hill, his claims that it wasn’t a terrorist camp, that the so-called massacre couldn’t have been a tragic accident since there were no toxic chemicals in use at the commune, his conclusion that it must have been a genocidal attack, carried out by someone who wouldn’t hesitate to murder children. Alison talked about the “mercy killings” carried out by mainliners after the fact. Natalie shared her experiences as a healer, the ongoing heartbreak of losing family members and friends to the long-term effects of the poison.
Greaves didn’t say much, but seemed intent on Rowan DeVries throughout the speeches, as DeVries grew more and more impatient. He leaned toward Leesha. “Don’t you think this is just a delaying tactic?” he hissed.
Leesha shrugged. “Maybe. I guess we are learning things we didn’t know before.”
All this time, Seph had been listening, keeping his opinions to himself. Now he spoke up. “Isn’t that uncommon—wizards using poisons?”
“Ask DeVries about his father,” Greaves said. “He was very ecumenical when it came to murder. He employed sorcerers to make poisons for him.”
“What do you know about my father?” DeVries said, obviously startled.
“I used to work for him,” Greaves said.
DeVries stared at her. It seemed he had finally lost his footing. “What was your name again?”
“Back then I went by Gwyneth Hart,” Greaves said. “Gwen.”
“And...you made poisons? For my father?”
Greaves shook her head. “Actually, I worked on another project. Your father was interested in modifying Weirstones, in creating designer Weir. I worked on that—experimenting on unwilling subjects—and I hated it. I fled to Thorn Hill to get away from him. There, I became a different person. I took a new name, started a new life. I hoped your father would never find me.” She paused. “Apparently, he did.”
DeVries wasn’t buying either. “You think the connection between you and my father proves he was responsible for Thorn Hill?”
“I think it proves that he was familiar with and a frequent user of poisons,” Greaves said. “I think it proves that he was a despicable man.”
“But you survived?” DeVries said after a long pause. “I thought the survivors were all children.”
“That depends on how you define ‘survived,’” she said. She turned to Brendan Wu, who took the floor, and told them about shades.
Leesha could tell that speech came hard for him—for both Greaves and Wu. When she looked closely at him, and at Lilith Greaves, she could see the resemblance between their flat, expressionless faces and the way they moved and the zombie-like creatures who’d nearly killed her that night in the Flats.
Somehow, it was this most far-fetched claim that she found most convincing—that a sentient remnant of those who died persisted after death. Maybe it was because she’d had direct experience with what they called hosted shades the night of the attack. Or maybe Wu was just more credible than Mandrake. This was the first explanation she’d heard that made sense. Well, it was the only explanation she’d heard.
Not everyone was convinced.
“You expect us to believe that you”—DeVries pointed at Brendan Wu and Lilith Greaves with his first and middle fingers—“that you are actually Thorn Hill victims inhabiting stolen bodies?”
“Not victims,” Greaves said. “Survivors. And whether you choose to believe it or not, it’s true.”
“A body is not just a costume that you put on,” DeVries said. “I mean, how does that even work?”
“I don’t know.” Wu shrugged. “Could it be...magic? Ya think?”
Leesha smothered a smile. She could see the spirit of this boy shining through his ill-fitting body.
“Do you have any proof?” DeVries asked, looking around, like he was humoring people at a séance. “For example, are there any loose shades in here right now?”
“Not loose shades,” Alison muttered, scowling. “Free shades.”
Mandrake motioned to Severino, and he walked around, passing out small flower pendants made of silver. “Put those on, and you’ll be able to see them,” Mandrake said.
Leesha slid the chain over her head so that the pendant rested on her chest. When she looked up, she saw them. They were everywhere, like gossamer petticoats or spiderwebs or pulsing, transparent jellyfish in the air. She couldn’t help hunching down in her chair, covering her head with her arms.
“They won’t hurt you,” Mandrake said. “They can’t hurt you, unless they inhabit a body. As of now, they’re not strong enough to inhabit someone living—only the dead.”
“I suppose this could be the real deal,” DeVries said. “They could be restless spirits, spooks, shades, or whatever. Or this could be a sefa that causes hallucinations.” He tapped the pendant with his forefinger.
“I, for one, believe them,” Leesha said, straightening a little. “It’s ironic if we as practitioners of magic can’t consider the possibility that there is a kind of magic we’ve never seen before. Still, there’s something I don’t understand. I was attacked by a group of zom—hosted shades one night in the Flats. I was with two Anaweir friends, but it was clear that they were coming after me in particular. Why is that? Is it a matter of revenge?”
“Leesha’s right,” Seph said. “We’ve been talking about the connection between the mainline guilds and the disaster at Thorn Hill. Is there a connection between Thorn Hill survivors and the Weir murders?”
The Thorn Hill survivors looked at one another, as if hoping someone else would pick up the ball. Mandrake looked a little greenish, like he wished he could end the conversation right there.
Finally, Greaves spoke. “Yes,” she said. “Hosted shades have been responsible for most of the killings.”
T
his was met by shocked silence.
“There is an element of revenge in it,” Greaves continued matter-of-factly, “because most Thorn Hill survivors blame mainliners for their situation. But there is an element of justice as well. The only treatment for us, the only thing that offsets the damage done to us at Thorn Hill, is blood magic.”
“Blood...magic,” DeVries said. “You mean the energy that’s freed by the death of the gifted.”
Greaves nodded. “Originally, shades killed in order to obtain fresh host bodies. Weir, Anaweir—it didn’t matter. More recently, we’ve killed to obtain the blood magic that allows us to inhabit one body for an extended length of time, to fully occupy it and use it more effectively. It’s also therapeutic for those of us who still have our original bodies.”
Well, we wanted the truth, Leesha thought. “I was with you up until now,” she said. “I’m totally sympathetic, but that’s just not going to work for us going forward.”
Seph McCauley’s face had gone pale, his eyes blazing gold-green against the pallor. “So...what you’re saying is, Thorn Hill survivors killed Grace Moss and two other people in my backyard in order to collect blood magic.”
Wu and Greaves looked at each other. “You’re talking about the killings in Trinity,” Greaves said.
“Jonah asked me about that, remember?” Brendan said to Greaves. “He thought we were responsible for the killings on Halloween.”
“Isn’t that what we’re here to talk about?” Seph’s voice rose. “You killed a twelve-year-old girl so you could patch yourselves up. A girl who was two when Thorn Hill happened, someone who had no idea she was even magical until two years ago.”
“I’ll be the first to say that I don’t control more than a fraction of the Thorn Hill survivors,” Greaves said. “It could have been shades that did the killings. But not anyone under my command. It wasn’t us.”
“This is a waste of time,” DeVries said. “It wasn’t zombies who attacked me on Halloween night. It was Jonah Kinlock. So where is he?”
“Yes,” Alison said. “Where is he? What have you done with him?”
Leesha looked from Alison to Mandrake, feeling the tension that crackled between them.
“Jonah has another commitment,” Mandrake said, giving Alison a look that said that she was talking out of turn.
“Like what?” Alison said. “What could be more important than this?”
Mandrake and Greaves seemed to be having trouble coming up with an answer.
Alison stood. “I have something to say,” she announced, her voice trembling a little. “Ms. Greaves, you said that you left Mr. DeVries’s employ because you didn’t want to experiment on unwilling subjects, right?”
Greaves nodded warily. “Right.”
“But when you got to Thorn Hill, you started right back in, didn’t you?” Alison said. “You—and him—” She pointed at Mandrake. “You started trying to turn us into something we’re not, and we never had a chance to say yes or no.”
“Alison,” Mandrake said, visibly shaken, “what are you doing?”
“Truth and reconciliation,” Alison said. “Isn’t that what this is? So here’s the truth: we were experimented on without our consent.”
“You’re confused,” Mandrake said, licking his lips, sweat beading his forehead. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Yes, I do,” Alison said. “And you do, too.”
“I should have known that this meeting would be too stressful for you.” Mandrake looked at Natalie for help. “Natalie, can you and Rudy help Alison back to her apartment and sedate her? Once we’re done here, we can—”
“No,” Natalie said. “No, I can’t.” With that they all stood, all the younger survivors of Thorn Hill. Natalie, Rudy, Charlie, Mike, and Thérèse.
“See, we’re all in this together,” Rudy said. “Back then, we were too young to consent. Well, now we’re older, those of us who’ve survived. We’re old enough to decide. But you just keep on using us, don’t you?”
“Using you? Is that what you think?”
“Your mistake was giving us the blood magic,” Natalie said. “It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, to get us all on board with the new plan, to demonstrate the benefits. But there were...unexpected side effects. Like clearheadedness.”
“Jonah had it right all along, didn’t he?” Alison said.
Mandrake turned, speaking directly to Seph. “She’s heavily medicated,” he said. “She’s been declining for some time, and has developed a paranoia that—”
“I have been heavily medicated,” Alison said. “We all have. All those trips to the dispensary, all those therapies. You still hoped to create that perfect assassin.”
“What kind of experiments?” Mercedes asked. “What was really going on at Thorn Hill?”
“They were creating magical mutants,” Rudy said. “So we could defend ourselves against wizard oppression. After the massacre, Gabriel tried to carry on.”
“I was trying to keep you alive!” Gabriel looked at each of them in turn, but couldn’t seem to find any allies.
“But you weren’t the expert on Weirstones, were you?” Natalie said. She jerked a thumb at Greaves. “Lilith Greaves was. She was always better at this than you. So your experiments weren’t all that successful.”
“Meanwhile, the undead survivors of Thorn Hill were causing problems,” the one called Charlie said. “Making it more likely that your secrets would come out. So you sent us out to put them to rest permanently.”
“Jonah caught on,” Natalie said. “He kept asking questions about why we were doing what we were doing. He kept trying to get at the truth behind Thorn Hill. Worse, now shades under Lilith’s command were killing the gifted, seeking blood magic.”
“So you needed a scapegoat,” Alison said. “You needed a sacrifice that would take the pressure off of you, so you could keep your secrets a little longer. So you set Jonah up. He was supposed to take the blame for the murders at McCauley’s. The double bonus was it would shut him up. But somehow, he managed to slip through the trap you laid for him.”
“Hang on,” Seph said. “What are you saying?”
“You’re blaming the wrong person,” Alison said. “Jonah didn’t kill those people on Halloween. I did.” Tears pooled in her eyes, spilled over, and ran down her cheeks. “I am so very sorry.”
Emma spent a good part of the long drive home rehearsing what she would say. Or maybe rehearsing was the wrong word, because she never said the same thing twice. It was like a song where you changed the lyrics every time you sang it, but it still never quite came together. Or maybe there was just no way to turn any of this into words that were anything but ugly.
You know how your life was ruined and you lost nearly all your family when you were only six or seven years old, and you thought it was an accident? Well, it wasn’t. Somebody did it on purpose.
You know how the people all around you suffered and died, and you watched it, knowing that it’s going to happen to you one day? You paid the price for my mama cheating on my father.
Remember how you can’t even kiss a girl or hug your brother, Kenzie, who you love most in the world? My daddy did that.
Seriously, it might be easier just to shoot herself between the eyes and leave a long apology note.
But, no. That was Tyler’s way out. And they deserved better.
So she gave up and tuned the radio to a blues station, and it seemed like every one of those songs told the story much better than she ever could.
As she drove north, it got colder and colder.
Should she go talk to Mercedes first? It would help if she could bring some scrap of hope along with her. But, no. She’d be doing that more for herself, not for Jonah, Natalie, and the others. So she headed straight for the Anchorage.
She was really feeling the absen
ce of her phone. She kept reaching for it, thinking she’d call Kenzie or Jonah or somebody, and realizing too late that it wasn’t there. She decided to stop at Oxbow and pick it up.
Emma parked in her usual spot. When she got out of her truck, she was shocked at how cold it was. She tried to enter through the side door as usual, but when she put in the code, she got an error message.
Maybe they finally got around to changing the locks, she thought. She tried pounding on the door, but nobody answered. The place appeared deserted, nobody coming in or out. In fact, the whole campus seemed oddly empty of students. It was already dark, maybe just past suppertime, which usually meant a lot of coming and going.
Maybe she should go try Kenzie at Steel Wool. There was always staff on duty there, and he was one of the first people she wanted to talk to anyway.
As she turned away, she heard gunshots coming from inside the dormitory. And then what sounded like volleys of gunfire in return. Emma flattened herself against the building, next to the door, hoping that brick would stop a bullet. Her pulse pounded in her throat as possible explanations reeled through her mind.
So at first she didn’t notice when somebody materialized out of the dark and snowflakes into the pool of light around the door. He was muffled up against the cold, but had a phone pressed to his ear.
Emma shrank back, raising both hands in defense. Then lowered them slightly. “Fitch?” she said, and it came out almost as a squeak.
He stared at her as if she’d risen from the dead and tapped him on the shoulder. “Emma?” Fitch threw his arms around her, and swung her around in a happy dance. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to see you. Leesha’s been calling you and calling you.”
The phone in his hand was crackling angrily. Raising it to his ear, Fitch said, “Kenzie! It’s Emma! She’s here, in front of Oxbow. And she’s alive!”