“Tyler,” Jonah said, wading into the nest of furniture pads, pushing them aside. “The man I killed the night we met.”
“Did you kill him?”
Jonah wanted to say yes, Emma could tell, to prove just how low-down bad he was. Instead he said, “I still don’t know.”
“Lilith Greaves is my mother. Her real name is Gwen Hart.”
“Lilith is your mother.” He wasn’t exactly asking questions, just making statements, repeating whatever it was that she said.
“That’s right. So between the two of us, who’s hardwired for murder, do you think?”
“It doesn’t matter who poisoned the wells,” Jonah said. “The end result is the same, and the fix is the same.”
Emma could tell she was losing him, so she hurried it along. “You don’t even know it’s a fix,” she growled. “Who knows what will happen if you kill her?” She jerked her chin toward Madison. “Even if you end up with blood magic, it’s going to run out sooner or later. You might be worse off than before.”
“We don’t know if it’s a fix,” Jonah said, “but it buys us some time, and it’s the only option we have.”
“Maybe not,” Emma said, licking her lips. “I’ve been to Tyler’s lab. I have all his records, all his recipes, all his files. Don’t you think Natalie or Mercedes could do something with that? Gabriel always said what we needed was more information. Now we have it.”
“You may be right,” Jonah said. “But I can’t take the chance that you’re wrong.” He kicked a barrel out of his way and crossed to where Madison lay in her nest of padding.
With a grunt of satisfaction, he began to pull away the quilts.
“Jonah!” Emma said, her voice ragged with desperation, “You listen to me. If you’re looking for revenge, I’m the one you should be coming after.”
“This isn’t about revenge,” Jonah said, squatting next to Madison. “It’s about doing what’s necessary to save Kenzie’s life.”
“Really?” Emma growled. “If you want to save your brother’s life, you do have a choice. Who are you going to bet on—Lilith Greaves or me?”
Jonah didn’t seem to hear. Slowly, methodically, he began to strip off his gloves.
Emma recalled her mother’s words. In you, I was creating a savant whose music could bring light into darkness and reconnect broken spirits. Your music was designed to heal wounded souls...
You’ve told so many lies, Mama, Emma thought. This time, this one time, I hope you were telling the truth.
She launched into the opening bridge for the new song she’d written on the way back from Memphis, the song that she never sang the same way twice. She began to sing.
I ain’t looking for forgiveness, I won’t try and cop a plea,
There is no earthly reason you should take a chance on me.
I’ve been a loser all my life,
So this should come as no surprise
But, this time, I’ve got sorry on my mind.
Through the entire first stanza, she was afraid to look up, afraid Jonah would be doing what he’d come here to do. When she finally did sneak a look, he was sitting, spooky and still, bare hands resting on his knees, staring out into space. So she went on.
I’m thirty miles from Memphis and a thousand miles from home.
I’ve got murder on my conscience, and I’m guilty to the bone.
There’s too many ways to hurt a person
With no way to make it right,
But here I am with sorry on my mind.
Now Jonah’s eyes were closed, his lashes dark on his cheeks. “I don’t know why you should be sorry,” he whispered, swallowing hard. “None of this is your fault.”
“I can’t help how I feel,” she said. “If you or Madison end up dead, that’ll be my fault, too. That’s a big load to carry around.”
I was born to be a sinner, I was born to play the blues.
You were born to pain and trouble in a world you didn’t choose.
My daddy was a killer,
Says my mama was to blame,
But I’m the one with sorry on my mind.
“Maybe you can help me out with this last verse,” Emma said softly. “It’s giving me a lot of trouble. Try as I might, I can’t figure out how this song ends.”
I’ve got no right to be here, you’ve made that pretty clear,
I don’t like what I’m seeing when I look into the mirror.
But I just had to come here
And lay it on the line.
And tell you I’ve got sorry on my mind.
“Why are you doing this?” Jonah’s voice shook, and tears leaked out from under his lashes. “It’s like they finally gave me a drug that takes the edge off the pain, and you just keep poking at it, opening up the wound, making me feel things I don’t want to feel.”
“That’s what makes us human,” Emma said. “Feeling things—even pain. That’s what music does, if it’s any good: it makes you feel things. You listen to a song, and somehow you know what that person was going through when he wrote it. Or maybe it puts a name to what you’re feeling. And because you can share that, you don’t feel so alone.”
She grabbed a breath. “You may think you can’t touch anybody without hurting them, but you’re wrong.” Setting her guitar aside, she crossed the distance between them and dropped to her knees in front of him so they were face-to-face. Reflexively, he pulled his hands back, balling them into fists.
“You’ve touched me, Jonah,” she said, “and I’ll never be the same.” Their eyes met, and, once again, she saw the Jonah she knew.
“How did you do that?” he whispered.
“I guess,” she said, “I’ve finally figured out what my gift is. Now, please, put your gloves back on.”
One heartbeat. Two. And then, with a quick movement, Jonah scooped up the gloves and slid them on.
Emma breathed a sigh of relief.
“All right,” he said. “We’ll do it your way. I don’t know anyone I’d rather bet on.”
Emma put her hands on his shoulders. “You know what I think? What you call empathy—that knack you have for putting yourself in somebody else’s place—that’s a strength, not a weakness. Never, ever give it up.”
Jonah pulled her in for a fierce hug. Emma rested her head against his chest, so she could hear the beating of his heart and breathe in his familiar scent.
“You know what I think?” Jonah said, after a while.
“What?”
“The ending of that song does need work.”
“Maybe,” she said, “we can work on it together.”
When you bring guns to downtown Cleveland and start firing them off, sooner or later the police are going to show up, and that’s just what happened at the Keep that night. It was a crime scene that had everything but live suspects and a plausible explanation.
There was plenty to go on. CSI could have camped there for a year, given all the evidence that needed collecting. The scene could have been a training stage for murderers—some of the victims had been hacked apart, some had been shot. There were guns all around, but everyone who had used them seemed to be dead. In fact, the vast majority of the bodies looked like they’d been dead for some time, though some were remarkably well preserved. Some of the dead were people who had been missing for months.
Madison Moss was the only seriously wounded person who was still alive. They took her to Metro, but she was out in a matter of days. Too stubborn to stay, they said.
On the night of the attack, none of the witnesses had much to say, and the perpetrators all seemed to be dead. Eventually, Ross Childers arrived, one of the rare occasions when a big-city department calls on a small-town officer for investigative help. He interviewed as many survivors as he could, and so finally, like all terrible ordeals, the long night was over.
There was a big memorial service for Gabriel Mandrake, and music superstars from all over the country showed up. It would have made sense to have had it at the Keep, in the fortress he had built, but it was closed for major cleanup. So they held it in a nearby church.
The media buzzed around Cleveland for weeks; there was plenty of fodder to keep them occupied, but when nobody would agree to an interview and the police just kept saying the investigation was ongoing, after a while they had to close up shop. Merchants and restaurateurs downtown were worried that the lurid coverage of the Carnage at the Keep, as the media called it, would deter business. In fact, the demand for zombie tours increased and the entertainment district took on a kind of edgy, dangerous appeal.
The investigation was never formally closed, but the prevailing theories seemed to be that it was either a meth-fueled turf war or it had to do with some kind of bizarre religious cult.
“How come the party always ends up at my house?” Kenzie said, scowling as the others filed in.
“Um, I don’t know, best sound system, maybe?” Jonah said, shutting the door behind him.
“Best light show?” Emma said, setting down sacks of takeout. “Though I have to say, Kenzie, lately, the display is not up to standard.”
Natalie eyed Kenzie critically. “Hmmm. Show me?” She extended her arms to demonstrate.
Grumbling, Kenzie stuck out his arms. They were rock steady, showing no telltale webbing of flame.
Natalie nodded, displaying grudging approval. “Mercedes and I think we can do even better with the symptoms once your Weirstone is completely healthy.”
“What ever happened to patient confidentiality?” Kenzie muttered. “Harry! Fill the ice bucket, please.”
“You’re not supposed to rely on Harry so much,” Natalie chided. “You’re supposed to try to do more things for yourself.”
“Harry likes doing it,” Kenzie said. “I mean, we’ve been together forever. I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”
“How’s the walking coming?” Natalie persisted.
“Are you ever off-duty?” Kenzie pulled up his sweater to reveal the T-shirt he had on underneath. Emblazoned on the front was NAG in large letters with a slash across it.
Natalie rolled her eyes.
Jonah couldn’t help smiling. Just after the standoff at the Keep, when Kenzie no longer had access to blood magic, he’d hit a low point, suffering from a major rebound reaction. During that time, Jonah scarcely left his brother’s bedside. Emma was there a lot, too. Sometimes they just sat and talked and held hands, Emma’s grip firm and warm through the leather. An anchor. Sometimes, they brought their guitars and played until light leaked in through the windows. Like an old couple, finishing each other’s musical sentences.
They were still working on the ending of that song they were writing together.
For the last few days, though, Emma had seemed distant and a bit standoffish. Jonah would catch her looking at him in this perplexed and wounded way. He wondered if it was because she was leaving for Memphis in the morning. Did she expect he’d try to talk her out of it? He would not. She deserved a chance to move on, if that’s what she wanted.
Mercedes and Natalie and some of the other healers from both Trinity and the Anchorage had worked nearly round the clock on the records from Tyler’s lab. Eventually, they identified the poison Tyler had used—it was a plant native to Brazil, and not one they’d have likely chanced on without help. It was largely unknown, so there wasn’t much out there in the way of antidotes, but once Mercedes knew the mechanism, she had a scheme for treatment.
It was Natalie who had determined that the poison embedded itself in the Weirstone, which was what made it so difficult to find and treat. They tested Weirstones from savants who had died, and confirmed it. After research trips to Memphis, and trips to Brazil, they devised a two-step process: first, extract the poison from savant Weirstones, and second, a chelation therapy to take it out of the body.
Kenzie was the first patient, because he was totally out of options. At first, the extraction made him even sicker, but he began to improve as soon as the chelation treatment began. Now, six months later, he was putting on weight and muscle, what with his daily torture sessions with the physical therapists and his ravenous appetite. He’d probably always be slender, and he’d never be as tall as Jonah, but this time his glowing good health seemed real...and permanent. For the first time that Jonah could remember, it seemed safe to look forward to a future with Kenzie in it.
“Speaking of sound systems, can you get some tunes going, bro?” Jonah said.
“Harry. Favorites playlist, please.” He watched as Jonah arranged beverages on the windowsill. “Did I miss somebody’s birthday? Or are we celebrating something else?”
“We are celebrating,” Natalie said. “We’re waiting for a special envoy to arrive.”
As the first bars of “Untouchable” blasted through the speakers, Rudy groaned. “You never get tired of that, do you? Is it going to be all Fault Tolerant, all the time, from here on in?”
“Why should I listen to inferior music?” Kenzie said. “Anyway, you were the one who was hot to make the EP.”
The EP project had grown out of Kenzie’s recovery. It had been on the to-do list for a while, but now they had an extra incentive to record the Kinlock catalog.
“Note to self: be careful what you wish for,” Rudy said, with a mock shudder. He gave Kenzie a sideways look. “The thing is, we need more tunes.”
“They’re coming,” Kenzie said. “The creative spirit is not like a faucet you can turn off and on. Anyway, it’s not like we’ve had nothing to do.”
“Kenzie isn’t the holdup,” Jonah said, easing himself into a chair. “I’ve got a whole lot of new material from him. It’s just that the chelation therapy wears me out. As soon as I get home, I’m done.”
“Welcome to our world, Superman,” Rudy said. “People can live totally normal lives without leaping tall buildings at a single bound.”
“If things go as expected, Jonah should keep his strength and sensory acuity,” Natalie said. “What Gabriel and Lilith did changed the architecture of our stones, so some things are hardwired. If it’s true that the uncontrollable toxic touch thing is really a side effect of the poison, then the removal of the stored poison should help that. As a matter of fact—”
“Has anyone else noticed that Natalie is getting harder and harder to understand?” Jonah said. “When did she stop speaking English?”
Natalie looked at Jonah, narrow-eyed, and he shifted his eyes away. Quit pressuring me, he thought.
Just then, the doorbell pinged.
“That’ll be Leesha,” Natalie said, leaping up and keying in the okay to enter.
“I just live here,” Kenzie murmured. “Don’t mind me.”
It was Leesha, and, behind her, a tall, angular Anaweir boy with platinum hair. He looked familiar, but Jonah couldn’t place him.
“Fitch!” Emma cried. She hurtled out of her chair and flung her arms around him. “I didn’t know you were home. Are you back for the whole summer?”
“Unfortunately, no,” Fitch said. “I have to be back in Cambridge for summer session in a couple weeks. I’m still catching up after being gone for fall term.”
“I hope it’s okay I brought my friend Fitch along,” Leesha said to Natalie. “You’d said that Kenzie was feeling better, and we both wanted to see him again.”
Fitch had been looking around the room. When his gaze lit on Kenzie, he made a beeline for him and bumped fists. “Kenzie! My man!”
“Fitch!” Kenzie grinned. “My jailbreak partner. Welcome to my lair.”
Seeing Jonah’s confusion, Fitch stuck his hand out. “I’m Harmon Fitch. You probably don’t remember me, but you saved my life in the Flats just before Christmas.”
“Ah,” Jonah said. “I r
emember—you were at the Halloween party, too. Dancing with Leesha.”
“After you turned me down,” Leesha said.
“Make yourself at home,” Kenzie said. “Lord knows, everyone else has. Drinks are over there, snacks on that table. Empty chairs there.”
Leesha and Fitch fetched drinks. Leesha perched on the edge of a chair. Fitch declined a seat, but leaned against the wall, looking just a bit awkward and ill at ease.
“Jonah and I were with Leesha in Trinity all day today, working out some legal issues,” Natalie said. “I asked her if she would come answer any questions you might have about the outcome.” Natalie nodded to Leesha.
“Okay, well, Mercedes and I have been working with Jonah and Natalie on a plan to put the buildings, assets, and endowment of the foundation in trust for the survivors of Thorn Hill.”
“Hear, hear!” Kenzie said, and they clinked their glasses.
“So, as of today, it’s a done deal. The papers are signed, the lawyers paid.”
“Really?” Rudy said. “It was that easy?”
Leesha nodded. “Frankly, everyone was amazed at how well-endowed the foundation is.” She paused, and repeated, “Amazed. There should be plenty of money to provide support for all Thorn Hill survivors as well as fund research into treatments for free shades, assuming that becomes a priority. So. For now, the foundation will be governed by a board of trustees that includes representatives from the Interguild Council as well as students and staff from the Anchorage. Mercedes has agreed to direct health services here, for the time being, at least, and we’ll be recruiting for a school director as well. We’d prefer to hire a savant, but—” She stopped. Cleared her throat.
“But there are no adult savants, at this point,” Jonah concluded. “None of us have made it to eighteen.”
“But we will,” Natalie said. “To the future.” She raised her glass.
“What about savant representation on the Interguild Council?” Kenzie asked.
“The council has agreed to that,” Leesha said. “Ironically, Hilary Hudson and Sylvia Morrison were two of your most vocal supporters. If there’s anything you want to ask for, now is the time. I think I speak for everyone when I say the council would be willing to lynch any and all members of the Black Rose. It’s a shame that none of them survived the incident at the Anchorage.”