The Sorcerer Heir

by Cinda Williams Chima

  “Which it did,” Emma reminded him.

  “Yeah, but nobody said anything about murder until you did. I thought it was best to leave well enough alone.” He swallowed hard. “To be honest, I was scared.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “Scared of your daddy.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he was a bad man, Memphis,” Mickey said. “Because he was a killer.” He hit the button to open the doors.

  It felt like when Emma rode a roller coaster for the first time. She got up to the top of the first hill, looked down, and realized the only way to get off that thing was to plunge down that hill and every hill after until she got to the end of the line. There are some things you just have to hang on and get through.

  Mickey pulled the truck inside the building and shut the doors behind them. It was obvious that nobody was supposed to see the inside, because the inside didn’t look anything like a barn. They were on a concrete pad, in an area clearly used as garage space. There were still some KEEP OUT signs, but it was kind of halfhearted, since anybody who’d gotten that far wasn’t going to pay attention to any signs.

  Mickey rolled to a stop, but neither one of them made a move to get out.

  “What do you mean, he was a killer?” Emma said, her fingers making sweat marks on the vinyl seats.

  “That’s what he did for a living,” Mickey said.

  “He was a musician,” Emma said, through gritted teeth. “He played the bass guitar.” She looked up. “He was good, Mickey. He was damn good.”

  “I don’t disbelieve you,” Mickey said. “People ain’t just one thing—they’re a lot of different things. And Tyler Greenwood was a killer—a killer for hire.”

  “Who hired him?”

  Mickey shook his head. “I don’t know. Sonny Lee shouldn’t of told me as much as he did, but he needed me to know how dangerous this was before I agreed to help him.” He swallowed hard. “See—he knew that Tyler hated giving you up on Sonny Lee’s terms. Sonny Lee told him that if he came to see you, if he tried to contact you, he would tell you all about your daddy, about some terrible things he did. And if anything happened to Sonny Lee, he’d set it up so you’d find out anyway. That was my job. I was supposed to bring you here.”

  “And Tyler wasn’t supposed to know that?”

  “No,” Mickey said, running a hand over his bristly chin. “He wasn’t supposed to know. Because then he’d just kill the both of us, you see.” From the matter-of-fact way he said it, Emma knew that he believed it to be true. “Keep in mind, Sonny Lee set this up almost ten years ago, when you came to stay with him.”

  “Do you think Sonny Lee was the one that told him?” Emma said. “About you, I mean?”

  “I just can’t picture that,” Mickey said. “He wouldn’t put me at risk that way. I’m thinking Tyler must’ve known all along. Which gives me the shivers, to tell you the truth. Funny how life gets more precious when you don’t have much of it left.”

  Mickey climbed down from the truck, peering around as though he thought danger might come at him from every side.

  “He’s dead, Mickey,” Emma said, jumping down herself and striding toward a set of doors on the far side of the garage.

  “Hang on a minute,” Mickey said, hurrying after her. “Don’t go rushing into things.”

  The door was fastened with a keypad lock on it. Mickey pulled out a slip of paper and tried three times to key something in, but had no luck with his trembling fingers.

  “Let me,” Emma said. Mickey handed her the paper, which had a string of numbers on it. Emma punched in the code and heard the sound of metal against metal as the locks shifted. Bracing her feet, she pulled open the door.

  The area beyond looked like the kind of office you’d find in a factory, maybe—not fancy at all. The equipment, the desks—everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. At one end of the office, she saw another set of doors and another keypad.

  “You’re right,” Emma murmured. “Nobody’s been in here. Not for a long time, anyway.”

  Mickey walked around the room, unlocking one cabinet after another, swinging the doors wide. They were full of weapons of various kinds—knives, daggers, handguns, rifles. Some she wouldn’t have recognized as weapons, but she guessed they must be.

  Emma used the same code on the second set of doors, which swung open to reveal another room lined with white tiles on the floor and walls. It looked kind of like one of the chemical laboratories in high school, with stainless work tables and sinks with high faucets, and metal exhaust hoods to get rid of nasty fumes.

  “Just...be careful, honey,” Mickey said just behind her. “There’s no telling what’s in there.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Emma said. She made a slow circle around the room, taking in the equipment, the gas burners, the shelves lined with jars and bottles full of different colored powders and liquids. Some held what looked like dried plants. They were labeled—some with names, and some with letters and numbers—all handwritten.

  Cicutoxin. Eupatorium rugosum. Aconitum napellus. Scopolamine. Nerium oleander. Atropa belladonna. Cerbera odollam. Solanum carolinense. Datura stramonium. Dieffenbachia. Amanita phalloides. Ricinus communis.

  Who knew that Tyler spoke Latin? Emma didn’t know what they all meant, but she had a bad feeling.

  Others were labeled with numbers and letters, like PSD320.

  She was very careful not to touch anything. She even tried not to breathe, though they were all locked inside glass-fronted cabinets.

  In another cabinet were books about nasty plants, poisons, folk medicines, and an entire row of neatly labeled binders. This cabinet was not locked. Emma pulled out one of the binders and flipped through it. It seemed to be a kind of recipe book—recipes for murder.

  Emma shoved the binder back into the cabinet and backed away slow. Then turned and rushed past Mickey and out of the lab and into the outer room. There she stood, head down, breathing hard as if making up for all the breathing she hadn’t done inside. She heard the doors slide open and closed as Mickey followed her out.

  “Come on, Memphis, sit down here before you fall down.” He pulled out the desk chair and she collapsed into it. “Need anything? Can I get you some water or—”

  Emma shook her head. Then rested it on her arms on the desk and wept, shoulders shaking. She could hear Mickey shuffling around the room, opening a cabinet. He plunked something down on the desk in front of her. “You’re supposed to read this. Sonny Lee made Tyler write everything out for you. I don’t know if this will help or not.” He hesitated. “No rush. I got all the time in the world. I’ll be outside, having another smoke.” The outside door hissed open and then closed again.

  It wasn’t long before Emma blotted her eyes on the sleeves of her shirt and sat up. Maybe Mickey had all the time in the world, but she did not.

  There was a folder on the desk in front of her, the kind she used to put reports in for school. She flipped it open, revealing notebook paper covered in Tyler’s familiar writing.

  Emma—

  Your grandfather made me write this. He means to use it to keep me away from you. If you’re reading this now, I guess it didn’t work or I messed up or I’m dead. Anyway.

  There were some scratched-out words and then it continued.

  I may be telling you some things you know already, but here goes. The truth is, for years, I worked for a man named Andrew DeVries. I know that you’re gifted, you have that shine, but I don’t know how much you know about magic. So it may or may not be important for you to know that I am a sorcerer, and DeVries was a wizard, and a lot of sorcerers work for wizards, doing things they’d rather not do. I’m not making excuses. Well, maybe I am.

  My job was killing people. I traveled all over the world doing it. Being a musician was a good cover for me. I killed people all different ways, but, b
eing a sorcerer, I mostly used poisons, because I have a real talent for potions and plants and like that. Some of that I learned from my grandmother, your great-grandmother. Most of the people I killed were wizards that some other wizard wanted dead. So I told myself that wasn’t so bad. And poisons are a good way to kill wizards, because they ain’t looking for it, and because it takes them down as quick as it does anybody else. But sometimes I killed people in the other guilds, too. Mr. DeVries was the one who handled the contracts, and he didn’t discriminate, so I didn’t either.

  Your mother worked for Mr. DeVries, too, but she was working on a project that was kind of a sideline for him. Her specialty was using potions and treatments to change Weirstones—that’s the magical source inside of a gifted person. DeVries hoped to make improvements in the basic model, or even create new magical guilds to meet a need, or turn a sorcerer into a warrior, say.

  Gwen absolutely hated that work, but, like I said, a lot of people do things they’d rather not do. That’s just the way the world is.

  So that’s how we met, and one thing led to another, and we got married. If that wasn’t bad enough, we hadn’t been married a year when we found out Gwen was pregnant. I wanted no part of being a father until you were born. And then I was totally head over heels in love with you. I hated traveling because every time I came home, you’d done some new thing and I’d missed it. But Gwen was more and more unhappy with her job. She kept saying we should both leave, we should run away, but I knew how dangerous that would be. We fought about it a lot until I came back from a business trip and found the two of you gone.

  It didn’t take me long to find out where you’d gone—your mama had been talking about this commune in Brazil before you left. I knew DeVries would be keeping a close watch on me. I hoped that if I stayed, he would decide it wasn’t worth going after you. I was scared to death he’d find you and kill you both. He wasn’t the kind to give second chances.

  You’d been gone eighteen months when I decided it was safe to come find you. I didn’t call ahead—I wasn’t sure how Gwen would take it if I showed up, and I didn’t want to give her a chance to run off and then who knew if I would find you again.

  There was some more scratching out, and he drew a line out to the margin and added:

  She was scared of me. There was times that I hurt her—I didn’t mean to, but I did. I never laid hands on you, though.

  So I went to Brazil, and slipped into camp, meaning to surprise you. But when I got there, I was the one who got the surprise. I found out that your mother was experimenting on you. On her own daughter. On my daughter. Not only that, she had taken up with somebody else—a man named Gabriel Mandrake, who was the mastermind behind the Thorn Hill project, as they called it. The three of you were a family...and your mother looked happier than I’d ever seen her. Here I’d been doing everything I could to protect the two of you, while she was cheating on me.

  I’d like to say I went a little crazy, but I knew exactly what I wanted—I wanted to hurt your mother and destroy Mandrake and everything he’d built there. I didn’t want him dead. I wanted him to have to live with it. So I bided my time, kept out of sight, and waited until Mandrake was away. Then I poisoned the wells at the camp and took you back to the States with me.

  It wasn’t like Emma didn’t know it was coming, but it was still like a body blow. She sat back in her chair, and closed her eyes, and let the tears fall. It was some time before she could go back to reading.

  I knew that as long as DeVries was alive, you’d be in danger. So the first thing I did when I got back was kill him. But you were still in danger, if you were living with me, and so I went to Sonny Lee and told him I wanted to fake my death and I asked him to take charge of you.

  Your grandpa was furious with me. Furious. It took a lot to talk him into having any part of it. And then he set some conditions. I was done with you. I was not to come back to Memphis or contact you or try and check up on you. I could keep him up to date with how to contact me—that was all.

  So this is part of the deal. I had to write a true confession, and he’d keep it in a safe place. And if I broke that promise, he’d let you know what kind of a man your father was.

  So, there it is. I’m sorry, Emma. I am so sorry. I’ve hurt a lot of people—in fact, I’ve destroyed everybody and everything I’ve ever loved. I’m hoping that by staying away from you I can keep bad things and bad people away from you. The best thing that can happen is that you live your whole life without having to read this. Without knowing what kind of evil there is in the world. Without knowing your father. Because you’re the one good thing I’ve done. You’re the thing I love most in the world.

  —Your father,

  Tyler Greenwood

  On his way to the Keep, Jonah checked his incoming messages one last time. Still nothing from Kenzie. He swore softly. He’d been conducting a methodical search of all of the campus buildings, using all his skills to get into places he wasn’t supposed to be. So far he’d come up empty. He’d asked Rudy to look for Harry’s IP on the network, but it wasn’t there. He shouldn’t be surprised. By now, Gabriel knew better than to allow Kenzie to get online.

  He could be off-campus somewhere, but that seemed unlikely. It would be a hassle and a risk, especially since Kenzie was so medically fragile. It took considerable effort to keep from adding “if he’s still alive” to every speculation. But that way lay madness.

  As usual, a handful of hosted shades loitered around the front entrance to the club. Most people would assume they were panhandlers or the homeless. When Jonah arrived, they scattered. Understandably, they were still leery of him.

  Jonah entered through the front doors, past the placards that read CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS. SEE YOU NEXT YEAR.

  He ran into a tense standoff in the foyer.

  To be specific, it was Alison confronting eight hosted shades, most brandishing makeshift weapons. Alison had a shiv in each hand, and a gash over one eye.

  Didn’t anybody tell you? Jonah thought. It’s supposed to be all kumbaya now. It seemed these survivors had not got the memo.

  Jonah stepped between Alison and the shades, standing sideways so he could keep an eye on both. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  “How the hell should I know?” Alison swiped away blood with her sleeve. “They just showed up here, and when I wouldn’t let them in, they attacked me. Am I supposed to just let them? Is that the new rule?” Her voice was shaking.

  Jonah turned and faced the shades, who shuffled and seethed, but stood their ground.

  “What’s up?” he asked.

  One of the shades stepped forward, a haggard-looking man in ragged clothes, wielding a broken bottle. We want to see Lilith! he messaged Jonah.

  “Lilith and Gabriel will be meeting with you in small groups once they come up with a plan. They don’t have one, yet.” At least, not one they’ve shared with us, he added to himself.

  You’re keeping the blood magic all to yourselves! one of the shades shouted. Well, it sounded like shouting, mind-to-mind.

  “It’s not like they’re hoarding it,” Jonah said. “There’s a limited supply. It’s not that easy to come by.” And it’s going to a select few. You lose.

  Lilith promised that if we did as she said, and stopped killing mainliners around here, she’d supply us with blood magic, the shade persisted. Where is it? We want to meet with her.

  “She will meet with you,” Jonah said. “But you have to give them some time.”

  How do we know you aren’t holding her prisoner? How do we know she’s still alive?

  “You’ll just have to take my word for it,” Jonah said, beginning to lose patience. “I can’t make her come down and meet with you.”

  I like this body, the shade said. And I want to keep it. But it’s already disintegrating. Unlike yours.

  Well, what do you expect? Jonah thoug
ht. I’m not dead. Yet.

  But, no. That was not politically correct. We’re all equal now, all Thorn Hill survivors. All in this together. Until we’re not.

  The shade waved the bottle menacingly. If they’re going to meet with us, I want to know when.

  “Where are they, anyway?” Jonah muttered to Alison out of the corner of his mouth.

  “Upstairs,” Alison said. “Having a meeting. Again. Still. Gabriel isn’t answering his phone.”

  Jonah was in no mood to run interference for Lilith and Gabriel while they planned and plotted. But he had to try.

  “I’m sorry,” Jonah said to the shades. “I can’t say when they’ll be meeting with you. As soon as I know, I’ll tell you. Right now, you have to leave.”

  Not good enough, the spokesman snarled, lunging at Jonah, slashing at him with the bottle.

  Jonah easily evaded the jagged glass shard and dropped the shade with a kick to the chin that all but took his head off. As he struggled to get up, Jonah said, “Now, leave, or I’ll destroy what’s left of your body and you’ll have to find a new one, blood magic or not.”

  The shade finally got to his feet. If we can’t get blood magic here, we’ll just go get our own, he said. And he led the way out the door.

  Jonah sighed. He couldn’t really blame them for their distrust. After all, up until a week ago, Nightshade operatives were slaughtering the people they were now supposed to be allied with. Communication continued to be a problem, and several fights had broken out already.

  It’s too bad, Jonah thought, that we haven’t been using our resources all along to find ways to help shades instead of slaughtering them. Maybe we’d be much further ahead.

  Jonah turned to Alison. “You all right? You might want to have somebody take a look at that gash.”

  Alison waved his concern away. “I’m okay. But this kind of thing keeps happening,” she muttered. “Gabriel doesn’t want us to carry weapons—he thinks that raises the chances of an incident. But the shades are getting more aggressive by the day. I wish Gabriel or Lilith would at least talk to them.”