Emma nodded her understanding. She was not to give Natalie any take-away message. There would be no plea for rescue. Otherwise, he’d kill her.
Resting his hand on Natalie’s head, Rowan murmured words that sounded like Latin. “Ana memorare.”
A shudder ran through Natalie. And then another.
Rowan spoke another charm and stepped back. Shooting a warning look at Emma, he said, “Natalie? What’s the matter? Are you okay?”
She flinched, as if startled. She blinked at him, then rubbed both her hands over her face. “What happened? Where am I?”
“I’m Rowan DeVries, remember? You’re here to treat my cousin.”
“Your cousin?” Natalie said thickly, looking around, as if for clues.
“Here.” Rowan rested his hot hand on Emma’s shoulder.
“She’s doing much better, as you can see. We were just about to take you back to the Anchorage, when you had some sort of spell.”
It was a spell, all right, Emma thought.
Something must have shown in her expression, because Rowan’s fingers dug into her shoulder in warning. Natalie’s expression cleared. “Oh. Right. And, so . . .”
Her eyes lit on the suitcase. “And so I was just about to leave?”
“Right. I’m going to take you back to the Anchorage now.”
Natalie took a step, and faltered. “Wow, this isn’t like me.”
“I’m sure you’ll be more comfortable at home,” Rowan said, letting go of Emma and moving swiftly to take Natalie’s arm. “We’ve taken too much of your time already. I can help you to the car if you’d like.”
Natalie looked at Emma. “You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
Emma nodded. “I’m fine,” she whispered.
“You call me if you need any more medicine. Or anything at all.”
Then Natalie turned away, toward the door. “If you can . . . just get my bags,” she said to Rowan, “I’ll walk out on my own.”
Rowan picked up her bags and followed her out. He paused in the doorway and turned back toward Emma. “Don’t worry. You’ll be perfectly safe while I’m gone. I’ve instructed security not to let anyone in or out.” When they were gone, Emma sank down onto the bench in the foyer and put her head in her hands. Once again, she was on her own.
Chapter Thirty-two
Do-Over
“Jonah! Wake up!” Jake’s voice broke into Jonah’s seething thoughts.
Jonah looked down, balancing himself on the edge of the platform. Four stories below, his gymnastics coach was a tiny speck against the polished wood floor.
That’s what they called him, anyway—a gymnastics coach. He was more like a martial-arts instructor.
“You need to be over there.” Jake pointed to the far end of the gym, to the platform under the rafters. “Get there without touching down. The timer starts NOW!”
Jonah pulled the grappling hook from his pocket, clipped it to his line, and sent it flying across the room to find a home over one of the crossbeams at the peak of the roof. After yanking back a bit to anchor it, he launched himself from the edge of the platform. At first he was falling, nearly to the gym floor, and then arcing up, up, up. At the peak of the arc, he released himself from the line and grabbed on to the metal framework that supported the lighting system. Swinging back, he launched himself again, this time ropeless. But when he arrived at where the platform should have been, it was gone.
Jake was up to his old tricks again. Testing Jonah’s ability to improvise on the fly.
Just before Jonah slammed into the wall, he twisted so that he hit feetfirst, meanwhile scanning the gym for the new target. Throwing out another line, he anchored near center to give himself a little time and pushed off again.
There. Just above the floor, near the door.
Midswoop, he launched another line, at an angle so he could change direction. Folding his body so he didn’t hit the floor, he dropped lightly onto the platform, turned, and assumed his ready stance.
Jake examined the screen on his phone. “Time’s not bad. But you’ve got to keep your eye on the prize, remember.”
One of Jake’s cardinal rules.
“Eyes on the prize,” Jonah repeated dutifully.
“Before you shower, spend an hour with the weights,” Jake advised. “Work on the abdominals. Are you keeping up with your running?”
“Well,” Jonah said, “I have this calculus test—”
“Calculus!” Jake shook his head. “When you going to use that? Prioritize, man! What I teach you will keep you alive.”
So Jake hadn’t gotten the memo. The one that said that Jonah was out of Nightshade. “Weights. Running. Got it,” Jonah said, eager to end the conversation. Because he’d spotted Natalie standing in the doorway to the gym, seething with tension, giving him a look that said, We need to talk. Natalie had been working off-site for nearly a week, and all of his phone calls and texts had gone unanswered. She probably wants to schedule a practice for the band, Jonah thought. Something he wasn’t sure he’d ever be ready for.
He crossed the polished gym floor to where she stood.
“Glad you’re back. Gabriel said that you were completing an off-campus assignment. Were you back in Trinity again?” She shook her head. “Something’s come up. I need your help.”
“Sure,” Jonah said, thinking, Natalie never needs help with anything. “You know all you have to do is ask.” She looked around, then leaned in close. “Let’s go someplace we can’t be overheard.”
“Suits me,” Jonah said, glancing over to where Jake was giving him the evil eye. “Let’s walk down to the river.” Leaving the gym, they crossed to St. Clair. They descended into the Flats and turned left on River Road, toward Settlers Landing. The park would be nearly deserted on a weekday, this early in the morning. And it was, nearly—just a few joggers who lived downtown.
They sat on the wall around the Ohio fountain, looking downriver, their view framed by the rusted and brilliantly painted steel of multiple bridges. The only traffic on the river was the crew team from St. Ignatius, rowing valiantly against the current. It was still early, the rising sun splintered by the buildings of downtown.
“So,” Jonah said. “What’s up? Where have you been? I was getting worried.”
“Jonah,” Natalie said abruptly. “I need help with a rescue.” Jonah stared at her, mystified. There was almost nothing Natalie could have said that would have surprised him more. Generally she preferred to remain at arms’ length from field operations.
“Go on,” he said.
“Gabriel sent me to help some wizards with a patient who was dying from a mysterious ailment.”
“Gabriel sent you to help wizards?” Jonah rolled his eyes. “That’s taking ‘Kumbaya’ a little too far. Did you at least poison a few while you were there?”
“Their patient wasn’t a wizard,” Natalie said, ignoring that last comment. “She’s a savant.”
“Someone from the Anchorage?” Jonah asked, mentally sorting through all the shadehunters he knew were out in the field.
Natalie shook her head. “Someone who’s new to all this.” She leaned closer. “They’re holding her captive because she is the only witness to a murder. They think she may be the break they’ve been looking for . . . that she holds the key to all the recent wizard murders.”
“You’re sure she’s a savant?” Jonah asked.
“She was at Thorn Hill, and has a savant stone.” Natalie frowned. “But I don’t really know what her gift is. And she doesn’t have the tattoo.”
Something kindled in the back of Jonah’s mind. It might have been hope. “Does she? Know something about the wizard murders, I mean?”
“Hard to say. It seems she was on the scene when a number of wizards were killed, along with her father.” Natalie’s eyes narrowed as she focused in on Jonah’s face. “Hello? Are you feeling all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Jonah’s heart thudded painfully in his chest, and
he could scarcely catch his breath. Sweat pebbled his skin, chilling him as the wind off the river hit him.
“I . . . Gabriel’s changed my dose again,” Jonah lied. “It always takes a while to get used to it.”
“Huh.” Natalie didn’t believe him, of course. “Here. Put your head between your knees.” She put her hand between his shoulder blades and pushed.
“No . . . just—just . . . back to this girl. What’s her name?”
“Emma Greenwood. Why?”
Jonah gripped the top of the wall on either side so hard the stone crumbled under his fingers. A torrent of emotions raced through his mind. Emma Greenwood was alive? How was that possible? And if it was possible, how had she fallen into the hands of wizards?
Reinforcements. Reinforcements had been arriving as Jonah was leaving the house. Yet Jonah had stolen her guitar and left Emma there for them to find.
“Jonah, what the hell is the matter?” Natalie put her hands on his shoulders and looked him straight in the eyes.
“You know you can tell me anything.”
Not this, he thought. He’d killed a girl and now she’d come back to life?
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m all right. It’s not unusual for me to feel crappy. In fact, I feel crappy most of the time. I just try and ignore it. That’s what I do.” Stop it, Kinlock! You’re babbling. “About this girl. Did you figure out what was wrong with her? Is she—how is she doing now?”
“She’s doing much better,” Natalie said. “And no, I don’t know what was wrong with her. Some kind of poison or toxin or spell. Nothing I’ve seen before. She did hit her head, but that doesn’t seem serious.”
“Who are the wizards? Did you get any names?”
“DeVries. Rowan DeVries, a Burroughs and a Hackleford. DeVries’s sister was killed, apparently.”
DeVries. He’d killed Rachel DeVries that terrible night in Cleveland Heights. And Rowan DeVries had come to the Interguild Council, vowing revenge. And said nothing about a witness. Clearly, they meant to keep that information to themselves.
Jonah struggled to keep his voice polite, concerned, under control. “So they invited you in to treat this girl and then they let you go? That’s so . . . unwizard-like.”
“DeVries wiped my mind, not realizing that I’m immune to conjured magic. I sure wasn’t going to tell him. So I played along.”
“The girl. Emma. What did she say about the killings?” Jonah asked, his mouth as dry as dust. “What does she remember? Would she recognize . . . anybody who was there?”
“She remembers very little of what happened. Maybe she’ll remember more as she recovers. To be honest, there’s a chance that nobody was murdered at all. Emma asked to see the bodies, but DeVries claimed they’d been destroyed.”
Oh, somebody was murdered, all right, Jonah thought. Nine somebodies, and it could have been ten. “If she can’t help them, do you think they’ll let her go?”
“That’s what I was hoping for,” Natalie said. “I thought they might wipe her memory and send her off. But Emma seems convinced that they intend to wring everything out of her and then kill her.” Natalie put her hand on Jonah’s arm. “In the meantime, they’re torturing her, Jonah. She didn’t say anything, but there were blisters all around her neckline.”
“Tortured! They’re torturing her?” Jonah surged to his feet. “Exactly.” Natalie tilted her head, noting his reaction.
“Does that surprise you?” She scraped back the hair that the wind had pulled loose from her ponytail.
Maybe Emma would remember him, and his secret would be out. But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except seizing this chance to undo some of what he’d done.
“Where is she? Is she still at the house in Cleveland Heights?”
Natalie shook her head. “Cleveland Heights? Who said anything about the Heights? She’s in Bratenahl. Up by the lake. It’s just a house—a mansion—on the lakefront, but the property is walled in, and they have an alarm system and fulltime security.”
“No problem,” Jonah said, already building his wall of secrets. “I’ll get in. In the meantime, please don’t say anything about this to Gabriel or anyone else. And if I bring her back here, absolutely nobody can know that history about her.”
“But Gabriel will want to debrief me on what happened when I—”
“Just tell him your patient was recovering and so you came back to school.” When Natalie still looked unconvinced, Jonah resorted to begging. “Please, Nat. If you care about me. If you care about—about Emma, you won’t say a word to anyone.”
“All right, Jonah, I trust you.”
Don’t trust me, Jonah thought. I’m asking you for my sake, not hers.
“Just be careful,” Natalie said, trying to smile. “We have a gig to practice for, you know.”
Maybe I’ll be killed in the attempt, Jonah thought, showing his teeth in a smile. Then I’ll be off the hook.
Chapter Thirty-three
North Coast Blues
If help ain’t coming, you got to help yourself. That’s what Sonny Lee always said. And so the night Natalie left, Emma began planning her escape.
She considered her options. Emma was a city girl . . . not the best coordinated or athletic person. The outer walls were high, alarmed, and guarded, so the notion of her scaling them was ridiculous. All of the trees had been cut back so that they didn’t overhang the wall, so shimmying down one of them wasn’t a path out.
There was an attendant at the driveway gate, so even if she managed to get hold of some car keys, it was unlikely she could bluff her way out. She could try to hide in the back of somebody’s car, but she suspected that that ploy worked only in the movies.
Even getting out of the house would be a challenge. At night, they locked her in her room, and during the day, there were people everywhere.
Down was easier than up. So, like it or not, over the cliff and down to the lake seemed the most likely way out. If she managed not to fall into the water, she might actually make it.
She knew she’d need a rope of some kind. So while Rowan was driving Natalie back downtown, Emma sneaked down the basement stairs.
It was cool and damp-smelling, dark and apparently little used. She found an unlocked wine cellar and several locked doors (the torture chambers?) and, happily, a coil of sturdy nylon rope in a metal cabinet. She wasn’t sure how long it was, but the cliff wasn’t all that high, maybe thirty feet? Huddling in a corner, she tied knots into the rope at intervals. And that pretty much summed up the climbing plan. She’d tie one end to a tree and slide over the edge, using her feet to keep from smashing against the cliff.
In a box marked Donations she found a heavy sweatshirt, a knit cap, and a pair of jeans that more or less fit her, though they seemed in danger of sliding off her hipless frame. These must have belonged to Rachel DeVries, she thought, which was creepy, to tell the truth.
She carried the rope and the clothes back to her room and hid everything between the mattress and the box spring. The next day, she rooted around in the hall closet and found a pair of leather gloves in a jacket pocket. She’d need those if she didn’t want to shred the skin on her hands.
She was just closing the closet door when someone behind her said, “Going somewhere?”
Emma jumped and spun around, heart thudding. It was Burroughs. And beyond him, she saw Hackleford and DeVries. Rowan had been off-site all afternoon, strategizing with his wizard colleagues. They must have just gotten back, because they were still wearing their jackets. Burroughs was still right there, seemingly waiting for an answer.
“Oh! I . . . uh . . . it’s getting chilly, and I thought I might sit out in the garden. I was afraid my hands might get cold.” She held up the gloves.
“It’s supposed to storm tonight,” Burroughs said, moving in so he stood uncomfortably close. “Might be best to stay inside.” He reached out and tucked her hair behind her ears. There was an implied ownership in the gesture that made her shudder. But Emma a
lso noticed a wired intensity in him that hadn’t been there before, a certain eagerness.
Emma weighed the gloves in her hand, debating whether she could get away with keeping them. “Well, maybe I’ll just hang on to them in case I—”
Suddenly Rowan was there. He gripped her wrist with one hand and ripped the gloves away with the other, stuffing them into his pocket. “I don’t think you realize just how precarious your situation is. Come with me.”
He half dragged her away from the others, down the hallway toward her room. Wrenching open the door, he thrust her inside and slammed the door behind them. Then stood, glaring down at her.
“What is the matter with you?” Emma demanded, rubbing her bruised wrist. “What do you want from me?”
“Two more wizards have been murdered.”
“Murdered? Where?”
“Chicago,” Rowan said. “Sometime yesterday.”
“How?”
“Similar to the others. Cut to pieces, their heartstones destroyed. Nightshade scattered over the bodies.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“No? Well, it may as well be, because you’re going to pay the price.”
“What do you mean?” Emma asked, her heart plummeting.
“Think the Mafia, Emma, only a thousand times worse. For what it’s worth, I believe that you’re doing the best you can. But this situation has fueled speculation about whether I have the right temperament for this job. Whether I’m ruthless enough to lead the syndicate. Some of my colleagues are less interested in the truth than in the political advantage to be gained if you implicate members of the Interguild Council. You are the wedge that drives support to my enemies. And that can’t happen—not right now. If I lose control of the Black Rose, there’s no way my successors will leave me alive.”
“And, so . . . I am the sacrifice.”
Rowan’s lips tightened. “You are the sacrifice. Unless you can give me what I need.”
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