Cinda Chima - The Enchanter Heir

“Hurt how?” When Emma fumbled for an answer, the dispatcher said impatiently, “Is he shot or stabbed or what?”

“I don’t know. I think he fell, and hit his head. His head’s bleeding, anyway.”

“Is it bleeding a lot?”

“Looks like it was, but it’s scabbed up now.”

“How long ago did this happen?” To Emma’s guilty ears, the dispatcher’s voice sounded accusing.

“I—I don’t know. I haven’t been home.”

“Is he breathing? Does he have a pulse?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Does he have a history of heart disease? High blood pressure?”

“Who knows? He’s seventy-three, but he never goes to the doctor’s. Look, can’t you ask these questions later? My grandfather, he needs—”

“EMS is on the way, honey,” the dispatcher said. “What’s your name?”

“Emma Greenwood.”

“And you’re Mr. Greenwood’s granddaughter?”

“Yes.”

Emma heard the clatter of a keyboard as the dispatcher took down the information.

“Anything else, Emma? Can you see any other injuries?

Broken bones?”

Emma shook her head, which of course the dispatcher couldn’t see through the phone. “No.”

“Any history of stroke?”

“Not that I know of,” Emma said.

“They’ll be there any minute. Listen for the sirens. Are you on the first floor?”

“Yes. Door’s unlocked. Come in through the shop. Studio Greenwood. I won’t hang up.” Emma set the phone down on the floor next to her and leaned over Sonny Lee. STo her surprise, her grandfather opened his eyes. He tried to speak, but the words came out garbled.

“Sonny Lee! Hang on,” Emma said. “The paramedics are coming and you’re gonna be fine, all you have to do is lay there and wait.”

In answer, Sonny Lee flopped his right hand, banging it on the floor. He clutched an envelope in his gnarly fingers. “What’s that?”

He flopped his hand again in answer. Carefully, she extricated the envelope from his grip. On the outside, Memphis Slim was scrawled in pencil.

Memphis Slim. Sonny Lee’s name for her.

Emma sat on the floor next to him. “Just hang on a little longer,” she said, pressing her hand against his cheek, blinking back tears. He breathed out, a long sigh of letting go. His head drooped back and his eyes glazed over, like a skin of ice on a blackwater puddle. He was dead.

Emma could hear the faint sound of sirens through the open windows, too late. They couldn’t bring Sonny Lee back to life. What would happen to her now? Would she end up in foster care? That old fear kindled and burned.

No. She had places she could go, people she could crash with for a night or two.

A night or two. What about the rest of her life? And what about the shop, with all its woodworking tools? And Sonny Lee’s collection of vintage instruments, many of them one of a kind. What would happen to them?

She needed time to think. To plan, and she wouldn’t have it if she stuck around. She needed to get out of there. She could at least take the guitars that she’d built herself. She could claim that much. Maybe she could get the rest later somehow. When she had a place to stay.

In a daze of grief, Emma climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She yanked a backpack off a hook on the wall and stuffed four T-shirts, a pair of jeans, a flannel shirt, and socks and underwear inside. That was most of her clothes, when you counted the ones on her back. She pushed up the loose ceiling tile over the mattress she used for a bed and pulled down her money stash—the proceeds from the sale of two guitars. She slid the money into the backpack pocket, and Sonny Lee’s letter into the front pocket of her jeans. That was about it: her whole life inside one backpack.

Sirens clamoring right outside pulled Emma out of her thoughts, and emergency lights bloodied the windows. There was no time to pack anything else. The two Studio Greenwood guitars she’d finished leaned against the wall, still in their cases, where she’d left them the last time she came back from Mickey’s.

She pulled one of Sonny Lee’s fedoras down low over her eyes, slung the backpack over her shoulder, scooped up the guitars, and descended the outside stairs to the alley as the paramedics came in the front.

Moments later, she was walking down Beale Street, a guitar in either hand. Emma looked just like a hundred other guitarists in Memphis, heading for a gig. Except for the tears streaming down her face.

Too Little, Too Late

By the time Jonah broke into the dungeon, Jeanette was dead. She hung from the wall, her long plait of gray hair matted with blood, her face swollen, her body bruised and broken. Tools of torture had been flung carelessly aside— useless now.

Jonah knew she was dead because he couldn’t feel her pain. The pain he was feeling was all his own. “Jeanette,” he whispered, his voice breaking, along with his heart.

He snapped the manacles around her wrists in two with his fingers, letting the chains clatter back against the wall. Gently, he lowered her to the stone floor, giving her damaged body the care it deserved, that it should have had. She’d saved his life many times over, but he’d failed her now.

Until five years ago, Jeanette had worked in the infirmary at the Anchorage, where Jonah had spent much of his early life after leaving Thorn Hill. She would hold his head over the basin until the black sick was out of him, then clean his face and mop his sweaty forehead and change the mitts on his hands. After his doses, she would cradle him and sing songs to him until he slept. She provided the comfort of human touch at a time when he almost never got it. Most important of all, she’d saved his brother’s life. She’d left the Anchorage when he was twelve, but not a week went by without a phone call or text or e-mail from Jeanette.

Even at the worst times in his life, he’d never stopped believing in Jeanette Brodie. And she’d never stopped believing in him.

Stripping off his leather glove, he cradled her cheek with his bare hand, knowing he no longer posed any danger to her. “Be at peace,” he whispered, closing her eyes with his fingertips. He texted Gabriel and Kenzie, one word only: Dead . He resisted the urge to send a second text to Gabriel alone. Told you so.

Jeanette might be at peace, but a fine, fresh anger flamed inside of Jonah. Why would anyone—even wizards—target Jeanette? She was one of the gentlest people he’d ever known. She’d only left Gabriel’s service because she could no longer steel herself against the dying of children.

The world was full of monsters, and Jonah meant to find out which one was to blame for this.

He mounted the stone steps two at a time, at savant speed, quiet as the vapor of death. As soon as he reached the first floor, he heard voices. When he breathed in the stench of conjured magic, he knew: wizards.

Jonah ghosted down the hallway. The voices spilled from a large, arched entryway into an adjacent room. His unusually good hearing was, ironically, a gift from wizards.

He edged his head around the doorframe so that he Scould see.

Three people stood around the fireplace, though the hearth was cold on this summer day. One was a young man with sun-streaked brown hair, his lean body rigid with impatience. He looked to be in his early twenties—but it was always hard to tell with wizards. The fifty-ish woman with raven-black hair would be Jessamine Longbranch, the owner of the house Jonah had broken into minutes before. The other man was older, gaunt, with a badly scarred face. That was likely Geoffrey Wylie, a known associate of Longbranch’s.

“Well? What did you find out?” The younger man was an American, his voice as penetrating as a sliver of ice.