The Enchanter Heir

Chapter Twenty-three

Kiss of Death

When it was all over, Jonah stood alone in the silent conservatory. Nobody was moving.

The porch was a charred ruin. A bamboo curtain smoldered where wizard flame had set it on fire. Furniture was overturned, and pottery smashed, dirt strewn everywhere.

And everywhere, it seemed, there were dead wizards. Conscious of passing time, Jonah searched for his gloves, pulled them back on, then looked for Greenwood. The sorcerer was lying, facedown, amid shards of shattered glass and smears of blood.

Gently, Jonah rolled him over, searched for a pulse, and swore. He was dead.

Fury mingled with guilt and disbelief. That’s another survivor of Thorn Hill gone. One more door to hope closed. Somebody who probably actually knew something.

What had killed him? His jeans were soaked in blood from a deep gash in his right thigh. Maybe that. Or was it Jonah’s touch, a fatal encounter in the confusion? Or a wizard’s killing charm?

You’re like a bull in a china shop, Jonah thought. You’re not used to fighting humans, who can bleed, and die, and not get up again.

Would Greenwood be dead if Jonah hadn’t come there? That question gnawed at him. But time was passing. He had no idea where Rowan DeVries was coming from, but no doubt he’d be here before long.

Jonah threaded his way through the rubble and dropped to his knees next to Emma.

Just let her be all right. And if she is, Kinlock, what exactly are you going to do with her? Her father’s dead. There are eight dead wizards in her sunroom.

One thing at a time, he told the voice in his head.

The bruise on Emma’s temple was ugly purple, and her eye nearly swollen shut. At first, Jonah worried she might have fractured her skull or broken her neck, but some color had returned to her cheeks. When he picked up her wrist, he could feel the reassuring thrum of her heart, even through his gloves. She was still breathing, thank God.

Blood still welled from a wound on the side of her head, where it had struck the fountain. Gently, he moved hair around until he found it. A bad gash, but not too deep, though it was bleeding a lot, the way head wounds always do.

Gently, he straightened her tangled limbs, checking for broken bones. He didn’t want to move her if doing so might injure her further. Nothing seemed to be broken, although she moaned and tried to pull away, so movement was obviously painful. She had cuts all over from the broken glass, but none of them seemed life-threatening.

All the while Jonah kept up a constant litany of soothing lies, hoping it would help her, as it did Kenzie. “Easy now, Emma, you’re going to be all right, I promise.”

Jonah found his sword, slid it into place on his back. Found Rachel’s butchered body and pulled his Nightshade amulet from her pocket. Then he knelt next to Emma again, sliding his arms under her so he could lift her.

Something about the pressure of his arms around her roused her, and she began to struggle, flailing her long limbs, crying out, “Tyler!”

“Please, Emma, don’t,” Jonah said, lowering her back to the floor, pinning her with his body, pouring persuasion into her, giving it all he had. Even singing softly into her ear until her body relaxed. “Please,” he said. “I’m going to have to carry you, and I can’t do it if you struggle.”

She opened her eyes, gazing into his face, her expression muddy with confusion. “My head hurts,” she whispered, tears leaking from her eyes.

“I know,” he said. “Just rest. I’m going to take you somewhere you can get some help. Is that all right?”

She nodded, her eyes still fixed on his face.

He lifted her again, cradling her against him, and she snaked her arms around his neck, slipping her hand under the collar of his jacket, raising gooseflesh across his shoulders and the hairs on the back of his neck. A sense of déjà vu, of impending danger, rolled over him, but he didn’t know why.

She said something he couldn’t make out, and he leaned closer to hear.

“You’re—you’re beautiful,” she murmured. “Anybody ever tell you that?”

“Just—just close your eyes,” Jonah said. “It’ll be easier that way.”

She licked her lips, swallowed hard, then, before he knew what was happening, pulled his head down and kissed him on the lips.

Time seemed to slow into a series of sensations. Warm lips, opening under his. Her body arching up to meet him. Her hands in his hair. His body reacting with a lifetime of backed-up desire. It was as if he’d been waiting for that kiss all his life. Which, in a way, he had, with mingled anticipation and dread.

And even when he realized what had happened, what he’d done, it still wasn’t easy to pry himself away from her. Her arms were like iron bands around him. Her hands pressed against the back of his neck and between his shoulder blades, generating blazing heat where skin met skin. It was all he could do to free himself without breaking her arms, and yet the struggle, the friction between them, sent blood surging through his veins. He was strong in some ways, but weak in others, and Emma was stronger than she looked.

“Oh,” she whispered, suddenly breathless. That familiar drunk and dreamy look spread over her face. That exquisite bonding, soul to soul. Joy welled up in her, spilling through the link between them.

“No!” Jonah flinched back from her as if scalded, swearing under his breath. Too late. Too late. Too late.

He knelt again, easing her onto the floor, his hands gripping her shoulders to keep her at arm’s length.

Her head drooped like a heavy flower on a long stem. She smiled, her eyelids fluttering shut.

Jonah recognized the look. The look of death coming on.

Desperately, he scrubbed at her lips with the hem of his sweatshirt, as if he could wipe the toxin—and his guilt— away. Instead, he left a smear of blood.

Jonah drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around them, his body shuddering with grief.

Hearing, once again, the whispers that followed him everywhere. That’s Jonah Kinlock. He killed his own sister. And ever since, he’d told himself: Stay away from the innocent. The best you can do is deliver peace to the afflicted and justice to the guilty. You have the killing touch.

Jonah turned his attention back to Emma. She lay still, eyes closed, barely breathing, that creepy, blissful smile still on her face. Her left hand lay across her stomach, the nails cut short, like a child’s, her fingers callused at the tips. She had guitar player’s hands—sinewy and strong, like his own. He gripped them between his gloved hands, as if he could hold her in the world somehow.

Stubbornly, she clung to life, breaths shivering in and out of her, tears still seeping from the corners of her eyes. As long as she’s crying, she’s alive.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, praying to the merciful gods who had never heard him before. Hoping for the most potent, head-spinning drug of them all—and knowing he wouldn’t get it.

Forgiveness.

Instead, he watched helplessly as the color slowly bled from Emma’s face. As her breathing slowed, became fainter and fainter until he could no longer hear it. Now, when he pressed his gloved fingers against her throat, he felt no pulse.

She was dead. The realization hit him like a knife to the gut. Though he was out of Nightshade, he was still killing Thorn Hill survivors.

“She wasn’t supposed to be here,” Jonah muttered to the indifferent world, his stomach roiling with sick self-loathing.

His life was an endless loop of disaster and regret, a phonograph needle stuck on a sad song. A decade of killing, and he still hadn’t shed the enchanter’s curse: Empathy. Jonah heard cars pulling into the driveway, doors slamming, feet crunching on gravel. A voice in his head spoke up—some primal plea for survival that wouldn’t be stilled. Reinforcements are coming. If you’re still here, you’ll have to riff them, too.

He decided to leave the same way he came in—through the basement. He was barely around the corner and down the basement stairs when he heard the back door opening and somebody calling, “Rachel?”

As he passed through the workshop, he took one of the SG guitars. He knew he shouldn’t do it, he knew it was stealing, but he also knew that it was the only way he’d ever hear Emma’s sweet music again.