The Enchanter Heir

Chapter Thirty-six

Audition

“Will I have to take an admission test?” Emma asked as they turned down the alley next to the Keep. “I’m not good at test taking.”

“No test,” Natalie said. “Sometimes Gabriel holds auditions. To figure out how you fit in. What you need.”

“Audition?” There it was: one more reason to panic. “I’m not ready. Guitar is all I know, and I don’t want to try out with a guitar I’ve never played before.”

“It’s not really a tryout,” Jonah said. “More like an interview, for placement. If you get stuck, just let us do the talking.”

How is Mandrake going to find out about me, if they do the talking? Emma wondered.

Maybe that was the idea—the only way Emma was going to get in was if Mr. Mandrake knew nothing about her.

They climbed a narrow staircase to the second floor. Natalie and Jonah ran identity cards through a scanner and the outside door hissed open. Then they went through three staffed security checkpoints.

“Is there a lot of crime around here?” Emma asked. “Gabriel’s careful, for a lot of reasons,” Jonah said, exchanging glances with Natalie.

An assistant of uncertain gender with blue hair, bronze skin, and multiple piercings met them in the outer office.

“Jonah! Natalie! And you must be Emma.”

“Hey, Patrick,” Natalie said, which answered one question, anyway. “Can we go on in?”

“Mr. Mandrake is expecting you,” Patrick said. “But he’s had some unexpected visitors. Let’s wait a few moments, shall we? Would you like green tea? Juice? Springwater?”

They shook their heads, so Patrick motioned them to seats and returned to his workstation.

Emma couldn’t settle down, though, so she circled the room, looking over the photos displayed on the walls, mostly of Gabriel Mandrake with the royalty of the music business.

With up-and-coming bands. At various benefit concerts. Here were framed covers of Rolling Stone and Time magazine, featuring Mandrake, alongside display cases full of medals, gold records, and awards.

“Where was this taken?” she asked, pointing to a grainy black-and-white photo of Mandrake next to a remarkably beautiful child with shaggy black hair and long-lashed blue eyes. They stood outside a tent, against a jungle background, a guitar between them.

“That’s Gabriel and Jonah,” Natalie said. “It was taken at Thorn Hill, not long before the massacre.”

“So they knew each other before Jonah came to school here?”

“Obviously,” Jonah said drily.

Emma studied the photograph, trying to divine if the setting looked at all familiar. Which it should be, since she’d lived at Thorn Hill.

“He has his own artist-edition Stratocaster?” she asked, pointing to a later photo of Gabriel holding another guitar.

“He does,” Natalie said, grinning at Emma’s fascination with Mandrake’s show-off wall.

“Jonah,” Patrick said, in a low, urgent voice. He was staring at the screen on his workstation. “Mr. Mandrake suggests you wait in the washroom until his visitors have left.”

Emma looked for Jonah, but he was already gone. How does he move so fast?

The door to Mandrake’s office opened, and a man and a woman emerged, followed by a man Emma recognized as Gabriel Mandrake. The two strangers were dressed in street clothes, but Emma had spent enough time on the street to recognize police officers when she saw them.

Mandrake was dressed in blue jeans and a white collared shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His exposed arms were covered with tattoos, and Emma could see more designs peeking out of his shirt collar.

“I assure you that I’ll talk to the students. If they noticed anything suspicious, we’ll be in touch,” Mandrake was saying.

“It would be better if we could talk to them directly,” the woman said, as if continuing an argument that had started inside. “Perhaps they saw something that would help us . . . even if they don’t realize it.”

Mandrake’s lips tightened in what looked like annoyance. “Then you’ll have to come back with a court order,” he snapped. “Our children are fragile, Detective. Can you imagine how traumatic it would be if they were questioned by the police about monsters and zombies?” He raised an eyebrow.

The male detective bristled. “We’re not saying there were actual zombies on the bridge,” he said. “Children have fertile imaginations, and they’d been through a harrowing experience. But somebody kidnapped a dozen preschoolers. And somebody seems to have emptied a graveyard and left a couple hundred corpses in the Flats. The media is going wild. We need to find out who and why.”

“I agree,” Mandrake said, “which is why it’s a shame to see you wasting your time here.”

“Is it true that Lisbet’s coming here for a concert in the spring?” the female detective said eagerly. “I saw them in Pittsburgh two years ago.”

“They are,” Mandrake said, glancing at his watch. “I believe Patrick here has some courtesy tickets, if you know anyone who could use them.”

When the detectives had gone, Mandrake turned his attention to Emma and Natalie. “I’m sorry about that,” he said, his voice still edged with irritation. “The police don’t always make appointments, and I figured it was easier to handle it now than to ask them back.”

Jonah emerged from the washroom and quietly rejoined them, as if being asked to hide in a bathroom when there were visitors at the school was something that happened all the time. Clearly, nobody was going to offer an explanation to Emma.

Zombies on a bridge? Emma thought. Why not?

Mandrake was thin . . . gaunt as a crankster on his way down, with close-cropped dark hair, an earring, and intense brown eyes in a sharp-boned face.

“And you’re Emma Greenwood,” he said, his eyes flicking over her once, twice, three times, as if to gather as much information as possible. “And you lived at Thorn Hill.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re not in the south anymore, Emma,” Mandrake said. “Call me Gabriel.”

Emma nodded, hoping she could manage it. “So where have you been living, since the disaster?”

Mandrake asked.

“Memphis.” She guessed she’d best keep her answers short. Less chance that she’d get herself into trouble. Mandrake smiled. “Ah. I thought I heard that in your voice. Memphis is a great music town.”

“It is,” Emma said.

Mandrake waited, as if expecting something more. Then he said, “Well, welcome to the Anchorage. Natalie tells me that you were staying at the family shelter downtown.” She nodded, tongue-tied. Afraid she’d say the wrong thing again. Wishing she had the gift of pretty speech, like Jonah.

Who knew that someone who hated liars would have so much need of the gift of lying.

“Patrick,” Mandrake said to his assistant. “I’m not in for anyone for the next half hour.”

Mandrake led them back to his office, which contained more rock-and-roll memorabilia, along with several electric and acoustic guitars that Emma itched to take a closer look at.

One whole wall of the office was made of glass, and before she could stop herself, she’d crossed to look outside. The school was high on a bluff, looking down into the industrial heart of the city. Down below, the river snaked its way to the lake, lined by steelyards and railroad tracks, spanned by a series of iron and stone bridges. Downriver, a massive lake freighter was just threading its way back to open water, the bridges lifting open before it.

“Oh,” Emma said, practically putting her nose against the glass before she remembered herself. “I wouldn’t get anything done if I had a view like that.”

Mandrake smiled. “Sometimes I do have to draw the drapes,” he said. He gestured to a grouping of chairs by the window. “Please. Sit. And tell me what’s happened to you.”

Natalie and Emma had worked out a story that morning. Most of it was technically true. “My parents are dead . . . my mother died in Brazil, at the Thorn Hill commune. Since then, I’ve lived with my grandfather in Memphis. But he died . . . a stroke, I think.”

“I’m sorry for your losses,” Mandrake murmured, his eyes alert and fixed on her face, so that she felt like she was the only person in the world.

“I don’t have any other family, and I didn’t want to go to the child welfare. I’d heard about this place called the Anchorage, where you could go if you’d been at Thorn Hill. So I came to Cleveland.”

Emma glanced at Jonah. He sat, head bowed, one leg thrust out straight, the other bent at the knee. Gloved hands on his thighs. A carefully casual posture, but tension thrummed through him as if he were a high-intensity power line. Was he worried she’d say something wrong?

“How did you get here from Memphis?” Mandrake asked.

“I have a van,” Emma said. “It’s not pretty, but it runs.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“And the shelter didn’t send you to Children and Family Services?”

“No, sir.” When Mandrake’s eyes narrowed, Emma added, “I told them I was eighteen. That works if you’re tall, and you claim you don’t have ID.”

Mandrake laughed. “You’ve worked that out, have you?”

He sobered. “You say your mother died at Thorn Hill. What was her name?”

“Gwen . . . Gwen Hart,” Emma said.

“Gwen Hart,” he said, shaking his head. “I don’t remember her, but it was a big place and I wasn’t there often. I had a business back in the States to run.” He woke the notebook on his desk, and the screen illuminated. “The thing is, you’re not in our survivor database. We track everyone, even those who went to live with relatives, because many of them have come back to us eventually.” His fingers flew over the keyboard, then he turned the screen so that she could see it. File not found, it said.

“So I’m not in your records?” Emma said, her heart sinking.

“Neither you nor your mother are on the casualty lists,”

Gabriel said, turning the screen back.

“The casualty lists? But . . . I’m alive.”

“Obviously,” Mandrake said. “We always check, but as you can imagine, things were chaotic at the end. All the adults were dead, after all, and the survivors among the older children were quite ill. Some of the children were difficult to identify, and so it’s certainly possible that you might have survived and yet be listed as dead. The records are what they are . . . imperfect.” He paused. “Could I see your right forearm?” he asked, pulling back his own sleeve.

“She doesn’t have the Nightshade tattoo,” Natalie said. “I already checked.”

“Hmm,” Gabriel said.

“My father took me back to the States,” Emma said. “He came back and got me, before the . . . uh . . . poisoning.”

“He did? Why?”

“He was supposed to keep me until Christmas,” Emma said. “I guess you could say my parents were separated.”

“What was your father’s name?”

“Tyler Boykin. Well, Tyler Greenwood.”

“Hmm. Tyler Greenwood. I don’t remember him.”

“That makes sense, because I guess he never really stayed there very long,” Emma said.

“As you can tell, Emma has a savant stone,” Jonah said, as if eager to cut short the discussion and get to the point.

“Yes,” Mandrake said. “It’s consistent with what we see in survivors.” He sat back in his chair, juggling a pen with supple fingers, his face unreadable. “Do you remember Thorn Hill, Emma?”

“Just—just fragments. There are scenes in my head. Like flashbacks. Mostly, I remember my mother. It’s like I hear her voice in my head. Or some fragrance reminds me of her. I never know which ones are real and which ones I made up.” Her voice trailed off. Good one, Emma. Now they think I’m seeing things. “We called it the Farm. I remember gardens, and houses in the woods . . . they looked like mushrooms. And playing games on the—on a field called the okara. I slept in a hammock.”

“Well,” Gabriel said, “clearly you were there.”

Emma glanced over at Jonah, who was scanning messages on his phone, flicking through screens. He seemed to have a habit of doing that when he was hiding in plain sight.

“So . . . you’ve been living with your grandfather all this time?” Gabriel said. “What was his name?”

“Sonny Lee Greenwood.”

Mandrake’s eyes narrowed. “The luthier?”

“That’s him,” Emma said. “Why? Have you heard of him?”

“Anyone who’s serious about custom guitars knows his work. I have one of his guitars in my collection.”

Emma smiled sadly. “They’re hard to find. Most people aren’t willing to give them up once they get hold of one.”

“Was Sonny Lee gifted?”

“Yes, sir, he was,” Emma said. “But not in the way you mean.”

“Emma is already a skilled luthier,” Jonah said. “Like her grandfather. I’m thinking that might be her savant gift. You’ve been saying you want to do more of that work onsite, maybe start a training program for some of the savants. She does amazing work.”

How does he know that? Emma thought. Then, answering her own question, she thought, Natalie.

“A luthier?” Mandrake eyed her appraisingly. “Aren’t you rather young?”

“I pretty much lived in Sonny Lee’s shop. He said I was the best apprentice he’d ever had.”

Mandrake held her gaze for a long moment, then unfolded to his feet and crossed the room to where a Martin D-28 rested in a stand. Lifting it, he brought it back to Emma. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “What would you do with this one?” Mellow, mellow Martins, Emma thought, brushing her fingers across the strings. This one sounded as warm as the sun on a summer day. Except for the buzz. She sighted down the fingerboard.

“This is just my eyeball guess,” Emma said. “The action’s too low. I’d start with the saddle height and nut-slot depth. Without my feeler gauges, I can’t tell you which and how much. If that doesn’t do the trick, you might want to look at the neck relief. But get somebody that knows what he’s doing.”

“Like you.”

“Like me. But I’m not the only one.”

Mandrake smiled. “I think we can find a place at the Anchorage for Sonny Lee Greenwood’s granddaughter.”

“I should tell you up front, I’m not much of a student,” Emma said.

Jonah gave her a look that said, Shut up. As in: Why are you telling him that? You trying to get him to turn you down?

“No worries,” Mandrake said, lacing his fingers. “If you don’t work out as a student, maybe you can join the faculty.”

He stood. “Jonah . . . ask Patrick for keys to eight hundred in Oxbow. Take Emma over there, and get her settled in.”

“In Oxbow?” Jonah looked astounded. “You’re putting her in Oxbow?”

“That’s what I said, didn’t I?” Mandrake shifted his gaze to Emma. “You’ll find clothes, groceries, soap, and so on at the store in the student center. Not a great selection, but enough to get you through until you can go out shopping. Put it on the school account. Jonah will show you the woodshop, too. If you need some specialized tools and supplies, make a list of what you need, and sources, if you know them, and I’ll bring it all in.”

“You want me to give her a tour?” Another surprise for Jonah, and one he didn’t look happy about. “Isn’t there someone else who—”

“It’s good practice for an administrator-in-training,” Gabriel said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to make some calls.”