Finally, she rejoined him. “Can I ask some questions?”
“Sure,” Jonah said. Eager to end the one-on-one, he added, “Can we walk while we talk?”
“Sure,” Emma said. “You got a hot date or what?”
Jonah’s cheeks burned as the blood rushed to his face. “Ah . . . no. I just—you know . . . homework.”
As they left the apartment, she reactivated the security system. She seemed absolutely comfortable with devices of all kinds.
“Where’s your room?” she asked as they got on the elevator.
Jonah pointed at the ceiling. “Four floors up.”
“I could tell you were surprised that Mr. Mandrake put me here,” Emma said, in that direct way she had. “Why?”
Jonah shrugged. “Oxbow is reserved for staff and . . . and . . . staff. So prepare to be put to work. Teaching, maybe, or repairing musical instruments, or helping with the music program.”
“But he’s never even seen my work,” Emma said as they turned down the sidewalk. “How does he know I’m any good?”
“I don’t second-guess what Gabriel does,” Jonah said, which was a total lie. These days, anyway.
Emma digested this for a few moments. “So you work for Mr. Mandrake, too?”
“Gabriel.”
“For Gabriel?”
Jonah nodded. Anticipating the next question, he volunteered, “I’m training with him in community relations, fund-raising, management of the club, and like that.”
“And you’re just seventeen?”
“Gabriel is never afraid to give responsibility to a person just because he’s young,” Jonah said. “We grow up fast.” Or we wouldn’t grow up at all.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you, Jonah. What is your gift?”
He should’ve been ready for that question, but it still caught him by surprise somehow.
“I’m an empath. Do you know what that is?”
Emma shook her head.
“I can read people’s emotions,” Jonah said. “Gabriel finds that helpful sometimes.” Along with my other skills. Like killing. Oh, right. Not anymore.
Emma stopped dead in her tracks, embarrassment rolling off her in waves. “You read minds?”
He shook his head. “Feelings. I can’t tell what a person is thinking, plotting, or planning, but I can sometimes tell when they’re lying, or when they’re afraid, angry, and so on.”
She didn’t look reassured. “Great,” she muttered, peering at him out of the corner of her eye.
“Don’t worry about it,” Jonah said. “I’ve learned to filter most of it out. It’s just background noise. Otherwise, I’d go crazy.” Liar.
“Who’s Kenzie?” she asked then.
“My brother.”
“Younger or older?”
“Younger.” Jonah guessed he should give more than one-word answers. “His real name is McKenzie. So Kenzie for short. He lives at Safe Harbor.”
“Safe Harbor? What’s that?”
“It’s a skilled facility for savants with severe disabilities,” Jonah said. He pointed up St. Clair. “It’s a few blocks that way.”
“Oh.” A blush stained Emma’s cheeks to a coppery red. “He’s disabled because of the . . . because of what happened at Thorn Hill?”
“Because of the poison,” Jonah said bluntly. “It hit some of us harder than others. Kenzie has intractable magical seizures.”
“Magical seizures? What’s that like?”
“Unforgettable. Life-changing, even.” He turned up the walk to the arts-and-crafts building. “The woodshop is in this building.”
“Will I get to meet him?” Emma persisted.
“Do you want to?”“Why wouldn’t I?”
“He’d like that.” They stood on the porch of A&C. “It’s in here, first floor, to the rear. Your key card should open the door. If I leave you here, now, can you find your way back to Oxbow?”
“No problem,” Emma said.
Chapter Thirty-eight
I’m with the Band
Emma awakened with a jolt, momentarily disoriented, her arms crossed over her face to ward off danger. Propping up on her elbows, she looked around. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the window, flaming dust motes in the air.
Right. She was in the Oxbow Building, eighth-floor studio, view of downtown.
She pulled her shirt away from her clammy skin. Jonah’s shirt. She’d bought pajamas at the store in the student center, but when it came down to it, she’d slept another night in Jonah’s clothes. She pressed the faded cotton against her nose. It still carried his scent.
They ought to bottle that, she thought. And call it Boy Blue. Or, maybe, Bad Idea.
She had nothing to bring to this game. She had no skills. It was her kind of luck to fall for a boy who could read minds. Well, emotions. Did that include lust? It was humiliating . . . like walking around naked with someone who was fully clothed. A just God would have given that gift to Emma . . . so she could sort out the liars.
What time was it? She groped for her phone. Not there. Where was her phone?
Oh. It was back at home. Tyler’s home. It seemed so far away, now. Just one more dream that fades upon waking. A stopping place on a journey to nowhere.
Her groping hand found the notebook paper with her wish list on it—the notes and measurements she’d taken at the woodshop the day before. The shop at the Anchorage was top-shelf, just like everything else on campus. Still, it had an air of neglect, as if the administration had sunk a lot of money into it at the front end, but nobody had paid much attention to it since. It didn’t smell like any woodshop she’d ever been in. Not even any sawdust on the floor.
She’d made a slow circuit of the larger tools, trying them out with scrap lumber she found in the discard bin. The tools looked nearly new, though some of the blades needed sharpening and everything was covered with a fine layer of dust. She was used to Sonny Lee’s tools and their quirks. For instance, how the pulley on the table saw would slip on the shaft and bind against the body of the saw and you had to act quick if you smelled burning rubber or you might burn up the belt. Or how you had to give the old disc sander a spin to get it going because the capacitor didn’t work and it wouldn’t start up on its own.
There wasn’t much in the way of materials—woods, fittings, and the like. Wistfully, she recalled the racks of seasoned woods she’d left behind at Tyler’s, and wondered if they were still there. I need to get back there, she thought. Somehow.
Propping herself up in bed, she scanned the rows of tiny, precise handwriting, making a few additions and clarifications. New saw blades. Lubricants. The specialized wood glue Sonny Lee always ordered from Germany. And woods: birch and ebony and book-matched maple.
Setting her list aside, she slid out of bed and padded across the floor to the bathroom. She was at a boarding school, where they had set times for things. She’d probably already missed breakfast. She didn’t want to miss lunch, too.
A blinking light in one corner of the mirror caught her attention. She squinted at it, puzzled. Then poked at it with her finger without result.
Then she remembered. Jonah had said something about a digital display embedded in the mirror.
A remote was propped against the backsplash. She scooped it up and began hitting buttons until a message appeared.
We’re in the practice rooms on the first floor. Take the elevator down (use your key card). Entry key is GIST27. Nat.
Emma pulled on the jeans she’d bought the day before, crispy and new. She chose a black T-shirt with Security in stark white letters on the back and a line drawing of a castle keep on the front. She tugged a brush through her resistant hair, twisted it into a knot, grabbed a hunk of crumb cake from the refrigerator, and went to find the practice rooms.
Emma stepped off the elevator on the first floor. To her left, toward the front, was a common area, with a flat-screen television, comfortable furniture, and a fireplace. It was deserted.
The rear of the warehouse was a rough-finished workspace that showed its warehouse bones, partitioned off with dividers. She walked down a short hallway lined with doors. Displays next to each door listed the room schedule for the day. As she neared the end of the hallway, she began to feel the thud of percussion under her feet, and heard the faint, anguished cry of a blues guitar, the wail of keyboards. Next to the last door, the display said simply Diaz.
Through the door, she heard a voice that all but brought her to her knees.
Just one kiss,
That was never meant to be. Just one kiss
One more bitter memory.
A blighted love, a mortal sin, A doomed encounter skin to skin.
She eased the door open. It was Jonah, a vintage Stratocaster slung low on his hips, knees bent, head thrown back, eyes closed as he searched out the chords with his fingers. Which should have been difficult, since he was wearing fingerless gloves in studded black leather. Who wears gloves, even fingerless ones, to play guitar?
And why was Jonah playing with the band she’d first heard at Club Catastrophe? She looked them over. Their lead guitarist was missing—the one who’d played the Parker Dragonfly.
The other players were the same. Natalie hunched over a drum kit, her sticks a blur, face gleaming with sweat. The purple-haired girl from the fitness center played an Ibanez bass guitar, and the boy who played keyboards was the same, too.
Emma leaned against the doorframe, head swimming as Jonah’s voice poured over her.
Just one kiss,
Was enough to break my heart. Just one kiss,
A disaster from the start.
Like the kiss of frost that chars the rose, An assassin in a lover’s clothes.
Jonah prowled back and forth, exuding a feral heat, his movements mesmerizing, his T-shirt plastered to his washboard abs, jeans riding low on his hipbones.
Get ahold of yourself, girl, Emma thought. You of all people know better than to fall for a musician.