who survived Thorn Hill. It may mean the Anchorage will become a target. That means all of us. From that standpoint, anyway, we’re all on the same side.”
Yeah, Emma thought. Rowan said the same thing. With so many allies, why do I feel so alone?
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
“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.
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
