The Enchanter Heir

She was about to follow him up the steps to the porch, when he blocked her path, holding her back with one hand.

“Do you have a silent alarm?” he asked.

“Tyler had a security system,” Emma said, pointing at the metal sign in the yard.

“I know. But there’s also a motion detector here on the porch.” He stood, frowning, hands in his back pockets, his gaze flicking over the front of the house. Finally, he nodded and pointed into the maple tree overhanging the porch. “There’s the camera. It’s set up to film whoever comes in or out. It may be attached to a silent alarm, too. And, given that there are wizards involved, there may be magical traps as well. Those may or may not work on us, depending on what kind of magic they’ve used.”

A cold finger brushed Emma’s spine. This isn’t play pretend. You’ve got to remember that.

“Do you mind if I try and find another way in?” Jonah said.

“Be my guest,” Emma said, thinking, Easier said than done.

And, somehow—somehow—he swung up into the maple tree and onto the porch roof. She heard his light footsteps overhead, a window sliding up.

Moments later, he opened the door from the inside. “I disabled the alarm system,” he said. “But I broke the window latch. Sorry.”

“How did you do that?” she demanded.

“I forced it.”

“No! I mean, how did you get up there? And how do you know about alarms?”

“It’s not so different from climbing up a cliff.” When she kept on staring, he added, “We have a diverse curriculum at the Anchorage.”

They offer a burglary track? Emma thought, following him into the house.

Emma stepped inside, onto the old landing with the cracked linoleum that Tyler had been meaning to replace. On a hook inside the door hung the battered leather jacket he’d bought at a thrift store. Lined with fleece, it was the closest thing he had to a winter coat.

Impulsively, Emma lifted the jacket down. It was heavy aviator leather . . . so old it didn’t even smell like leather anymore. Instead, she caught a faint whiff of tobacco and that hair oil he used. The scent of late nights and good times.

The enormity of loss hit her, like a punch to the gut. She wrapped her arms around her middle, folding a little.

“Emma?” Jonah had turned back toward her. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she said, sliding into Tyler’s jacket as if she were armoring up for the battle to come. It fit big on her slim frame, and the sleeves were a little too long, but she could live with that.

They walked through the kitchen, past the bulletin board. The calendar pinned to it was still showing September, the gigs written in on the weekends. The message light on the answering machine was blinking. Emma hit the playback button.

Here was Tyler’s familiar voice. “Leave me a message, and I just might call you back.” Followed by a throaty laugh. Goose bumps prickled Emma’s arms.

There were a series of hang-ups and several increasingly angry messages from club owners and band mates, asking after Tyler. The last one was bitter and brief, from a woman. “Least you could do is call me, Tyler. I mean, come on!”

Leaving the kitchen, Emma walked toward the front of the house. She might not be able to remember what happened the night of the murder, but she had a clear memory of how the house had looked before then. What was different?

The hall table was in its usual place, Tyler’s keys in the old margarine tub where he always threw them when he was at home. Something was different, though. The walls had been scrubbed down—no—repainted a subtly different color. The hardwood floors had been sanded down and refinished.

The changes might fool most people, but they wouldn’t fool Emma, since the place looked better than it ever had while Tyler lived there. It was like she’d walked onstage, and found it set up for a different band.

“Somebody’s cleaned this place up,” she murmured. “Who would’ve done that?”

Emma padded down the hallway, feeling invisible. Like an actor with a walk-on part in a play. I’m a ghost in this house, she thought.

She turned aside, into the office. As she entered, the tiny hairs rose on the back of her neck, and she shuddered. Even the simplest animal—a lobster—can learn to avoid those places where it was hurt before. Hadn’t she read that somewhere?

Methodically, she studied the room. Her laptop was missing, and objects on the desk had been subtly shifted. She looked in the drawers and could see that the contents had been disturbed. There might be some folders gone, too.

“It looks like they searched the place,” she said, looking around for Jonah. But he wasn’t there. He hadn’t followed her in. After all that fuss about going in her place, now he seemed to be hanging back, so as not to intrude.

She turned to the bookcase to the left of the door and pulled out the shelf that hid the gun safe. The safe was locked. She entered the combination, but it still didn’t open. Apparently, the combination had been changed. Was Tyler’s gun still inside?

Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like nothing had happened. Emma felt like her life had been rubbed out, like a stray pencil mark.

Emma walked on down the hallway, through the living room, to the conservatory. Pausing in the doorway, she scanned the room before she entered. It looked much as she remembered, except for what was missing. The wicker set with the peeling paint was gone, as were most of the lamps. The battered bamboo roller shade had been replaced and the drapes removed. The windows were the same style as before, but even without the daylight, she could tell they were new. For one thing, the windows in Tyler’s house were never clean. When she breathed deeply, she could smell a charred, burned odor.

Getting down on her knees, she ran her finger along the baseboard.

“Ow!” Yanking her bleeding finger away, she sucked on it. She’d cut it on a bit of broken glass.

“Emma?” Jonah stood in the doorway to the conservatory, shifting from one foot to the other.

Emma held up her bleeding finger. “I cut my finger on some glass. No big deal.” She stood. “Rowan said that this is where my father and the others were killed.”

Jonah glanced around. “You wouldn’t know to look at it. Somebody must have cleaned it up.” After a pause, he added, “We should collect your things and go. I don’t want to be here any longer than necessary.”

He’s as jumpy as a cat on hot asphalt, Emma thought. It was making her jumpier than she already was.

“All right, then help me bring up some things from the basement,” she said. She descended the stairs, apprehension prickling her skin. Halfway down, she paused, a shudder rippling through her. Something had happened, here on the steps.

She looked up at Jonah, two steps above her. “I’m glad you’re here,” she said. “This house is full of ghosts.”

He must’ve felt it, too, since he looked half sick to his stomach.

At the bottom of the stairs, she didn’t head immediately to her workshop. She stood and turned in a slow circle, looking for clues. It looked the way it always did. Maybe nothing bad had happened down here. Here was her bicycle, the tires a little flat. There was the washer and dryer, the laundry basket under the clothes chute that extended from the third floor to the basement.

Her workshop seemed undisturbed, familiar . . . the nearly finished guitars in their stands around the room, awaiting fingerboards, frets, and so on. The scent of shellac and wood glue was fainter now.

“What should I carry up?” Jonah asked, from the doorway. It was spooky, the way he just appeared like that. Like the devil, when you called him.

Emma nodded toward the clean room. “You’ll find my grandfather’s guitar collection in there. I already picked the best to bring from Memphis, so I want to take them all. The ones in cases, take them on up and put them in the van. The ones on display, there should be a case for each one in the storeroom. If you have any