The Enchanter Heir

questions, give a yell.”

He nodded but didn’t move. He looked around the room, as if committing it to memory. “This is your workshop?”

“It is. Was,” she amended.

He gestured toward the guitars in their stands. “And you . . . you made those?”

“I did,” Emma said, brushing her fingers over the fret board of the one that was finished.

Hang on. She swiveled, looking around the room once again. Then, squeezing her eyes shut, she tried to re-create in her mind the way it had looked before. “That’s odd,” she said.

“What’s odd?”

“One of my guitars is missing,” she said. “I had two that were finished. I was playing one of them the night . . . the night all this happened. That one’s gone.”

For three heartbeats, Jonah said nothing. Then he cleared his throat. “Could it be somewhere else in the basement?”

“I don’t see why it would be.”

They searched the rest of the basement, anyway, including the coal bin. Nothing.

“Could it have broken, if . . . if there was a struggle?” Jonah asked. “Somebody’s cleaned up the place. If it was broken, they might have thrown it away.”

“I could have fixed it,” Emma said, fisting her hands. “I’m a luthier!”

“Well, I’ll start carrying,” Jonah said, turning away.

“I’ll be up in my room, packing some things,” she called after him.

At the top of the front stairs, she turned right, toward her father’s room at the far end of the hall. Past the main bathroom, where Tyler’s razor, comb, and deodorant still littered the sink.

The towel Emma had used to dry her hair still hung over the shower bar, and Tyler’s was wadded up in the tub, stinking of mildew.

Life, interrupted.

Emma had rarely ever gone into Tyler’s room. Since she didn’t really know what it was supposed to look like, it was hard to tell if anything had been shuffled around.

She opened Tyler’s closet and pushed through a forest of plaid flannel shirts. Blue jeans and T-shirts were piled on the shelf. All the wardrobe his life had required. On impulse, she pulled two flannel shirts from their hangers and laid them out on the bed.

Back in the closet, she pulled the cheap fiberboard storage boxes out of the way so she could get at the safe, and dropped to her knees. It took her two tries to get the safe open, her hands were trembling so much. She reached in, deep, and pulled out a bulky cloth bag, setting it on the floor beside her. Reached in again, and her groping hand found a much smaller bag . . . velvet.

That was it.

Closing the safe, she carried her findings back to the bed and set them down next to the flannel shirts. Picking free the knot that closed the velvet bag, she dumped the contents— something gold and glittery—onto the threadbare bedspread.

She scooped it up in her hand. It was a pendant on a gold chain. A flower with delicate petals that peeled back from a central spike, bracketed by clumps of berries. It looked familiar.

It was the same flower the Thorn Hill survivors had inked into their skin. Nightshade.

Emma looped the chain around her neck so that the pendant rested between her breasts, pleasantly warm.

She thumbed through several of the packets of bills. They were twenties and fifties. Half the stash was fresh and crisp, like it had never been touched. The rest had the look of money that had been accumulated over years, little by little. Not a windfall or payoff, but the result of months and years of blood and sweat and providing the bass-line heartbeat for a multitude of bands.

She looked around the bedroom, at the peeling wallpaper, the water-stained ceiling. Tyler could’ve used this money. Why didn’t he spend it?

She had no idea how much it added up to, and she didn’t want to take the time to do that math.

Emma opened the binder. A note was paper-clipped to the inside cover.

The money’s from me. I hoped you might use it for college, or to start a business, or buy a house. It won’t make up for what I took from you, but it’s what I can give you now. Don’t bother with the house . . . it’s mortgaged to the roof, and you’ll be too easy to find if you stay. My advice is: take the money and run.

I hope you’ll take the time to read over these old songs. Maybe learn a few of them. One thing you can say about the blues . . . it tells the truth, if you ever want to hear it.

P.S.: The pendant belonged to your mother. I thought you should have it.

Tyler

Emma flipped through the notebook. It was tablature for dozens of old blues songs and spirituals. Not a bass line, which she might have expected from Tyler. It was six-string guitar. Pages and pages and pages of guitar tablature and lyrics, all apparently handwritten by her father. Some were songs she knew, others she’d never heard of. This was her father’s legacy to her. The truth, if you ever want to hear it.

I always want to hear it, she thought.

She hadn’t even known Tyler could read music. That was one thing she could do . . . and do well. Sonny Lee had sent her to music-theory classes since she was little. “You’re gonna do more than play by ear,” he said. “You’re gonna own it.”

She was coming to realize that there was a lot she didn’t know about her father. Would never know now.

The first song? “Motherless Child.”

Emma sat back on her heels and thought a moment, chewing on her lower lip. Taking a pillow off the bed, she pulled off the frayed pillowcase. Working quickly, she stuffed the money and the binder into the pillowcase.

Then she dragged his battered suitcase out of the back of the closet and carried it and the pillowcase down the hall to her own bedroom . . . the one she’d occupied for a few months.

Pausing in the doorway, she took a good look around.

Her bed was a heap of tumbled bedclothes, just the way she’d left it. Her cell phone was still on the floor next to her bed, plugged in to charge. A few Memphis club posters were taped to the wall, her notion of decorating. If somebody’d been in the room, she couldn’t tell.

She set the suitcase on the bed and zipped it open. Crossing to her closet, she pulled out her old backpack and set it next to the suitcase. Her music and electronics went into the backpack, clothing and shoes into the suitcase. She shoveled everything in, choosing quickly, going with her gut, not giving it a lot of thought.

When she looked over her selections, it struck her once again how much her wardrobe resembled her father’s. Jeans. Flannel shirts. T-shirts and sweatshirts. They were more alike than she’d realized. Then why had they spent so many years apart? If he’d ever made even the teensiest effort, she wouldn’t feel so divided . . . guilty and resentful and grief-stricken and pissed off.

I didn’t want your money, Daddy. I wanted you. Hot tears pricked her eyes, and she slumped down on the bed, weeping. Sometimes I feel like a motherless child a long way from home. A long way from home.

“Emma? Are you all right?” It was Jonah.

“I’m fine.” Emma wiped her nose on her sleeve, waving him away. She buried her face in her pillow, wishing she could disappear. It smelled of a previous life, and she cried harder.

Of course, he didn’t go. “Is there . . . can I . . . get you something?”

“No,” she mumbled into her pillow.

She heard the floorboards creak as he crossed the room to her. Then sat down next to her, his blue-jeaned thigh against hers. She could feel his heat through two layers of denim. “I am so sorry, Emma,” he whispered. “So very sorry.”

After a moment’s hesitation, he gently stroked her hair, murmuring soft reassurances, his voice like sweet