Bloodliner

Chapter 1As Jonah Ivory sat between his parents' caskets in the parlor of the funeral home in Tucson, he finished his eighth beer of the evening. His goal was to drink a whole case. Eight down, sixteen to go. Crumpling the eighth empty can in his fist, he tipped his chair back and chucked the can behind the caskets with the other seven. Before he could tip forward and reach for number nine, however, his chair rocked off balance, and he fell back and down to the floor. Perfect. After the impact, Jonah lay there for a long moment, staring up at the ceiling. His eyes burned as the tears he'd been holding back tried to force their way out. But he wouldn't let them. I'm too young for this. Too young to lose them. In fact, Jonah was seventeen years old...not that he looked it. He was skinny, with a boyish face, and he wasn't exactly wearing responsible grown-up clothes for a viewing: a black Jethro Tull concert t-shirt, ratty faded blue jeans, and sneakers. But then there was his shoulder-length hair, which was prematurely white. It had been scared that way five years ago. That was when he'd lost his two brothers, who had been abducted right in front of him. He'd been thirteen years old when it had happened...so maybe he wasn't too young at seventeen to lose his mother and father, after all. First the twins, now my parents. I ought to be getting used to this by now. So why do I miss them so much? It was a mystery to him. Jonah hadn't been close to his mother and father for ages. Though they'd been living in the same house in Tucson, seeing each other every day, they might as well have been living in separate towns for the past five years. The loss of the twins had driven them apart. But in the few days since the car accident that had killed his mother and father, Jonah had been feeling completely and irretrievably lost. All he could think to do was drink himself into a stupor and stumble through the motions of the prearranged viewing and the preparations for the funeral. Why does it matter? We were practically strangers. The biggest question of all, though, the one that loomed up in the gaps between lazy drunken sparks and ripples, was this: Now what? Jonah rolled off the upended chair and got to his feet. He pulled his ninth beer out of the red and white cooler that occupied two chairs in the front row of seating. As he snapped open the tab on the can, he looked around the empty room. At least I don't have to deal with anybody. Jonah and his parents were alone. Other than the undertaker, who had strolled through a few times, not one soul had shown up for the viewing. Nice turnout. After a long drink of beer, Jonah righted the chair he'd knocked over and sat back down on it. He glanced over at the closed caskets beside him, then quickly looked away as the reality smacked him in the head again. I hate this. Just as he lifted the beer for another drink, a young, black-haired woman walked into the room. She was beautiful. As soon as Jonah caught sight of her, he lowered the beer from his lips. Her body was slender and shapely under her waist-length red leather jacket and short black dress. Knee-high red leather boots accentuated the curves of her long, lean legs. As she approached, Jonah saw that her features were even prettier than they had looked from a distance. She had a long face and angular nose that gave her an exotic look—Italian, maybe, or Greek or Arab. She must have been wearing contact lenses behind her black horned-rim glasses, because her eyes were two different colors: one hazel, the other amber flecked with red. Simply put, she was a knockout. As bad a day as Jonah was having, he still automatically assessed his chances with her before she'd even said a word. He knew it in a heartbeat: she wasn't just out of his league, she was out of his universe. Even if he hadn't been having the second shittiest day of his life, he probably wouldn't have bothered to make a play for her. That was why he didn't bother to get up when the woman approached him. He just stared out from behind his long, white bangs and burped softly. "Hello, Mr. Ivory." She stopped a few feet away and didn't offer to shake his hand. She had a slight accent—Italian, maybe? "My name is Stanza Miracolo." "Don't mind me." Jonah waved at the two closed caskets. "Go ahead and view all you like." "Not here for that, thanks." Stanza slid two fingers into a vest pocket of her red leather jacket. "Here for you," she said, tugging out a business card and offering it to him. When Jonah didn't take the card, she flipped it at him. The card landed face-up on his stomach, and he stared down at it. Stanza Miracolo, it said. Bloodlines Genealogy & Beyond. Jonah brushed the card from his black Jethro Tull t-shirt. "You picked the wrong day to try to sell me something, lady," he said, and then he polished off his beer. "Already paid for," said Stanza. "I'm your inheritance." "Believe it or not, this really isn't a good time for me." Jonah crumpled the latest empty and tossed it behind the caskets with the rest. "Can't you see I'm busy?" "Your mother and father hired me," said Stanza. "Services deliverable to you upon their deaths. It's in their wills." Jonah laughed. "This is a joke, right? Who put you up to this?" Stanza pulled a folded bundle of papers from inside her jacket and handed it to him. "The contract. Check the signatures on the last page." Jonah unfolded the bundle and flipped to the last page. His eyes went straight to the familiar handwriting at the bottom. Isaac Ivory. Caroline Ivory. Without comment, Jonah flipped back to the front page and scanned the text. "Genealogical services?" he said, mispronouncing it "Genie-logal" because he was drunk. "Tracing your family tree," said Stanza. "Finding your roots." "What's this about 'per dime rates?'" said Jonah. "'Per diem,'" said Stanza. "It means I'll be reimbursed for costs incurred during travel." "Travel?" "With you." Stanza c****d her head as if she had heard something, then turned and paced around the room. "Won't find your family history sitting around Tucson, will we?" Jonah frowned. My two brothers were stolen five years ago, and now my parents are dead. That's all the family history I really need to know. "Not interested," said Jonah. "Anyway, I've got work, and my band's got gigs." It was true. Jonah worked a day job driving a delivery truck for the local Red Cross. By night, he played lead guitar for Crimson Wonder, a Jethro Tull tribute band. He had a gig that very night after the viewing, in fact. Stanza leaned out through the open doorway, looked in both directions, and leaned back. "I get paid only if I fulfill the contract," she said. "So fulfill it," said Jonah. "Not without you." Stanza wagged an index finger at him. Jonah snorted and got up from his chair. "Not gonna happen." Just as he was shoving the contract toward Stanza, a word on the front page caught his eye. "Protection? What's that all about?" Stanza snatched the pages from his hand. She winked her red-flecked amber eye at him. "You'll see." Then, she turned and whisked off down the hallway. As Jonah watched her go, he suddenly felt bad. In spite of all the negative s**t that had happened in his life, he wasn't usually so rude. Once things calmed down, would it be so bad traveling around with a hot-looking woman? Maybe I should apologize and tell her I'll call after the funeral. Unfortunately, by the time Jonah thought of saying something else to Stanza, she was through the front door and outside. She seemed to disappear as soon as she hit the shadows, red jacket and all. Jonah took a step after her, then stopped. Wobbling in the parlor doorway, he looked back at the closed caskets at the far end of the room. It was the end of an era over there, the end of a lifetime. Mom and Dad were gone forever. I'm alone. No one left. No parents, no brothers, no family. I'm an 18-year-old orphan. No girlfriend, either. No friends, unless he counted his Crimson Wonder bandmates, who were always feuding with him anyway. I'm completely alone. And the thing was, Jonah thought he deserved it. He hadn't saved his brothers, the twins, when they were taken. He'd just stood there, frozen, and watched. He'd suffered for what he'd done—not done—but was it ever enough? He relived it nightly in his dreams, but that didn't change a thing. He was still a coward who hadn't even tried to save his own brothers. So now I'm alone. At least I don't have anyone left to lose. Jonah's eyes flicked back and forth from one casket to the other. "When you see the twins," he said, his voice a trembling whisper. "Tell them I'm sorry."