by Holly Black
I walk into his dining room. There’s some mail on the table, along with a bunch of wilted flowers from the funeral. It seems like it happened so long ago, but really it’s just been a few weeks since Philip died.
On the sideboard are a bunch of photos, most of them of the three of us kids when we were little, doing a lot of running through sprinklers and posing awkwardly, our arms around one another, on lawns. There are other photos too, older ones of Grandad with Mom in her wedding dress, Grandma, and one of Grandad and Zacharov at what looks like Lila’s parents’ wedding. The expensive-looking wedding band on Zacharov’s finger is pretty distinctive.
“I’m going to put on the kettle,” he says.
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m not thirsty.”
“Did I ask you?” Grandad looks at me sternly. “You take a cup, you drink it, and then I’ll make up a bed for you in the spare room. Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” I say, chastened.
“I’ll call them in the morning. Tell them you’re going to be a little late.”
“I’ve been late a lot,” I say. “Missed a lot of classes. I think I’m failing physics.”
“Death messes you up. Even a fancy school like yours knows that.” He goes into the kitchen.
I sit down at the table in the dark. Now that I’m here, I feel a calm settle over me that I can’t explain. I just want to be here, sitting at this table, forever. I don’t want to move.
Eventually there is a metallic whistle from the kitchen. Grandad comes back, setting down two mugs. He flicks a switch on the wall, and the electric lights of the chandelier glow so brightly that I shade my eyes.
The tea is black and sweet, and I’m surprised that I’ve finished half of it in a single gulp.
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” he asks finally. “Why you’re here in the middle of the night?”
“Not really,” I say as forthrightly as I can manage. I don’t want to lose this. I wonder if he’d even let me into his house if he knew I was working for the government, no less that I blackmailed my brother into joining me. I’m not even sure they allow federal agents into the worker town of Carney.
He takes a slug from his cup and then winces, like maybe his doesn’t have tea in it. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Not anymore.”
“I see.” He stands and shuffles over to put his ruined hand on my shoulder. “Come on, kid. I think it’s time for you to get to bed.”
“Thanks,” I say, getting up.
We go into the back room, the same room where I slept when I spent the summers in Carney. Grandad brings in some blankets and a pair of pajamas for me to sleep in. I think they might be an old pair of Barron’s.
“Whatever’s eating you,” he says, “it’s never worse in the morning.”
I sit down on the corner of the mattress and smile wearily. “G’night, Grandad.”
He pauses in the doorway. “You know Elsie Cooper’s oldest son? Born crazy. He can’t help it. No one knows how come he turned out like that—he just did.”
“Yeah,” I say vaguely. I remember people in Carney talking about how he never left the house, but I can’t recall much else. I look over at the folded pajamas. My limbs feel so heavy that even thinking about putting them on is an effort. I have no idea where Grandad’s story is supposed to be going.
“You were always good, Cassel,” he says as he closes the door. “No idea how you turned out that way—you just did. Like the crazy Cooper kid. You can’t help it.”
“I’m not good,” I say. “I play everybody. Everybody. All the time.”
He snorts. “Goodness don’t come for free.”
I’m too tired to argue. He switches off the light, and I’m asleep before I even crawl underneath the covers.
Grandad calls school to tell them I won’t be there for classes today, and I basically just sit around his house all morning. We watch Band of the Banned reruns and he makes some kind of turmeric beef stew in the Crock-Pot. It comes out pretty good.
He lets me stretch out on the couch with an afghan, like I’m sick. We even eat in front of the television.
When it’s time to go, he packs up some of the stew into a clean Cool Whip container and hands it to me along with a bottle of orange soda. “You better go study that physics,” he says.
“Yeah,” I say.
He pauses when he sees the shiny new Benz. We look at each other silently over the hood for a moment, but all he says is, “Tell that mother of yours to give me a call.”
“I will, Grandad. Thanks for letting me spend the night.”
His brows furrow. “You better not say anything stupid like that to me again.”
“All right.” I grin, holding up my hands in a gesture of surrender. Then I get into the car.
He slaps the hood. “Bye, kid.”
I drive off. I get twenty minutes out of Carney before I drink the orange soda. By the time I arrive at Wallingford, I’ve missed most of the day. I roll into the break period after study hall and before lights-out.
Sam is sitting on the striped couch of the common lounge, next to Jeremy Fletcher-Fiske. A newscaster is on the television, talking about football. Some guys are playing cards on a folding table. Another senior, Jace, is watching a carrot on a plate rotate in the microwave.
“Hey,” I say, waving.
“Dude,” says Sam. “Long time, no see. Where have you been?”
“Just family stuff,” I say, sitting down on the arm of the couch.
Tomorrow I am going to have to get my homework from teachers. I’m going to have to start buckling down if I want to pass everything this semester, but I figure that tonight I might as well just relax.
On the screen another announcer starts in on the local news. He says that on Sunday, Governor Patton held a brunch where his unexpected and controversial announcement had his constituents up in arms.
They show a clip of a big ballroom covered in tables and Patton up on a podium with a blue curtain behind him and my mother standing nearby, along with another guy in a suit. Her hair is pulled back and she’s wearing a yellow dress with short white gloves. She looks like a costumer’s idea of a politician’s wife. I am so busy trying to make out her expression that for a moment I don’t realize what Patton’s saying on the clip.
“—and furthermore, after consideration, I have come to realize that my stance was an unrealistic one. While having access to information regarding who is or is not hyperbathygammic would be convenient for law enforcement, I now see that the price for that convenience is too high. Worker rights groups have made the point that it’s unlikely the information would remain confidential. As governor, I cannot countenance any risk to the privacy of New Jersey citizens, especially when that privacy may protect their lives and livelihoods. Even though I have been in the past a strong supporter of proposition two, I am withdrawing that support as of this moment. I no longer believe that mandatory testing for workers is something this government should tolerate, no less dictate.”
I must be staring at the screen in horror.
“Crazy, right?” asks Jeremy. “Everyone’s saying that the guy got paid off. Or worked.”
Sam flinches. “Oh, come on. Maybe he just grew a conscience.”
That’s the brunch my mother invited me to, the one she said I’d love. Baby, I know what I’m doing.
A shiver runs down my back. The news has moved on to coverage of an earthquake, but I am still stuck with the memory of my mother’s face on that clip. If you didn’t know her, you wouldn’t notice it, but she was fighting back a smile.
She worked him. There is no doubt in my mind.
I want to scream. There’s no way to get her out of this. There’s no way it won’t be discovered.
Sam is speaking, but the buzzing in my head is so loud, it drowns out all other sounds.
I call my mother dozens of times that night, but she never picks up. I fall asleep
with the phone still in my hand and wake up when its alarm goes off the next morning. I drag myself through my classes. I’m behind in everything. I stumble through answers, fail a quiz in statistics, and botch a French translation to great hilarity.
When I get up to my room, I find Daneca waiting for me. She’s sitting on Sam’s bed, her clunky brown shoes kicking the bed frame absently. Her eyes are red-rimmed.
“Hey,” I say. “I don’t know where Sam is. I haven’t seen him since I passed him in the hall on the way to Physics.”
She pushes a thick braid off her shoulder and straightens up like she’s steeling herself to do something unpleasant. “He already went to play practice. He’s still acting weird, and I’m not here to see him, anyway. I have to talk to you.”
I nod, although I’m not in the frame of mind to say anything remotely sensible. “Sure. Fine.”
“It’s about Lila.”
She couldn’t go through with it, I realize. “That’s okay,” I say lightly. “Maybe it was a terrible idea anyway.”
“No, Cassel,” Daneca says. “You don’t understand. I really screwed up.”
“What?” My heart is a drum, beating out of time. I toss my backpack onto my bed and sit down beside it. “What do you mean—‘screwed up’?”
Daneca looks relieved that I finally seem to understand her. She scoots forward, leaning in toward me. “Lila caught me. I’m an idiot. It must have been obvious what I was trying.”
I picture Daneca trying to get off her glove without Lila noticing. It didn’t occur to me until now how hard it must have been. Daneca doesn’t know how to brush someone accidentally, the way you need to for a working or to lift a wallet. She’s no expert at sleight of hand.
“So you didn’t—,” I say. “So you didn’t work her?” All I feel is relief so intense that I almost laugh.
I’m glad. Horribly, shockingly glad.
I can learn to live with guilt. I don’t care about being good. I can learn to live with anything if it means being with Lila too.
Daneca shakes her head. “She made me tell her everything. She can be really frightening, you know.”
“Oh,” I say. “Yeah, she can be.”
“She made me promise not to say anything to you,” Daneca says, voice low.
I look out the window. There are so many thoughts running through my head, it’s like I’m not thinking at all. But still I force myself to give her a quick smile. “She didn’t think you would break a promise? We’ve got to do something about that reputation of yours, Goody Two-shoes.”
“I’m sorry,” Daneca says, ignoring my attempt at humor.
“It’s not your fault,” I say. “I shouldn’t have asked you. It wasn’t fair.”
She stands up and starts toward the door.
“See you at dinner,” she says, looking at me with surprising fondness.
As the door closes behind Daneca, I feel a terrible wave of emotion sweep through me, reckless joy and horror so mixed up that I don’t know what to feel first.
I tried to make myself do the right thing. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough. All I know right now is that I love Lila, and for a little while she’ll love me back.
When I find Lila, she’s heading toward the library. The collar of her shirt is open and the white silk scarf around her throat flutters in the wind. She looks like she’s about to go for a drive in a car with the top down.
“Hey,” I say, jogging up alongside her. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Cassel,” she says, like my name tastes sour on her tongue. She doesn’t slow.
“I know you’re probably furious about Daneca,” I say, walking backward so I can look at her while I’m talking. “And you have every right to be. But let me explain.”
“Can you?” Lila says, stopping abruptly. “I’m not a toy you can just turn off.”
“I know that,” I say.
“How could you think that it would be okay to work me? How would it be any different from what your mother did?” She looks like she feels a little bit sorry for me and a little bit disgusted. “The curse is over. We’re over.”
“Oh.” Of course. I grit my teeth against the reflexive flinch. All I can hear is my mother’s words in Atlantic City: She wouldn’t have given you the time of day, Cassel.
“It wasn’t enough for you to have your joke, pretending to love me, pretending you weren’t pretending—” She stops herself, closing her eyes for a moment. When she opens them again, they’re bright with fury. “I’m not cursed anymore. I’m not going to grovel for your attention. It must have been thrilling to have me sigh over every one of your thoughtless smiles, but that’s never going to happen again.”
“That’s not what it was like,” I say. I’m stunned, all of my months of pain and panic reduced, in her eyes, to gloating.
“I’m not weak, Cassel. I’m not the kind of girl who cries over you.” Her voice shakes. “I’m not the girl who does whatever you want whenever you want it.”
“That’s why I asked Daneca—,” I say, but I can’t finish. It’s not even true. I asked Daneca to work her because I was starting to believe the illusion. Daneca was trying to save me from myself.
“You wanted to make me feel nothing for you?” Lila says. “Well, let me do you one better. I hate you. How about that? I hate you, and you didn’t have to do a thing to make me.”
“Come on, now,” I say. I can hear the self-loathing in my voice. “I did plenty.” I lost Lila the moment my mother cursed her. Everything else was just a pathetic game of pretend. None of it real.
Her expression wavers, then smoothes out into a mask of blandness. “Good-bye, Cassel,” she says, and turns to go. Her head is bent and her scarf must have shifted, because I glimpse redness along her throat. From this angle it looks like the edge of a burn.
“What is that?” I say, walking after her, pointing to my own collar.
“Don’t,” she says warningly, holding up her gloved hand. But there is something in her face that wasn’t there a moment ago—fear.
I grab one end of her scarf. It comes unknotted with a single pull.
Her pale throat is cut, one side to the other, newly scabbed and dark with ash. The criminal’s second smile. A glittering choker of dried blood.
“You’re—,” I start. But of course, she always was. A crime boss’s daughter. Mobster royalty.
Talking with someone who just signed up to be a federal agent.
“The ceremony was on Sunday,” she says. “I told you I was going to be the head of the Zacharov family someday. No one starts at the top, though. I have a long way to go. First I have to prove my loyalty. Even me.”
“Ah.” Lila has always known who she was and what she wanted. There is something horrifyingly final about her scar, like a shut door. She’s not afraid of her future. “Brave,” I say, and I mean it.
For a moment she looks like she wants to tell me more. Her mouth opens, and then I see her swallow those words, whatever they were. She takes a deep breath and says, “If you don’t stay away from me, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.”
There’s nothing to say to that, so I say nothing. I can already feel numbness creeping into my heart.
She continues her walk across the quad.
I watch her go. Watch the shadow of her steps and her straight back and the gleam of her hair.
I remind myself that this is what I wanted. When that doesn’t work, I tell myself that I can survive on memories. The smell of Lila’s skin, the way her eyes shine with mischief, the low rasp of her voice. It hurts to think of her, but I can’t stop. It ought to hurt.
After all, hell is supposed to be hot.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Several books were really helpful in creating the world of the curse workers. In particular, David W. Maurer’s The Big Con; Sam Lovell’s How to Cheat at Everything ; Kent Walker and Mark Schone’s Son of a Grifter ; and Karl Taro Green-feld’s Speed Tribes.
I am deeply indebted to many peo
ple for their insight into this book. Thanks to Cassandra Clare, Robin Wasserman, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Delia Sherman, who were always kind enough to stop what they were doing and help me work through problems during our Mexican writing retreat. Thanks to Libba Bray and Jo Knowles for helping me enormously with the push to the end. I am grateful to Justine Larbalestier for talking with me about liars and to Scott Westerfeld for his detailed notes. Thanks to Joe Monti for his enthusiasm and book recommendations. Thanks to Elka Cloke for her medical expertise. Thanks to Kathleen Duey for pushing me to think about the larger world issues. Thanks to Kelly Link, Ellen Kushner, Gavin Grant, Sarah Smith, and Joshua Lewis for looking at very rough drafts. Thanks to Steve Berman for his help working out many, many details, especially in that last draft.
Most of all, I have to thank my agent, Barry Goldblatt, for his encouragement; my editor, Karen Wojtyla, who pushed me to make the book far better than I thought it could be; and my husband, Theo, who gave me lots of advice about private school and scams, and who let me read the whole thing to him out loud.
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Acknowledgements
