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“This is none of your business,” says Daneca. “If you don’t get your soda and get out of here, I’m calling Mom. ”
Sam and I share the awkward look of outsiders in the middle of a family squabble.
“Oh, yeah?” Chris says. “Maybe you should tell your friends that you’re an emotion worker instead of hiding it. Do you think they’ll still listen to you then?”
For a moment everything stops.
I look at Daneca. She has the blank look of shock, eyes wide. Her hand is raised protectively as if words could be warded off. The kid isn’t lying.
Which means that Daneca has been.
Sam falls off his stool. I think he was trying to stand up and wasn’t really thinking about it, but he winds up stumbling back as the stool crashes to the floor. His back hits the cabinet. The expression on his face is awful. He doesn’t know her anymore. It cuts me to the bone because that’s exactly how I’m afraid he’ll look at me.
I lean down and right the fallen stool, glad to have something to do.
“We’ve got to go,” Sam says. “Cassel, come on. We’re out of here. ”
“No, wait,” Daneca says, walking toward him. She falters as if not sure what to say, then turns back to the kid. “How could you do this to me?” Her voice is a thin wail.
“It’s not my fault you’re a liar,” Chris says haltingly. He looks terrified. I think if he could, he’d take the words back.
Sam stumbles toward the door.
“I’ll talk to him,” I say to Daneca.
“You lie,” she says, grabbing my arm, desperate. I can feel her nails through the thin leather of her gloves. “You lie to him all the time. Why is it okay when you do it?”
I shrug off her hand, not letting her see how much the words hurt. Right now all my impulses are bad ones. I hadn’t realized how little Daneca trusted me until this afternoon. And if she’s anything like my mother—the only other emotion worker I know—maybe I shouldn’t trust her, either. “I said I would talk to him. That’s all I can do. ”
Outside, Sam’s hearse is still in the driveway but I don’t see him anywhere. Not in Daneca’s mother’s elegant garden, not over the hedge in the neighbor’s backyard with an in-ground pool. Not walking down the side of the road. Then one of the doors of the hearse swings open. Sam is lying on his back inside.
“Get in,” he says. “Also, girls suck. ”
“What are you doing?” I climb inside. It’s creepy. The roof is lined in gathered gray satin and the windows are tinted very dark.
“I’m thinking,” he says.
“About Daneca?” I ask, although I can’t imagine the answer is anything other than yes.
“I guess now we know why she wouldn’t get tested. ” He sounds bitter.
“She was scared,” I say.
“Did you know she was a worker?” he asks. “Be honest. ”
“No,” I say. “No. I mean, I guess I thought she might be—before I really knew her—because of her being so gung ho about HEX, but I figured she wished she was a worker. Like I used to. But you have to understand how frightening—”
“I don’t,” Sam says. “I don’t have to understand. ”
It finally occurs to me what’s bothering me about the hearse. Being in the back reminds me of being in the trunk of Anton’s car, next to garbage bags of bodies. I remember vividly the smell of spilled guts. “She cares about you,” I say, trying to force my mind back to the present. “When you care about someone it’s harder to—”
“I never asked you what kind of worker you are,” Sam says, flinging the words at me like a challenge.
“Yeah,” I say carefully. “And I really appreciate that. ”
“If I did . . . ” Sam pauses. “If I did, would you tell me?”
“I hope so,” I say.
He’s quiet then. We lie next to each other, twin corpses waiting for burial.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
WE CAN’T STAY IN DANECA’S driveway. Instead, we go to Sam’s house, steal a six-pack of his dad’s beer, and drink it between us in his garage. There’s an old maroon couch out there near a drum set from his older sister’s band. I flop down on one side of the sofa, and he flops on the other.
“Where is your sister now?” I ask, reaching for a handful of sesame-coated peanuts—we found a bag of them near the beer. They crunch in my mouth like salted candy.
“Bryn Mawr,” he says, belching loudly, “driving my parents crazy because she has a girlfriend covered in tattoos. ”
“Really?”
He grins. “Yeah, why? You didn’t think anyone related to me could be a rebel?”
“How much of a rebel can she be in that fancy college?” I say.
He throws a musty pillow at me, but I manage to block it with my arm. It tumbles to the concrete floor.
“Didn’t your brother go to Princeton?” he asks.
“Touché,” I say, and gulp from the beer. It’s warm. “Shall we duel for the dishonor of our siblings?”
Sam frowns at me, suddenly serious. “You know, I thought—for most of the first year we lived together—that you were going to kill me. ”
That makes me nearly spit out beer, I laugh so hard.
“No, look—living with you, it’s like knowing there’s a loaded gun on the other side of the room. You’re like this leopard who’s pretending to be a house cat. ”
That only makes me laugh harder.
“Shut up,” he says. “You might do normal stuff, but a leopard can drink milk or fall off things like a house cat. It’s obvious you’re not—not like the rest of us. I’ll look over at you, and you’ll be flexing your claws or, I don’t know, eating a freshly killed antelope. ”
“Oh,” I say. It’s a ridiculous metaphor, but the hilarity has gone out of me. I thought I did a good job of fitting in—maybe not perfect, but not as bad as Sam makes it sound.
“It’s like Audrey,” he says, stabbing the air with a finger, clearly well on his way to inebriated and full of determination to make me understand his theory. “You acted like she went out with you because you did this good job of being a nice guy. ”
“I am a nice guy. ”
I try to be.
Sam snorts. “She liked you because you scared her. And then you scared her too much. ”
I groan. “Are you serious? Come on, I never did anything—”
“I’m as serious as a heart attack,” he says. “You’re a dangerous dude. Everyone knows this. ”
I take the remaining throw pillow and press it over my face, smothering myself. “Stop,” I say.
“Cassel?” Sam says.
I peek out from under the cushion. “Don’t traumatize me any more than you already—”
“What kind of worker are you?” Sam’s looking over at me with the benevolent curiosity of the drunk.
I bite off what I was going to say, hesitate. The moment drags on, suspended in amber.
“You don’t have to tell me,” he says. “It doesn’t matter. ”
I know what he thinks my answer is going to be. He figures I’m a death worker. Maybe he even thinks I killed somebody. If he’s really clever—and at this point I have to assume he’s more clever than I am, since he’s saying that he figured out I was dangerous long before I did—he’s got a theory that I killed one of the men the Feds are looking for. If I say I’m a death worker, he’ll swallow it. He’ll think I’m a good friend. He’ll think I’m honest.
My palms sweat.
I want to be that friend. “Transformation,” I say. It comes out like a croak.
He sits up fast, staring at me. All traces of humor are gone. “What?”
“See? I’m getting better at being truthful,” I say, trying to lighten the mood. My stomach hurts. Honesty freaks me right the hell out.
“Are you crazy?” he asks me. “You shouldn’t have told me that! You
shouldn’t tell anyone! Wait, you’re really—?”
I just nod.
It takes him a long moment before he can come up with anything else.
“Wow,” he says finally, awe in his voice. “You could create the best special effects in the world. Monster masks. Horns. Fangs. Totally permanent. ”
I never thought of that, never considered using working for anything fun. The corner of my lip lifts in an unexpected smile.
He pauses. “The curses are permanent, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, thinking of Lila, and Janssen. “I mean, I can change things back to the way they were. Mostly. ”
Sam gives me a considering look. “So you could stay young forever?”
“That sounds possible,” I say with a shrug. “But it’s not like the world is full of transformation workers, so it must not work. ” The sheer enormity of what I don’t know about my limitations—the stuff I don’t even want to deal with—is suddenly a lot more obvious.
“How about giving yourself a huge you-know-what?” He leans back on the couch and points to his pants with both hands. “Like, unnaturally big. ”
I groan. “You’ve got to be kidding me. That’s what you want to know?”
“I’ve got my priorities straight,” he says. “You’re the one who’s not asking the right questions. ”
“Story of my life,” I say.
Sam finds a dusty bottle of Bacardi in the back of his parents’ pantry. We split it.
Late Sunday afternoon I wake up to someone ringing the doorbell. I don’t remember how I got home; maybe I walked. My mouth still tastes like booze, and I am pretty sure my hair is sticking straight up. I try to smooth it out as I walk down the stairs.
I don’t know what I expect, really. A package that I have to sign for, maybe. Missionaries, kids selling cookies, something like that. Even the Feds. Not Mr. Zacharov, looking as crisp as a fake hundred-dollar bill, at the door of my dingy kitchen.
I flip the locks. “Hey,” I say, and then realize my breath must be awful.
“Are you busy this evening?” he asks, giving every appearance of not noticing that I just rolled out of bed. “I’d like you to come with me. ” Behind him is a goon in a long, dark coat. He’s got a tattoo of a skull on his neck, above the keloid scars.
“Sure,” I say. “Okay. Can you give me a minute?”
He nods. “Get dressed. You can have breakfast on the way. ”
I walk back upstairs, leaving the kitchen door open so that Zacharov can come in if he wants.
In the shower, as hot water pounds down like needles onto my back, I realize that it’s really, really odd that Zacharov is waiting for me downstairs. The more awake I get, the more surreal it seems.
I come back into the kitchen fifteen minutes later, chewing aspirin, in black jeans and a sweater, with my leather jacket on. Zacharov is sitting at my kitchen table, looking relaxed, fingers tapping on the worn wood.
“So,” I say. “Where are we going?”
He stands and raises both steel gray eyebrows. “To the car. ”
I follow him out to a sleek black Cadillac. It’s already running, with Stanley—a bodyguard I met before—in the driver’s seat. The guy with the skull tattoo is sitting beside him. Zacharov waves me in, and I scoot across the backseat.
“Hey, kid,” Stanley says. There’s a steaming cup of coffee in the cup holder and a fast-food bag over on my seat. I open it up and take out the bagel and egg sandwich inside.
“Stanley,” I say, nodding to him. “How’s the family?”
“Never better,” he says.
Zacharov sits beside me as the tinted privacy divider grinds up.
“I understand that you and my daughter spent Friday together,” he says as Stanley backs the Cadillac out of my driveway.
“I hope she had fun,” I say between chews. I wonder suddenly if Zacharov found out about the curse. If so, it was nice for him to let me get cleaned up and fed before he killed me.
But Zacharov has an amused curl to his lip. “And I understand that you spent some time with some federal agents the day before that. ”
“Yeah,” I say, trying not to look too relieved. Questions about the Feds from a mob boss should not relax anyone. “They came to see me at school. About Philip. ”
He narrows his eyes. “What about Philip?”
“He was making a deal with them,” I say. There’s no point in lying to Zacharov about this. Philip’s dead. There’s no real harm in his knowing. I feel a pang of guilt nonetheless. “They say he was an informant. And then someone murdered him. ”
“I see,” Zacharov says.
“They want me to help them find the killer. ” I hesitate. “At least that’s what they say they want. ”
“But you don’t think so,” he says.
“I don’t know,” I say, and take a long swig of the coffee. “All I know is that they’re assholes. ”
He laughs at that. “What are their names?”
“Jones and Hunt. ” The combination of coffee and grease is soothing my stomach. I feel pretty good, leaning back against the leather seat. I’d feel better if I knew where we were going, but for the moment I am willing to wait.
“Huh,” he says. “Luck workers, both of them. ”
I look over at him, surprised. “I thought they hated workers. ”