Dad hugged her in his wiry arms. “Okay, Kels.”
He sounded defeated. She’d never heard that in his voice before.
She pulled free and moved back along the hallway, Ethan falling into step beside her. As they moved away, Kelsie’s pulse skidded with the scattered unease of the mob.
CHAPTER 56
SCAM
OUTSIDE, THE DAYLIGHT SEEMED MORE intense than Ethan remembered.
All the colors were brighter, like the muted world inside the house had sent his eyes into overdrive. The dying grass in front of the abandoned houses was a more vivid yellow, the graffiti more discordantly vibrant.
He put his sunglasses back on.
But it wasn’t the light that was weirding him out. It was the whole uncanny vibe of that drug den with its scabby, decaying inhabitants. Every minute he’d been inside, inexplicable emotions had passed through him.
“Kelsie, did you feel sort of . . . happy in there? Like, a contact high?”
“That was me, trying to keep my dad from punching you.”
“Oh. Um, thanks.” Ethan hadn’t quite gotten his head around Kelsie’s power yet. The night before, on the roof of the Boom Room, she’d explained she could control the energy of a crowd. But it could also control her. It was pretty complicated, but Ethan was old friends with complicated. Complicated lived in his mouth.
“A lot of blissed-out junkies in there,” she said. “I borrowed what they were feeling, to keep things calm. People are like herd animals—they share emotions. I just lend a hand.”
“It reminded me of . . .” He remembered feeling fuzzy and calm on the bank’s marble floor, like liquid valium was pumping into him, along with three helpings of Thanksgiving turkey. “During the robbery, all us customers zoned out. Was that you?”
Kelsie gave him a sad look. “For all the good it did.”
“All my fault,” he said, half hoping Kelsie would argue. But she didn’t.
She slouched with her head down, scuffing her high-tops on the pavement as they walked. She looked tiny and defeated. He couldn’t imagine what it was like to see someone you loved in a place like that, taking an awful drug like krokodil. Kelsie wanted to get her father some food, but Ethan thought the guy would be better off with a hospital. He looked half dead. They all did.
Ethan missed his home in the nice part of Cambria. He missed his mom and he missed Jess. Being born into a family of straight shooters might be a pain, but nothing compared to a con-artist druggie father. He vowed to call Mom the minute he found an untraceable phone.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
“For . . .” For being anywhere near that bank on Friday. For needing a ride home. For stealing a bag full of money that put him right in the way of a desperate Jerry Laszlo.
But without that crazy roller coaster of events, he never would’ve met Kelsie. He liked Kelsie. A lot. Probably more than she liked him, and that still didn’t stop him liking her in a big way.
She’d saved him from the Craig, she’d thrown thousands of bucks into the air, and she’d hidden him from various interested parties overnight.
Which made not telling her about the other Zeroes totally selfish. But she’d been so fascinated when he’d told her about the voice, like his power was something amazing and cool instead of this awful hijacker in his body.
In all that glory, Ethan had missed the opportunity to mention he wasn’t the only other person with a power. And leaving out the truth was like any scam—if you rode it long enough, you couldn’t get off.
“I’m just sorry I can’t help you more.”
“Hey,” she said. “It was pretty handy what you said to that guy Tony. About his mom and his aunt. I think you really helped him.”
Ethan smiled. The voice had done him proud in there. First with scary Tony and then with Kelsie’s dad.
Maybe his stupid voice was getting better. Maybe it was developing beyond its usual short-term thinking. The weird thing was, it had felt good to use the voice again. Like shaking hands with an old friend.
“You think I was right, not giving my dad the money?” Kelsie asked. “I feel like I let him down.”
“Your dad let you down, not the other way around.”
Kelsie gave him a lopsided smile. “Is that your voice talking?”
“I don’t need the voice for this. Trust me, I’m a world-class expert in letting people down.”
She smiled at him gratefully. Ethan beamed in return. Every time Kelsie looked at him, it was like a light turned on.
A black sedan went by, out of place in this part of town. It reminded Ethan of the Craig’s advice about never driving anything fancy. Though maybe this guy wasn’t trying to lie low.
The driver was a man in a suit with pale skin and thick black hair. Beside him was another guy in a suit.
“Dad has nothing,” Kelsie was saying to herself. “No food, no clothes. I had all his money, and I threw it away last night.”
“That was my fault,” Ethan said.
Then he realized something. When it came to money, he could help Kelsie out. Money was something he could manage. But it would mean telling her about the other Zeroes. . . .
“I should just tell the police where he is,” Kelsie said. “I mean, what’s worse? Being in prison or winding up dead?”
Ethan reached out clumsily to rest a hand on her shoulder. “I think I can help. There’s something I haven’t—”
Kelsie froze. “You see that car?”
Ethan glanced up. “Yeah, it went past before.”
“Last time I saw a car circling the block, it was really bad news.”
“It’s probably just . . .”
Ethan’s words faded as the car drifted to a halt beside them. The two men got out. The driver came right over toward them, a tall hook of a man with a bend to his spine. The other guy stayed by the car, like he was ready to take off. Like this was a robbery.
Ethan was all set to offer them the roll of twenties in his pocket, but he didn’t get the chance.
“Kelsie Laszlo?” The driver said with some crazy kind of accent.
“Nope,” Ethan said right away.
The guy’s eyes flicked once toward Ethan and then back to Kelsie. “We’re looking for your father. There’s a price on his head. Any idea where I can find him?”
Ethan looked at Kelsie, who gave him a beseeching look. Ethan realized with something like pride that she wanted him to use the voice.
Ethan willed it to take over his throat, anything to make these guys believe he and Kelsie had nothing to do with Jerry Laszlo. Anything to help Kelsie. But the voice had nothing to say.
Which probably meant they already knew exactly who Kelsie was, and that her father was hiding nearby.
“Like, we don’t know what you mean,” Ethan tried in his own voice. It cracked on the last word.
The guy finally gave him a solid look. “Huh. The boy from the bank video.”
“Um, what video?”
The guy laughed. “And here with Jerry Laszlo’s little girl. I believe this is called a two-for-one. How lucky can a guy be?”
Okay, these guys knew everything. The voice couldn’t unwind that. So Ethan had to want something simpler.
This guy needs to leave us alone. Ethan sent the thought spiraling out. And there it was at last, the wonderful feeling of the voice pulling upward toward his throat and jaw, full of certainty. Come on, voice. Just like in the tenements. Win this thing!
The voice said, “My friend. What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t.” The man’s smile was coldly polite.
“I’m going to call you . . .” The voice seemed to hesitate, but of course the voice knew exactly what to say next. “I’m going to call you Misha.”
Misha started, which filled Ethan with happiness.
“Yeah, I know who you are, Misha,” the voice went on. “You’d be surprised what I know. Like how Alexei doesn’t think much of you.”
Misha shook his head. “You don’t know Mr. Bagrov. You don’t know shit.”
“What I know is, he told everyone important not to mess with Kelsie,” the voice continued breezily. “Because Miss Laszlo here is doing business with him. So how come Mr. Bagrov didn’t bother to tell you that?”
Misha gave a dry laugh. “He’s doing business with kids like you?”
Kelsie nodded once, her jaw set in defiance. “That’s right. Picking up where my dad left off.”
Misha stared at Kelsie’s sparkly high-tops and Ethan’s crumpled shirt. “Don’t make me laugh. You kids don’t even have a car.”
“Only a dipshit brings their ride into a neighborhood like this,” Ethan heard himself say.
Misha’s eyes flicked to his shiny black sedan and then up at the broken windows of the building behind them. The voice had played him perfectly.
But then the other guy spoke up. “Let’s check this with Mr. Bagrov.”
He pulled open his jacket to reach for his phone, and Ethan saw a gun strapped to his side.
The voice died in his throat, and Ethan felt a sudden resentment for all the other Zeroes. Why was his power so crap at lying to more than one person at a time?
“Wait!” Ethan said in his own useless, shaky voice.
Both the mobsters stared at him, expecting more.
Ethan really wanted these guys to leave them alone. He wanted to get out of this creepy dead-end part of town. He wanted to live another day, maybe go back to the Moonstruck Diner and drink bad coffee for hours. He wanted to call his mom, for Pete’s sake. He put that all into one articulate thought and prayed the voice had a plan.
“Okay,” he heard himself say. “Go right ahead, Boris. Call him. And when you do, tell him you got a present for him.”
Misha smiled. “You mean you two kids?”
“Nope.” Ethan grinned, but inside he was chanting please, please, please, focusing every bit of his will into his power. “Jerry’s three blocks that way, in the tenement with the broken bottles on the lawn, second floor. But move fast. He won’t be there long.”
Beside him, Kelsie gasped. “You . . .”
Ethan felt his stomach leap into his throat, pushing the voice out of the way. “Oh, crap.”
Misha’s expression changed to one of pure greed. Both of the men slipped back into the car. “Thank you, my friend!”
And just like that the voice had done it again.
CHAPTER 57
MOB
KELSIE RAN, HEADING AFTER THE fancy car. But half a block later Ethan was grabbing her, dragging her to a halt.
“Kelsie, wait!”
She pushed him off, swung a fist at him. “Oh my God, Ethan! Why did you do that?”
Ethan looked stunned, like he couldn’t believe what was happening either.
“It’s too late,” he said. “I screwed up. But we can’t beat them there.”
She spun away from him. The car was three blocks away, already in front of the building full of junkies. The Bagrov men were out front, banging on the boarded-up door.
She started running again, outpacing Ethan, shouting as she got closer. In the empty suburb, her voice rolled and rolled. At last she felt an answering spark of anxiety from inside the tenement. People had heard her.
But Ethan grabbed her again, bringing her to a skidding stop.
“We can’t, Kelsie! Those guys have guns!”
The crack of wood came from down the street, and both of them spun to face it. A board came tumbling down the tenement’s front steps, and the two men disappeared through the doorway.
“Dad!” Kelsie couldn’t escape Ethan’s grasp, so she dragged his weight behind her, his sneakers skidding on asphalt.
She could feel the people inside the tenement bonded in fear. But the mob only lasted seconds. They thought it was the cops coming in and scattered in all directions.
“Run!” she cried.
Ethan was in front of her now. He looked scared, his freckles standing out on his pale skin.
“Why did you do that?” she screamed at him.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan said.
The world was spinning, smears of color dancing across her eyes. First she hadn’t given her dad the money, and now this.
Kelsie tried to pull away, but she was weak with exhaustion. She couldn’t remember the last meal she’d eaten, the last decent night’s sleep she’d had. “You could’ve told him another building. Any building! You sent him right to my dad!”
“I wanted us to be safe,” Ethan said numbly. “I forgot about keeping your father safe too. My voice didn’t understand.”
“You kept saying you wanted to help!”
“I do!” Ethan cried. “But I don’t know what the voice is going to say! It’s out of my control.”
“Then you shouldn’t use it at all!” she yelled, turning to the building again. “Help me fight them.”
“What are we going to do against mobsters with guns? They’ll just take us, too. We have to get out of here.”
She flinched as the fear inside the building shifted to hard panic. Misha and his pal must have stumbled into a roomful of junkies, guns waving.
“My dad’s gonna think I led them right here.”
“Listen. Jerry owes them money, you said. That’s what this is all about. I can get money!”
She stared at him. He had scammed a free room at the Magnifique and stolen a bag of cash from Craig. But what if the Bagrovs wanted blood?
“Can’t you talk them out of taking him at all?”
Ethan shook his head. “Once they get on the phone with Bagrov, we’re dead meat. Please.”
He reached out toward her but Kelsie knocked his hand away. Her head was throbbing like an overamped speaker from the panic down the street.
She tried to latch onto the energy coming from inside the building, to organize it into some kind of resistance. But it scattered like birds. Like panicked junkies, pretty much.
“Listen,” Ethan said. “Can we please have this conversation someplace far way? What if Misha calls for backup?”
“Not till I hear your plan for saving my dad!” Kelsie braced herself. “And don’t even think about using your voice on me.”
“Okay.” Ethan was panting, and took a moment to speak again. “There’s something I haven’t told you yet. I have this bag of money.”
“Craig’s money. I know.”
“Right, but there’s another thing.” Ethan nodded. “The part where I don’t have it.”
Kelsie groaned. His other voice might be a bullshitter, but at least it usually made sense. “Do you have it or not, Ethan?”
“My friends are holding it for me.” He hesitated. “Friends who are like us . . . with powers.”
“Powers.” Kelsey stared at him. “Superpowers?”
He nodded.
Of course. Where there were two, there had to be more. Maybe lots more, just like she’d said on the bus. And Ethan had pretended to be too sleepy to talk about it.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was getting to it.” Ethan looked terrified. “It’s just that we’re, like, a secret group, and I had to make sure you were—”
“You let me think we were the only ones!”
Ethan opened his mouth, but Kelsie waved his response away.
“Save it.” She took one last look at the tenement. “Okay. Let’s go meet your superfriends. Anyone who’s not you.”
CHAPTER 58
CRASH
CHIZARA WALKED DOWN THE BASEMENT stairs of the Central Cambria Police Department, a little wobbly in her heels. Up ahead, beyond the jail cells, the IT guys were showing a group of managerial types into the server room. She hurried to join the back of the crowd, frowning down at the fake paperwork on her clipboard.
Stuffy air flowed out of the room, and the hallway smelled strongly of cleanser and bleach. Chizara tried not to think why, pushing the beaten cop out of her head. This was her chance to make up a
little for what she’d done, for the bad things she’d let happen.
The room was full of metal shelves with rows of black and beige boxes, none of them showing a wink of life. But she could still sense the patterns around her. Like walking into the burned-out shell of a house—maybe a whole burned-out town—one that she herself had torched. Slowly Chizara began to match these empty shells to the pulsing systems she’d seen in her head before she crashed them on Friday.
That giant gray box there, next to the boss guy with the lightning-bolt logo on his shirt, she recognized the innards of that. She’d frazzled them during the big crash, right before she’d started to lose it.
“So when that power spike hit,” the boss guy was saying, “this UPS should’ve cut in and kept the power steady. We’ll put in a new one for you, no problem, but the weird thing is why the mains relay is stuck. So first we’re gonna run some tests—”
A woman in a gray suit spoke up: “You been keeping up the quarterly maintenance?”
“Right on schedule,” said the guy. “Every check we’ve ever run, she failed over just like she should.”
“Of course it did,” murmured a young guy just in front of Chizara to his buddy. “Guy knows how to cover his ass, doesn’t he?”
His buddy nodded, then glanced over his shoulder, registered Chizara as a stranger, looked her up and down. She was every inch the serious young assistant with her clipboard, in the navy-blue skirt suit she’d begged Mom to buy her so she could look like an American girl at church on Sundays.
It had been easy, sneaking into the CCPD. There were so many groups here—tech people, insurance adjusters, police brass—a big enough crowd to lose track of whose assistant was whose. Chizara smiled back at the guy, her mind reaching through into the server room, trying to see exactly what she’d done.
The UPS was the least of it, just a giant switch that she’d stopped from doing its automated rescue. Littered around it were caramelized circuit boards, burned-out fibers, and blasted switches. It should be a beehive in there, hundreds of buzzing insects stinging her brain. She should be curled up in a corner from the pain.