White Cat (19 page)

Now that I focus on it, the memory doesn’t even seem real. It slips away from me, like the blurred copy of a copy.

“You ready?” Philip asks.

I stand, but my legs are shaky. It’s one thing to suspect my brother was working me, another to stand next to him once I know he’s done it.
I’m the best con artist in this family
, I reassure myself.
I can lie. I can seem calm until I am calm.

But another part of my mind is howling, rattling around and scraping for other false memories. I know it’s impossible to look for what’s not there, and yet I do, running through the last few days—weeks, years—in my mind, as though I will stumble in the gaps.

How much of my life has been reimagined by Barron? Panic chills my skin like a sickness.

We walk down the stairs of the house quietly, out to a Mercedes parked on the street with the headlights turned down and the engine humming. Anton’s in the driver’s seat. He looks older than the last time I saw him, and there’s a scar that runs over the edge of his upper lip. It matches the keloid scar stretching across his neck.

“What took you so long?” Anton says, lighting a cigarette and throwing the match out the window.

Barron slides into the backseat next to me. “What’s the rush? We’ve got all night. This one here doesn’t have school in the morning.” He musses my hair.

I shove away his gloved hand. The annoyance feels surreally
familiar. It’s like Barron thinks we’re on a family car trip.

Philip gets into the passenger seat, looks back at us and grins.

I have to figure out what they think I know. I have to be smart. It sounds like they might believe some disorientation but not complete cluelessness. “What are we doing tonight?”

“We’re going to rehearse for this Wednesday,” Anton says. “For the assassination.”

I’m sure I flinch. My heart hammers. Assassination?

“And then you’re going to block the memory,” I say, fighting to keep my voice steady. I remember what Crooked Annie said about blocking access to memories so that the block can be removed later and the memory loss reversed. I wonder if we’ve rehearsed before. If so, I’m screwed. “Why do you have to keep making me forget?”

“We’re protecting you,” Philip says automatically.

Right.

I lean forward in the seat. “So my job is the same?” I say, which seems vague enough not to show my ignorance, but encourages an answer.

Barron nods. “All you do is walk up to Zacharov and put your bare hand on his wrist. Then you change his heart to stone.”

I swallow, concentrating on keeping my breathing even. They can’t mean what they’re saying. “Wouldn’t shooting him be easier?” I ask, because the whole thing is ridiculous.

Anton looks at me with hard eyes. “You sure he can do this? All this memory magic—he’s unstable. This is my future we’re talking about.”

My future.
Right. He’s Zacharov’s nephew. Anything happens to the man in charge, the mantle slips onto his shoulders.

“Don’t punk out on us,” Philip says to me in his I’m-being-patient voice. “It’s going to be a piece of cake. We’ve been planning this for a long time.”

“What do you know about the Resurrection Diamond?” Barron asks.

“Gave Rasputin immortality or something,” I say, deliberately vague. “Zacharov won it at an auction in Paris.”

Barron frowns, like he didn’t expect me to know even that much. “The Resurrection Diamond is thirty-seven carats—the size of a grown man’s thumbnail,” he says. “It’s colored a faint red, as though a single bead of blood dropped into a pool of water.”

I wonder if he’s quoting someone. The Christie’s catalog. Something. If I just concentrate on the details like it’s a puzzle, then maybe I won’t completely freak out.

“Not only did it protect Rasputin from multiple assassination attempts, but after him it went to other people. There have been reports of assassin’s guns turning out not to be loaded at the critical moment, or poison somehow finding its way into the poisoner’s cup. Zacharov was shot at on three separate occasions and the bullets didn’t hit him. Whoever has the Resurrection Diamond can’t be killed.”

“I thought that thing was a myth or something?” I say. “A legend.”

“Oh, so now he’s an expert on working,” Anton says.

But Barron’s eyes are shining. “I’ve been researching the Resurrection Diamond a long time.”

I wonder how much of that research he even remembers or if it has been winnowed down to just a few phrases. Maybe he wasn’t quoting an auction catalog; maybe he was quoting one of his notebooks.

“How long have you been researching it?” I ask.

He’s really angry now. “Seven years.”

In the front seat Philip snorts.

“So you started
before
Zacharov got the diamond?”

“I’m the one who told him about it.” Barron’s expression is firm, certain, but I think I can see the fear in his face. He’s lying, but he will never admit he’s lying. There is no evidence in the world that will make him back off a claim once he’s made it. If he did, he would have to admit how much of his memory is already gone.

Philip and Anton snicker to each other. They know he’s lying too. It’s like going to the movies with them in the summers when we all stayed in Carney with our grandparents. The familiarity makes me relax despite myself.

“So I actually agreed to do this?” I say.

They laugh more.

I have to proceed very carefully. “If the Resurrection Diamond is supposed to prevent assassination, are you sure I’m going to be able to get around it?”

It seems to be within the bounds of believable ignorance or hesitation. Anton grins at me in the rearview mirror. “You’re not doing death work. Whatever that stone is, it won’t stop your kind of magic.”

My kind of magic.

Heart to stone.

Me? I’m the transformation worker?

Who cursed you?
I asked the cat in my dream.

You did
.

I think that I’m going to be sick. No, I’m really going to be sick. I press my eyes shut, turn my head against the cold window, and concentrate on holding down my gorge.

He’s lying. He’s got to be lying.

“I’m—,” I start.

I’m a worker. I’m a worker. I’m a worker.

The thought repeats in my head like one of those tiny ricocheting rubber balls that just won’t stop banging into everything. I can’t think past it.

I thought I’d give anything to be a worker, but somehow this feels like a hideous violation of my childhood fantasy.

What’s the point of pretending to be anything less than the most talented practitioner of the very rarest curses?
Except, I guess I’m not pretending anymore.

“You okay over there?” Barron asks.

“Sure,” I say slowly. “I’m fine. Just tired. It’s really late. And my head is killing me.”

“We’ll stop for coffee,” says Anton.

We do. I manage to spill half of mine down my shirt, and the burn of the scalding liquid is the first thing that makes me feel halfway normal.

The entrance to the restaurant—Koshchey’s—is so ornate that it looks like something out of another time. The front door is a brass so bright it looks like gold. Stone fire birds flank it, their feathers painted pale blue, orange, and red.

“Oh, tasteful,” Barron says.

“Hey,” says Anton, “it belongs to the family. Respect.”

Barron shrugs. Philip shakes his head.

The sidewalk outside has the kind of stillness that comes only very early in the morning, and in that stillness I think the restaurant looks oddly majestic. Maybe I have bad taste.

Anton twists a key in the lock and opens the door. We walk into the dark room.

“You sure no one’s here?” Philip asks.

“It’s the middle of the night,” says Anton. “Who’s going to be here? This key wasn’t easy to come by.”

“Okay,” Barron says, “so this place is going to be full of tables and political people. Rich bored folks that don’t mind kicking it with gangsters. Maybe some workers from the Volpe and Nonomura families—we’re currently allying ourselves with them.” He walks across the room to point to a spot underneath a massive chandelier hung with a few huge blue crystals among the clear ones. It glitters, even in the dim light. “There will be a podium and loud, boring speeches.”

I look around. “What is this?”

“Fund-raiser for ‘Vote No on Proposition Two.’ Zacharov is hosting it.” Barron looks at me strangely. I wonder if I was supposed to know that.

“And I’m going to just walk up to him?” I ask. “In front of everyone?”

“Chill,” Philip says. “For the millionth time, we’ve got a plan. We’ve been waiting too long for this to be idiots, okay?”

“My uncle has some very specific habits,” says Anton. “He’s not going to have his bodyguards close to him, because he can’t
have his society folks or the other families thinking he’s afraid. So instead of guards he gets high-up laborers to take turns as his entourage. Philip and I are scheduled to be up his ass for two hours, starting at ten thirty.”

I nod my head, but my gaze strays to the walls, to oil paintings of houses with chicken legs scampering beside women riding cauldrons through the skies, all reflected in massive mirrors. All our movements shimmer in them too, so that I keep thinking I see someone else moving when it’s only myself.

“Your job is to keep an eye on us after that and wait for Zacharov to head to the bathroom. He wants it cleared when he uses it, so we’ll be alone. That’s where you’re going to give him the touch.”

“Where is it?” I ask.

“There are two men’s bathrooms,” Anton says, pointing. “One has a window. He’ll pick the other one. I’ll show it to you.”

Barron and Philip head toward a glossy black door stenciled in gold with the image of a man on horseback. I follow.

“We go in with Zacharov,” Philip says. “You wait a few minutes and then go in yourself.”

“I won’t be in the room,” Barron says. “I’ll be outside—with you—to make sure everything goes smoothly.”

I push the door and walk into a large bathroom. A mural of tiles takes up the whole far wall, an enormous bird of red and orange and gold flies in front of a tree covered in what look like cabbages but I assume are just really stylized leaves. The hand dryer is attached to that wall, but someone has painted it almost the same gold as the tiles. Stalls are
along one side, urinals on the other, and a stretch of marble countertop filled with shining brass sinks.

“I’ll play Zacharov,” Anton says, and goes to stand at the sink. Then he looks at me, and I think he realizes he’s about to be mock-assassinated. “No, wait. I’ll play me. Barron, you be my uncle.” They change places.

“Okay, go ahead,” Anton says to me.

“What do I say?” I ask.

“Pretend you’re drunk,” says Barron. “Too drunk to notice you’re not supposed to be there.”

I stagger from near the doorway up to Barron.

“Get him out of here,” Barron says in a fake accent that I think is supposed to be Russian.

I extend my gloved hand and try to slur my voice. “It’s a real honor, sir.”

Barron just looks at me. “I don’t know if he’d shake.”

“Sure he will,” says Anton. “Philip here will say that Cassel’s his little brother. Try again, Cassel.”

“Sir, it’s a real honor to be here. I really appreciate the way that you’re doing your part to make workers safe so that we can exploit all the little people.” I hold out my hand again.

“Stop being a comedian,” Philip says, but not like he really means it. “Concentrate on the money and how you’re going to get your fingers on his skin.”

“I’m going to shove my hand under the cuff of his sleeve. Precut a hole in my glove. I just need my longest finger to touch skin.”

Barron laughs. “Mom’s old trick. The way she did that guy at the racetrack. You remembered.”

I bite back a comment about remembering and just nod, looking down.

“Go ahead,” Anton says. “Show me.”

I extend my right hand, and when Barron takes it, I wrap my left hand around his wrist and shake. The left hand holds Barron’s arm in place so that even if he struggles it’ll take him a moment to get away. Anton’s eyes widen a little. He’s afraid. I can read his tells.

And just like that I’m sure he hates me. Hates being afraid and hates me for making him feel that way.

“A real honor, sir,” I say.

Anton nods. “So, then you turn his heart to stone. That should look like—”

“Very poetic,” I say.

“What?”

“Very poetic, turning his heart to stone. Was that your idea?”

“It’ll look like a heart attack—at least until the autopsy,” Anton says, ignoring my question. “And that’s what we’re going to let them think it was. You’re going to ride out the blowback in here, and then we’re going to call for a doctor.”

“You didn’t seem drunk enough,” says Barron.

“I’ll seem drunker,” I say.

Barron’s looking at himself in the mirror. He smoothes out one of his eyebrows, then turns his head to admire his profile. His shave is so close that it might have come from a straight razor. Handsome. A real snake-oil salesman. “You should throw up.”

“What? You want me to stick my finger down my throat?”

“Why not?”

“Why?” I lean against the wall, studying Philip and Barron. Their faces are the two I know best in all the world, and right now they’re unguarded. Philip shifts back and forth, grim-faced. He crosses and uncrosses his arms over his chest. He’s a loyal laborer and he’s got to be a little uncomfortable at the idea of taking out the head of the family, even if it means becoming rich and powerful overnight. Even if it means putting his childhood friend in charge and making himself indispensable.

Barron, however, appears to be having fun. I don’t know what he’s getting out of this, except that he loves to be in control. And it’s obvious that he’s managed to make Anton and Philip need him. He might be burning through his own memories to do it, but he’s got power over all of us.

Of course, maybe he’s in it for the money too. We’re talking about a lot of money, being the head of a crime family.

“Afraid you won’t be able to do it?” Barron asks, and I remember we’re talking about vomiting. “But think—the hardest thing is getting in the door. This way you can burst in the door with your hand over your mouth, push into the stall, close it behind you, and toss your cookies. He’ll be laughing at you when you come out. Easy mark.”