White Cat (26 page)

“How?” I ask, startled.

“I told my bodyguard he was poking around the penthouse and saw me. They let me lock him up here. That means we just have Barron and Anton to worry about.”

Just Barron and Anton.
I rub the bridge of my nose. “You said you were going to keep
both
my brothers out of it.”

“Our arrangement has changed,” she says. “There’s just one problem.”

“What’s that?”

“No one here is supposed to carry a gun at the party. They won’t let me have one.”

“I don’t have a—” I stop myself. Really not a good idea to talk about me and guns in school—especially not in the same sentence. “I don’t have one.”

“There’s going to be a metal detector,” she says. “Get one and think of a way to get it in.”

“That’s impossible,” I say.

“You owe me,” says Lila. Her voice is as soft as ash.

“I know,” I say, defeated. “I know that.”

The line goes dead.

I am left staring at the cafeteria wall, trying to convince myself that she isn’t setting me up.

“Did something happen?” Sam asks.

“I’ve got to go,” I say. “Class is going to start.”

“We’ll skip class,” says Daneca.

I shake my head. “Not on my first day back.”

“We’ll meet up at activities period,” Sam says. “Outside the theater. And then you’re going to tell us what’s going on.”

On the way to class, I call back the number Lila called from.

A man answers; not Zacharov. “Is she there?” I ask.

“I don’t know who you’re talking about,” he says gruffly.

“Just tell her I need two more tickets for Wednesday.”

“There’s no one here—”

“Just tell her,” I say.

I have to believe he does.

Leaning against the brick wall of the building, I start talking. Telling Sam and Daneca feels like peeling off my own skin to expose everything underneath. It hurts.

I don’t play them. I don’t even try. I just start at the beginning and tell them about being the only nonworker in a family of workers. I tell them about Lila and thinking that I’d killed her, about finding myself on the roof.

“How could all of you be curse workers?” Sam asks.

“Working is like green eyes,” Daneca says. “Sometimes it just shows up in families, but if the parents are both workers, worker kids are more likely. Like, look at how almost one percent of Australians are workers, because the country was founded as a worker penal colony, but only, like, one one-hundredth of a percent of people in the U.S. are workers.”

“Oh,” says Sam. I don’t think that he was expecting such a comprehensive answer. I know I wasn’t.

Daneca shrugs.

He turns to me. “So, what kind of worker are you?”

“He’s probably a luck worker,” says Daneca. “Everyone’s a luck worker.”

“He’s not,” Sam says. “He’d tell us that.”

“What I am . . . doesn’t matter. The point is that my brothers want me to kill this guy and I don’t want to do it.”

“So you’re a death worker,” Sam says.

Daneca punches him in the arm, and despite being huge, he flinches. “Ow.”

I groan. “Look, it really doesn’t matter because I’m not going to work anyone, okay?”

“Can you just bail?” Sam asks. “Skip town?”

I nod for a moment, then shake my head. “Not going to.”

“Let me try to understand,” Sam says. “You believe your brothers can potentially make you kill someone, but you’re going to stick around and let them try. What the hell?”

“I
believe
,” I say, “that I am a very clever young man with two fantastically clever friends. And I further believe that one of those friends has been looking for an opportunity to display his expertise in fake firearms.”

At that, Sam’s eyes take on an acquisitive gleam. “Really? The guy who’s getting shot has to put the wires through his pants, put the trigger in his pocket or something. And it would have to be timed so it happens at the exact moment as the gunshot. Unless you’re talking about faking death work. That’s a whole lot easier, really.”

“Gunshots only,” I say.

“Wait,” Daneca says. “What is it—exactly—that you’re
planning on doing?”

“I have a couple of ideas,” I say, as innocently as possible. “Mostly bad ones.”

We talk through the plan a dozen times at least. We refine it down from the ridiculous to the unlikely to something that might work. Then, instead of going to dinner in the cafeteria, they drive me over to Barron’s house and I show them how to pick a lock.

Without Grandad the house feels empty and enormous. I miss the teetering piles as I brew a pot of coffee. This house feels unfamiliar and disturbingly full of possibilities. I spread out the new notebooks in a fan in front of me, crack my knuckles, and get ready for a long night.

When I wake up Tuesday morning with drool darkening the cuff of my shirt and Sam hitting the horn in the driveway, I barely manage to brush my teeth before I stumble out the door.

He hands me a cup of coffee. “Did you sleep in those clothes?” he asks.

I almost can’t stand the thought of drinking more coffee, but I do. “Sleep?” I ask.

“You have blue ink on your cheek,” he says.

I flip down the visor and look in the tiny mirror. My face scruff is looking scruffier and my eyes are bloodshot. I look terrible. The smear of ink across my jawline is the least of my problems.

At school I am so out of it that Ms. Noyes takes me aside and asks if everything is okay at home. Then she checks to see
if my pupils are dilated. Dr. Stewart tells me to shave.

I fall asleep in the back of the debate team meeting. I wake up in the middle of a debate about whether or not to wake me. Then I drag myself over to the drama department for a tutorial from Sam on weapons.

I wolf down dinner and then head out to the parking lot with Sam.

“Mr. Sharpe,” Valerio calls, walking toward us. “Mr. Yu. I hope you weren’t thinking of going off campus.”

“I’m just going to drive Cassel home,” Sam says.

“You have a half hour to get back before study hall starts,” he says, pointing to his watch.

I go back to the table and the notebooks and wind up sleeping on the downstairs couch with all the lights on. There’s so much work to do. I don’t remember half of what I write and when I look at the words in the morning, they don’t look like I wrote them at all.

Sam arrives right on time.

“Can I borrow your car?” I say. “I don’t think I’m going to school today. I’ve got a big night.”

He hands over the keys. “You’ll want a hearse of your own when you feel how this thing hugs the road.”

I drive him to school, then I break back into Barron’s house. I’m the best kind of thief, the kind that leaves behind items equal in value to those he’s stolen.

Then I go home and shave until my skin is as slick as any slickster’s.

*   *   *

I’m so exhausted that I fall asleep at four and don’t wake up
until Barron shakes my arm.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” says Barron, sitting in the chair I’ve never liked, with his arms folded. He rocks back, pushing the front legs off the floor with his weight.

Anton leans against the door frame leading into the dining room. A toothpick rests on the swell of his bottom lip. “Better get dressed, kid.”

“What are you doing here?” I ask, trying to sound sincere. I walk past them into the kitchen and pour myself some of the day-old coffee. It tastes a little bit like battery acid, but in a good way.

“We’re going to a party,” Barron says making a face when he sees what I’m doing. “In the city. It’s going to be pretty swank. Lots of hoodlums.”

“Philip’s stuck,” says Anton. “Zacharov sent him on an errand at the last minute.” I know that’s not true, but I can’t tell if Anton is worried. I can imagine Lila sending him a message with Philip’s phone.

I rub my hand over my eyes. “You want me to come?”

Anton and Barron exchange glances. “Yeah,” Barron says. “I thought we told you about it.”

“No—look, you guys go ahead. I’ve got a lot of homework.”

Anton takes the cup out of my hand and spits his toothpick into it. “Don’t be stupid. No kid your age wants to sit home doing homework instead of partying. Now get upstairs and get in the shower.”

I go. The shower feels like hot needles on my back, relaxing my muscles. There’s a spider—one I missed—hunched in a corner of the ceiling, tending a knot of eggs. I shampoo my
hair and watch the beads of water catch in her web.

When I step out into the foggy bathroom, the door is open and Barron’s there to hand me a towel. He gives me a quick glance before I wrap it around me. I try to turn to one side, but I’m not fast enough.

“What’s that on your leg?”

I realize that naked means easy to check for amulets.

“Hey,” I say, “there’s this thing called privacy. You might have heard of it.”

He grabs my shoulder. “Let me see your leg.”

I clutch the towel tighter. “It’s just a cut.”

He lets me push past him into the hall, but Anton’s waiting in my bedroom.

“Grab him,” Barron says, and Anton kicks my leg, knocking me off balance. I fall onto the bed, which isn’t bad except that Barron locks his arm under my jaw and pulls me up on the mattress.

“Get off me!” I yell. The towel is gone and I struggle, embarrassed and scared, while Anton reaches into his back pocket.

A knife blade springs up out of the ebonized hilt in his hands. “What have we here?” Anton says, poking my calf where the stones are sewn up in my skin. The whole area throbs when he presses on it. Infected.

When he cuts me, I can’t help it. I scream.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

“SLICK,” BARRON SAYS, looking at my bloody leg. He places the remains of three wet, red pebbles into his pocket. “How long have you been using that trick?”

Even the best plans go wrong. The universe doesn’t like anyone thinking it can be controlled. All plans require some degree of improvisation, but they usually don’t go wrong
right away
.

“Shove it up your ass,” I say, which is pretty juvenile, but he’s my brother and he brings that out of me. “Come on, hit me so hard that you knock a couple of my teeth out. That will be a great party look.”

“He remembers,” says Anton, shaking his head. “We’re screwed to the wall, Barron. Nice work.”

Barron curses under his breath. “Who did you tell?”

I turn to him. “I know I’m a worker. A
transformation worker
. Let’s start with
you
telling
me
why you made me think I wasn’t one.”

They exchange a maddening glance, like somehow they’re going to be able to call a time out, go into the other room, and discuss what to tell me.

Barron sits on the end of my bed and composes himself. “Mom wanted us to lie to you. What you are—it’s dangerous. She thought you’d be better off if you didn’t know until you were older. When you figured it out as a little kid, she asked me to make you forget. That’s how it started.”

I look down at the gory sheets and the sluggishly bleeding hole in my leg. “So she knows? About all of this?”

Barron shakes his head, ignoring the dark look Anton sends in his direction. “No. We didn’t want her to worry. Jail’s been tough on her and the blowback from her work makes her emotions unstable. But money’s been tight, even before she went inside. You know that.”

I nod slowly.

“Philip came up with a plan. Assassination is the biggest, quickest money there is. And the crazy money goes to killers who are reliable—who can get rid of bodies permanently. With you, we could do that.” He says all this like I’m going to be thrilled with my brother’s cleverness. “Anton made sure that no one knew who was really responsible for the murders.”

“And I don’t get a say? In being a killer?”

He shrugs his shoulders. “You were just a kid. It didn’t seem fair for you to go through a bunch of trauma. So we made you forget everything you did. We were trying to protect—”

“How about kicking me in the stomach? Was that the right amount of trauma? Or how about that?” I point to my leg. “You still protecting me, Barron?”

Barron opens his mouth, but no clever lie comes out.

“Philip tried to protect you,” Anton says. “You wouldn’t shut your mouth. You’ve had it easy. Time to toughen up.” He
hesitates, his tone becoming less sure. “When I was your age, I knew enough not to talk back to worker royalty. My mother cut these marks in my throat when I turned thirteen and reopened them to pack them with ash every year until I turned twenty. To remind me who I was.” He touches the scars pearling his neck. “To remind me pain is the best teacher.”

“Just tell us if you talked to anyone,” Barron says.

You can’t con an honest man. Only the greedy or the desperate are willing to put aside their reservations to get something they don’t deserve. I’ve heard lots of people—my dad included—use that to justify grifting.

“Cut me in on the money,” I say to Anton. “If I’m earning it, I decide how to spend it.”

“Done,” Anton says.

“I told my roommate Sam that I was a worker. Not what kind, just that I was one.”

Anton lets out a long breath. “That’s it? That’s all you did?” He starts to laugh.

Barron joins in. Soon we’re laughing like I told the best joke anyone ever heard.

A joke they’re greedy and desperate enough to believe.

“Good, good,” Anton says. “Put on a nice suit, okay? This isn’t some school dance we’re going to.”

I limp to my closet. Leaning down, I sort through my rucksack as if for something appropriate. Pushing aside my uniform and a few pairs of jeans, I find a dress shirt and straighten up.

“So Philip had an idea and you went along with it? That doesn’t sound like you,” I say, walking awkwardly back to the
doorway. Something catches my foot accidentally-on-purpose and I fake-stumble into Barron. My fingers are quick and nimble. “Whoa, sorry.”

“Careful,” he says.

I lean against the door frame and then yawn, covering my mouth with my hand. “Come on. Tell me why you really didn’t say anything.”

A weird half smile grows on Barron’s face. “It’s so unfair. You, of all people, get the holy grail of curse work. And me stuck with changing memories like I’m some kind of cleanup crew. Sure, it’s useful when you want to make some mundane thing easier. I could cheat at school or I could keep someone from remembering what I did to them, but what does that mean? Not much. Do you know how many transformation workers are even born in the world in a given decade? Maybe one. Maybe. You were born with real power and you didn’t even appreciate it.”