White Cat (28 page)

I take his hand in mine and cover his wrist with my other hand, pushing my gloved fingers up his sleeve, worming my finger through the small opening in the leather so I can brush the skin of his wrist. His eyes open wide when I touch him, like I’ve given him an electric shock. He jerks back.

I pull him sharply toward me. “You have to pretend to die,” I whisper against his ear. “Your heart just turned to stone.”

Zacharov staggers away from me, stricken. He looks toward Anton, and for a moment I think he’s going to ask something that will doom me. Then he lurches abruptly against the hinge of one of the stalls and, stumbling back, bangs his head against the hand dryer. He gasps soundlessly and slides down the wall, hand knotting in his shirt like he is trying to grasp his chest.

We watch him as his eyes close. His mouth gapes once more, like he’s trying for a last gasp of air.

Zacharov’s not a bad con man himself.

“What did you do?” Grandad shouts. “Undo it, Cassel. Whatever you’ve done—” My grandfather looks at me like he doesn’t know me.

“Shut up, old man,” Anton says, punching the stall behind Grandad’s head.

I want to snap at Anton, but there’s no time. Lack of blowback’s going to give me away.

I concentrate on transforming myself. I picture a blade coming toward my own head, try to feel the impulse to work the work that danger feeds.

I have to freak myself out. I think of Lila, and me with a knife standing over her. I imagine raising the blade and feel the full weight of horror and self-loathing. The false memory still has the power to terrify me.

I actually jerk my hand a tiny bit in response, and then I feel my flesh go malleable. I imagine my father’s hand in place of my own. I picture his blunt fingers and rough calluses.

My father’s hand to go with his suit.

A small transformation. A little change. One that I hope will have minimal blowback.

A ripple runs through my flesh. I concentrate on taking a step toward the wall, but my foot feels like it’s spreading out, melting.

Anton reaches into his coat and flips open a butterfly knife. It twirls in his fingers, as bright as the scales of a fish. He leans over Zacharov and carefully cuts the pin from his tie. “Everything’s going to be different now,” he says, slipping the Resurrection diamond into his pocket.

Anton turns toward me, still holding the knife, and suddenly this seems like a terrible, terrible plan.

“I’m sure you don’t remember,” Anton says, his voice low. “But you made me an amulet. Don’t even think about trying to work
me
.”

As if I could do anything but fall to my knees as my body twists and contorts.

Through blurry, changing vision, I see my grandfather crouching near Zacharov.

My limbs change, fins rising on my skin, and fifth and sixth arms banging into the wall. My head thrashes back and forth. My tongue forks. Everything cramps as the bones wrench themselves out of their sockets. My eyes become a thousand eyes, blinking together at the painted ceiling. I tell myself it will be over soon, but it goes on and on and on.

Anton walks toward Grandad. “You’re a loyal worker, so it makes me sad to have to do this.”

“Stop right there,” Grandad says.

Anton shakes his head. “I’m glad Philip doesn’t have to watch. He wouldn’t understand, but I think you do, old man. A leader’s got to be careful who gets to tell stories about him.”

I try to turn over, but my legs are hooves and they clatter against the tiles. I don’t know how to work them. I try to shout, but my voice isn’t my own—there’s a birdlike whistle in it, probably from the beak hardening on my face.

“Good-bye,” Anton says to my grandfather. “I’m about to become a legend.”

Someone bangs on the door. The knife stops, hovering in front of Grandad’s throat.

“It’s me,” Barron says from the other side. “Open up.”

“Let me open the door,” says Grandad. “Put away the knife. If I’m loyal to anyone, it’s this boy here. And if you want him loyal to you, you’ll be careful.”

“Anton,” I say from the floor. It’s hard to form the words
with my curling tongue. “Door!”

Anton looks at me, slings the knife back into its sheath, and opens the door.

I concentrate on moving my transformed hand into the pocket of my pants.

Barron takes a few stiff steps into the room, then staggers forward, like he was pushed from behind.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” a girl’s voice calls. Lila is wearing a red dress as tight as it is short. Her only accessory is the huge silver gun gleaming in the fluorescent lights. The door swings shut behind her. The gun sure looks real. And she’s pointing it straight at Anton.

Anton’s lips part, like he’s going to say her name, but no words come out.

“You heard me,” she says.

“He killed your father,” Anton says, pointing the closed knife at me. “It wasn’t me. It was him.”

Her gaze shifts to where Zacharov’s body is resting, and the barrel of the gun wavers.

I reach under my jacket, hoping that my fingers stay fingerlike long enough to be usable. My tongue is working again. “You don’t understand. I never meant—”

“I’m tired of your excuses,” she says, leveling the gun at me. Her hand is shaking. “You didn’t know what you were doing. You don’t remember. You didn’t mean to hurt anyone.”

She doesn’t sound like she’s pretending.

I try to stand. “Lila—”

“Shut up, Cassel,” she says, and shoots me.

Blood spatters cover my shirt.

I gasp like a fish.

As my eyes close, I hear Grandad choke out my name.

There’s nothing like a gunshot to make you the life of the party.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

IT HURTS. I EXPECTED THAT, but it still knocks the breath out of me. Wetness seeps through my shirt, making it stick to my skin.

I try to still my breathing as much as possible. My body’s shifting has slowed; the blowback’s wearing off. I want to keep my eyes open, but I need Anton to really believe I was shot, so I listen instead of looking.

“Both of you, against the sinks,” Lila says. “Put your hands where I can see them.”

People are moving around me. I hear a grunt from my grandfather’s direction, but I can’t afford to look.

“How can you be here?” Anton asks her.

“Oh, come now,” Lila says, low and dangerous. “You
know how I got here. I walked. From Wallingford. On my little paws.”

I try to shift, just a little, so it will be easier to stand later.

Like a stage magician, the con artist misdirects suspicion. While everyone’s watching for him to pull a rabbit out of a hat, he’s actually sawing a girl in half. You think he’s doing one trick when he’s actually doing another.

You think that I’m dying, but I’m laughing at you.

I hate that I love this. I hate that the adrenaline pumping through the roots of my body is filling me with giddy glee. I’m not a good person.

But deceiving Anton and Barron feels fantastic.

I can hear footsteps echoing around me, moving toward her. “I’m sorry, Lila,” says Anton. “I know that—”

“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” she says.

Someone touches my shoulder, and I almost flinch. Rough bare fingers on my neck, looking for a pulse. The one thing I can’t fake. He pulls open my jacket. If he unbuttons my shirt, he’s going to see wires.

“You’re a little devil, Cassel Sharpe,” Grandad says under his breath.

Clever as the devil and twice as pretty.
I force myself not to smile.

“Give me the gun,” Anton says, and this time I do open my eyes a sliver. He’s got the knife in one hand. “You know you don’t want to do this.”

“Get against the sinks!” she says.

He drops his knife and swipes his hand toward her, knocking the gun out of her grip. It skitters across the floor.

She lunges for it at the same time he does, but he gets to it first. I try to get up, but Grandad presses me back down.

Lifting the gun, Anton fires three times into her chest.

She staggers back, but she isn’t wired up so there’s no bang, no blood. The pellets hit her harmlessly, bouncing to the floor.

We’re made.

Anton stares at her, then at the gun in his hand. Then he looks at me. My eyes are wide open.

“I’ll kill you,” he growls, throwing aside the fake gun. It hits the tiles so hard a piece of it chips off.

This is bad.

My grandfather gets between us, and I try to shove him out of the way, as a voice comes from the other side of the room.

“Enough,” Zacharov says, into a sudden pocket of silence. He climbs unsteadily to his feet and stretches his neck, as though it’s stiff.

Anton stumbles back, like Zacharov’s a ghost. We all freeze.

Barron points an accusing finger in my direction. “You played me.” He sounds unsteady.

“You’re all playing,” Zacharov says in his accented voice. “You were like this with water pistols when you were children. Waving them around and soaking everything.”

“Why did— What did you know?” Anton asks. “Why did you pretend—”

Zacharov grimaces. “I would never have believed that you, Anton, would betray our family. I would never have believed that you would plot to kill me. You, of all people, who I would have made my heir.” Zacharov looks at my grandfather. “Family means nothing anymore, does it?”

Grandad looks from Barron to me, like he’s not sure how to answer.

Anton takes two steps toward Zacharov, his mouth twisting in an ugly way. Barron picks up the knife that Anton dropped and flips it around in his hand. Flips it closed, then open again.

I roll over and push myself up, skittering across the floor on fake blood. I manage to get up onto my knees.

“You’re never going to leave here alive,” Anton tells Zacharov, gesturing to Barron and the knife.

I have only one card left to play, but it’s a good one. I stand. This is like being on the roof of Smythe Hall all over again; if I slip, I die.

“I’m not afraid,” Zacharov says, still looking at Anton. “It takes guts to kill a man with your hands. You don’t have the balls.”

“Shut up,” says Anton. He turns to Barron. “Give me the knife. I’ll show him scared.”

Lila rushes Anton, but her father grabs hold of her arms and pulls her back against him.

Her lip curls. Her eyes smolder with banked fire as she stares at her cousin. “I’ll kill you,” she says.

Barron doesn’t hand over the knife, but he does start to smile. He raises the tip to Anton’s throat.

“Don’t point that thing at me,” Anton says, shoving at Barron’s hand. “What are you waiting for? Give it here.”

“I’m pointing the right way,” Barron says. “Sorry.”

I take a deep breath and spring my trap. “We’ve been meeting with Zacharov for months, Barron and me. Right, sir?”

Zacharov gives me a hard look. I imagine he’s fed up with my shenanigans, but he’s got to realize that keeping the knife at Anton’s neck is the most important thing. Zacharov’s fingers tighten on Lila’s arms. “That’s right.”

Barron nods.

“No, you haven’t,” Anton says to Barron. “Why? Even if you’d screw me over, there’s no way you’d screw Philip.”

“He’s in this too,” says Barron. He twists the knife in his hand, letting the fluorescent lights reflect off the blade.

“Philip would never turn on me. That’s impossible. We planned this together. We planned it for years.”

Barron shrugs his shoulders. “If that’s true, then where is he? If he was so loyal, wouldn’t he be here?”

Then Anton looks at me. “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“What doesn’t make sense?” Lila asks. She cuts her eyes toward me for a moment. “You think you’re the only one who can betray people, Anton? You think you’re the only liar?”

I can see the conflict in Anton’s face. He’s still trying to figure out his next move.

“We had to be sure you were serious about killing the head of our family,” Barron says. He doesn’t look confused; he doesn’t even flinch.

“But he’s going to kill you, idiot,” Anton says. He sounds lost. “You threw everything away for nothing. You kidnapped his daughter. You’re dead men. He’s going to execute us all.”

“He forgave us,” Barron says. “He made a deal with Philip and me to let that slide. It was more important to prove that you planned to kill him. We’re nobodies. You’re his nephew.”

Zacharov snorts softly, shaking his head. Then he extends his hand toward Barron, who gently drops the knife into Zacharov’s hand.

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

“Anton,” Zacharov says, letting go of Lila as though he suddenly realizes that he should. “You’re outnumbered. Time to pack it in. Get down on the floor. Lila, you go get Stanley. Tell him there’s something in here we’ve got to deal with.”

Lila wipes her hands on her dress and doesn’t look any of us in the face. I try to catch her eye, but it’s impossible. She heads toward the door.

Zacharov is the one who meets my gaze. He knows that I played him, even if he doesn’t know how. He gives me a slight nod of his head.

I guess I proved myself after all.

“Thank you, Barron. And Cassel, of course.” I can hear the grind of his teeth as he thanks my brother and me for a lie. “Why don’t you both go with Lila and wait for me in the kitchen? We’re not done here. Desi, you make sure they don’t wander off.”

“You,” Anton says, looking at me. “You did this. You made this happen.”

“I didn’t make you into a moron,” I say, which maybe isn’t the smartest thing, but I’m dumb and giddy with relief.

Plus, you know I’m terrible at keeping my mouth shut.

Anton lunges at me, closing the distance before I can react. We crash backward into one of the stalls, and my head slams into the tile beside one of the toilets. I see Grandad grabbing for Anton’s neck like he’s going to pull him off me, but Anton is way too huge and hardened for that.

His knuckles slam against my cheekbone. I lean up, cracking my forehead against his skull hard enough to make me dizzy with pain. He arches up, like he’s going to punch me again, when his eyes lose focus. He falls heavily on top of me and just lies there, heavy as a blanket.