White Cat (29 page)

I scrabble backward, not caring about the filthy floor, just trying to get out from under his weight. He looks pale, his lips already going blue.

He’s dead.

Anton is dead.

I’m still staring at him when Lila leans down and touches a wad of toilet paper to my mouth. I didn’t even realize I was bleeding.

“Lila,” Zacharov says. “Come on. I need you out of here.”

“You ever think you’re too clever for your own good?” she asks me softly, before going back over to her father.

Grandad is holding his own wrist, hunched over it protectively.

“Are you okay?” I ask him, pushing myself up and leaning heavily against the wall.

“I’ll be okay when we get out of this bathroom,” Grandad says. Then I notice that his right hand is bare and his ring finger is darkening, blackness spreading down from the nail.

“Oh,” I say. He saved my life.

He laughs. “What? You didn’t think I still had it in me?”

I’m embarrassed to admit that I forgot he’s
still
a death worker. I’ve always thought of his being a worker in the past tense, but he killed Anton with a single touch, a press of fingers against a vulnerable neck.

“You should have let me help you,” Grandad says. “I overheard them talking after dinner that night when they dosed me.”

“Lila, Barron,” Zacharov says, “you two come with me. We’ll leave Cassel and Desi alone for a moment to clean themselves up.” He looks at us. “Don’t go anywhere.”

I nod as they go.

“You’ve got a lot of explaining to do,” Grandad says.

I’m still pressing the wad of paper to my cheek. Real blood drooling from my mouth drops onto my shirt next to the fake blood. I look down at Anton’s body. “You thought I was still memory worked—that’s why you were trying to drag me out of here.”

“What was I supposed to think?” Grandad says. “That you three had some ridiculously complicated plan? That Zacharov was in on it too?”

I grin in the mirror. “We’re not in on anything. I forged
Barron’s notebooks. Barron believes everything in those books. He has to, what with his memory loss.”

That’s what I did that last day and a half. What I stayed up all night doing. Rewriting pages and pages of notes in handwriting easy to forge because I already knew it so well. I constructed an entirely different life for Barron; the kind of life where he’d want to save the head of a crime family because Zacharov is Lila’s dad. The kind of life where my brothers and I worked together for noble purposes.

The easiest lies to tell are the ones you want to be true.

Grandad frowns, and then understanding smoothes his features out into shock. “You mean he never met with Zacharov?”

I shake my head. “Nope. He just thinks he did.”

“Did
you
meet with Zacharov?”

“Lila wanted us to take care of things ourselves,” I say. “So, also no.”

He groans. “This is trouble heaped on top of trouble.”

I give Anton’s body a last look. Something glitters in the light. Zacharov’s diamond tie tack near Anton’s left hand. He must have taken it from his pocket.

I lean down and pick up the pin.

Zacharov is leaning against the doorway when I stand. I didn’t hear him come in. “Cassel Sharpe.” He sounds tired. “My daughter tells me that this was her idea.”

I nod my head. “It would have worked better with a real gun.”

He snorts. “Since it was her idea, I am not going to
cut off your hand for touching my skin. Just tell me one thing—how long have you known you are a transformation worker?”

For a moment I open my mouth to protest. I didn’t work him; how can he be sure that I wasn’t faking? Then I remember the blowback, and me twisting on the tile floor. “Not long,” I say.

“And you knew?” Zacharov turns to Grandad.

“His mother wanted to keep it a secret until he was old enough. She was going to tell him after her release.” Grandad looks over at me. “Cassel, what you can do is very valuable to some people. I’m not saying your mother was right, but she’s a smart lady and—”

I cut him off. “I know, Grandad.”

Zacharov is watching us, like he’s weighing something in his mind. “I want to make this clear: I never agreed to let your brothers live. Either of them.”

I nod, because I can hear that he’s not done talking.

“Your grandfather’s right. You’re valuable. And now you’re mine. So long as you keep working for me, your brothers stay alive. Understand?”

I nod again.

I should tell him I don’t care. That it doesn’t matter to me if they’re dead. But I don’t. I guess it’s true; no one will ever love you like your family.

“We’re settled here,” he says. “For now. Go into the kitchen and see if someone can scare you up a clean shirt.”

Grandad pulls back on his right-hand glove. Now one of its fingers hangs as floppily as those on his left hand.

“Oh. I found—,” I say to Zacharov, holding out the Resurrection Diamond before I notice something strange. A corner of the huge rock is chipped.

Zacharov takes it from me with a tight smile. “Thank you once more, Cassel.”

I nod, trying not to let it show that I know the Resurrection Diamond can’t protect anyone. It’s worthless. It’s made of glass.

Outside the bathroom the party is still going full swing. The noise crashes over me like a surreal wave, music and laughing and speeches loud enough to cover gunshots. None of what’s happened—definitely not Anton being dead—seems real in the dancing light of the chandeliers or reflected in thousands of champagne bubbles.

“Cassel!” Daneca yells, running up to me. “Are you all right?”

“We were worried,” Sam says. “You were in there for too long.”

“I’m fine,” I say. “Don’t I seem fine?”

“You’re covered in blood standing in the middle of a party,” Sam says. “No, you don’t seem fine.”

“This way,” Zacharov says, pointing toward the kitchens.

“We’re coming with you,” says Daneca.

I feel drained, and my cheek is throbbing. My ribs still hurt. And I don’t see Lila anywhere.

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay.”

People nearly trip over themselves getting out of my way as I walk. I guess I really do look bad.

The kitchen looks smaller with people running around in it, carrying out trays of blini slathered in caviar, golden pastries leaking garlic butter, and tiny cakes topped with crystallized lemon.

My stomach growls, surprising me. I shouldn’t be hungry after watching another person be killed, but I’m starving.

Philip is standing in the back flanked by two burly men who appear to be restraining him. I don’t know if Lila brought him to the party or if Zacharov sent to have him escorted over from wherever she was keeping him.

When he sees me, his eyes narrow.

“You took everything from me,” he shouts. “Maura. My son. My future. My friend. You took
everything
.”

I guess I did.

I could tell him that I didn’t mean for it to happen.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?” I say.

He struggles against the bodyguards holding him. I’m not worried. I let Daneca steer me to the area by the pantry and sinks.

“I’m going to make you regret the day you were born,” Philip shouts to my back. I ignore him.

Lila is waiting with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a rag in the other. “Get up on the counter,” she says.

I do, pushing aside a bowl of flour and a spatula. Philip’s still yelling, but his voice seems to come from far away. I smile. “Lila, this is Daneca. I think you met Sam. They’re my friends from school.”

“Did he actually admit we’re his friends?” Sam asks, and Daneca laughs.

Lila pours some vodka onto the napkin.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the rest of my plan,” I say to Lila. “About Barron.”

“The notebooks, right? You fixed them somehow.”

When I look surprised, she smiles. “I lived with him for years, remember? I saw the notebooks. Clever.” She presses the cloth against my cheek, and I hiss. It stings like crazy.

“Ow,” I say. “You ever think you’re kind of a bully?”

Her smile goes wide. If it could, I think it would curl up at the corners. She leans close to me. “Oh, I know I am. And I know you like it.”

Sam snickers. I don’t care.

I do like it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I SPEND THE NEXT TWO weeks slammed, making up all the homework I missed. Daneca and Sam help me, sitting with me in the library until in-room curfew, when I have to head home and they have to go back to the dorms. I spend so much time at school that Grandad gets me my own car. He takes me to some friend of his who hooks me up with a 1980 Mercedes-Benz Turbo for two grand.

It runs like crap, but Sam promises to help convert it to grease. He won some kind of state science fair with the conversion of his hearse, and he thinks we can make it all the way to an international science fair with the tinkering he’s
got planned for my ride. Until then, I keep my fingers crossed that the engine keeps turning over.

When I go out to my car to drive myself home that Tuesday, I find Barron leaning against it, twirling keys around one black-gloved finger. His motorcycle is parked next to my car in the lot.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“Pizza night,” he says.

I look at him like he’s lost his mind.

He returns the look. “It’s Tuesday.”

The problem with forging an entire year of someone’s life very quickly is that your fantasies creep in. Maybe you meant to just get in the stuff that you needed, but that leaves a lot of space to fill. I filled the space with the relationship I wished we had.

It’s a little embarrassing now that Barron is standing here, really believing we go out for pizza every other Tuesday and talk about our feelings.

“I’ll drive,” I say finally.

We order a pizza heaped with cheese and sauce and sausage and pepperoni at a little place with booths, and miniature jukeboxes above each linoleum tabletop. I cover my slice with hot pepper flakes.

“I’m going back to Princeton to finish school,” he says, biting into a chunk of garlic bread. “Now that Mom’s getting out. Something tells me she’s going to need a lawyer again soon.” I wonder if he can go back, if he can fill the holes in his brain with law books and remember them as long as he doesn’t work anymore. That’s a big “as long as.”

“Do you know when her actual release happens?”

“They say Friday,” he says. “But they’ve already changed the date twice, so I don’t know how seriously to take it. But I guess we should get a cake or something, in case. Worst case scenario: We eat the cake anyway.”

Memory is funny. Barron seems relaxed, like he really likes me, because he doesn’t remember hating me. Or maybe he remembers the feeling of dislike but he assumes that he liked me more than he hated me. But I’m not relaxed. I can’t stop remembering. I want to leap up out of the chair and choke him.

“What do you think is the first thing she’s going to do when she gets out?” I ask.

“Meddle,” he says, and laughs. “What do you think? She’s going to start trying to get everything to go the way she wants it to go. And we all better pray that’s the way we want it to go too.”

I suck soda through my straw, lick grease off my glove, and contemplate transforming Barron into a slice of pizza and then feeding him to the kids at the next table.

Still, it’s nice to have a brother I can talk to.

Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

That’s what Zacharov says when he explains that he’s keeping Philip working for the family, where he can keep an eye on him. People don’t usually leave crime families alive, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

I ask Grandad if he’s seen Philip, but all he does is grunt.

*   *   *

Lila calls me on Wednesday.

“Hey,” I say, not recognizing the number.

“Hey, yourself.” She sounds happy. “You want to hang out?”

“I do,” I say, my heart slamming. I switch my messenger bag over to the other shoulder with suddenly clumsy hands.

“Come up to the city. We can get hot chocolate, and maybe I’ll let you beat me at a video game. I’m four years out of practice. I might be a little rusty.”

“I’ll beat you so bad your own avatar will laugh at you.”

“Jerk. Come up on Saturday,” she says, and hangs up.

I smile all the way through dinner.

On Friday at lunch I head out onto the quad. It’s warm out and lots of kids have brought their food to eat on the grass. Sam and Daneca are sitting with Johan Schwartz, Jill Pearson-White, and Chaiyawat Terweil. They wave me over.

I hold up my hand and turn toward a small copse of trees. I’ve been thinking through everything that happened, and there’s one thing still bothering me.

I take out my phone and punch in a number. I don’t expect anyone to pick up, but she does.

“Dr. Churchill’s office,” says Maura.

“It’s Cassel.”

“Cassel!” she says. “I was wondering when you’d call. You know what the best feeling in the world is? Just driving down the road with the music blasting, the wind in your hair, and your baby gurgling happily in his car seat.”

I smile. “You know where you are headed?”

“Not yet,” she says. “I guess I’ll know when we get there.”

“I’m glad for you,” I say. “I just wanted to call and tell you that.”

“You know what I miss most?” she says.

I shake my head, and then realize she can’t see me. “No.”

“The music.” Her voice drops, low and soft. “It was just so beautiful. I wish I could hear it again, but it’s gone. Philip took the music with him.”

I can’t help shuddering.

Daneca is walking toward me when I hang up the phone. She looks annoyed.

“Hey,” she says. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”

I must look shell-shocked or something, because she hesitates. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that. I want to,” I say. I’m not sure I mean it, but I am sure that Daneca and Sam were there for me when I really needed them. Maybe the point of real friendship isn’t that you have to repay kindness, but whatever. At least I should try.

As Daneca, Sam, and I cross the quad, I see Audrey eating an apple near the entrance to the arts center.