I turn back, keeping my face carefully blank, a little puzzled. My heart is beating so fast that my chest hurts. “No,” I say, and force a laugh. “Barron’s no good with authority.”
“Who is, right?” asks Zacharov, and laughs too. “Tell him to keep his nose clean. I’d hate having to break his neck.”
I lean against the railing. “You promised me—”
“Some betrayals even I can’t afford, Cassel. He wouldn’t just be turning his back on me. He’d be turning his back on you and your mother. He’d be putting you in danger. And Lila.”
I nod numbly, but my heart is skipping along, like a stone on the surface of a lake right before it drops under. If he knew what I’d done, if he knew about Yulikova and the Licensed Minority Division, he would shoot me as soon as look at me. He would kill me six times over. But he doesn’t know. At least I don’t think he knows. His expression, the slight lift of one side of his mouth, tells me nothing.
I resume my walk up the steps, each footfall heavier than it was.
There’s a hallway.
“Lila?” I call softly as I pass several glossy wooden doors with heavy metal trim on the hinges and knobs.
I open a door at random and see a bedroom, an empty one. It’s too tidy to be anything but a guest room, which means that they have enough bedrooms to have my mother in one and at least another spare. The place is even bigger than I realized.
I knock on the next. No one answers, but down near the end another door opens. Lila steps into the hall.
“That’s a linen closet,” she says. “There’s a washing machine and dryer in there.”
“I bet you don’t even need exact change to use them,” I say, thinking of the dorms.
She grins, leaning against the door frame, looking like she just got out of the shower. She’s got on a white tank and black skinny jeans. Her feet are bare, her toenails painted silver. A few locks of pale wet hair stick to her cheek; a few more stick to her neck where her scar is.
“You got my letter,” she says, walking closer. Her voice is soft. “Or maybe—”
I touch the pocket of my jacket self-consciously and give her a lopsided grin. “Took me a while to translate.”
She pushes the hair out of her face. “You shouldn’t have come. I put everything in the letter, so that we wouldn’t have to—” She stops speaking, as if the rest of the sentence has deserted her. Despite the words, she doesn’t sound angry. She takes another half step toward me. We’re close enough that if she whispered I’d hear it.
I look at her, and I think of how it felt when I saw her in my bedroom in the old house, before I knew that she’d been cursed, when everything still seemed possible. I see the soft line of her mouth, and the clear brightness of her eyes, and I remember dreaming about those features when it still seemed like she could be mine.
She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything.
But that was before we’d scammed our way into a high-rise and laughed ourselves sick and talked in the funeral parlor the way I’ve never talked to anyone and might never talk to anyone again. That was before she stopped being a memory and started being the only person who made me feel like myself. That was before she hated me.
I wanted her then. Now I barely want anything else.
I sway toward Lila, waiting for her to pull back, but she doesn’t. My hands come up, gloved fingers closing around her upper arms, crushing her to me as my mouth catches hers. I’m braced for her to stop me, but her body folds against mine instead. Her lips are warm and soft, parting in a single sigh.
That’s all it takes.
I push her back against the wall, kissing her the way I’ve never let myself. I want to swallow her up. I want her to feel my regret in the slide of my mouth and taste devotion on my tongue. She makes a sound that’s half gasp and half a moan and pulls me closer against her. Her eyes close, and everything is teeth and breath and skin.
“We’ve got to—,” she says against my mouth, her voice seeming to come from a great distance. “We’ve got to stop. We’ve got to—”
I stagger back.
The hallway seems very bright. Lila is still leaning against the wall, one hand against the plaster, like it’s holding her. Her lips are red, her face flushed. She’s looking at me with wide eyes.
I feel drunk. I am breathing so hard that I feel like I’ve been running.
“You should probably go,” she says unsteadily.
I nod, agreeing, even though leaving is the last thing I want. “But I have to talk to you. It’s about Daneca. That’s why I came. I didn’t mean—”
She gives me a nervous look. “Okay. Talk.”
“She went out with my brother. She’s been going out with him, I think.”
“Barron?” She pushes off from the wall, paces the carpet.
“Remember when I thought that you’d told her about my being a transformation worker? Well, that was him. I don’t know exactly what he told her, but he mixed up enough truth with the lies that I can’t convince her to stay away from him. I can’t convince her of anything.”
“That’s not possible. He’s not the kind of boy she would like. Daneca’s too smart for that.”
“You went out with him,” I say before I think better of it.
She gives me a scorching look. “I never said I was too smart.” Her tone makes it clear that if she were smart, she wouldn’t have just been up against the wall with my tongue in her mouth. “And I was a kid.”
“Please,” I say, “just talk to her.”
Lila sighs. “I will. Of course I will. Not for your sake either. Daneca deserves better.”
“She should have stayed with Sam.”
“We all want things that aren’t good for us.” She shakes her head. “Or things that aren’t what they seem.”
“I don’t,” I say.
She laughs. “If you say so.”
Down the hall a door opens, and we both jump. A man in jeans and a sweatshirt emerges, a stethoscope around his neck. He starts stripping off plastic gloves as he comes toward us.
“She’s doing well,” he says. “Rest is really the best thing for her now, but in another week I’d like to test her mobility with that arm. She’s going to have to move it as soon as she’s able to do so without pain.”
Lila looks at me, her eyes slightly too wide. Like she’s trying to gauge my reaction. Like there’s something for me to be reacting about.
I take a chance. “Your patient is my mother,” I say.
“Oh—I didn’t realize. You can go see her now, of course.” He reaches into his pocket and comes out with a card. He smiles, revealing a mouth full of crooked teeth. “Call me if you have any questions. Or if Shandra does. Gunshot wounds can be tricky, but this was a clean one. Through and through.”
I take the card and shove it into my pocket as I start down the hallway. I’m walking fast enough that Lila would have to run to catch up.
“Cassel,” she calls, but I don’t even slow.
I push open the door. It’s a regular guest room, like the other one. Big four-poster bed, but this one has my mother in it, propped up and watching a television that’s on one of the dressers. She’s got a bandage around her arm. Her face looks pale without her usual makeup. Her hair is a mess of curls. I have never seen her like this. She looks old and frail and nothing like my indomitable mother.
“I’ll kill him,” I say. “I’ll murder Zacharov.”
Shock distorts her features. “Cassel?” she says, fear in her voice.
“We’re getting out of here.” I come around to the side of the bed, ready to help her up. My eyes search the room for a weapon, any weapon. There’s a heavy-looking brass cross over the bed. It’s primitive-looking, with jagged sides.
“No,” she says. “You don’t understand. Calm down, sweetheart.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
The door opens and Lila’s standing there, looking almost afraid. She pushes past me and gives my mother a quick glare.
“I’m sorry,” she says, turning back to me. “I would have told you, but your mother made us promise not to. And she’s okay. If she wasn’t okay, I would have told you. No matter what. Honest, Cassel.”
I look between them. It’s hard to even imagine them being in the same room together. Maybe Lila’s the one who shot her.
“Come here, baby,” my mother says. “Sit on the bed.”
I do. Lila stands by the wall.
“Ivan has been very good to me. This past Sunday he said I could go to church, so long as I went with some of his people. Isn’t that nice?”
“You got shot in church?” I wonder which particular religion she’s claiming to belong to, but I keep that question to myself.
“On the way back. If it wasn’t for dear Lars, that would have been it. The car pulled up and I didn’t even see it, but he did. I guess that’s what he does, as a bodyguard and all. He pushed me and I fell, which made me mad when it was happening, but he saved my life. The first bullet hit me in the shoulder, but the rest missed and the car went screeching off.” She sounds like she’s reciting the plot of a particularly exciting episode of a soap opera, not telling me about something that actually happened to her.
“You think they were gunning for you? As in, you specifically? It wasn’t some enemy of—” I glance at Lila. “You don’t think it was a misunderstanding?”
“They had government plates,” my mother says. “I didn’t notice, but you can bet that Lars did. Amazing instincts.”
Government plates. Patton. No wonder Zacharov was livid.
“Why didn’t you call me right away? Or Barron? Either one of us. Or Grandad, for hell’s sake. Mom, you’re hurt.”
She tilts her head and smiles at Lila. “Could you give the two of us a couple minutes alone?”
“Yeah,” Lila says. “Of course.” She heads out the door, closing it behind her.
Mom reaches out and pulls my face close to hers. She’s not wearing gloves, and her bare nails sink into the skin of my throat. “What the hell have you boys been up to? Messing around with federal agents?” she hisses, low and vicious.
I push away, my neck stinging.
“I raised you better than this,” she says. “Smarter. You know what they’ll do to you if they find out what you are? They’ll use you to hurt other workers. They’ll use you. Against your grandfather. Against everyone you love. And Barron—that boy thinks he can wriggle out of anything, but if you got him into this, he’s in over his head. The government put us in camps. And they’ll do it again if they figure out a legal way to manage it.”
I am left with the uncomfortable echo of Lila’s words about Daneca being too smart to get involved with Barron. I guess we’re all smart about some things and dumb about others. But the federal government isn’t just some bad boyfriend. If Mom knew what they wanted me to do, I think she’d have a different opinion of them. If anything, looking at her, pale and furious in her pile of blankets, I am more committed than ever to getting rid of Patton.
“Barron can take care of himself.”
“You’re not denying it,” she says.
“What’s wrong with wanting to do something good with my life?”
She laughs. “You wouldn’t know good if it bit you on the ass.”
I look at the door. “Does Lila—does she know?”
“No one knows,” Mom says. “They suspect. That’s why I didn’t want you to hear about my little accident. I didn’t want you coming here—you or your brother. It’s not safe. There was a boy who described you in connection with some agents.”
“Fine,” I say. “I’m going now. I’m glad you’re okay. Oh, and I went to the jewelry store. It was a dead end, but I did learn one thing. Dad had two forgeries made. And by the way, it would have really helped if you’d mentioned that he was the one who met with Bob.”
“Two? But why would he do—” She stops speaking as the obvious answer sinks in. She got conned by her own husband. “Phil would never do that. Never. Your father wasn’t greedy. He didn’t even want to sell the stone. He just wanted to keep it as insurance, in case we needed money. Our retirement fund, that’s what he called it.”
I shrug. “Maybe he was pissed off about your affair. Maybe he didn’t think you deserved nice things.”
She laughs again, this time without any malice. For a moment she seems like herself. “You ever hear of a sweetheart scheme, Cassel? You think your father didn’t know?”
Sweetheart schemes have been Mom’s bread and butter since Dad died. Find a rich guy. Curse him so he falls in love with her. Get his cash. She even went to jail for one of her less successful cons, although the conviction was overturned on appeal. But I never thought she’d done anything like that when Dad was alive.
I stare at her, my mouth parted. “So Dad knew about you and Zacharov?”
She snorts. “You really are such a prude, Cassel. Of course he did. And we got the stone, didn’t we?”
“Okay,” I say, trying to push away all thoughts of what she’s done. “So, then, what would he do with it?”