Black Heart (30 page)

“That might be your first mistake,” I say, half under my breath.

Sam laughs. “In a good mood, are we?”

“Did you see?” Daneca asks me. “Proposition two isn’t going to pass. And Patton resigned. Well, he was arrested, so I guess he had to. You must have seen it. He even admitted that your mother hadn’t done anything wrong.”

I think about telling Daneca the truth. Of all the people I know, she’s the one who would be the most proud of me. But it feels unfair to get them involved—no matter what they say, especially since this is something far bigger and more dangerous than anything I’ve been in the middle of before.

“You know me,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m not much for politics.”

She looks at me slyly. “Too bad you didn’t see it, because if I am made valedictorian of our class, I’d love to have help writing my speech, and Patton’s is the perfect model. It sets the exact right tone. But I guess if you really don’t care about that kind of thing—”

“You want to tell everyone that today’s the day you speak from your heart and confess all your crimes? Because I didn’t think you had all that much to confess.”

“So you did see it!” Sam says.

“You’re a liar, Cassel Sharpe,” Daneca says, but there’s no heat in it. “A lying liar who lies.”

“I guess I heard someone talking about it somewhere.” I smile up at the ceiling. “What do you want? A leopard can’t change his spots.”

“If the leopard was a
transformation worker
, he could,” Sam says.

I get the sense that maybe I don’t have to say anything.
They appear to have put a theory together on their own.

Daneca grins at Sam.

I try not to think of the photo in Barron’s wallet or of the way she was smiling at my brother in the picture. I especially try not to compare it to her smile now.

“Deal me in next go-around,” I say. “What are we playing for?”

“The sheer joy of victory,” Sam tells me. “What else?”

“Oh,” Daneca says, and gets up. “Before I forget.” She walks over to her bag and pulls out a bundled T-shirt. She unknots it and pushes back the cloth. Gage’s gun is there, oiled and gleaming. “I got this out of Wharton’s office before the cleaners came.”

I stare at the old Beretta. It’s small, and as silvery as the scales of a fish. It shines under the light of the desk lamp.

“Get rid of it,” Sam says. “For real, this time.”

The next day it starts to snow. The flakes float down, coating the trees in a thin powder, making the grass sparkle with ice.

I walk from statistics to Developing World Ethics to English. Everything seems bizarrely normal.

Then I see Mina Lange, hurrying to class, wearing a black beret dusted white.

“You,” I say, stepping in front of her. “You got Sam shot.”

She looks at me with wide eyes.

“You’re a terrible con artist. And you aren’t a very nice person. I almost feel sorry for you. I have no idea what happened to your parents. I have no idea how you wound up
stuck curing Wharton, with no end in sight and no way out and no friends you trust enough to let help you. I can’t even say that I wouldn’t have done what you did. But Sam almost died because of you, and for that I will never forgive you.”

Her eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t mean—”

“Don’t even try it.” I reach into my jacket and give her Yulikova’s business card and the wrapped T-shirt bundle. “I can’t promise you anything, but if you really want to get out, take this. There’s a death worker, a kid named Gage, who wants his gun back. You give it to him, and I bet he’d be willing to help you out. Teach you how to be on your own, get work, and not be beholden to anyone. Or you can call the number on the card. Yulikova will make you a trainee in her program. She’s looking for the gun too. She’ll help you too, more or less.”

Mina stares at the card, turning it over in her hand, holding the bundle against her chest, and I walk away before she can thank me. The last thing I want is her gratitude.

Giving her that choice is my own personal revenge.

The rest of the day goes about as well as any day. I make another mug in ceramics that doesn’t blow up. Track is canceled because of the weather. Dinner is a somewhat gummy mushroom risotto, haricots verts, and a brownie.

Sam and I do our homework, flopped on our beds, throwing wadded-up pieces of paper at each other.

It snows even harder while we sleep, and in the morning we have to fight our way to class through a volley of snowballs. Everyone arrives with ice melting in their hair.

The debate club has a meeting in the afternoon, so I go to that and doodle in my notebook. Through sheer lack of attention I wind up stuck with the topic Why Violent Video Games Are Bad for America’s Youth. I try to argue my way out of it, but it’s impossible to debate the whole debate team.

I am crossing the quad, heading back to my room, when my phone rings. It’s Lila.

“I’m in the parking lot,” she says and hangs up.

I trudge through the snow. The landscape is hushed, quiet. In the distance there is only the sound of cars moving through slush.

Her Jaguar is idling near the pile of snow the plow built at one end of the lot. She’s sitting on the hood, in her gray coat. The black hat she’s wearing has an incongruously cute pom-pom at the top. Strands of gold hair blow in the wind.

“Hey,” I say, walking closer. My voice sounds rough, like I haven’t spoken in years.

Lila slides off the car and comes sweetly into my arms. She smells like cordite and some kind of flowery perfume. She’s not wearing makeup and her eyes have a slight puffy redness that makes me think of tears. “I told you I’d say good-bye.” Her voice is almost a whisper.

“I don’t want you to go,” I murmur into her hair.

She pulls back a little and twines her arms around my neck, drawing my mouth down to hers. “Tell me you’ll miss me.”

I kiss her instead of speaking, my hands sliding up to knot in her hair. Everything is quiet. There is only the taste of her tongue and the swell of her lower lip, the curve of her jaw. There is only the sharp shuddering gasp of her breath.

There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she’ll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way that I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue.

It’s thrilling to realize that I’m allowed this at last, that for this moment she’s mine.

Then she takes an unsteady step back. Her eyes shine with unsaid things; her mouth is ruddy from being pressed against mine. She bends down and picks up her hat. “I’ve got to—”

She’s got to go and I’ve got to let her.

“Yeah,” I say, curling my hands at my sides to keep from grabbing for her. “Sorry.” I shouldn’t already feel the loss of her so acutely, when she’s not yet gone. I have had to let her go so many times, surely practice ought to make this easier.

We walk to her car together. The snow crunches under my feet. I look back at the bleak brick dorms.

“I’ll be here,” I say. “When you get back.”

She nods, smiling a little, like she’s humoring me. I don’t think she realizes just how long I’ve been waiting, how long I will wait for her still. Finally she meets my gaze and smiles. “Just don’t forget me, Cassel.”

“Never,” I say.

I couldn’t if I tried.

Believe me, once upon a time, I tried.

She gets into the car and closes the driver’s side door
with a slam. I can tell it costs her something to act casual, to give me that last little wave and grin, to put her car into gear and start to pull out of the lot.

That’s when it hits me. In a single moment everything becomes suddenly, gloriously clear. I have a choice other than this one.

“Wait!” I yell, legging it over and knocking on the window.

She hits the brakes.

“I’m coming with you,” I say as she rolls the window down. I’m grinning like a fool. “Take me with you.”

“What?” Her face looks blank, like she’s not sure she’s hearing me right. “You can’t. What about graduating? And your family? And your whole life?”

For years Wallingford has been my refuge, proof that I could be a regular guy—or that I could pretend well enough that no one could tell the difference. But I don’t need that anymore. I’m okay with being a con artist and a grifter. With being a worker. With having friends who will hopefully forgive me for taking off on a mad road trip. With being in love.

“I don’t care.” I get in on the passenger side, slamming the door on everything else. “I want to be with you.”

I can’t stop smiling.

She looks at me for a long moment, and then starts to laugh. “You’re running away with me with your book bag and the clothes on your back? I could wait for you to go to your dorm—or we could stop by your house. Don’t you need to get anything?”

I shake my head. “Nope. Nothing I can’t steal.”

“What about telling someone? Sam?”

“I’ll call from the road.” I hit the knob on the radio, filling the car with music.

“Don’t you even want to know where we’re going?” She’s looking at me like I’m a painting she’s managed to steal but will never be allowed to keep. She sounds exasperated and oddly fragile.

I look out the window, staring out at the snow-covered landscape as the car starts to move. Maybe we’ll go north and see my father’s family, maybe we’ll try to find her father’s diamond. It doesn’t matter.

“Nah,” I say.

“You’re crazy.” She’s laughing again. “You know that, right, Cassel? Crazy.”

“We’ve spent a lot of time doing what we’re supposed to do,” I say. “I think we should start doing what we want. And this is what I want. You’re what I want. You’re what I’ve always wanted.”

“Well, good,” she says, tucking a lock of spun-gold hair behind her ear and leaning back in her seat. Her smile is all teeth. “Because there’s no turning back now.”

Her gloved hand turns the wheel sharply, and I feel the giddy rush that comes only at the end of things, that comes when, despite everything, I realize that we actually got away with it.

The big score.

Several books were really helpful in creating the world of the curse workers. In particular, David W. Maurer’s
The Big Con
; Robert B. Cialdini’s
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
; Kent Walker and Mark Schone’s
Son of a Grifter
; and Karl Taro Greenfeld’s
Speed Tribes
.

I am deeply indebted to many people for their insight into this book. Thanks to Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Josh Lewis, and Robin Wasserman for looking at many, many permutations of scenes and for their suggestions on two scenes in particular. Thanks to Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner, Maureen Johnson, and Paolo Bacigalupi for the many helpful suggestions and general cheerleading while we were in Mexico. Thank you to Justine Larbalestier and Steve Berman for their detailed notes and focus on getting the details just right. Thank you to Libba Bray for letting me talk the whole end through with her. Thanks to Dr. Elka Cloke and Dr. Eric Churchill for their medical expertise and generosity. Thanks to Sarah Smith, Gavin Grant, and Kelly Link for helping me polish the whole book to a shine.

Most of all I have to thank my agent, Barry Goldblatt, for all his sincere support; my editor, Karen Wojtyla, for pushing me to make these books far better and for the care she took with all aspects of the series; and my husband, Theo, who gave me lots of insight into private schools and scams and who once again let me read the whole book to him out loud.