Black Heart (9 page)

“I only came here for you. I’m no good at this school stuff.” She unsticks a postcard from the wall over Sam’s bed, which involves her climbing onto the mattress in a way that ignites every bad thought I’ve ever had. “Okay. I think that’s it,” she says.

“Lila,” I say as she walks toward the door. “You’re one of the smartest people I know—”

“She doesn’t want to see you, either,” Lila says, cutting me off. “I have no idea what you did to Daneca, but I think she’s madder at you than she is at Sam.”

“Me?” I drop my voice to a whisper so that we won’t be overheard. “I didn’t do anything. You’re the one who told her I turned you into a cat.”

“What?” Lila’s mouth parts slightly. “You’re crazy. I never said that!”

“Oh,” I say, honestly puzzled. “I thought you must have. Daneca was asking me all these questions—weird questions. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything. It’s your story to tell if you want to tell it. I’ve got no right—”

She shakes her head. “You better hope she doesn’t figure it out. With her mother’s crazy worker advocacy stuff, she’d probably go straight to the government. You’d wind up press-ganged into one of those federal brainwashing programs.”

I smile guiltily. “Yeah, well, I’m glad you didn’t say anything to her.”

Lila rolls her eyes. “I know how to keep a secret.”

As she leaves with Daneca’s stuff, I am shamed into realizing how many secrets Lila
has
kept. She’s had the
means to ruin my life pretty much since she became human again. One word to her father, and I would be dead. Since my mother worked her, Lila has even more means and a better motive. The fact that she hasn’t done it is a miracle. And I have not even the slightest idea why she hasn’t, when she has every reason, now that the curse has worn off.

I lean back on my bed.

My whole life I’ve been trained as a con artist, trained to read what people mean underneath what they say. But right now I can’t read her.

At dinner Mina denies knowing anyone who would blackmail her for spite. No one has ever teased her at Wallingford, no one has ever laughed behind her back. She gets along with absolutely everybody.

We sit together, slowly eating roast chicken and potatoes off our trays while she answers my questions. I wait for Sam to show up, but he never does. Lila doesn’t come into the dining hall either.

When I press Mina, she tells me that her ex-boyfriend doesn’t go to school at Wallingford. His name is Jay Smith, apparently, and he goes to public school, but she isn’t sure which one. She met him at the mall, but she’s a little fuzzy on where. His parents are very strict, so she was never allowed to go to his house. She deleted his number when they broke up.

Everything is a dead end.

Like she doesn’t want me to suspect anyone. Like she doesn’t want me to be investigating the very thing she asked me to fix.

Like she
already knows who’s blackmailing her
. But that makes no sense. If she did, she’d have no reason to involve me.

When I get up from the table, Mina hugs me and tells me that I’m the sweetest boy in the world. Even though she doesn’t mean it and she’s probably saying it for all the wrong reasons, it’s still nice.

I find Sam lying in bed when I get back to the room, headphones over his ears. He stays that way all through study hall, snuffling quietly into his covers. He sleeps in his clothes.

Wednesday he barely speaks and barely eats. In the cafeteria he picks at his food and responds to my most outrageous jokes with a grunt. When I see him in the halls, he looks haunted.

On Thursday he tries to talk to Daneca, abruptly chasing her out onto the school green after breakfast. I follow them, dread in the pit of my stomach. The skies are overcast and it’s cold enough that I won’t be surprised if we get sleet instead of rain. Wallingford looks bleached out, gray. For a moment Sam and Daneca are standing close together, and I think he’s got a chance. Then she lurches back and starts off in the direction of the Academic Center, braids whipping behind her.

“Who?” he yells after her. “Just tell me who he is. Just tell me why he’s better than me.”

“I should have never told you anything,” she shrieks back.

People want to lay bets on the identity of this mysterious guy, but no one’s willing to go to Sam with their
guesses. He looks wild-eyed, stalking around the campus like a madman. When they come to me, I am glad that I already gave up the business.

By Friday I’m worried enough that I make Sam come home with me. I leave my Benz at Wallingford and we drive over to my mom’s old house in his grease-powered hearse. As we pull in, I notice there’s already another car parked in the driveway. Grandad’s come to visit.

I WALK IN THE FRONT
door to the house, Sam right behind me. It’s unlocked and I can hear the chug of the dishwasher. My grandfather is standing at the counter, chopping potatoes and onions. His gloves are off and the blackened stubs where his fingers used to be are clearly visible. Four fingers; four kills. He’s a death worker.

One of those kills saved my life.

Grandad looks up. “Sam Yu, right?” he says. “The roommate.”

Sam nods.

“You drove up from Carney,” I say. “And you’re making dinner. What’s going on? How’d you even know I was going to come home this weekend?”

“Didn’t. You heard from that mother of yours?” Grandad asks.

I hesitate.

He grunts. “That’s what I thought. I don’t want you to get caught up with her bullshit.” He nods toward Sam. “Kid can keep a secret?”

“He’s currently keeping almost all of mine,” I say.

“Almost all?” Sam says, the corner of his mouth lifting. That’s the closest he’s been to smiling in days.

“Then both of you listen up. Cassel, I know that she’s your mother, but there’s nothing you can do for her. Shandra got herself in over her head. She’s got to get her own self out. You understand?”

I nod.

“Don’t be yessing me to death when you mean no,” Grandad says.

“I’m not doing anything crazy. I’m just seeing if I can find something she lost,” I say, glancing toward Sam.

“What she
stole
,” says Grandad.

“She stole from Governor Patton?” Sam asks, clearly bewildered.

“I wish it was just that idiot she had to worry about,” says Grandad, and he goes back to his chopping. “You two go sit down awhile. I’m making steaks. There’s plenty for three.”

I shake my head and walk into the living room, drop my backpack near the couch. Sam follows.

“What’s going on?” he asks. “Who’s your grandfather talking about?”

“My mother stole something and then tried to sell a fake back to the original owner.” That seems like the simplest explanation. The details only make the whole thing more confusing. Sam knows that Lila’s father is a crime boss, but I’m not sure he really thinks of anyone’s parent as potentially lethal. “The guy wants the real version, but Mom doesn’t remember where she put it.”

Sam nods slowly. “At least she’s okay. In hiding, I guess, but okay.”

“Yeah,” I say, not even convincing myself.

I smell the onions hit a hot pan of grease in the kitchen. My mouth waters.

“Your family is badass,” Sam says. “They set a high bar of badassery.”

That makes me laugh. “My family are
lunatics
who set a high bar for
lunacy
. Speaking of which, don’t mind my grandfather. Tonight we can do whatever you want. Sneak into a strip club. Watch bad movies. Crank call girls from school. Drive down to Atlantic City and lose all our cash at gin rummy. Just say the word.”

“Is there really gin rummy in Atlantic City?”

“Probably not,” I admit. “But I bet there are some old folks who’d be willing to sit in on a game and take your money.”

“I want to get drunk—so drunk,” he says wistfully. “So drunk that I forget not just tonight but, like, the last six months of my life.”

That makes me think uncomfortably of Barron and his memory curses. I wonder how much, right now, Sam would
pay to be able to do just that. To forget Daneca. To forget he ever loved her.

Or to make her forget that she stopped loving him.

Like Philip got Barron to make Maura—Philip’s wife—forget she was going to leave him. It didn’t work. They just had the same fights over and over again as she fell out of love with him exactly the same way she had before. Over and over. Until she shot him in the chest.

“Cassel?” Sam says, shoving my shoulder with a gloved hand. “Anyone home in there?”

“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “Drunk. Right. Let me survey the booze situation.”

There’s always been a liquor cabinet in the dining room. I don’t think anyone’s been in it since before Dad died and Mom went to prison. There was so much clutter in front of it that it wasn’t exactly easy to get into. I find a couple of bottles of wine in the back, along with some bottles of brown liquor with labels I don’t recognize, and a few newer-looking things in the front. The necks are coated in dust. I take everything out and pile it on the dining room table.

“What’s Armagnac?” I call to Sam.

“It’s fancy brandy,” my grandfather says from the kitchen. A few moments later he sticks his head into the room. “What’s all that?”

“Mom’s liquor,” I say.

He picks up one of the bottles of wine and looks at the label. Then he turns it upside down. “Lot of sediment. This is either going to be the best thing you ever drank or vinegar.”

The inventory turns out to be three bottles of possibly sour wine; the Armagnac; a bottle of rye that’s mostly full; pear brandy with a pale globe of fruit floating in it; and a container of Campari, which is bright red and smells like cough medicine.

Grandad opens all three bottles of wine when we sit down to dinner. He pours the first into a glass. It’s a dark amber, almost the same color as the rye.

He shakes his head. “Dead. Toss it.”

“Shouldn’t we at least try it?” I ask.

Sam looks at my grandfather nervously, like he’s expecting to get in trouble for our liquor cabinet raid. I don’t point out that among most people I know, legal drinking age isn’t going to exactly be a sticking point. Sam should cast his mind back to Philip’s wake.

Grandad laughs. “Go ahead if you want, but you’re going to be sorry. It’ll probably do better in your gas tank than in your stomach.”

I take his word for it.

The next one is nearly as black as ink. Grandad takes a sip and grins. “Here we go. You kids are in for a treat. Don’t just glug this stuff.”

In the kind of fancy magazines my mother reads when she’s shopping for men, they rate wines, praising them for tasting like things that don’t sound good to drink—butter and fresh cut grass and oak. The descriptions used to make me laugh, but this wine really does taste like plums and black pepper, with a delicious sourness that fills my whole mouth.

“Wow,” says Sam.

We finish off the rest of the wine and start on the rye. Sam pours his into a water glass.

“So what’s the matter?” Grandad asks him.

Sam bangs his head against the table lightly and then downs his drink in three long swallows. I’m pretty sure he’s forgotten to be worried about getting in trouble with anyone. “My girlfriend dumped me.”

“Huh,” Grandad says, nodding. “The young lady with you at Philip’s funeral? I remember her. Seemed nice enough. That’s too bad. I’m sorry, kid.”

“I really—I loved her,” Sam says. Then he refills his glass.

Grandad goes into the other room for the Armagnac. “What happened?”

“She hid something big—and when I found out, I was really pissed. And she was sorry. But by the time I was ready to forgive her, she was the one who was pissed. And then I had to be sorry. But I wasn’t. And by the time I was, she had a different boyfriend.”

My grandfather shakes his head. “Sometimes a girl’s got to walk away before she knows what she wants.”

Sam pours some of the Armagnac into his glass, along with the dregs of the rye. He tops off the concoction with a shot of Campari.

“Don’t drink that!” I say.

He toasts to us and then tosses the whole thing back.

Even Grandad winces. “No girl’s worth the hangover you’re going to have come morning.”

“Daneca is,” Sam says, words slurring.

“You got a lot of ladies to get through. You’re still young. First love’s the sweetest, but it doesn’t last.”

“Not ever?” I ask.

Grandad looks at me with a seriousness he reserves for moments when he wants me to really pay attention. “When we fall that first time, we’re not really in love with the girl. We’re in love with being in love. We’ve got no idea what she’s really about—or what she’s capable of. We’re in love with our idea of her and of who we become around her. We’re idiots.”

I get up and start stacking dishes in the sink. I’m not too steady on my feet right now, but I manage it.

When I was a kid, I guess I loved Lila like that. Even when I thought I’d killed her, I still saw her as the ideal girl—the pinnacle of girlhood that nobody else was ever going to be able to get close to. But when she came back, I had to see her the way she was—complicated, angry, and a lot more like me than I’d ever guessed. I might not know what Lila is capable of, but I know her.

Love changes us, but we change how we love too.

“Come on,” Sam says from the table, pouring bright red liquor into teacups he’s found somewhere. “Let’s do shots.”

I wake up with the horrible taste of cough medicine in my mouth.

Someone is pounding on the front door. I turn over and cover my head with a pillow. I don’t care who it is. I’m not going downstairs.

“Cassel!” My grandfather’s voice booms through the house.

“What?” I shout back.

“There’s somebody to see you. He says he’s from the government.”

I groan and roll out of bed. So much for my avoiding answering the door. I pull on jeans over my boxers, rub sleep out of my eyes, and grab for a shirt and a pair of clean gloves. Stubble itches along my cheeks.

As I brush my teeth, trying to scrub the taste of the night before out of my mouth, dread finally catches up with me. If my grandfather guesses that I’m thinking about working for Yulikova, I have no idea what he will do. There’s no worse kind of traitor to guys like Grandad. And as much as I know he loves me, he’s also somebody who believes in putting his duty before feelings.