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“Come on, now,” I say. I can hear the self-loathing in my voice. “I did plenty.” I lost Lila the moment my mother cursed her. Everything else was just a pathetic game of pretend. None of it real.
Her expression wavers, then smoothes out into a mask of blandness. “Good-bye, Cassel,” she says, and turns to go. Her head is bent and her scarf must have shifted, because I glimpse redness along her throat. From this angle it looks like the edge of a burn.
“What is that?” I say, walking after her, pointing to my own collar.
“Don’t,” she says warningly, holding up her gloved hand. But there is something in her face that wasn’t there a moment ago—fear.
I grab one end of her scarf. It comes unknotted with a single pull.
Her pale throat is cut, one side to the other, newly scabbed and dark with ash. The criminal’s second smile. A glittering choker of dried blood.
“You’re—,” I start. But of course, she always was. A crime boss’s daughter. Mobster royalty.
Talking with someone who just signed up to be a federal agent.
“The ceremony was on Sunday,” she says. “I told you I was going to be the head of the Zacharov family someday. No one starts at the top, though. I have a long way to go. First I have to prove my loyalty. Even me.”
“Ah.” Lila has always known who she was and what she wanted. There is something horrifyingly final about her scar, like a shut door. She’s not afraid of her future. “Brave,” I say, and I mean it.
For a moment she looks like she wants to tell me more. Her mouth opens, and then I see her swallow those words, whatever they were. She takes a deep breath and says, “If you don’t stay away from me, I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.”
There’s nothing to say to that, so I say nothing. I can already feel numbness creeping into my heart.
She continues her walk across the quad.
I watch her go. Watch the shadow of her steps and her straight back and the gleam of her hair.
I remind myself that this is what I wanted. When that doesn’t work, I tell myself that I can survive on memories. The smell of Lila’s skin, the way her eyes shine with mischief, the low rasp of her voice. It hurts to think of her, but I can’t stop. It ought to hurt.
After all, hell is supposed to be hot.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Several books were really helpful in creating the world of the curse workers. In particular, David W. Maurer’s The Big Con; Sam Lovell’s How to Cheat at Everything; 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, Robin Wasserman, Sarah Rees Brennan, and Delia Sherman, who were always kind enough to stop what they were doing and help me work through problems during our Mexican writing retreat. Thanks to Libba Bray and Jo Knowles for helping me enormously with the push to the end. I am grateful to Justine Larbalestier for talking with me about liars and to Scott Westerfeld for his detailed notes. Thanks to Joe Monti for his enthusiasm and book recommendations. Thanks to Elka Cloke for her medical expertise. Thanks to Kathleen Duey for pushing me to think about the larger world issues. Thanks to Kelly Link, Ellen Kushner, Gavin Grant, Sarah Smith, and Joshua Lewis for looking at very rough drafts. Thanks to Steve Berman for his help working out many, many details, especially in that last draft.
Most of all, I have to thank my agent, Barry Goldblatt, for his encouragement; my editor, Karen Wojtyla, who pushed me to make the book far better than I thought it could be; and my husband, Theo, who gave me lots of advice about private school and scams, and who let me read the whole thing to him out loud.
BLACK HEART
To Fizzgig, my long-haired gray moppet of a cat, who was patient and friendly despite always appearing enraged.
1
MY BROTHER BARRON sits next to me, sucking the last dregs of milk tea slush noisily through a wide yellow straw. He’s got the seat of my Benz pushed all the way back and his feet up on the dash, the heels of his pointy black shoes scratching the plastic. With his hair slicked back and his mirrored sunglasses covering his eyes, he looks like a study in villainy.
He’s actually a junior federal agent, still in training, sure, but with a key card and an ID badge and everything.
To be fair, he’s also a villain.
I tap my gloved fingers impatiently against the curve of the wheel and bring a pair of binoculars to my eyes for about the millionth time. All I see is a boarded-up building on the wrong side of Queens. “What is she doing in there? It’s been forty minutes.”
“What do you think?” he asks me. “Bad things. That’s her after-school job now. Taking care of shady business so Zacharov’s gloves stay clean.”
“Her dad won’t put her in any real danger,” I say, but the tone of my voice makes it pretty obvious I’m trying to convince myself more than I’m trying to convince my brother.
Barron snorts. “She’s a new soldier. Got to prove herself. Zacharov couldn’t keep her out of danger if he tried—and he’s not going to be trying real hard. The other laborers are watching, waiting for her to be weak. Waiting for her to screw up. He knows that. So should you.”
