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I think of her at twelve, a skinny girl with eyes too large for her face and a nimbus of tangled blond hair. In my memory she’s sitting on the branch of a tree, eating a rope of red licorice. Her lips are sticky with it. Her flip-flops are hanging off her toes. She’s cutting her initials into the bark, high up, so her cousin can’t claim she’s lying when she tells him she got higher than he ever will.
Boys never believe I can beat them, she told me back then. But I always win in the end.
“Maybe she spotted the car and went out the back,” I say finally.
“No way she made us.” He sucks on the straw again. It makes that rattling empty-cup sound, echoing through the car. “We’re like ninjas.”
“Somebody’s cocky,” I say. After all, tailing someone isn’t easy, and Barron and I aren’t that good at it yet, no matter what he says. My handler at the agency, Yulikova, has been encouraging me to shadow Barron, so I can learn secondhand and can keep myself safe until she figures out how to tell her bosses that she’s got hold of a teenage transformation worker with a bad attitude and a criminal record. And since Yulikova’s in charge, Barron’s stuck teaching me. It’s supposed to be just for a few months, until I graduate from Wallingford. Let’s see if we can stand each other that long.
Of course, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the kind of lesson Yulikova’s been imagining.
Barron grins, white teeth flashing like dropped dice. “What do you think Lila Zacharov would do if she knew you were tailing her?”
I grin back. “Probably she’d kill me.”
He nods. “Probably she would. Probably she’d kill me twice for helping you.”
“Probably you deserve it,” I say. He snorts.
Over the last few months I got every last thing I ever wanted—and then I threw it all away. Everything I thought I could never have was offered up on a silver platter—the girl, the power, a job at the right hand of Zacharov, the most formidable man I know. It wouldn’t even have been that hard to work for him. It probably would have been fun. And if I didn’t care who I hurt, it would still all be mine.
I lift the binoculars and study the door again—the worn paint striping the boards and crumbling like bread crumbs, the chewed-up bottom edge as ragged as if it had been gnawed on by rats.
Lila would still be mine.
Mine. The language of love is like that, possessive. That should be the first warning that it’s not going to encourage anyone’s betterment.
Barron groans and throws his cup into the backseat. “I can’t believe that you blackmailed me into becoming Johnny Law and now I have to sweat it out five days a week with the other recruits while you use my experience to stalk your girlfriend. How is that fair?”
“One, I think you mean the extremely dubious benefit of your experience. Two, Lila’s not my girlfriend. Three, I just wanted to make sure she was okay.” I count off these points on my leather-covered fingers. “And four, the last thing you should want is fairness.”
“Stalk her at school,” Barron says, ignoring everything I’ve just said. “Come on. I have to make a phone call. Let’s pack in this lesson and get a couple of slices. I’ll even buy.”
I sigh. The car is stuffy and smells like old coffee. I’d like to stretch my legs. And Barron is probably right—we should give this up. Not for the reason he’s saying but for the one that’s implied. The one about it not being okay to lurk around outside buildings, spying on girls you like.
My fingers are reaching reluctantly for my keys when she walks out of the worn door, as though my giving up summoned her. She’s got on tall black riding boots and a steel gray trench. I study the quicksilver gestures of her gloved hands, the sway of her earrings, the slap of her heels on the steps, and the lash of her hair. She’s so beautiful, I can barely breathe. Behind her follows a boy with his hair braided into the shape of two antelope horns. His skin is darker than mine. He’s got on baggy jeans and a hoodie. He’s shoving a folded-up wad of something that looks like cash into an inside pocket.
Outside of school Lila doesn’t bother wearing a scarf. I can see the grim necklace of marks on her throat, scars black where ash was rubbed into them. That’s part of the ceremony when you join her father’s crime family, slicing your skin and swearing that you’re dead to your old life and reborn into wickedness. Not even Zacharov’s daughter was spared it.
She’s one of them now. No turning back.
“Well, now,” says Barron, gleeful. “I bet you’re thinking we just observed the end of a very naughty transaction. But let’s consider the possibility that actually we caught her doing something totally innocent yet embarrassing.”
I look at him absently. “Embarrassing?”
“Like meeting up to play one of those card games where you have to collect everything. Pokémon. Magic the Gathering. Maybe they’re training for a tournament. With all that money she just handed him, I’m guessing he won.”
“Funny.”
“Maybe he’s tutoring her in Latin. Or they were painting miniatures together. Or he’s teaching her shadow puppetry.” He makes a duck-like gesture with one gloved hand.
I punch Barron’s shoulder, but not really hard. Just hard enough to make him shut up. He laughs and adjusts his sunglasses, pushing them higher on his nose.
The boy with the braids crosses the street, head down, hood pulled up to shadow his face. Lila walks to the corner and raises her hand to hail a cab. The wind whips at her hair, making it a nimbus of blown gold.
I wonder if she’s done her homework for Monday.
I wonder if she could ever love me again.
