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That’s when I notice the way that the boy is gesturing grandly, his cigarette trailing smoke. Misdirection, a classic of magic tricks and cons. Look over here, one hand says. He must be telling a joke too, because the man is laughing. But I can see his other hand, worming out of his glove.
I jump up, but I’m too late. I see a flash of bare wrist and thumb.
I start toward him, not thinking—crossing the street, barely noticing the screech of a car’s brakes until I’m past it. People turn toward me, but no one is watching the boy. Even the idiot guy from the pool hall is looking in my direction.
“Run,” I yell.
The hollow-cheeked man is still staring at me when the boy’s hand clamps around the front of his throat.
I grab for the boy’s shoulder, too late. The man, whoever he was, collapses like a sack of flour. The boy spins toward me, bare fingers reaching for skin. I catch his wrist and twist his arm as hard as I can.
He groans and punches me in the face with his gloved hand.
I stumble back. For a moment we just regard each other. I see his face up close for the first time and am surprised to notice that his eyebrows are carefully tweezed into perfect arches. His eyes are wide and brown beneath them. He narrows those eyes at me. Then he turns and runs.
I chase after him. It’s automatic—instinct—and I’m wondering what I think I’m doing as I race down the sidewalk. I risk a look back at Barron, but he’s turned away, bent over the phone, so that all I see is his back.
Figures.
The boy is fast, but I’ve been running track for the last three years. I know how to pace myself, allowing him to get ahead of me at first when he starts sprinting, but catching up once he’s winded. We go down block after block, me getting closer and closer.
This is what I’m supposed to do once I’m a federal agent, right? Chase bad guys.
But that’s not why I’m after him. I feel like I am hunting my own shadow. I feel like I can’t stop.
He glances back at me, and I guess he sees that I’m gaining on him, because he tries a new strategy. He veers abruptly into an alley.
I take the corner in time to see him reaching for something under his hoodie. I go for the nearest weapon I can find. A plank of wood, lying near a stack of garbage.
Swinging it, I catch him just as he gets out the gun. I feel the burn of my muscles and hear the crack as wood hits metal. I knock the pistol against the brick wall like it’s a baseball and I’m in the World Series.
I think I’m as surprised as he is.
Taking slow steps, I hold up the plank, which is split now, a big chunk of the top hanging off by a splinter, the remainder jagged and pointed like a spear. He watches me, every part of him tense. He doesn’t look much older than I am. He might even be younger.
“Who the hell are you?” When he speaks, I can see that some of his teeth are gold, flashing in the fading sun. Three on the bottom. One on top. He’s breathing hard. We both are.
I bend down and lift the gun in one shaking hand. My thumb flicks off the safety. I drop the plank.
I have no idea who I am right now.
“Why?” I say, between breaths. “Why did she pay you to kill him?”
“Hey,” he says, holding up both his hands, the gloved and ungloved one, in a gesture of surrender. Despite that, he seems more stunned than scared. “If he was your friend, then—”
“He wasn’t my friend.”
He lowers his hands slowly until they rest at his sides, like he has made a decision about me. Maybe that I’m not a cop. Maybe that it’s okay to relax. “I don’t ask why anyone wants anything. I don’t know, okay? It was just a job.”
I nod. “Let me see your throat.”
“No marks.” He pulls the neck of his shirt wide, but there’s no scarring there. “I freelance. I’m too pretty for all that bullshit. No one puts a collar on Gage.”
“Okay,” I say.
“That girl—if you know her, you know what she’s about.” He reaches into his mouth, pulling out a loose tooth—a real one—black with rot at the top. It sits like a flawed pearl in the palm of his glove. Then he grins. “Good thing murder pays so well, right? Gold’s expensive.”
I try to hide my surprise. A death worker who loses only a single tooth with each hit is a very dangerous guy. Every curse—physical, luck, memory, emotion, dream, death, and even transformation—causes some kind of blowback. As my grandfather says, all work works the worker. Blowback can be crippling, even lethal. Death curses rot a part of the worker’s body, anything from a lung to a finger. Or, apparently, something as minor as a tooth.
