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She takes a chewed-on pencil out of her bag and points it in my direction. “If I asked you one question, would you answer it honestly?”
“I don’t know,” I say. There are some things I can’t talk about and other things I’m not sure I want to. But at least I can be honest with her about my uncertainty. I’m not sure she sees that as the same step forward I do, though.
“What happened to that cat we saved from the animal shelter?”
I hesitate.
Here’s the problem with telling the truth—smart people figure out the parts you don’t say. A lie can be airtight, easy. The truth is a mess. When I told Daneca the story about my brothers changing my memory, about how they wanted me to kill Zacharov and how they’d held Lila captive, I left out one essential detail. I never told her that I was a transformation worker.
I was too scared. I was already trusting her so much that I couldn’t bring myself to give up that last secret. And I was scared of the secret itself, scared to say the words out loud. But now Daneca’s put the whole thing together and found the gap. The cat that she saw me hold—the one that she never saw again.
“I can explain,” I start.
Daneca shakes her head. “I thought you’d say that.” She turns away from me.
“Come on,” I say. “I really can explain. Give me a chance.”
“I already did,” she whispers as Dr. Jonahdab starts taking attendance. “You blew it.”
No matter how angry Daneca is with me, I know she always wants answers. But maybe she feels like she already has them.
Something prompted her to start thinking about stuff that happened seven months ago. Lila must have said something—maybe even told her that I was a transformation worker, that it was because of me she spent years trapped in a body that wasn’t hers, that she was the cat we stole. She and Daneca have been hanging out a lot. Maybe Lila needed to talk to someone. It’s as much Lila’s secret as it is mine.
Now I guess it’s Daneca’s secret as well.
* * *
I skip track practice, flop down on the sofa in the common room of my dorm, and Google Central Fine Jewelry in Paterson. There’s a crappy website that promises to pay cash for gold and claims to accept consignments. It’s open only until six, so there’s no way I can make it there before closing time.
I dial the number listed. I pretend to be a regular, checking when Bob works, claiming he’s the only one I’ll trust with some estate pieces. The grouchy woman on the other end of the line says he’ll be in on Sunday. I thank her and hang up. I guess I have plans for the weekend.
Central Fine Jewelry doesn’t seem like the kind of place where you keep working after you make a mint reselling the Resurrection Diamond, though, so I’m not feeling optimistic.
They do have a page on the site featuring amulets. It looks pretty legit. They don’t claim to have any transformation amulets. Claiming to have one is a sure sign of a scam, since no one but a transformation worker can make them. Most of the stones in stock are for luck magic. They list a few more unusual amulets, ones to prevent memory work and death work—well, prevent it once, before the amulet snaps and you’re left buying a new one—but nothing too good to be true. I figure that since he knew my dad, Bob used to have ties to curse workers. His inventory is proof that he still does.
It figures that a forger would be in with workers. The thing about curse magic being illegal is that it turns everyone who uses it into a criminal. And criminals stick together.
That thought makes my mind turn inevitably toward Lila.
As much as she hates me now, she will hate me that much more once I sign the papers and become a federal agent. Down in Carney, where we spent our summers growing up, if a curse worker joined the government, that person was considered a traitor, the lowest of the low, someone not worth spitting on if he was on fire.
There’s some part of me that takes a perverse delight in doing the one thing that is going to make a bunch of murderers, con men, and liars all gasp and clutch their pearls.
I bet they didn’t think I had it in me.
But I never wanted to hurt Lila—at least not hurt her worse than I already have. And no matter what any of them think of me, I will never let the government get its claws in her.
Another senior, Jace, comes into the common room and turns on the television. He flips the channel to some reality show about beauty queens stranded on a desert island. I’m not really watching. My mind is skipping to Mina Lange and blackmail.
I don’t want to even consider how thinking about Lila brought me to Mina.
Still, I turn her story over and over in my head, trying to see if there is some clue I can glean from the little she told me. Why did it take the thief two weeks after stealing the camera to start blackmailing Mina? Don’t people who steal cameras usually want the camera more than what’s on it, anyway? Who bothers flipping through another person’s pictures? But then, it’s not like most kids at Wallingford can’t afford to buy a camera, and it’s weird how many rich kids steal for fun. They’ll shoplift from the convenience store down on the corner, break into each other’s rooms to grab boxes of cookies, and clumsily jimmy open doors so that they can grab iPods.
Which, unfortunately, only widens the suspect pool, instead of shrinking it. The blackmailer could be anyone. And, more than probably, the person is joking about the five grand and the baseball field, trying to scare Mina. The remote cruelty points to a girl or a bunch of girls. Whoever she is, she probably just wants to make Mina squirm.
If I’m right, it’s a pretty good con. Even if Mina calls their bluff, she can’t do much about it, because she won’t want the pictures to get out. But the girls probably can’t resist giggling when Mina comes into the cafeteria or teasing her in class, even if they don’t say anything about the pictures.
I just wish I was sure Mina was telling me the truth.
