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“So how’s Lila?” Barron asks once we’re on the highway. “You still hung up on her?”
I give him a look. “Considering you locked her in a cage for several years, I guess she’s okay. Comparatively speaking.”
He shrugs, glancing in my direction with a sly look. “My choices were limited. Anton wanted her dead. And you surprised the hell out of us by transforming her into a living thing. After we got over the shock, it was a relief—although she made a terrible pet cat.”
“She was your girlfriend,” I say. “How could you have agreed to kill her?”
“Oh, come on,” he says. “We were never that serious about each other.”
I slam my hand down on the dashboard. “Are you crazy?”
He grins. “You’re the one who changed her into a cat. And you were in love with her.”
I look out the window. The highway is flanked by towering soundproofing walls, vines snaking through the gaps. “Maybe you made me forget almost everything, but I know I wanted to save her back then. And I almost did.”
His gloved hand touches my shoulder unexpectedly. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I really did start messing with your memories because Mom said it would be better for you not to know what you were. Then, when we got the idea to go into the killing business, I guess I thought that so long as you didn’t remember, nothing we made you do counted.”
I have no idea what to say in return. I settle for not saying anything at all. Instead I lean my cheek against the cool glass of the window. I look at the stretch of asphalt highway snaking in front of us, and I wonder what it would be like to leave all of this behind. No Feds. No brother. No Lila. No Mom. No mob. With just a little magic I could change my face. I could walk out of my life entirely.
Just a few fake documents and I’d be in Paris. Or Prague. Or Bangkok.
There I wouldn’t have to try to be good. There I could lie and cheat and steal. I wouldn’t really be me so it wouldn’t really count.
Change my identity. Change my name. Let Barron take care of Mom.
Next year Sam and Daneca are going to be away at college. Lila will be doing whatever bootleg business her father tells her to do. And where will I be? Killing people for Yulikova. Everything’s arranged, all for the best, and as bleak as a desert road.
Barron knocks on the side of my head. “Hey, anyone in there? You’ve been quiet for, like, fifteen minutes. You don’t have to tell me that you forgive me or anything like that—but you could say something. ‘Good talk.’ ‘Shut up.’ Whatever.”
I rub my face. “You want me to say something? Okay. Sometimes I think I am what you made me. And sometimes I don’t know who I am at all. And either way I’m not happy.”
He swallows. “Okay…”
I take a deep breath. “But if you want forgiveness, fine. You’ve got it. I’m not mad. Not anymore. Not at you.”
“Yeah, right. You’re pissed off at someone,” he says. “Any idiot can see that.”
“I’m just angry,” I say. “Eventually it will burn off of me or something. It has to.”
“You know, this might be your cue to say that you’re sorry about forcing me to go into this whole federal agent training program—”
“You never had it so good,” I say.
“But you didn’t know that,” he says. “I could be miserable right now, and it would be all your fault. And then you’d feel bad. Then you’d be sorry.”
“Then I might. Now I’m not,” I say. “Oh, and—good talk.”
Really, it was a pretty good talk. About the best I could expect from my sociopathic amnesiac jerk of an older brother.
We park on the street. Paterson is an odd collection of old buildings and bright awnings with neon signs advertising cheap cell phones, tarot card readings, and beauty salons.
I get out and feed a few quarters into the meter.
Barron’s phone chirps. He takes it from his pocket and looks at the screen.
I raise my eyebrows, but he just shakes his head, like it’s nothing important. His gloved fingers tap the keys. He looks up. “Lead on, Cassel.”
I head toward the address of Central Fine Jewelry. It looks like all the other stores on the street—dirty and poorly lit. The front window is filled with a variety of hoop earrings and long chains. A sign in one corner reads WE’LL PAY CASH FOR YOUR GOLD TODAY. There’s nothing special about it, nothing that makes the place stand out as the location of a master forger.
