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“Enough.” Philip gets between us, and Anton lets go of me. “You, get in the kitchen and stick your finger down your throat,” he says to me. “Don’t be so squeamish.” He turns to Anton. “Lay off my brother. We’re putting enough pressure on him.”
It doesn’t escape my notice that as Anton turns away and punches the door of a stall, Barron is smirking.
The more we fight, the more Barron is in control.
I push past Anton and keep going on through the big double doors to where I figure the kitchen is, pitch black and filled with the smells of paprika and cinnamon.
I reach around on the wall and flip the switch. Battered stainless and copper pots reflect the fluorescent lights. I could keep going out the back door, but there’s no point. I need them to keep thinking that I’m clueless. I don’t need them chasing me through the streets and then searching me until they find the amulets in my leg, even if staying here means the degrading and unpleasant duty of puking into a bowl. I open one of the industrial refrigerators and drink a few swallows of milk out of the carton. I hope it will coat my stomach.
The liners of my gloves are damp with sweat when I strip them off. My hands look pale in the lights.
I think of the hydrogen peroxide I fed to Grandad and wonder if this is some kind of karmic punishment. I put my finger on my tongue, testing how awful it’s going to be. My skin tastes like salt.
“Hey,” someone says.
When I turn, I see that it isn’t Anton or Philip or Barron. It’s a guy I don’t know with a long coat and a gun pointed right at me.
The milk slides out of my hands and falls to the floor, splashing out of the carton.
“What are you doing here?” the man says.
“Oh,” I say, thinking fast. “My friend has a key. He works for one of the owners.”
“Are you talking to someone?” comes a voice from the back, and another man with a shaved head walks into the room. His T-shirt has a deep V, revealing his necklace of scars. He looks over at me. “Who’s that?”
“Hey, man,” I say, holding up my hands. I’m making up a story in my head about who I am, falling into the role. I am a worker kid, just off the bus, looking for a job and a place to crash—someone told me about this place because of its connection to Zacharov. “I was just stealing food. I’m sorry. I’ll wash the dishes or whatever to pay for it.”
Then the door on the other side opens and Anton and Philip step through.
“What the hell?” the man with the shaved head says.
“Get away from him,” says Philip.
The guy with the long coat swings his gun toward my brother.
I reach out my hand instinctively, to push the barrel away from Philip. The metal is warmer than I thought it would be. I have spent my whole life listening to workers talk about the mechanics of magic, about focusing and unfocusing your thoughts at the same time. I have even practiced, hoping for luck, for death, for something to channel itself through my skin. All that goes through my head as I close my fingers around the barrel and change the gun.
It’s like I can see the metal all the way down to the particles, but instead of being solid, it’s liquid, flowing into endless shapes. All I have to do is choose one.
I look up, and the man is holding what I imagined, a snake coiling around his fingers, its green scales as bright as the wings of the phoenix out in front.
The man screams, shaking his arm like it’s on fire.
The snake ripples, tightening its coils, its mouth opening and closing like it’s choking. A moment later a bullet drops from its mouth, bouncing against the stainless steel counter and rolling.
Two shots ring out.
Something’s wrong with me—with my body.
My chest constricts painfully and my shoulder jerks. For a moment I think that I’m the one that’s shot, until I look down and see my fingers becoming gnarled roots. I take a step forward, and my legs buckle. One of them is covered in fur and bends backward. I blink, and I am seeing everything out of dozens of eyes. I can even see behind me, like I have eyes there, too, but all there is to see is cracked tile floor. I turn my head and see the two men lying on the ground. Blood is mixing with the milk, and the gun is slithering toward me, its tongue flicking out to taste the air.
I am hallucinating. I’m dying. Terror rises up in my throat, but I can’t scream.
“What the hell were they doing here? Killing our people isn’t part of the plan,” Anton is shouting. “This wasn’t supposed to happen!”
My arms are the trunk of a tree, the arms of a sofa, they are twisting into coils of rope.
Someone help me. Please help me. Help me.
