Black Heart (Curse Workers 3)

I shake my head. “That can’t be real. That cannot be real science. It’s too awesome.”

“You didn’t do the reading, did you?” she asks, and I decide that this is the moment to retreat to my new desk.

When I walk back, I see my plan has worked. Daneca is sitting where she always does. I move my backpack and flop into its place. She looks up, surprised. It’s too late for her to get up without it being really obvious that she doesn’t want to sit next to me. She scans the room like she’s racking her brain for some excuse to move, but the seats are mostly full.

“Hey,” I say, forcing a smile. “Long time, no see.”

She sighs, like she’s resigned herself to something. “I heard you got into a fight.” Daneca’s wearing her Wallingford blazer and pleated skirt with neon purple tights and even brighter purple gloves. The color of them more or less matches the faded purple streaks in her wooly brown hair. She kicks clunky Mary Janes against the brace of the desk.

“So you’re still mad at Sam, huh?” I realize this probably isn’t how he’d want me to broach the subject, but I want information and class is about to start.

She makes a face. “He told you that?”

“I’m his roommate. His moping told me that.”

She sighs again. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

“So don’t,” I say.

Daneca leans toward me and lowers her voice. “Let me ask you something.”

“Yes, he’s really, really sorry,” I say. “He knows he overreacted. How about you guys forgive each other and start—”

“Not about Sam,” she says, just as Dr. Jonahdab walks into the room. The teacher picks up a piece of chalk and starts sketching Ohm’s law on the board. I know what it is because of the words “Ohm’s law” above it.

I open my notebook. “What, then?” I write, and turn the pad so that Daneca can see it.

She shakes her head and doesn’t say anything else.

I am not really sure I understand the relationship between current and resistance and distance any better by the end of class, but it turns out Willow Davis was right about the whole snake-head dimension thing being possible.

When the bell rings, Daneca takes my arm, her gloved fingers digging in just above my elbow.

“Who killed Philip?” she asks suddenly.

“I—,” I start. I can’t answer without lying, and I don’t want to lie to her.

Daneca’s voice is low, an urgent whisper. “My mother was your lawyer. She did your immunity deal for you, the one that got the Feds off your back, right? You made a deal to tell them who killed those people in the files. And Philip. For immunity. Why did you need immunity? What did you do?”

When the Feds dumped a bunch of files onto my lap and told me Philip had promised to name the killer, I didn’t really stop Daneca from looking at them. I knew that was a mistake, even before I realized the files were all of people I’d transformed, a list of bodies that were never found—and haven’t been found since. More missing memories.

“We’ve got to get going,” I say. The classroom has emptied out, and a few students are starting to come in for the next class. “We’re going to be late.”

She reluctantly lets go of my arm and follows me out the door. It’s funny how our positions are reversed. Now she’s the one trying to corner me.

“We were working on that case together,” Daneca says. Which is sort of true. “What did you do?” she whispers.

I look down at her face, searching for what she thinks the answer is. “I never hurt Philip. I never hurt my brother.”

“What about Barron? What did you do to him?”

I frown, so confused that for a moment I can’t think of what to say. I have no idea where she got that from. “Nothing!” I say, throwing my hands wide for emphasis. “Barron? Are you crazy?”

A faint flush colors her cheeks. “I don’t know,” she says. “You did something to someone. You needed immunity. Good people don’t need immunity, Cassel.”

She’s right, of course. I’m not a good person. The funny thing about good people—people like Daneca—is that they really honestly don’t get the impulse toward evil. They have an incredibly hard time reconciling with the idea that a person who makes them smile can still be capable of terrible things. Which is why, although she’s accusing me of being a murderer, she seems more annoyed than actually worried about getting murdered. Daneca seems to persist in a belief that if I would just listen and understand how bad my bad choices are, I’d stop making them.

I pause near the stairs. “Look, how about I meet you after dinner and you can ask me whatever you want? And we can talk about Sam.” I can’t tell her everything, but she’s my friend and I could tell her more than I have. She deserves as much truth as I can afford to give. And who knows, maybe if I just listen for once, I will make some better choices.

I couldn’t make much worse ones.

Daneca brushes a brown curl behind her ear. Her purple glove is smeared with ink. “Will you tell me what you are? Will you tell me that?”

I suck in my breath in honest surprise. Then I laugh. I’ve never told her my biggest secret—that I’m a transformation worker. I guess it’s time. She must have worked out something or she wouldn’t have asked.

“You got me,” I say. “You got me there. Yeah, I’ll tell you that. I’ll tell you everything I can.”

She nods slowly. “Okay. I’ll be in the library after dinner. I have a paper to start.”

“Great.” I jog down the stairs, running full tilt when I hit the quad so I can make it to ceramics before the final bell. I already have two demerits. I’ve been in enough trouble for a single day.

My pot comes out totally misshapen. It must have had an air bubble in it too, because when I put it into the kiln, it explodes, taking out three other people’s cups and vases along with it.

On my way to track practice, my phone rings. I flip it open and cradle it against my cheek.

“Cassel,” Agent Yulikova says. “I’d like you to stop by my office. Now. I understand your classes are over for the day, and I’ve arranged for you to be excused. The office understands that you have a doctor’s appointment.”

“I’m on my way to track,” I say, hoping that she’ll hear the hesitation in my voice. I have a gym bag slung over my shoulder, bouncing off my leg. Overhead the trees are blowing in the wind, covering the campus in a drifting carpet of leaves with the colors of a sunrise. “I’ve missed a lot of meets.”

“Then they won’t notice if you miss another one. Honestly, Cassel. You almost got yourself killed yesterday. I would like to discuss the incident.”

I think of the gun, taped in the closet of my dorm room. “It wasn’t any big thing,” I say.

“Glad to hear it.” With that, she hangs up.

I head toward my car, kicking leaves as I go.

CHAPTER THREE

A FEW MINUTES LATER Agent Yulikova is gathering up piles of paper and shifting them out of the way so that she can get a better look at me. She’s got straight gray hair, chopped to hang just beneath her jawline, and a face like a bird’s—delicate and long nosed. Masses of chunky beaded necklaces hang around her throat. Despite holding a steaming cup of tea and wearing a sweater under her navy corduroy jacket, her lips have a bluish tint, like she’s cold. Or maybe like she has a cold. Either way she more closely resembles a professor from Wallingford than the head of a federal program to train worker kids. I know she probably dresses the way she does on purpose, to lure trainees into feeling comfortable. She probably does everything on purpose.

It still works.

She’s my handler, the one who’s responsible for ushering me into the program as soon as I am eighteen, per the deal I made with the Feds. Until then, well, I don’t know what she’s supposed to do with me. I suspect she doesn’t know either.

“How are you doing, Cassel?” she asks me, smiling. She acts like she really wants to know.

“Good, I guess.” Which is a huge, ridiculous lie. I’m barely sleeping. I’m plagued with regrets. I’m obsessed with a girl who hates me. I stole a gun. But it’s what you say to people like her, people who are evaluating your mental state.

She takes a sip from her mug. “What’s it been like shadowing your brother?”

“Fine.”

“Philip’s death must make you feel more protective of Barron,” she says. Her gaze is kind, nonthreatening. Her tone is neutral. “It’s just the two of you now. And even though you’re the younger brother, you’ve had a lot of responsibility placed on you. . . .” She lets her words trail off.

I shrug my shoulders.

“But if he put you in any danger yesterday, then we need to put a stop to things immediately.”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” I say. “We were just following someone—a random person—and then Barron got a call. So I was on my own for a couple minutes, and I saw the murder. I chased after the kid—the killer—which was stupid, I guess. But he got away, so that’s that.”

“Did you talk to him?” she asks.

“No,” I lie.

“But you cornered him in the alley, correct?”

I nod, then think better of it. “Well, for a second he was cornered. Then he went for the fence.”

“We found a broken plank near the scene. Did he swing it at you?”

“No,” I say. “No, nothing like that happened. Maybe he stepped on it as he was running. It all happened so fast.”

“Could you describe him?” She leans forward in her seat, peering at me, like she can see my every fleeting thought in the involuntary flinches and flushes of my body. I really hope that’s not true. I’m a good liar, but I’m not world class. My experience has been mostly with two different kinds of adults—criminals, who act in ways I can anticipate, and marks, who can be manipulated. But with Yulikova I’m out of my depth. I have no idea what she’s capable of.

“Not really,” I say with a shrug.

She nods a few times, like she’s taking that in. “Is there anything else you want to tell me about what happened?”

I know I should admit to taking the gun. If I confess now, though, she’ll ask me why I took it. Or maybe she’ll just ask Barron what we were doing. Who we were tailing. If he’s in the right mood, he might even tell her. Or worse, he’ll make up a story so fanciful that it leads her straight to Lila faster even than the truth would.

It’s not that I want to be this person, doing the wrong thing again, lying to Yulikova. I want to learn how to do the right thing, even if I hate it. Even if I hate her for it. I just can’t this time.

But next time—next time I’ll do better. I’ll tell her everything. Next time.

“No,” I say. “It really was no big thing. I was just stupid. I’ll be more careful.”

She picks up a clipped packet of papers from her desk and drops them in front of me with a significant look. I know what they say. Once I sign them, I’m no longer a regular citizen. I will be agreeing to a private set of regulations and laws. If I screw up, I will have agreed to be tried in a private court. No more jury of my peers. “Maybe it’s time for you to leave Wallingford early and train with Barron and all the other students full-time.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“And you’ve said no before.” She smiles. Then, opening up one of the drawers of the desk, she pulls out a tissue. She coughs into it. I see something dark stain the paper before she wads it up. “I’m guessing you’re going to say no again now.”

“I want to be a federal agent and work for the LMD. I want—” I stop. I want to be better. I want you to make me better. I can’t say that, though, because it’s crazy. Instead I say, “Becoming a high school dropout isn’t exactly a dream of mine. And anyway, my immunity agreement—”

She cuts me off. “We might be able to scare up a diploma for you.”

I imagine not having to see Lila, her white-gold hair long enough to curl at the nape of her neck, her smoky voice distracting enough that I can barely pay attention to whatever it is that I’m doing when she speaks. I imagine not having to grit my teeth to avoid calling her name every time I pass her in the hall. “Soon. I just want to finish out the year.”

Yulikova nods, like she’s disappointed but not surprised. I wonder about her coughing and the tissue—was that blood on it? I don’t feel right asking. None of this feels right.

“How are you doing with the charms?” she asks.

I reach into my pocket and pull them out. Five perfect circles of stone with holes bored in the middle. Five transformation amulets to stop a curse from a worker like me, not that there are many workers like me. Making the charms was draining, but at least there was no blowback involved. They’d been sitting in my glove compartment for a week, waiting for me to deliver them.

“Very rare,” she says. “Have you ever worn one of these amulets and cast a curse?”

I shake my head. “What would happen if I did?”

Yulikova smiles. “A lot of nothing. The stone would crack and you would be exhausted.”

“Oh,” I say, oddly disappointed. I don’t know what I was expecting. Shaking my head at myself, I drop the amulets onto the desk in front of her. They roll and spin and clatter like coins. She looks at them for a long moment, then raises her eyes to me.

>

I shake my head. “That can’t be real. That cannot be real science. It’s too awesome.”

“You didn’t do the reading, did you?” she asks, and I decide that this is the moment to retreat to my new desk.

When I walk back, I see my plan has worked. Daneca is sitting where she always does. I move my backpack and flop into its place. She looks up, surprised. It’s too late for her to get up without it being really obvious that she doesn’t want to sit next to me. She scans the room like she’s racking her brain for some excuse to move, but the seats are mostly full.

“Hey,” I say, forcing a smile. “Long time, no see.”

She sighs, like she’s resigned herself to something. “I heard you got into a fight.” Daneca’s wearing her Wallingford blazer and pleated skirt with neon purple tights and even brighter purple gloves. The color of them more or less matches the faded purple streaks in her wooly brown hair. She kicks clunky Mary Janes against the brace of the desk.

“So you’re still mad at Sam, huh?” I realize this probably isn’t how he’d want me to broach the subject, but I want information and class is about to start.

She makes a face. “He told you that?”

“I’m his roommate. His moping told me that.”

She sighs again. “I don’t want to hurt him.”

“So don’t,” I say.

Daneca leans toward me and lowers her voice. “Let me ask you something.”

“Yes, he’s really, really sorry,” I say. “He knows he overreacted. How about you guys forgive each other and start—”

“Not about Sam,” she says, just as Dr. Jonahdab walks into the room. The teacher picks up a piece of chalk and starts sketching Ohm’s law on the board. I know what it is because of the words “Ohm’s law” above it.

I open my notebook. “What, then?” I write, and turn the pad so that Daneca can see it.

She shakes her head and doesn’t say anything else.

I am not really sure I understand the relationship between current and resistance and distance any better by the end of class, but it turns out Willow Davis was right about the whole snake-head dimension thing being possible.

When the bell rings, Daneca takes my arm, her gloved fingers digging in just above my elbow.

“Who killed Philip?” she asks suddenly.

“I—,” I start. I can’t answer without lying, and I don’t want to lie to her.

Daneca’s voice is low, an urgent whisper. “My mother was your lawyer. She did your immunity deal for you, the one that got the Feds off your back, right? You made a deal to tell them who killed those people in the files. And Philip. For immunity. Why did you need immunity? What did you do?”

When the Feds dumped a bunch of files onto my lap and told me Philip had promised to name the killer, I didn’t really stop Daneca from looking at them. I knew that was a mistake, even before I realized the files were all of people I’d transformed, a list of bodies that were never found—and haven’t been found since. More missing memories.

“We’ve got to get going,” I say. The classroom has emptied out, and a few students are starting to come in for the next class. “We’re going to be late.”

She reluctantly lets go of my arm and follows me out the door. It’s funny how our positions are reversed. Now she’s the one trying to corner me.

“We were working on that case together,” Daneca says. Which is sort of true. “What did you do?” she whispers.

I look down at her face, searching for what she thinks the answer is. “I never hurt Philip. I never hurt my brother.”

“What about Barron? What did you do to him?”

I frown, so confused that for a moment I can’t think of what to say. I have no idea where she got that from. “Nothing!” I say, throwing my hands wide for emphasis. “Barron? Are you crazy?”

A faint flush colors her cheeks. “I don’t know,” she says. “You did something to someone. You needed immunity. Good people don’t need immunity, Cassel.”

She’s right, of course. I’m not a good person. The funny thing about good people—people like Daneca—is that they really honestly don’t get the impulse toward evil. They have an incredibly hard time reconciling with the idea that a person who makes them smile can still be capable of terrible things. Which is why, although she’s accusing me of being a murderer, she seems more annoyed than actually worried about getting murdered. Daneca seems to persist in a belief that if I would just listen and understand how bad my bad choices are, I’d stop making them.

I pause near the stairs. “Look, how about I meet you after dinner and you can ask me whatever you want? And we can talk about Sam.” I can’t tell her everything, but she’s my friend and I could tell her more than I have. She deserves as much truth as I can afford to give. And who knows, maybe if I just listen for once, I will make some better choices.

I couldn’t make much worse ones.

Daneca brushes a brown curl behind her ear. Her purple glove is smeared with ink. “Will you tell me what you are? Will you tell me that?”

I suck in my breath in honest surprise. Then I laugh. I’ve never told her my biggest secret—that I’m a transformation worker. I guess it’s time. She must have worked out something or she wouldn’t have asked.

“You got me,” I say. “You got me there. Yeah, I’ll tell you that. I’ll tell you everything I can.”

She nods slowly. “Okay. I’ll be in the library after dinner. I have a paper to start.”

“Great.” I jog down the stairs, running full tilt when I hit the quad so I can make it to ceramics before the final bell. I already have two demerits. I’ve been in enough trouble for a single day.

My pot comes out totally misshapen. It must have had an air bubble in it too, because when I put it into the kiln, it explodes, taking out three other people’s cups and vases along with it.

On my way to track practice, my phone rings. I flip it open and cradle it against my cheek.

“Cassel,” Agent Yulikova says. “I’d like you to stop by my office. Now. I understand your classes are over for the day, and I’ve arranged for you to be excused. The office understands that you have a doctor’s appointment.”

“I’m on my way to track,” I say, hoping that she’ll hear the hesitation in my voice. I have a gym bag slung over my shoulder, bouncing off my leg. Overhead the trees are blowing in the wind, covering the campus in a drifting carpet of leaves with the colors of a sunrise. “I’ve missed a lot of meets.”

“Then they won’t notice if you miss another one. Honestly, Cassel. You almost got yourself killed yesterday. I would like to discuss the incident.”

I think of the gun, taped in the closet of my dorm room. “It wasn’t any big thing,” I say.

“Glad to hear it.” With that, she hangs up.

I head toward my car, kicking leaves as I go.

CHAPTER THREE

A FEW MINUTES LATER Agent Yulikova is gathering up piles of paper and shifting them out of the way so that she can get a better look at me. She’s got straight gray hair, chopped to hang just beneath her jawline, and a face like a bird’s—delicate and long nosed. Masses of chunky beaded necklaces hang around her throat. Despite holding a steaming cup of tea and wearing a sweater under her navy corduroy jacket, her lips have a bluish tint, like she’s cold. Or maybe like she has a cold. Either way she more closely resembles a professor from Wallingford than the head of a federal program to train worker kids. I know she probably dresses the way she does on purpose, to lure trainees into feeling comfortable. She probably does everything on purpose.

It still works.

She’s my handler, the one who’s responsible for ushering me into the program as soon as I am eighteen, per the deal I made with the Feds. Until then, well, I don’t know what she’s supposed to do with me. I suspect she doesn’t know either.

“How are you doing, Cassel?” she asks me, smiling. She acts like she really wants to know.

“Good, I guess.” Which is a huge, ridiculous lie. I’m barely sleeping. I’m plagued with regrets. I’m obsessed with a girl who hates me. I stole a gun. But it’s what you say to people like her, people who are evaluating your mental state.

She takes a sip from her mug. “What’s it been like shadowing your brother?”

“Fine.”

“Philip’s death must make you feel more protective of Barron,” she says. Her gaze is kind, nonthreatening. Her tone is neutral. “It’s just the two of you now. And even though you’re the younger brother, you’ve had a lot of responsibility placed on you. . . .” She lets her words trail off.

I shrug my shoulders.

“But if he put you in any danger yesterday, then we need to put a stop to things immediately.”

“No, it wasn’t like that,” I say. “We were just following someone—a random person—and then Barron got a call. So I was on my own for a couple minutes, and I saw the murder. I chased after the kid—the killer—which was stupid, I guess. But he got away, so that’s that.”

“Did you talk to him?” she asks.

“No,” I lie.

“But you cornered him in the alley, correct?”

I nod, then think better of it. “Well, for a second he was cornered. Then he went for the fence.”

“We found a broken plank near the scene. Did he swing it at you?”

“No,” I say. “No, nothing like that happened. Maybe he stepped on it as he was running. It all happened so fast.”

“Could you describe him?” She leans forward in her seat, peering at me, like she can see my every fleeting thought in the involuntary flinches and flushes of my body. I really hope that’s not true. I’m a good liar, but I’m not world class. My experience has been mostly with two different kinds of adults—criminals, who act in ways I can anticipate, and marks, who can be manipulated. But with Yulikova I’m out of my depth. I have no idea what she’s capable of.

“Not really,” I say with a shrug.

She nods a few times, like she’s taking that in. “Is there anything else you want to tell me about what happened?”

I know I should admit to taking the gun. If I confess now, though, she’ll ask me why I took it. Or maybe she’ll just ask Barron what we were doing. Who we were tailing. If he’s in the right mood, he might even tell her. Or worse, he’ll make up a story so fanciful that it leads her straight to Lila faster even than the truth would.

It’s not that I want to be this person, doing the wrong thing again, lying to Yulikova. I want to learn how to do the right thing, even if I hate it. Even if I hate her for it. I just can’t this time.

But next time—next time I’ll do better. I’ll tell her everything. Next time.

“No,” I say. “It really was no big thing. I was just stupid. I’ll be more careful.”

She picks up a clipped packet of papers from her desk and drops them in front of me with a significant look. I know what they say. Once I sign them, I’m no longer a regular citizen. I will be agreeing to a private set of regulations and laws. If I screw up, I will have agreed to be tried in a private court. No more jury of my peers. “Maybe it’s time for you to leave Wallingford early and train with Barron and all the other students full-time.”

“You’ve said that before.”

“And you’ve said no before.” She smiles. Then, opening up one of the drawers of the desk, she pulls out a tissue. She coughs into it. I see something dark stain the paper before she wads it up. “I’m guessing you’re going to say no again now.”

“I want to be a federal agent and work for the LMD. I want—” I stop. I want to be better. I want you to make me better. I can’t say that, though, because it’s crazy. Instead I say, “Becoming a high school dropout isn’t exactly a dream of mine. And anyway, my immunity agreement—”

She cuts me off. “We might be able to scare up a diploma for you.”

I imagine not having to see Lila, her white-gold hair long enough to curl at the nape of her neck, her smoky voice distracting enough that I can barely pay attention to whatever it is that I’m doing when she speaks. I imagine not having to grit my teeth to avoid calling her name every time I pass her in the hall. “Soon. I just want to finish out the year.”

Yulikova nods, like she’s disappointed but not surprised. I wonder about her coughing and the tissue—was that blood on it? I don’t feel right asking. None of this feels right.

“How are you doing with the charms?” she asks.

I reach into my pocket and pull them out. Five perfect circles of stone with holes bored in the middle. Five transformation amulets to stop a curse from a worker like me, not that there are many workers like me. Making the charms was draining, but at least there was no blowback involved. They’d been sitting in my glove compartment for a week, waiting for me to deliver them.

“Very rare,” she says. “Have you ever worn one of these amulets and cast a curse?”

I shake my head. “What would happen if I did?”

Yulikova smiles. “A lot of nothing. The stone would crack and you would be exhausted.”

“Oh,” I say, oddly disappointed. I don’t know what I was expecting. Shaking my head at myself, I drop the amulets onto the desk in front of her. They roll and spin and clatter like coins. She looks at them for a long moment, then raises her eyes to me.