Black Heart (Curse Workers 3)

“Just bring a big enough bag that it looks possible for you to have the cash.”

Mina looks disconsolately out the window and takes a shaky breath.

“It’s going to be fine,” I tell her, curling my gloved hand around her arm in what I hope is a sympathetic way. She looks tired.

The bell rings, loud enough to startle us. Mina jumps up and brushes off her skirt. When she tosses her hair, it moves like a wave. It moves the way hair does only in movies.

No real hair moves like that.

I take another look at her as she pushes a lock of it behind her ear. “You seem really nice,” she tells Sam. “Thanks for trying to help.”

There are no split ends, I realize. And while her bangs make it hard to see, the part on top of her head shows a color that’s subtly different from the rest of her skin.

Sam nods, expression grave. “Anything I can do.”

“We’ll figure this out,” I say.

She gives me one of those almost-smiles that some girls seem to be able to summon up, the kind where her lip trembles and she looks so vulnerable that you find yourself desperate for a way to turn it into a real smile. Her lashes are still wet from tears that never fell. I wonder what it would feel like to wipe those tears with my thumb. I imagine the softness of her cheek against my bare skin. Then she picks up a messenger bag covered in pictures of singing anthropomorphic strawberries and marches out of the library.

Her wig swings behind her.

The rest of the day is a blur of hastily composed texts that don’t get returned. Lila isn’t in the common room of her building, and I had to promise Sharone Nagel a copy of my statistics homework to get her to look. Lila’s car is not even in the lot. By the time I discover that she’s not at dinner, I am practically crawling out of my skin with my desire to find her.

Daneca doesn’t come to dinner either.

Sam at least is there, flipping through a catalog of masks, barely paying attention to the cooling mound of shepherd’s pie piled on his plate. “So,” he says, “are you going to tell me what this thing with Mina is really about?”

“Nothing to tell. We’re going to save a maiden in distress like old-timey knights. I just wish I knew exactly what distress we were saving her from. The whole thing is fishy.”

“You don’t believe what she said about the pictures?” he asks, pausing on a page with a rubbery werewolf snout that is supposed to be attached with spirit gum.

“I don’t know. All I’m sure of is that she’s lying about something. But maybe it’s nothing important. We all lie, right?”

That makes him snort. “So what’s the plan, Sir Bone-head?”

“Pretty much what I said. We see who shows up to blackmail Mina or who shows up to laugh at how gullible she is.”

I gaze across at where Mina is sitting with her friends, playing with a lock of her wig and drinking a diet soda. Even being nearly sure her hair isn’t real, I wonder at it. It looks real, better than real, rippling down her back in a glossy sheet.

Was she sick? If so, it must have been long enough ago that no one at Wallingford remembers her absence from school, but not so long ago that her hair has grown back. Or I guess it could be something else. Maybe she just likes the convenience of not worrying about styling it in the morning.

I wonder what would make someone want to blackmail a girl like her. Anyone could tell that her family isn’t flush if they just looked. Her watch is nice, but she always wears it. The leather band is worn. And her shoes are black ballet flats. Cute but cheap. It’s not that she can’t afford nice things. She has last year’s cell phone and a two-year-old laptop covered in pink crystals. That’s more than lots of people have. Plus she goes to Wallingford. It’s just that she wouldn’t be the person I’d target if I wanted to grift an easy five large. It has to be a prank.

Unless the blackmailer knows something I don’t.

After dinner I go back out to the parking lot, but Lila’s car still isn’t there. I consider that maybe she and Daneca are together, since neither of them were at dinner. Maybe Daneca listened to what I said about Barron, no matter what she pretended. Maybe she even started to doubt him. If she ran into Lila, then maybe that’s why Lila hasn’t called me back. Daneca’s house is close by; it would have been a small thing to go there for dinner. I imagine them in Daneca’s kitchen, eating pizza and talking about what jerks those Sharpe boys are. I don’t mind the thought. It is, in fact, a huge relief, compared to all the other possibilities. I have a couple of hours before in-room check and no better ideas, so I decide to drive by Daneca’s house.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that it’s ironic that Barron, who’s wrong about so many things, is right about me being a stalker.

After parking on her leaf-lined street in Princeton, I walk down the block, past stately brick dwellings, each one with a manicured lawn, sculpted bushes, and a shining door knocker. Each yard is full of fall decorations—dried corn and gourds or planters with stacked pyramids of pumpkins, even the occasional leftover scarecrow.

As I walk up the path to her house, I realize that I figured wrong. Neither car is in the driveway, and I’ve just come this way for nothing.

I turn around and am about to walk away when the front door opens and the porch light flickers on.

“Hello?” Daneca’s mother calls into the darkness. She’s got a gloved hand up, shadowing her eyes. The porch light does the useless thing that porch lights often do, nearly blinding her and rendering me just a shadow.

I walk closer. “It’s me, Mrs. Wasserman. Cassel. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Cassel?” she says, as though she’s still nervous. Maybe more nervous. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

“I was looking for Daneca. We’re seniors, so we can go off campus as long as we’re back on time. But, yeah, I should probably be at Wallingford. I’m going back there right now.” I make a vague gesture in the direction of where I parked.

She’s quiet for a long moment. Then she says, “I think you’d better come inside.”

I walk over the worn marble threshold and step onto the gleaming wooden floors. I smell the remainder of whatever they had for dinner—something with tomato sauce—and hear the television from the living room. Daneca’s father and her sort-of brother, Chris, are sitting on the couches, staring at the screen. Chris turns to glance in my direction as I pass, eyes bright with reflected light.

Mrs. Wasserman beckons me toward the kitchen, and I follow her.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asks, walking to the stove and filling the kettle. It reminds me uncomfortably of my mother in Zacharov’s house.

“I’m okay.”

She points to a chair. “Sit down at least.”

“Thanks,” I say, sitting awkwardly. “Look, I’m really sorry to bother you—”

“Why is it that you thought Daneca would be here instead of at Wallingford?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know where she is. All I want to do is talk to her about her boyfriend. She’s dating my brother. If you met him, you’d understand why I am—”

“I have met him,” Mrs. Wasserman says. “He came to dinner.”

“Oh,” I say slowly, because I bet he told her something bad enough to explain her discomfort around me. “Barron came here? To dinner. Here?”

“I just want you to remember, Cassel, I know how hard things can be for worker kids. For every kid like Chris who finds a place to call home, there are lots of other kids who are kicked out onto the streets, taken in by crime families and then sold off to the rich—forced to endure continual blowback so that other people can line their pockets, or they’re forced to become criminals themselves. And it must be even worse to be raised to believe you had to do those things. I don’t know what you’ve done or what your brother’s done, but—”

“What is it you think we did?”

She glances at my face, like she’s searching for something. Finally she says, “I don’t know. Daneca called here earlier today. She said that you didn’t approve of her going out with your brother. I know you’re worried about Daneca. You’re Sam’s roommate, and I can see that you want to protect her. Maybe you want to protect both of them. But if you expect to be forgiven for what you’ve done, then you have to see that your brother deserves a second chance too.”

“What do you think I’ve done? What did he tell you that I did?”

“That’s not important,” she says. “It’s in the past. I am sure you want it to stay there.”

I open my mouth and close it again. Because I want to defend myself, but it’s true that I’ve done bad things. Things that I want to stay in the past. But I also want to know what he told her, because I really doubt he told her the whole story.

The problem with people like Mrs. Wasserman is exactly this. She’s kind. She’s good. She wants to help people, even people that she shouldn’t. Like Barron. Like me. It’s easy to take advantage of her optimism, her faith in how the world should work.

I should know. I’ve already done it.

When I look into Mrs. Wasserman’s face, I know that she’s a born mark for this particular kind of con.

CHAPTER NINE

IF YOU ARE A CRAZY person who needs to have clandestine meetings, then, just like in real estate, what matters most is location, location, location.

You want to control the situation, so you better control the terrain. No surprises. No buildings, no trees, no shadowy corners where your enemies can hide. You want only those hidden spots that will be occupied by your people. But the place can’t be so open that a passerby would have a clear sight line. Clandestine meetings have to stay clandestine.

The baseball field isn’t a terrible choice. Far from other buildings. A nearby wooded area is the only place to hide, and it’s not that close by. The time’s good too. Six in the morning is too early for most students to be up, but there’s no rule against it. Mina won’t have to sneak out. And there’s enough time for an exchange of goods before classes start. The blackmailer could get the money, take their sweet time stashing it, and still make it to breakfast.

On the other hand, six in the morning seems way too early for girls pulling a prank to be anywhere but in bed. I figure they’ll be in their pajamas, leaning out of the windows of their dorm, jeering, when Mina returns from the baseball field after no one shows to the meeting. If I’m right, that’s what’s going to happen. Then the real negotiation starts, because I still have to somehow convince them to give up the camera and its contents. That’s when we’ll find out what’s really going on.

Sam’s alarm goes off like a siren at four thirty in the morning, an hour I hope I never see from this end again. I knock my phone onto the floor trying to turn it off, before I realize the sound is coming from a totally different part of the room.

“Get up,” I say, and throw a pillow in his direction.

“Your plan sucks,” Sam mumbles as he lurches out of bed and heads for the showers.

“Yeah,” I say softly to myself. “Tell me one thing that doesn’t suck right now.”

It’s too early for there to be any coffee. I stare dully at the empty pot in the common room, while Sam picks up a jar of instant grounds.

“Don’t,” I warn him.

He scoops up a heaping spoonful and, heedlessly, shoves it into his mouth. It crunches horribly. Then his eyes go wide.

“Dry,” he croaks. “Tongue . . . shriveling.”

I shake my head, picking up the jar. “It’s dehydrated. You’re supposed to add water. Good thing you’re mostly made of water.”

He tries to say something. Brown powder dusts his shirt.

“Also,” I tell him, “that’s decaf.”

He runs to the sink to spit it out. I grin. There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery.

By the time we’re outside, I feel a little more awake. It’s so early that the hazy fog of morning is still settling over the grass. Dew has crystallized on the bare branches of trees and on piles of fallen leaves, turning them pale with frost.

We trek over to the baseball field, the dampness wetting our shoes. No one is there yet, which is the idea. You never want to be the last person to a clandestine meeting.

“Now what?” Sam asks me.

I point toward the woods. It’s not ideal but will be close enough to see if anyone shows up, and after chasing down a death worker, I am confident that I can catch up to a student if I really have to.

The ground is frozen. The grass crunches as we sit. I get up to check from a few angles until I’m sure we’re pretty well hidden.

Mina arrives about fifteen minutes later, just at the point when I think that Sam is about to fidget himself to death. She’s clutching a paper bag nervously.

“Um, hello?” she calls from the edge of the trees.

“Here,” I say. “Don’t worry. Just go to the middle of the field—to the right, by first base—and make sure to turn so that we see you.”

“Okay,” Mina says, her voice shaking. “I’m sorry to have dragged you into this, but—”

“Not right now. Just go stand over there and wait.”

Sam lets out a long-suffering sigh as she walks off. “She’s scared.”

“I know,” I say. “I just didn’t know how to—We don’t have time for that.”

“You must be the worst boyfriend in the whole world,” Sam whispers.

>

“Just bring a big enough bag that it looks possible for you to have the cash.”

Mina looks disconsolately out the window and takes a shaky breath.

“It’s going to be fine,” I tell her, curling my gloved hand around her arm in what I hope is a sympathetic way. She looks tired.

The bell rings, loud enough to startle us. Mina jumps up and brushes off her skirt. When she tosses her hair, it moves like a wave. It moves the way hair does only in movies.

No real hair moves like that.

I take another look at her as she pushes a lock of it behind her ear. “You seem really nice,” she tells Sam. “Thanks for trying to help.”

There are no split ends, I realize. And while her bangs make it hard to see, the part on top of her head shows a color that’s subtly different from the rest of her skin.

Sam nods, expression grave. “Anything I can do.”

“We’ll figure this out,” I say.

She gives me one of those almost-smiles that some girls seem to be able to summon up, the kind where her lip trembles and she looks so vulnerable that you find yourself desperate for a way to turn it into a real smile. Her lashes are still wet from tears that never fell. I wonder what it would feel like to wipe those tears with my thumb. I imagine the softness of her cheek against my bare skin. Then she picks up a messenger bag covered in pictures of singing anthropomorphic strawberries and marches out of the library.

Her wig swings behind her.

The rest of the day is a blur of hastily composed texts that don’t get returned. Lila isn’t in the common room of her building, and I had to promise Sharone Nagel a copy of my statistics homework to get her to look. Lila’s car is not even in the lot. By the time I discover that she’s not at dinner, I am practically crawling out of my skin with my desire to find her.

Daneca doesn’t come to dinner either.

Sam at least is there, flipping through a catalog of masks, barely paying attention to the cooling mound of shepherd’s pie piled on his plate. “So,” he says, “are you going to tell me what this thing with Mina is really about?”

“Nothing to tell. We’re going to save a maiden in distress like old-timey knights. I just wish I knew exactly what distress we were saving her from. The whole thing is fishy.”

“You don’t believe what she said about the pictures?” he asks, pausing on a page with a rubbery werewolf snout that is supposed to be attached with spirit gum.

“I don’t know. All I’m sure of is that she’s lying about something. But maybe it’s nothing important. We all lie, right?”

That makes him snort. “So what’s the plan, Sir Bone-head?”

“Pretty much what I said. We see who shows up to blackmail Mina or who shows up to laugh at how gullible she is.”

I gaze across at where Mina is sitting with her friends, playing with a lock of her wig and drinking a diet soda. Even being nearly sure her hair isn’t real, I wonder at it. It looks real, better than real, rippling down her back in a glossy sheet.

Was she sick? If so, it must have been long enough ago that no one at Wallingford remembers her absence from school, but not so long ago that her hair has grown back. Or I guess it could be something else. Maybe she just likes the convenience of not worrying about styling it in the morning.

I wonder what would make someone want to blackmail a girl like her. Anyone could tell that her family isn’t flush if they just looked. Her watch is nice, but she always wears it. The leather band is worn. And her shoes are black ballet flats. Cute but cheap. It’s not that she can’t afford nice things. She has last year’s cell phone and a two-year-old laptop covered in pink crystals. That’s more than lots of people have. Plus she goes to Wallingford. It’s just that she wouldn’t be the person I’d target if I wanted to grift an easy five large. It has to be a prank.

Unless the blackmailer knows something I don’t.

After dinner I go back out to the parking lot, but Lila’s car still isn’t there. I consider that maybe she and Daneca are together, since neither of them were at dinner. Maybe Daneca listened to what I said about Barron, no matter what she pretended. Maybe she even started to doubt him. If she ran into Lila, then maybe that’s why Lila hasn’t called me back. Daneca’s house is close by; it would have been a small thing to go there for dinner. I imagine them in Daneca’s kitchen, eating pizza and talking about what jerks those Sharpe boys are. I don’t mind the thought. It is, in fact, a huge relief, compared to all the other possibilities. I have a couple of hours before in-room check and no better ideas, so I decide to drive by Daneca’s house.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that it’s ironic that Barron, who’s wrong about so many things, is right about me being a stalker.

After parking on her leaf-lined street in Princeton, I walk down the block, past stately brick dwellings, each one with a manicured lawn, sculpted bushes, and a shining door knocker. Each yard is full of fall decorations—dried corn and gourds or planters with stacked pyramids of pumpkins, even the occasional leftover scarecrow.

As I walk up the path to her house, I realize that I figured wrong. Neither car is in the driveway, and I’ve just come this way for nothing.

I turn around and am about to walk away when the front door opens and the porch light flickers on.

“Hello?” Daneca’s mother calls into the darkness. She’s got a gloved hand up, shadowing her eyes. The porch light does the useless thing that porch lights often do, nearly blinding her and rendering me just a shadow.

I walk closer. “It’s me, Mrs. Wasserman. Cassel. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Cassel?” she says, as though she’s still nervous. Maybe more nervous. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

“I was looking for Daneca. We’re seniors, so we can go off campus as long as we’re back on time. But, yeah, I should probably be at Wallingford. I’m going back there right now.” I make a vague gesture in the direction of where I parked.

She’s quiet for a long moment. Then she says, “I think you’d better come inside.”

I walk over the worn marble threshold and step onto the gleaming wooden floors. I smell the remainder of whatever they had for dinner—something with tomato sauce—and hear the television from the living room. Daneca’s father and her sort-of brother, Chris, are sitting on the couches, staring at the screen. Chris turns to glance in my direction as I pass, eyes bright with reflected light.

Mrs. Wasserman beckons me toward the kitchen, and I follow her.

“Do you want something to drink?” she asks, walking to the stove and filling the kettle. It reminds me uncomfortably of my mother in Zacharov’s house.

“I’m okay.”

She points to a chair. “Sit down at least.”

“Thanks,” I say, sitting awkwardly. “Look, I’m really sorry to bother you—”

“Why is it that you thought Daneca would be here instead of at Wallingford?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know where she is. All I want to do is talk to her about her boyfriend. She’s dating my brother. If you met him, you’d understand why I am—”

“I have met him,” Mrs. Wasserman says. “He came to dinner.”

“Oh,” I say slowly, because I bet he told her something bad enough to explain her discomfort around me. “Barron came here? To dinner. Here?”

“I just want you to remember, Cassel, I know how hard things can be for worker kids. For every kid like Chris who finds a place to call home, there are lots of other kids who are kicked out onto the streets, taken in by crime families and then sold off to the rich—forced to endure continual blowback so that other people can line their pockets, or they’re forced to become criminals themselves. And it must be even worse to be raised to believe you had to do those things. I don’t know what you’ve done or what your brother’s done, but—”

“What is it you think we did?”

She glances at my face, like she’s searching for something. Finally she says, “I don’t know. Daneca called here earlier today. She said that you didn’t approve of her going out with your brother. I know you’re worried about Daneca. You’re Sam’s roommate, and I can see that you want to protect her. Maybe you want to protect both of them. But if you expect to be forgiven for what you’ve done, then you have to see that your brother deserves a second chance too.”

“What do you think I’ve done? What did he tell you that I did?”

“That’s not important,” she says. “It’s in the past. I am sure you want it to stay there.”

I open my mouth and close it again. Because I want to defend myself, but it’s true that I’ve done bad things. Things that I want to stay in the past. But I also want to know what he told her, because I really doubt he told her the whole story.

The problem with people like Mrs. Wasserman is exactly this. She’s kind. She’s good. She wants to help people, even people that she shouldn’t. Like Barron. Like me. It’s easy to take advantage of her optimism, her faith in how the world should work.

I should know. I’ve already done it.

When I look into Mrs. Wasserman’s face, I know that she’s a born mark for this particular kind of con.

CHAPTER NINE

IF YOU ARE A CRAZY person who needs to have clandestine meetings, then, just like in real estate, what matters most is location, location, location.

You want to control the situation, so you better control the terrain. No surprises. No buildings, no trees, no shadowy corners where your enemies can hide. You want only those hidden spots that will be occupied by your people. But the place can’t be so open that a passerby would have a clear sight line. Clandestine meetings have to stay clandestine.

The baseball field isn’t a terrible choice. Far from other buildings. A nearby wooded area is the only place to hide, and it’s not that close by. The time’s good too. Six in the morning is too early for most students to be up, but there’s no rule against it. Mina won’t have to sneak out. And there’s enough time for an exchange of goods before classes start. The blackmailer could get the money, take their sweet time stashing it, and still make it to breakfast.

On the other hand, six in the morning seems way too early for girls pulling a prank to be anywhere but in bed. I figure they’ll be in their pajamas, leaning out of the windows of their dorm, jeering, when Mina returns from the baseball field after no one shows to the meeting. If I’m right, that’s what’s going to happen. Then the real negotiation starts, because I still have to somehow convince them to give up the camera and its contents. That’s when we’ll find out what’s really going on.

Sam’s alarm goes off like a siren at four thirty in the morning, an hour I hope I never see from this end again. I knock my phone onto the floor trying to turn it off, before I realize the sound is coming from a totally different part of the room.

“Get up,” I say, and throw a pillow in his direction.

“Your plan sucks,” Sam mumbles as he lurches out of bed and heads for the showers.

“Yeah,” I say softly to myself. “Tell me one thing that doesn’t suck right now.”

It’s too early for there to be any coffee. I stare dully at the empty pot in the common room, while Sam picks up a jar of instant grounds.

“Don’t,” I warn him.

He scoops up a heaping spoonful and, heedlessly, shoves it into his mouth. It crunches horribly. Then his eyes go wide.

“Dry,” he croaks. “Tongue . . . shriveling.”

I shake my head, picking up the jar. “It’s dehydrated. You’re supposed to add water. Good thing you’re mostly made of water.”

He tries to say something. Brown powder dusts his shirt.

“Also,” I tell him, “that’s decaf.”

He runs to the sink to spit it out. I grin. There’s nothing quite as funny as someone else’s misery.

By the time we’re outside, I feel a little more awake. It’s so early that the hazy fog of morning is still settling over the grass. Dew has crystallized on the bare branches of trees and on piles of fallen leaves, turning them pale with frost.

We trek over to the baseball field, the dampness wetting our shoes. No one is there yet, which is the idea. You never want to be the last person to a clandestine meeting.

“Now what?” Sam asks me.

I point toward the woods. It’s not ideal but will be close enough to see if anyone shows up, and after chasing down a death worker, I am confident that I can catch up to a student if I really have to.

The ground is frozen. The grass crunches as we sit. I get up to check from a few angles until I’m sure we’re pretty well hidden.

Mina arrives about fifteen minutes later, just at the point when I think that Sam is about to fidget himself to death. She’s clutching a paper bag nervously.

“Um, hello?” she calls from the edge of the trees.

“Here,” I say. “Don’t worry. Just go to the middle of the field—to the right, by first base—and make sure to turn so that we see you.”

“Okay,” Mina says, her voice shaking. “I’m sorry to have dragged you into this, but—”

“Not right now. Just go stand over there and wait.”

Sam lets out a long-suffering sigh as she walks off. “She’s scared.”

“I know,” I say. “I just didn’t know how to—We don’t have time for that.”

“You must be the worst boyfriend in the whole world,” Sam whispers.