Black Heart (Curse Workers 3)

“I knew you were too much of a wild card when we brought you in. You’re too dangerous. You’ll never be loyal. I tried to tell Yulikova, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, a little desperate. “I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her you’re right. Just let her know where we are.”

He laughs. “Nope. But, then, you’re not Cassel Sharpe anymore, are you? You’re Governor Patton.”

“Okay,” I say, fear making me babble. “Agent Jones, you’re one of the good guys. You’re supposed to be better than this. You’re a federal agent. Look, I’ll go back. I’ll confess. You can lock me up.”

“You should have just let us frame you,” Jones says, cutting off a length of silvery duct tape with an army knife. “If no one has any control—if you’re out there, free to make deals with anyone—how’s that going to be? It’s only a matter of time before some foreign government or some corporation makes you a deal. And then you will be the dangerous weapon we let slip through our fingers. Better to just take you out of the equation.”

It barely registers that I was right, that they were setting me up.

“But I signed the—”

He brings the tape down over my mouth. I try to spit and turn my head, but he gets it on, tight across my lips. For a moment I forget I can breathe through my nose and I panic, trying to suck in air.

“And while you were making your little speech, I had an idea. I called up some very bad people who are real eager to meet you. I think you know Ivan Zacharov, don’t you? Turns out he’s willing to pay a lot of money for the pleasure of personally murdering a certain governor.” He grins. “Bad luck for you, Cassel.”

As the trunk lid comes down, plunging me into darkness, and then the car starts to move, I wonder if I’ve ever had any other kind.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE AIR GETS WARM fast in the trunk, and the oil and gasoline fumes make me want to gag. Worse, every bump in the road sends me sliding around, banging against metal. I try to brace with my feet, but as soon as we turn a corner or hit a pothole, my head or arms or back smacks into one of the sides. The way I’m tied, I can’t even curl against the blow.

All told, this is a pretty bad way to spend the last hours of my life.

I try to think through my options, but they’re dismal. I can’t transform, not with three amulets around my neck. And since I can’t touch my own skin with my hands, even if I somehow managed to rip the amulets off, I’m not sure I could change myself anyway.

One thing I have to say for Agent Jones—he is thorough.

I hear the moment that we pull off the highway. The noise of traffic dims. Gravel under the tires sounds almost like heavy rain.

A few minutes later the engine gutters out and a car door slams. I hear voices, too distant and low to be recognized.

By the time Agent Jones opens up the trunk, I am wild-eyed with panic. The cold air rushes in, and I start struggling against my bonds, even though there’s no way that I am going to do anything but hurt myself.

He just watches me squirm.

Then he pulls out his knife and saws through the rope. I can finally extend my legs. I do so slowly, my knees hurting from being bent too long.

“Out,” he says. I struggle to sit up. He has to help me onto my feet.

We are outside, underneath a massive industrial structure, with huge iron framing pieces holding up a tower that looms above us, spewing fire into the cloudy late morning sky. Plumes of smoke rise to blot out the shining steel bridges leading to New York. It looks like it’s about to rain.

I turn my head and see that maybe ten feet away from me is another sleek black car, this one with Zacharov leaning against it, smoking a cigar. Stanley is standing next to him, screwing a silencer onto a very large black gun.

Then, just as I am sure nothing about this can get worse, the passenger door opens and Lila steps out.

She’s got on a black pencil skirt with a gray belted coat and calf-high leather boots. Sunglasses cover her eyes, and her mouth is painted the color of old blood. She’s got a briefcase in her gray gloved hands.

I have no way to signal her. Her only glance in my direction is cold and perfunctory.

I shake my head No, no, no. Agent Jones just laughs dryly. “Here he is, just like I promised. But I never want to see his body again. Do you understand?”

Lila sets down the suitcase next to her father. “I have your money,” she tells Jones.

“Good,” says Agent Jones. “Let’s get started.”

Zacharov nods, blowing a cloud of smoke that spirals up and away from him, like the plumes from one of the buildings. “What guarantee do I have that you aren’t going to try to pin it on my organization? Your offer came as a real surprise. We don’t make so many deals with representatives of the government.”

“This is just me. One man, doing what I think is right.” Agent Jones shrugs his shoulders. “Your guarantee is that I’m here. I’m going to watch you gun him down. My hands might be clean, but we’re both responsible for his death. Neither one of us wants an investigation. Forensics might find a way to place me at the scene. If I rat on you, I’ll go down for kidnapping at the very least. I’ll hold up my end of the bargain.”

Zacharov nods slowly.

“You got cold feet?” Jones asks. “You get to be a worker hero, and eliminate a guy who has been gunning for you lately.”

“That was a misunderstanding,” Zacharov says.

“You mean that you haven’t been sheltering Shandra Singer? My mistake.” Agent Jones doesn’t even attempt to disguise his sarcasm.

“We don’t have cold feet,” says Zacharov.

“I’ll do it,” Lila says. Then she looks at Stanley, pointing to the gun. “Give me that.”

I widen my eyes, pleading silently. I move my foot in the dirt, hoping I can spell something out fast. M, I try to manage, upside down, so she can read it. ME, I want it to say.

Agent Jones clocks me on the side of the head with the butt of his gun, hard enough to make the world shift out of focus. I feel like my brain is actually rattling around in my skull. I fall onto my stomach, hands still cuffed behind my back. I didn’t even see that he’d drawn a weapon.

I lie there, gasping.

“It’s so unexpectedly nice to see him squirming in the dirt,” Zacharov says, walking over to me and bending down to pat my cheek with one gloved hand. “Governor, did you really think that no one could touch you?”

I shake my head, not sure what that’s supposed to convey. Please, I think. Please ask me something you need answered. Please rip off the tape. Please.

Lila steps forward with the gun held at her side. She looks at me for a long moment.

Please.

Zacharov rises to his feet. His black coat swirls around him like a cape.

“Get him up,” he tells Agent Jones. “A man should be on his feet when he dies—even this man.”

Lila’s blond hair blows gently around her face, a halo of gold. She takes off her sunglasses. I’m glad. I want to look into her eyes one last time. Blue and green. The colors of the sea.

A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes.

At least it’s you pulling the trigger. I wish I could say that, if nothing else.

“Are you sure?” Zacharov asks her.

She nods, touching a gloved finger to her throat, almost unconsciously. “I took my marks. I’ll take the heat.”

“You’ll have to go into hiding until we’re sure it won’t be traced to you,” Zacharov says.

Lila nods again. “It’ll be worth it.”

Ruthless. That’s my girl.

Agent Jones pulls me to my feet. I stagger unsteadily, like a drunk. I want to cry out, but the tape smothers the sound.

The gun in her hand wavers.

I take one last look and then close my eyes so tightly that they’re wet at the corners. So tightly that spots dance in the blackness of my vision.

I wish I could tell her good-bye.

I expect the gunshot to be the loudest thing in the world, but I forgot about the silencer. All I hear is a gasp.

Lila is leaning over me, pulling off her gloves so that she can get a fingernail under the corner of the duct tape. She rips it off my mouth. I am looking up at the late morning sky, so grateful to be alive that I am barely conscious of the pain.

“I’m me,” I say, babbling. “Cassel. I swear it’s me—”

I don’t even remember falling, but I am lying on the gravel. Agent Jones is beside me, unmoving. Blood pools in the dirt. His blood, as bright as paint. I try to roll onto my side. Is he dead?

“I know.” She touches the side of my face with bare fingers.

“How?” I say. “How did you—When?”

“You are such a jackass,” she says. “Do you think I don’t watch television? I heard your insane speech. Of course I knew it was you. You told me about Patton.”

“Oh,” I say. “That. Of course.”

Stanley pats down Jones and unlocks my cuffs. As soon as they’re off and the duct tape is pulled away, taking skin and stone and ink with it, I rip at my collar, pulling off the amulets and throwing them onto the ground.

All I want is to get out of this body.

For the first time the pain of the blowback feels like a release.

I wake up on an unfamiliar couch, with a blanket slung over me. I start to sit up, and realize that Zacharov’s sitting on the other side of the room, in a shallow pool of light, reading.

The glare of the bulb is giving his face the hard lines of a sculpture. A study of a crime boss in repose.

He looks up and smiles. “Feeling better?”

“I guess so,” I say, as formally as I can manage from a mostly prone position. My voice creaks. “Yeah.”

I sit upright, smoothing out the wrinkled mess of my suit. It doesn’t fit anymore, my arms and legs too long for the sleeves and pants, the body of it hanging off me like extra skin.

“Lila’s upstairs,” he says. “Helping your mother pack. You can take Shandra home.”

“But I didn’t find the diamond—”

He puts down the book. “I don’t hand out compliments easily, but what you did—it was impressive.” He chuckles. “You single-handedly torpedoed a piece of legislation I’ve been working toward ending for a long while, and you eliminated a political enemy of mine. We’re square, Cassel.”

“Square?” I echo, because I can’t quite believe it. “But I—”

“Of course, if you do find the diamond, I would really appreciate your returning it to me. I can’t believe your mother lost it.”

“That’s because you’ve never been to our house,” I say, which isn’t exactly true. He was in the kitchen once—and maybe he was there other times I didn’t know about. “You and my mother have had quite a history.” After the words come out of my mouth, I realize that whatever he says next isn’t something I want to hear.

He looks faintly amused. “There’s something about her—Cassel, I have met many evil men and women in my life. I have made deals with them, drank with them. I have done things that I myself have difficulty reconciling—terrible things. But I have never known anyone like your mother. She is a person without limits—or if she has any, she hasn’t found them yet. She never needs to reconcile anything.”

He says this thoughtfully, admiringly. I look at the glass on the side table next to him and wonder how much he’s had to drink.

“She fascinated me when we were younger—I met her through your grandfather. We—she and I—never much liked each other, except when we did. But—Whatever she said to you about what was between her and me, I want you to know that I always respected your father. He was as honest as any criminal can hope to be.”

I’m not sure I want to hear this, but suddenly it becomes clear why he’s telling me: He doesn’t want me to be angry on my father’s behalf even though he knows I know he slept with my mother. I clear my throat. “Look, I don’t pretend to understand—I don’t want to understand. That’s your business and her business.”

He nods. “Good.”

“I think my dad took it from her,” I say. “I think that’s why it’s gone. He had it.”

Zacharov looks at me oddly.

“The diamond,” I say, realizing I wasn’t making any sense. “I think my dad took the diamond from my mom and replaced it with a fake. So that she never knew it was gone.”

“Cassel, stealing the Resurrection Diamond is like stealing the Mona Lisa. If you have a buyer lined up, then you might get something close to its real value, but otherwise you steal it because you’re an art lover or just to show the world that you can. You can’t fence it. There would be too much attention. You would have to cut it into pieces, and then it would only fetch a fraction of its worth. For that, you might as well steal a handful of white diamonds at any jewelry store in town.”

“You could ransom it,” I say, thinking of my mother and her crazy plan to get money.

“But your father didn’t,” Zacharov says. “If he had it. Although he would have had it for only a couple of months.”

I give him a long look.

He snorts. “You aren’t seriously asking yourself if I caused your father to have a car accident, are you? I think you know me better than that. If I’d killed a man who I knew had stolen from me, I would have made him an example. No one would have failed to know who was responsible for a death like that. But I never suspected your father. He was a small-time operator, not greedy. Your mother I considered, but dismissed. Wrongly, as it turns out.”

>

“I knew you were too much of a wild card when we brought you in. You’re too dangerous. You’ll never be loyal. I tried to tell Yulikova, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“I’m sorry,” I say, a little desperate. “I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her you’re right. Just let her know where we are.”

He laughs. “Nope. But, then, you’re not Cassel Sharpe anymore, are you? You’re Governor Patton.”

“Okay,” I say, fear making me babble. “Agent Jones, you’re one of the good guys. You’re supposed to be better than this. You’re a federal agent. Look, I’ll go back. I’ll confess. You can lock me up.”

“You should have just let us frame you,” Jones says, cutting off a length of silvery duct tape with an army knife. “If no one has any control—if you’re out there, free to make deals with anyone—how’s that going to be? It’s only a matter of time before some foreign government or some corporation makes you a deal. And then you will be the dangerous weapon we let slip through our fingers. Better to just take you out of the equation.”

It barely registers that I was right, that they were setting me up.

“But I signed the—”

He brings the tape down over my mouth. I try to spit and turn my head, but he gets it on, tight across my lips. For a moment I forget I can breathe through my nose and I panic, trying to suck in air.

“And while you were making your little speech, I had an idea. I called up some very bad people who are real eager to meet you. I think you know Ivan Zacharov, don’t you? Turns out he’s willing to pay a lot of money for the pleasure of personally murdering a certain governor.” He grins. “Bad luck for you, Cassel.”

As the trunk lid comes down, plunging me into darkness, and then the car starts to move, I wonder if I’ve ever had any other kind.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE AIR GETS WARM fast in the trunk, and the oil and gasoline fumes make me want to gag. Worse, every bump in the road sends me sliding around, banging against metal. I try to brace with my feet, but as soon as we turn a corner or hit a pothole, my head or arms or back smacks into one of the sides. The way I’m tied, I can’t even curl against the blow.

All told, this is a pretty bad way to spend the last hours of my life.

I try to think through my options, but they’re dismal. I can’t transform, not with three amulets around my neck. And since I can’t touch my own skin with my hands, even if I somehow managed to rip the amulets off, I’m not sure I could change myself anyway.

One thing I have to say for Agent Jones—he is thorough.

I hear the moment that we pull off the highway. The noise of traffic dims. Gravel under the tires sounds almost like heavy rain.

A few minutes later the engine gutters out and a car door slams. I hear voices, too distant and low to be recognized.

By the time Agent Jones opens up the trunk, I am wild-eyed with panic. The cold air rushes in, and I start struggling against my bonds, even though there’s no way that I am going to do anything but hurt myself.

He just watches me squirm.

Then he pulls out his knife and saws through the rope. I can finally extend my legs. I do so slowly, my knees hurting from being bent too long.

“Out,” he says. I struggle to sit up. He has to help me onto my feet.

We are outside, underneath a massive industrial structure, with huge iron framing pieces holding up a tower that looms above us, spewing fire into the cloudy late morning sky. Plumes of smoke rise to blot out the shining steel bridges leading to New York. It looks like it’s about to rain.

I turn my head and see that maybe ten feet away from me is another sleek black car, this one with Zacharov leaning against it, smoking a cigar. Stanley is standing next to him, screwing a silencer onto a very large black gun.

Then, just as I am sure nothing about this can get worse, the passenger door opens and Lila steps out.

She’s got on a black pencil skirt with a gray belted coat and calf-high leather boots. Sunglasses cover her eyes, and her mouth is painted the color of old blood. She’s got a briefcase in her gray gloved hands.

I have no way to signal her. Her only glance in my direction is cold and perfunctory.

I shake my head No, no, no. Agent Jones just laughs dryly. “Here he is, just like I promised. But I never want to see his body again. Do you understand?”

Lila sets down the suitcase next to her father. “I have your money,” she tells Jones.

“Good,” says Agent Jones. “Let’s get started.”

Zacharov nods, blowing a cloud of smoke that spirals up and away from him, like the plumes from one of the buildings. “What guarantee do I have that you aren’t going to try to pin it on my organization? Your offer came as a real surprise. We don’t make so many deals with representatives of the government.”

“This is just me. One man, doing what I think is right.” Agent Jones shrugs his shoulders. “Your guarantee is that I’m here. I’m going to watch you gun him down. My hands might be clean, but we’re both responsible for his death. Neither one of us wants an investigation. Forensics might find a way to place me at the scene. If I rat on you, I’ll go down for kidnapping at the very least. I’ll hold up my end of the bargain.”

Zacharov nods slowly.

“You got cold feet?” Jones asks. “You get to be a worker hero, and eliminate a guy who has been gunning for you lately.”

“That was a misunderstanding,” Zacharov says.

“You mean that you haven’t been sheltering Shandra Singer? My mistake.” Agent Jones doesn’t even attempt to disguise his sarcasm.

“We don’t have cold feet,” says Zacharov.

“I’ll do it,” Lila says. Then she looks at Stanley, pointing to the gun. “Give me that.”

I widen my eyes, pleading silently. I move my foot in the dirt, hoping I can spell something out fast. M, I try to manage, upside down, so she can read it. ME, I want it to say.

Agent Jones clocks me on the side of the head with the butt of his gun, hard enough to make the world shift out of focus. I feel like my brain is actually rattling around in my skull. I fall onto my stomach, hands still cuffed behind my back. I didn’t even see that he’d drawn a weapon.

I lie there, gasping.

“It’s so unexpectedly nice to see him squirming in the dirt,” Zacharov says, walking over to me and bending down to pat my cheek with one gloved hand. “Governor, did you really think that no one could touch you?”

I shake my head, not sure what that’s supposed to convey. Please, I think. Please ask me something you need answered. Please rip off the tape. Please.

Lila steps forward with the gun held at her side. She looks at me for a long moment.

Please.

Zacharov rises to his feet. His black coat swirls around him like a cape.

“Get him up,” he tells Agent Jones. “A man should be on his feet when he dies—even this man.”

Lila’s blond hair blows gently around her face, a halo of gold. She takes off her sunglasses. I’m glad. I want to look into her eyes one last time. Blue and green. The colors of the sea.

A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes.

At least it’s you pulling the trigger. I wish I could say that, if nothing else.

“Are you sure?” Zacharov asks her.

She nods, touching a gloved finger to her throat, almost unconsciously. “I took my marks. I’ll take the heat.”

“You’ll have to go into hiding until we’re sure it won’t be traced to you,” Zacharov says.

Lila nods again. “It’ll be worth it.”

Ruthless. That’s my girl.

Agent Jones pulls me to my feet. I stagger unsteadily, like a drunk. I want to cry out, but the tape smothers the sound.

The gun in her hand wavers.

I take one last look and then close my eyes so tightly that they’re wet at the corners. So tightly that spots dance in the blackness of my vision.

I wish I could tell her good-bye.

I expect the gunshot to be the loudest thing in the world, but I forgot about the silencer. All I hear is a gasp.

Lila is leaning over me, pulling off her gloves so that she can get a fingernail under the corner of the duct tape. She rips it off my mouth. I am looking up at the late morning sky, so grateful to be alive that I am barely conscious of the pain.

“I’m me,” I say, babbling. “Cassel. I swear it’s me—”

I don’t even remember falling, but I am lying on the gravel. Agent Jones is beside me, unmoving. Blood pools in the dirt. His blood, as bright as paint. I try to roll onto my side. Is he dead?

“I know.” She touches the side of my face with bare fingers.

“How?” I say. “How did you—When?”

“You are such a jackass,” she says. “Do you think I don’t watch television? I heard your insane speech. Of course I knew it was you. You told me about Patton.”

“Oh,” I say. “That. Of course.”

Stanley pats down Jones and unlocks my cuffs. As soon as they’re off and the duct tape is pulled away, taking skin and stone and ink with it, I rip at my collar, pulling off the amulets and throwing them onto the ground.

All I want is to get out of this body.

For the first time the pain of the blowback feels like a release.

I wake up on an unfamiliar couch, with a blanket slung over me. I start to sit up, and realize that Zacharov’s sitting on the other side of the room, in a shallow pool of light, reading.

The glare of the bulb is giving his face the hard lines of a sculpture. A study of a crime boss in repose.

He looks up and smiles. “Feeling better?”

“I guess so,” I say, as formally as I can manage from a mostly prone position. My voice creaks. “Yeah.”

I sit upright, smoothing out the wrinkled mess of my suit. It doesn’t fit anymore, my arms and legs too long for the sleeves and pants, the body of it hanging off me like extra skin.

“Lila’s upstairs,” he says. “Helping your mother pack. You can take Shandra home.”

“But I didn’t find the diamond—”

He puts down the book. “I don’t hand out compliments easily, but what you did—it was impressive.” He chuckles. “You single-handedly torpedoed a piece of legislation I’ve been working toward ending for a long while, and you eliminated a political enemy of mine. We’re square, Cassel.”

“Square?” I echo, because I can’t quite believe it. “But I—”

“Of course, if you do find the diamond, I would really appreciate your returning it to me. I can’t believe your mother lost it.”

“That’s because you’ve never been to our house,” I say, which isn’t exactly true. He was in the kitchen once—and maybe he was there other times I didn’t know about. “You and my mother have had quite a history.” After the words come out of my mouth, I realize that whatever he says next isn’t something I want to hear.

He looks faintly amused. “There’s something about her—Cassel, I have met many evil men and women in my life. I have made deals with them, drank with them. I have done things that I myself have difficulty reconciling—terrible things. But I have never known anyone like your mother. She is a person without limits—or if she has any, she hasn’t found them yet. She never needs to reconcile anything.”

He says this thoughtfully, admiringly. I look at the glass on the side table next to him and wonder how much he’s had to drink.

“She fascinated me when we were younger—I met her through your grandfather. We—she and I—never much liked each other, except when we did. But—Whatever she said to you about what was between her and me, I want you to know that I always respected your father. He was as honest as any criminal can hope to be.”

I’m not sure I want to hear this, but suddenly it becomes clear why he’s telling me: He doesn’t want me to be angry on my father’s behalf even though he knows I know he slept with my mother. I clear my throat. “Look, I don’t pretend to understand—I don’t want to understand. That’s your business and her business.”

He nods. “Good.”

“I think my dad took it from her,” I say. “I think that’s why it’s gone. He had it.”

Zacharov looks at me oddly.

“The diamond,” I say, realizing I wasn’t making any sense. “I think my dad took the diamond from my mom and replaced it with a fake. So that she never knew it was gone.”

“Cassel, stealing the Resurrection Diamond is like stealing the Mona Lisa. If you have a buyer lined up, then you might get something close to its real value, but otherwise you steal it because you’re an art lover or just to show the world that you can. You can’t fence it. There would be too much attention. You would have to cut it into pieces, and then it would only fetch a fraction of its worth. For that, you might as well steal a handful of white diamonds at any jewelry store in town.”

“You could ransom it,” I say, thinking of my mother and her crazy plan to get money.

“But your father didn’t,” Zacharov says. “If he had it. Although he would have had it for only a couple of months.”

I give him a long look.

He snorts. “You aren’t seriously asking yourself if I caused your father to have a car accident, are you? I think you know me better than that. If I’d killed a man who I knew had stolen from me, I would have made him an example. No one would have failed to know who was responsible for a death like that. But I never suspected your father. He was a small-time operator, not greedy. Your mother I considered, but dismissed. Wrongly, as it turns out.”