Black Heart (Curse Workers 3)

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.

Barron pushes open the door. A bell rings as we walk in, and a man behind the counter looks up. He’s short and balding, with huge horn-rimmed glasses and a jeweler’s loupe on a long chain around his neck. He’s dressed tidily in a black button-up shirt. Fat rings sparkle over his gloves on each of his fingers.

“Are you Bob?” I say, walking up to the counter.

“Who’s asking?” he says.

“I’m Cassel Sharpe,” I tell him. “This is my brother Barron. You knew our father. I don’t know if you remember him, but—”

He breaks into a huge grin. “Look at you! All grown up. I saw pictures of the three of you Sharpe boys in your daddy’s wallet, God rest his soul.” He claps me on the shoulder. “Getting into the business? Whatever it is you need, Bob can make it.”

I glance around the shop. A woman and her daughter are looking at a case of crosses. They don’t seem to be paying attention to us, but we are probably the kind of people you try a little harder not to notice.

I lower my voice. “We want to talk to you about a custom piece you already made—for our mother. Can we go somewhere in the back?”

“Sure, sure. Come into my office.”

We follow him past a curtain made from a blanket stapled to the top of a plastic door frame. The office is a mess, with a computer in the center of a sagging wooden rolltop desk, the surface covered completely in papers. One of the drawers is open, and inside are watch parts and tiny glassine bags with stones in them.

I pick up an envelope. The name on it is Robert Peck. Bob.

“We want to know about the Resurrection Diamond,” Barron says.

“Whoa.” Bob holds up his hands. “I don’t know how you heard anything about that, but—”

“We saw the fake you made,” I say. “Now we want to know about the real thing. We need to know what happened to it. Did you sell it?”

Barron walks intimidatingly close to Bob. “You know, I work memories. Maybe I could help you recall something.”

“Look,” Bob says, his voice quavering slightly, rising a little too high. “I don’t know what’s made the two of you take this unfriendly tone with me. I was a good friend to your father. And I never told nobody that I’d copied the Resurrection Diamond—that I knew who’d stolen it. How many people would do that, huh, when there was so much money on the line? If you think I know where your father kept it or if he sold it, I don’t. We were close, but not close like that. All I did was make the fakes.”

“Wait. I thought you made the stone for my mother,” I say. “And what do you mean, fakes? How many?”

“Two. That’s what your dad asked for. And there was no way I switched anything. He didn’t let me keep the original diamond for longer than it took to take the measurements and some photographs. He was no fool, you know. You think he’d let something that valuable out of his sight?”

I exchange a look with Barron. Dad was a lot of things, but he wasn’t lazy about a con.

“So what happened?” I ask.

Bob takes a few steps away from us and opens a drawer in his desk, pulls out a bottle of bourbon. He screws off the cap and takes a long pull.

Then he shakes his head, like he’s trying to shake off the burn in his throat.

“Nothing,” he says finally. “Your father came in here with that damn stone. Said he needed the two copies.”

I frown. “Why two?”

“How the hell should I know? One fake I set on the gold tie pin where the original had been. The other I put in a ring. But the original, the real one? I kept that loose, just the way your father wanted it.”

“Are they good fakes?” Barron asks.

Bob shakes his head again. “Not the one on the pin. Phil came in here, wanting it fast, you know? Within the day. But the second one, he gave me some more time. That was a fine piece of work. Now, are you two going to tell me what this is about?”

I glance at Barron. A muscle in his jaw is jumping, but I can’t tell if he believes Bob or not. I’m trying to think, to play this thing through. So maybe Mom gives Dad the stone and says she needs a fake really fast, before Zacharov notices that the piece is gone. Dad goes straight to Bob, but he asks for two stones, because he already knows that he’s going to steal the diamond for himself—maybe out of spite, since he discovered that Mom was screwing around with Zacharov? Anyway, Dad brings her one of the fakes, and she slips it back to Zacharov before he notices that it’s gone. Then Dad tells her he has a present for her—a ring with the Resurrection Diamond set in it, which is actually the second fake. If that’s what happened, the original could be anywhere. Dad could have sold it years ago.

But why put the diamond in a ring that Mom can’t wear outside the house without drawing attention? That, I’m not sure about. Maybe he was so pissed off that he liked seeing it on her hand and knowing he’d gotten one over on her.

“What would something like that be worth on the black market?” I ask.

“The real thing?” Bob asks. “Depends if you really believe it’ll keep you from getting killed. As a stone with historical value, sure, it’s something, but the kind of people who buy rocks like that don’t want something they can’t show off. But if you believe—Well, what’s the price on invulnerability?”

Barron gets a glint in his eye that tells me he’s considering the question seriously rather than rhetorically, pricing the thing out in dollars and cents. “Millions,” he says finally.

Bob pokes Barron’s chest with his gloved finger. “Next time, before you come in here acting heavy, you get your story straight. I’m a businessman. I don’t cheat the families, I don’t cheat other workers, and I don’t cheat my friends, no matter what your mother told you. Now, before you go, you better be buying something nice. Something expensive—you get me? Otherwise I’m going to tell a couple of my friends how rude you boys were to Bob.”

We go out to the counter. Bob pulls out a couple of pieces that are in the right price range for our transgression. Barron picks out a diamond heart set in white gold for nearly a grand. I manage to seem convincingly broke—something that isn’t hard, since it’s true—and am allowed to buy a much cheaper ruby pendant.

“Girls like presents,” Bob tells us as he lets us out of the store, adjusting his glasses. “You want to be a charming guy like me, you got to shower your girl with gifts. Give my best to your mother, boys. She looks good on the news. That woman always knew how to take care of herself!”

He winks, and I’m ready to slug him, but Barron grabs my arm. “Come on. I don’t want to have to buy the matching earrings.”

We march back to the car. Our first mission together, and it was pretty much a bust. I rest my head against the frame while Barron takes out the keys.

“Well, that was . . . interesting,” he says, unlocking the doors with a click. “For a dead end.”

I get in, sliding into the passenger seat with a groan. “How the hell are we going to find this thing? The stone’s gone. There’s just no way.”

He nods. “Maybe we should try to think if there’s something else we can give Zacharov?”

“There’s me,” I say. “I could—”

The car starts, and he pulls away from the curb, veering into traffic like he’s daring the other cars to a game of chicken. “Nah. You’re already mortgaged to the hilt. But hey, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Mom has a nice apartment to stay in and an older gentleman to keep her company. Three square meals. Patton can’t get to her. What exactly are we trying to save her from? Given what we know about her history with Zacharov, she might even be getting—”

I hold up a hand to ward off whatever he’s about to say next. “LALALA. I can’t hear you.”

He laughs. “I’m just figuring that maybe she might be better off unsaved—safer, happier—which is excellent, because, as you said, our chances of finding that stone are pretty much zero.”

I tip my head back against the seat, looking up at the Ferrari’s tinted sunroof. “Just drop me at Wallingford.”

He pulls out his phone and texts while he drives, making him nearly pull into another lane by accident. A moment later his phone buzzes and he glances at the screen. “Yeah, okay. That’s perfect, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hot date,” he says, grinning. “I need you gone.”

“I knew it,” I say. “I so knew you weren’t dressed up like that to go to Paterson with me and meet Bob.”

Barron takes his hands away from the wheel to straighten his lapels and to tuck his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I think Bob appreciated my outfit. He made me buy the more expensive pendant. You might think that was to my disadvantage, but I accept that status comes with a price.”

“Not usually so immediately.” I shake my head. “You better not be hitting on federal agent ladies. They’ll arrest you.”

His grin widens. “I like handcuffs.”

I groan. “There is something seriously wrong with you.”

“Nothing that a night being worked over by a hot representative of justice couldn’t fix.”

I study the clouds through the sunroof. I think I see one in the shape of a bazooka. “Hey, so do you think Dad lied to Mom about the second fake diamond? Or do you think Mom lied to us?”

“To you,” he says. “She didn’t even try to tell me.” The smile has curled off his mouth.

“Yeah.” I sigh. “Either way it’s a hell of a dead end.”

Barron nods. His foot presses the accelerator harder, and he veers into the fast lane. I don’t protest. At least he has something good to race back to.

Barron drops me in front of Strong House. I slide out of the car and stretch. Then I yawn slowly. It’s just barely nightfall. The last of the sun is still blazing on the horizon, making all the buildings look like they’re catching fire.

“Thanks for the ride,” I say.

“Okay, well,” he says, his voice full of impatience. “Sorry, but you’ve gotta scram. Call me when you talk to Mom—so long as it’s not tonight.”

I smirk and slam the car door. “Have fun on your date.”

“Byeee,” he says, and waves. As I head toward the dorm, I glance back at the parking lot. I keep expecting a sweep of headlights as he pulls out, but the Ferrari’s still there. He’s only rolled it forward a little. Is he seriously waiting until I get to the door of my dorm, like I’m a little kid who can’t be trusted to make it home after dark? Am I in some danger I don’t know about? I can’t think of a good reason for him to keep idling near the curb when he so obviously wanted to get going.

I walk into the building, my scheming brain still rearranging the puzzle pieces. It takes me until I get to the hallway, fishing for my dorm key in the back pocket of my jeans, before I stop abruptly.

He wanted me to get going.

I run into the common room, ignoring Chaiyawat Terweil’s cry of protest when I jump over the cords connecting his PlayStation to the television. Then I drop to my knees in front of the window. Peering out, half-hidden behind a dusty curtain, I watch as a figure steps out of shadow, walks to where Barron is waiting, and opens the passenger side door.

She’s not wearing her uniform, but I know her just the same.

Daneca.

Purple-tipped braids glowing under the streetlight. Heels a lot higher than anything I’ve ever seen her in—high enough for her to wobble as she bends down. There’s no reason on earth why she should glance back at the Wallingford campus like she’s afraid of someone seeing her, no reason for her to be getting into my brother’s car, no reason for her to be dressed like that, no reason that makes sense. No reason but one.

The boy she’s been dating is my brother.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THERE IS NO WAY I can tell Sam.

He’s in our dorm room, still looking pretty hung over, sipping on a can of coconut water. “Hey,” he says, rolling toward me on his cot. “Your grandfather is a madman, you know that? After we finished with the poker, he showed me a bunch of old photos. I thought they were going to be pictures of you as a kid, but no. They were vintage snapshots of burlesque ladies with no gloves. From back in the day.”

I force a grin. I’m still thinking about Daneca and my brother, wondering how many times she’s been out with Barron, wondering why she ever went out with him even once. It’s hard to concentrate. “You looked at porn with my grandfather?”

>

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.

Barron pushes open the door. A bell rings as we walk in, and a man behind the counter looks up. He’s short and balding, with huge horn-rimmed glasses and a jeweler’s loupe on a long chain around his neck. He’s dressed tidily in a black button-up shirt. Fat rings sparkle over his gloves on each of his fingers.

“Are you Bob?” I say, walking up to the counter.

“Who’s asking?” he says.

“I’m Cassel Sharpe,” I tell him. “This is my brother Barron. You knew our father. I don’t know if you remember him, but—”

He breaks into a huge grin. “Look at you! All grown up. I saw pictures of the three of you Sharpe boys in your daddy’s wallet, God rest his soul.” He claps me on the shoulder. “Getting into the business? Whatever it is you need, Bob can make it.”

I glance around the shop. A woman and her daughter are looking at a case of crosses. They don’t seem to be paying attention to us, but we are probably the kind of people you try a little harder not to notice.

I lower my voice. “We want to talk to you about a custom piece you already made—for our mother. Can we go somewhere in the back?”

“Sure, sure. Come into my office.”

We follow him past a curtain made from a blanket stapled to the top of a plastic door frame. The office is a mess, with a computer in the center of a sagging wooden rolltop desk, the surface covered completely in papers. One of the drawers is open, and inside are watch parts and tiny glassine bags with stones in them.

I pick up an envelope. The name on it is Robert Peck. Bob.

“We want to know about the Resurrection Diamond,” Barron says.

“Whoa.” Bob holds up his hands. “I don’t know how you heard anything about that, but—”

“We saw the fake you made,” I say. “Now we want to know about the real thing. We need to know what happened to it. Did you sell it?”

Barron walks intimidatingly close to Bob. “You know, I work memories. Maybe I could help you recall something.”

“Look,” Bob says, his voice quavering slightly, rising a little too high. “I don’t know what’s made the two of you take this unfriendly tone with me. I was a good friend to your father. And I never told nobody that I’d copied the Resurrection Diamond—that I knew who’d stolen it. How many people would do that, huh, when there was so much money on the line? If you think I know where your father kept it or if he sold it, I don’t. We were close, but not close like that. All I did was make the fakes.”

“Wait. I thought you made the stone for my mother,” I say. “And what do you mean, fakes? How many?”

“Two. That’s what your dad asked for. And there was no way I switched anything. He didn’t let me keep the original diamond for longer than it took to take the measurements and some photographs. He was no fool, you know. You think he’d let something that valuable out of his sight?”

I exchange a look with Barron. Dad was a lot of things, but he wasn’t lazy about a con.

“So what happened?” I ask.

Bob takes a few steps away from us and opens a drawer in his desk, pulls out a bottle of bourbon. He screws off the cap and takes a long pull.

Then he shakes his head, like he’s trying to shake off the burn in his throat.

“Nothing,” he says finally. “Your father came in here with that damn stone. Said he needed the two copies.”

I frown. “Why two?”

“How the hell should I know? One fake I set on the gold tie pin where the original had been. The other I put in a ring. But the original, the real one? I kept that loose, just the way your father wanted it.”

“Are they good fakes?” Barron asks.

Bob shakes his head again. “Not the one on the pin. Phil came in here, wanting it fast, you know? Within the day. But the second one, he gave me some more time. That was a fine piece of work. Now, are you two going to tell me what this is about?”

I glance at Barron. A muscle in his jaw is jumping, but I can’t tell if he believes Bob or not. I’m trying to think, to play this thing through. So maybe Mom gives Dad the stone and says she needs a fake really fast, before Zacharov notices that the piece is gone. Dad goes straight to Bob, but he asks for two stones, because he already knows that he’s going to steal the diamond for himself—maybe out of spite, since he discovered that Mom was screwing around with Zacharov? Anyway, Dad brings her one of the fakes, and she slips it back to Zacharov before he notices that it’s gone. Then Dad tells her he has a present for her—a ring with the Resurrection Diamond set in it, which is actually the second fake. If that’s what happened, the original could be anywhere. Dad could have sold it years ago.

But why put the diamond in a ring that Mom can’t wear outside the house without drawing attention? That, I’m not sure about. Maybe he was so pissed off that he liked seeing it on her hand and knowing he’d gotten one over on her.

“What would something like that be worth on the black market?” I ask.

“The real thing?” Bob asks. “Depends if you really believe it’ll keep you from getting killed. As a stone with historical value, sure, it’s something, but the kind of people who buy rocks like that don’t want something they can’t show off. But if you believe—Well, what’s the price on invulnerability?”

Barron gets a glint in his eye that tells me he’s considering the question seriously rather than rhetorically, pricing the thing out in dollars and cents. “Millions,” he says finally.

Bob pokes Barron’s chest with his gloved finger. “Next time, before you come in here acting heavy, you get your story straight. I’m a businessman. I don’t cheat the families, I don’t cheat other workers, and I don’t cheat my friends, no matter what your mother told you. Now, before you go, you better be buying something nice. Something expensive—you get me? Otherwise I’m going to tell a couple of my friends how rude you boys were to Bob.”

We go out to the counter. Bob pulls out a couple of pieces that are in the right price range for our transgression. Barron picks out a diamond heart set in white gold for nearly a grand. I manage to seem convincingly broke—something that isn’t hard, since it’s true—and am allowed to buy a much cheaper ruby pendant.

“Girls like presents,” Bob tells us as he lets us out of the store, adjusting his glasses. “You want to be a charming guy like me, you got to shower your girl with gifts. Give my best to your mother, boys. She looks good on the news. That woman always knew how to take care of herself!”

He winks, and I’m ready to slug him, but Barron grabs my arm. “Come on. I don’t want to have to buy the matching earrings.”

We march back to the car. Our first mission together, and it was pretty much a bust. I rest my head against the frame while Barron takes out the keys.

“Well, that was . . . interesting,” he says, unlocking the doors with a click. “For a dead end.”

I get in, sliding into the passenger seat with a groan. “How the hell are we going to find this thing? The stone’s gone. There’s just no way.”

He nods. “Maybe we should try to think if there’s something else we can give Zacharov?”

“There’s me,” I say. “I could—”

The car starts, and he pulls away from the curb, veering into traffic like he’s daring the other cars to a game of chicken. “Nah. You’re already mortgaged to the hilt. But hey, maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. Mom has a nice apartment to stay in and an older gentleman to keep her company. Three square meals. Patton can’t get to her. What exactly are we trying to save her from? Given what we know about her history with Zacharov, she might even be getting—”

I hold up a hand to ward off whatever he’s about to say next. “LALALA. I can’t hear you.”

He laughs. “I’m just figuring that maybe she might be better off unsaved—safer, happier—which is excellent, because, as you said, our chances of finding that stone are pretty much zero.”

I tip my head back against the seat, looking up at the Ferrari’s tinted sunroof. “Just drop me at Wallingford.”

He pulls out his phone and texts while he drives, making him nearly pull into another lane by accident. A moment later his phone buzzes and he glances at the screen. “Yeah, okay. That’s perfect, then.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hot date,” he says, grinning. “I need you gone.”

“I knew it,” I say. “I so knew you weren’t dressed up like that to go to Paterson with me and meet Bob.”

Barron takes his hands away from the wheel to straighten his lapels and to tuck his phone into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I think Bob appreciated my outfit. He made me buy the more expensive pendant. You might think that was to my disadvantage, but I accept that status comes with a price.”

“Not usually so immediately.” I shake my head. “You better not be hitting on federal agent ladies. They’ll arrest you.”

His grin widens. “I like handcuffs.”

I groan. “There is something seriously wrong with you.”

“Nothing that a night being worked over by a hot representative of justice couldn’t fix.”

I study the clouds through the sunroof. I think I see one in the shape of a bazooka. “Hey, so do you think Dad lied to Mom about the second fake diamond? Or do you think Mom lied to us?”

“To you,” he says. “She didn’t even try to tell me.” The smile has curled off his mouth.

“Yeah.” I sigh. “Either way it’s a hell of a dead end.”

Barron nods. His foot presses the accelerator harder, and he veers into the fast lane. I don’t protest. At least he has something good to race back to.

Barron drops me in front of Strong House. I slide out of the car and stretch. Then I yawn slowly. It’s just barely nightfall. The last of the sun is still blazing on the horizon, making all the buildings look like they’re catching fire.

“Thanks for the ride,” I say.

“Okay, well,” he says, his voice full of impatience. “Sorry, but you’ve gotta scram. Call me when you talk to Mom—so long as it’s not tonight.”

I smirk and slam the car door. “Have fun on your date.”

“Byeee,” he says, and waves. As I head toward the dorm, I glance back at the parking lot. I keep expecting a sweep of headlights as he pulls out, but the Ferrari’s still there. He’s only rolled it forward a little. Is he seriously waiting until I get to the door of my dorm, like I’m a little kid who can’t be trusted to make it home after dark? Am I in some danger I don’t know about? I can’t think of a good reason for him to keep idling near the curb when he so obviously wanted to get going.

I walk into the building, my scheming brain still rearranging the puzzle pieces. It takes me until I get to the hallway, fishing for my dorm key in the back pocket of my jeans, before I stop abruptly.

He wanted me to get going.

I run into the common room, ignoring Chaiyawat Terweil’s cry of protest when I jump over the cords connecting his PlayStation to the television. Then I drop to my knees in front of the window. Peering out, half-hidden behind a dusty curtain, I watch as a figure steps out of shadow, walks to where Barron is waiting, and opens the passenger side door.

She’s not wearing her uniform, but I know her just the same.

Daneca.

Purple-tipped braids glowing under the streetlight. Heels a lot higher than anything I’ve ever seen her in—high enough for her to wobble as she bends down. There’s no reason on earth why she should glance back at the Wallingford campus like she’s afraid of someone seeing her, no reason for her to be getting into my brother’s car, no reason for her to be dressed like that, no reason that makes sense. No reason but one.

The boy she’s been dating is my brother.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THERE IS NO WAY I can tell Sam.

He’s in our dorm room, still looking pretty hung over, sipping on a can of coconut water. “Hey,” he says, rolling toward me on his cot. “Your grandfather is a madman, you know that? After we finished with the poker, he showed me a bunch of old photos. I thought they were going to be pictures of you as a kid, but no. They were vintage snapshots of burlesque ladies with no gloves. From back in the day.”

I force a grin. I’m still thinking about Daneca and my brother, wondering how many times she’s been out with Barron, wondering why she ever went out with him even once. It’s hard to concentrate. “You looked at porn with my grandfather?”