Play at Soul's Edge

by Sophia Amador

  She was going to think he had still been lying to her.

  Which of course he had been. Just not in the way she thought.

  Adrian tightened his lips. “No, you don’t understand.” He lowered his voice. “I’m actually working with the police. This is an undercover sting to help stop the spread of Rapture.”

  Elisa stopped and stared at him. Emotions flashed across her face too fast for him to follow. Then she put her hands on her hips and glared. “Adrian, you’re not up to your usual skill at lying. That’s way too far-fetched.”

  Damn. He needed to explain. He could explain anything, but there was just no time now. He was already taking critical seconds away from Keisha’s plans.

  He would talk to Elisa after class; it was only a couple of hours more. Her opinions wouldn’t harden in such a short time. He still had time to convince her.

  After all, this time he had the truth on his side.

  And the truth was what really mattered, wasn’t it? After all his years of lying, now that he had finally come to value honesty, surely telling the truth would make everything come out right.

  It had to.

  “We’ll talk about it later. But I need to get back to my part of the show, or the sting will be endangered. Cesar, escort Elisa back to class. And get someone else to stand guard at this door.” His lips thinned. As Cesar steered her away, Adrian added in a low, intense voice, “I promise I’ll explain everything as soon as I can.”

  He returned to the basement room, his emotions in turmoil, although nothing showed on his face. Fortunately, not much appeared to have happened while he was distracted by Elisa’s arrival. As planned, Vince had stepped in and blocked Rory’s knife. They were now engaged in a heated argument while Keisha begged to be reinstated, swearing she would continue to participate in the gang.

  Adrian stepped calmly back into the fray. “Both of you,” he commanded, “stop brawling at once.” He glanced at Keisha. “She says she wants to continue; that’s fine.”

  Rory stepped away from Keisha and his knife disappeared. “Whatever you say, Captain.”

  “Now,” Adrian continued, keeping his face smooth despite the clichéd dialogue Keisha had written, “I agree with you, Rory. Schwartz and Holman have outlived their usefulness. I want you to find them tonight and finish them off. They always work late at the lab. Make it look like a robbery.”

  Rory nodded. “Yes, Captain.”

  They all listened for sounds from the back of the room where Jim and Mira were hiding. After a moment, they heard a stealthy patter of retreating feet. The two were rushing to warn their uncle and boss. Keisha nodded, a satisfied smile on her face. She signaled to her team. Officers had been stationed outside, ready to follow Jim and Mira. They would pick up the kids and get them to talk. Her plan was working perfectly.

  All the while, Adrian’s mind was spinning, only a fraction of his attention on the scene playing out before him. Instead, he was thinking about what he would say to Elisa.

  He just wanted to finish this so he could get back to her and make it all better.

  Where had it gone wrong?

  It had seemed so amusing at first. Keisha had followed every clue, had snapped at every bit of bait. The police’s interests lined up exactly with his planned revenge.

  A few days ago, he had given her his report. She had glanced up at him with a big grin splitting her face. “Adrian, you’ve done it! This is exactly what we need.”

  “I thought you’d be pleased.”

  “Pleased doesn’t begin to say how I feel.” Keisha got up and paced around the small room. “It’s time for us to move into the final act.” There was a gleam in her eye. “Yes. This Jim and Mira will be our conduits to Holman and Schwartz. Now, we have to be careful to make sure we can rope them all in. Okay, here’s what we need to do.”

  Adrian kept his face attentive and serious as she laid out her plan.

  “You can get Jim and Mira to the school, right?”

  “Well, I did find that kid checking out my car once.” He shook his head. “But it would be pretty obvious if they were hiding in there.”

  Keisha waved a hand. “Just as long as you can pretend you don’t notice them.”

  He rolled his eyes. “Sure. I’m good at pretending to be clueless.”

  She paced back and forth, mumbling to herself, and then sat down, pulled out a pad of paper and drew on it.

  After a while, he chuckled. “Are those cats you’re drawing there?”

  Keisha glowered at him. “Why is everybody a critic? I just want to make sure that we keep all the principals straight. That’s what we learned in training: it’s important to be aware of all the players and all their roles in the operation.”

  Adrian straightened his face, but his lips were still twitching. “I understand.”

  Keisha continued drawing. “Now—” she began, then paused and glared at Adrian.

  “What?”

  “I’m waiting for you to criticize my drawing skills.”

  “Keisha,” Adrian said, smiling, “I would never be so rude.”

  She snorted and resumed drawing. “At least someone in this school has some manners,” she muttered under her breath. She continued aloud, “I want you, me, and a couple more of us to stage a meeting in the school basement.”

  “The basement? It’s off-limits to students.”

  “Leave that to me. I’ll get it arranged,” she promised with a dismissive sweep of her hand.

  “All right,” he said. She slid the pad of paper to face him. “Who are all those, uh, people?”

  “These are the gang members,’” she explained. “And over here, this is you, sitting in the chair at the end of the room.”

  He stared at the cat with pointy ears and square glasses and tried not to laugh. “Me? What am I supposed to be doing?”

  “I want you to play the gang leader.”

  He appeared taken aback. “Why me?”

  “You’re the best choice because of your knowledge of chemistry, and because you work at Schwartz Pharmaceuticals and have connections with Schwartz and Holman.”

  “Are you seriously expecting me to pretend to be the ‘Captain’ of Tenebras?” Adrian could not stop the amusement from overflowing into his voice. Then he forced himself to keep a straight face. “The man’s a bloodthirsty bastard, isn’t he? How could I play someone like that?”

  Keisha waved her hand airily. “Haven’t you watched gangster movies? I’ll have a script ready for you. All you have to do is act tough and casually order a few deaths.”

  “I don’t know.”

  She folded her arms. “Come on! It’s the only way I’ll be able to get a warrant sworn out for Schwartz Pharmaceuticals. The district judge has been really leery of me lately for some reason.” She frowned. “And remember, you’re only trying to fool a couple of kids. It’s not like you need to win an Academy Award.”

  He glanced sharply at Keisha. Could this all be a trap? Could she possibly know the truth?

  No. Her face was trivially easy to read. She was just another incompetent cop in over her head. Still, better to be safe.

  “But it’s risky for me personally. I may end up having to do something illegal. It may look like I’m actually involved with this gang or with Rapture sales. It could hurt my admission to Harvard next year.”

  Keisha scowled. He could hear her thoughts as though she had spoken them aloud. What a nerd, worrying about trivial things like college acceptances when so much is at stake. But he’s shown himself to be a valuable asset to our team, so I’ll cut him some slack. “Don’t worry. I’ll write up a document detailing your role in our plans and giving you immunity from prosecution, even if you have to skirt the law at times. Will that satisfy you?”

  Adrian nodded slowly. “Yes. I can accept that.”

  “Good. Now here’s what I want you to do.”

  Adrian had been so amused by the plan that he had decided to go along with it, although it was poorly thought out
, and relied on a number of dubious elements with a low probability of success. It was far from the type of scheme he would use. But it would be utterly entertaining. The immunity from prosecution was the icing on the cake.

  But now he shook his head. He’d been stupid to let entertainment get in the way of practicality. Just another example of how distracted he’d been.

  It was ironic that Elisa would falter in her belief in him the one time he was actually working on the side of the police, doing something she would have approved.

  He needed to talk to her.

  His cell phone buzzed. “Captain, I’ve got some bad news. Can we meet?”

  Elisa

  Elisa cut class.

  After all, she’d already hung out with drug dealers and murderers. What did an hour of truancy matter?

  Besides, she really couldn’t concentrate on Taylor polynomials today. She ran straight home, slammed her apartment door, and sank to the floor, face buried in her knees.

  The whole time, the scene in the basement room was replaying in her head. She kept on hearing Adrian’s calm, quiet voice saying, “Keisha, you’re no longer of any use to me. Kill her, Rory.”

  No.

  It couldn’t be true.

  She remembered Chloe’s gossip at lunch that day so long ago. “They say the Captain’s been running the gang since he was twelve. They say that even though he’s only a high school student, he’s already lost count of the number of people he’s ordered killed.”

  No.

  Adrian didn’t kill people. He couldn’t. He wasn’t that sort of person.

  “Kill her, Rory.”

  No.

  “Kill her.”

  There was a roaring somewhere inside Elisa’s head, pain like a block of ice lodged in her chest. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

  She didn’t want to think. Because if she started to, she would have to come to some conclusions.

  And there were no good conclusions.

  She needed to do something. She got up, sat at the dining table and sorted through the pile of junk mail.

  One envelope stuck out—a large, thick white one from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

  A fat envelope—a good sign. Elisa’s heart was frozen, but still, it leaped up in her chest and pounded furiously as she tore open the flap.

  “Congratulations!” it read. “You have been offered admission to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.” The professor she’d been hoping to work with wanted to meet her during an upcoming visit. A slow, distant excitement bubbled up within her. She clutched the paper, desperately, like a drowning person might clutch a life ring. Could she finally be getting some good news?

  Maybe she could put all this behind her and start the rest of her life. Maybe she could just run away from Rockton, forget everyone she knew here. Forget everything that had happened.

  Then she turned to the next page.

  Her financial aid package. She read it through once, twice, and then three times, hoping in vain to find something she had missed.

  They were basing her Expected Family Contribution on her father’s salary—the salary of a man she hadn’t seen in years, someone who had repeatedly refused to pay child support or contribute to their family’s financial upkeep. The college was claiming she could afford to pay nearly twenty thousand dollars a year.

  She had no money. She couldn’t even afford to pay two thousand a year. Her parents wouldn’t give her a dime. She couldn’t go to the local state university, much less a private school. Even if she worked full-time at minimum wage in addition to going to school, her full salary before taxes wouldn’t hit twenty thousand. Even if she worked overtime at the bakery this year, and saved every penny that didn’t go to taxes and rent, it wouldn’t be nearly enough. They wouldn’t even give her loans for it, thanks to the tyranny of the EFC. And that wasn’t even considering the question of whether it was a wise decision to go into debt so early in her life. She ground her teeth. She was trapped.

  She would work minimum-wage jobs for the rest of her life.

  “I could have been something!” her mother shouted. Elisa cowered behind the dining table. Her mother had already thrown the casserole dish at her. It missed Elisa’s head and lay splattered in a broken sticky mess behind her on the floor. “If I hadn’t had to take care of you! Always crying, always dirty, always whining! It’s all your fault. You’re the reason I had to drop out of school. You’re the reason why there’s no money.”

  Tears ran down Elisa’s cheeks. There would never be any money.

  There was no way she would ever become a biochemist, no way she would ever do the work she had always longed to do.

  Unbidden, her mind returned to a conversation with Adrian, and the bitterness in his words that she remembered but hadn’t really grasped at the time. “The only way out of poverty in this country is education, Elisa, and they took that away from me too. They always claim there’s plenty of help for the poor in this country, but it’s a lot rarer than people think.”

  It was ironic that she had asked him to give up his illegal sources of income just before she appreciated for the first time what that truly meant.

  She finally understood, in the core of her belly, why Adrian might have made the choices he made.

  If she wanted the one thing she had always dreamed of, her one chance to escape her terrible family life, to get away from the beaten track of her existence that stretched ahead of her like a narrow, dark tunnel—all she would have to do was smash her ethical compass to bits.

  Oh, she could justify it. She could do great things for the world if she just had enough money to go to college.

  She put her head in her hands. She could go to Adrian and explain the situation. Twenty thousand dollars was probably nothing for him, small change for the Captain of Tenebras. She shivered. He would help her.

  Of course.

  It would be easy.

  It would make him happy. It would make her life so much simpler. So much more successful.

  And they could be together.

  For a moment, that cold hard knot in her chest dissolved just a little bit, and the darkness in her mind lifted just a tiny fraction at the thought that she might see him again. That she might hold him in her arms.

  Her body yearned to feel his warmth pressed against her, to stand within his magic circle of protection, to hear his voice against her ear, quiver at his lips across her throat. To burn with him like a flame against the darkness.

  Every single inch of her skin vibrated with longing.

  But what would be the price?

  She firmed her lips and sat up straight. Then she picked up the folder from the table and marched over to the plastic bin that held recycling. She took a deep breath, dropped the folder into the bin, and then went to the kitchen to chop tomatoes for dinner.

  It was over.

  It was all over.

  The water ran in the sink and her tears ran down her cheeks.

  She couldn’t help imagining her next conversation with him.

  “Adrian, Ben told me the police traced Rapture to Tenebras. That your gang is the only supplier.”

  He would shrug in that casual way. “Do you always believe whatever Ben says?”

  “You know what I’m asking. Are you or are you not selling Rapture?”

  There was a soft tap at the door.

  It must be Adrian.

  But Elisa had already made her decision. She couldn’t let a murderer be part of her life.

  28

  Adrian

  THE DOOR OPENED, and Elisa stood in front of him, eyes rimmed with red, a dishtowel in her hand.

  He was ready for her, his outline planned in his head. After all, wasn’t persuasion one of his key strengths? He smiled his gentlest smile at her. “May I come in?”

  She bit her lip and nodded jerkily. He closed the door behind him and enfolded her in his arms, pressing his lips to her forehead. She was stiff, and the skin of her wrists a
nd hands was cold.

  He took the dishtowel from her and steered her gently to the couch.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  She hunched her shoulders. “You’re the Captain of Tenebras, aren’t you.”

  “I won’t lie to you anymore, Elisa.” He took her hands. “But, please, let me explain. It’s not like the rumors say. I—”

  “You’ve never stopped lying to me, have you?”

  “I’m not now. Please believe me.” She wasn’t even giving him a chance to lay out his carefully prepared facts. To tell the truth, as she wanted him to.

  “Did you really—order Rory to kill Keisha?” Her voice fell to a whisper.

  Annoyance rose in Adrian’s throat. “I told you, that was a police sting. Keisha’s still alive; didn’t you see her in school today?” Why did Elisa keep harping on that clumsy playacting scene when there were so many other things that mattered more? Still, he kept his face smooth, his voice quiet. How many times had his life depended on maintaining his calm and emotionless façade?

  “Don’t lie to me again!” Her voice rose. “Why would the cops come to a gang leader to set up a sting?”

  “I’m not lying,” he said mildly. “Keisha’s an undercover cop, and she doesn’t know I’m involved with Tenebras. She thinks I’m a straight-A student and far too much of a nerd to be involved in anything shady.” It was the absolute truth.

  She rubbed an eyelid, shaking her head. “Come on.”

  He took out his laptop. “Here, I’ll prove it to you.” Surely, truth and logic would win her over. Of course, he could manipulate her emotions instead. He could bend her to his will. But he was different now. He would do things by her rules. He would show her how he had changed. He brought up the letter of immunity from the Rockton police department.

  Elisa scrolled through the document. “You could easily have forged this.”

  Of course—that was the logical conclusion he would have come to as well. Telling the truth was such a straitjacket. Stating the absolute facts made it so difficult to explain. But Adrian was trying. He opened his eyes wide. “You don’t believe me?”