by Holly Black
“Chris is not my brother,” Daneca says automatically. “I don’t even think it’s legal for him to live here.” Her room looks exactly like I would have expected. Her bedspread is batik, studded with silver discs. Fringed scarves drape over the tops of the linen curtains. The walls are covered in posters of folk singers, in poems, and with a big worker rights flag. On her bookshelf, next to copies of Ginsberg and Kerouac and The Activist’s Handbook, is a line of horses. White and brown, speckled and black, they’re arranged like a chorus line.
I lean against the doorjamb. “Okay. Some kid who’s always hanging around at this address let me in. He was pretty rude about it too.”
She half-smiles. I can see past her to the paper she’s writing, the letters like black ants on the screen. “Why are you here, Cassel?”
I sit down on her bed and take a deep breath. If I can do this, then I can do everything else.
“I need you to work Lila,” I say. The words come easily to my lips, but my chest hurts as I speak them aloud. “I need you to make her not love me anymore.”
“Get out,” Daneca says.
I shake my head. “I need you to do it. Please. Please just listen.” I’m afraid my voice is going to break. I am afraid she is going to hear how much this hurts.
“Cassel, I don’t care what reason you have. There is no reason good enough to take away someone’s free will.”
“It’s already been taken! Remember when I said that I tried to stay away from Lila?” I say. “I’ve stopped trying. How’s that for a good reason?”
She doesn’t trust me. Surely she can understand if I don’t trust myself either.
The look Daneca gives me is full of disgust. “There’s nothing I can do anyway. You know that. I can’t take the curse off her.”
“Work her so that she feels nothing for me,” I say. My vision blurs. I wipe the dampness away from my eyes angrily. “Let her just feel nothing. Please.”
She looks at me in an odd, stunned way. When she speaks, her voice is soft. “I thought the curse was fading. It might already be gone.”
I shake my head. “She still likes me.”
“Maybe she likes you, Cassel,” Daneca says carefully. “Without the curse.”
“No.”
She waits for a long moment. “What about you? How are you going to feel when she—”
“It doesn’t matter about me,” I say. “The only way that Lila could be sure—that anyone could be sure—the curse was over is if she didn’t love me.”
“But—,” Daneca begins.
If I can just get through this, then nothing else can hurt me. I will be capable of anything. “It has to be this way. Otherwise I’ll create reasons to believe that she wants me, because I’d like that to be true. I can’t be trusted.”
“I know that you’re really upset—,” Daneca says.
“I can’t be trusted. Do you understand me?”
She nods, once. “Okay. Okay, I’ll do it.”
I exhale all at once, a dizzy rush of breath.
“But this is a onetime thing. I will never do this again. I will never do anything like this again. Do you understand me?”
“Yes,” I say.
“And I’m not even sure how to do it, so there are no guarantees. Plus the blowback is going to make me act all weird and emotional, so you are responsible for babysitting me until I am stable. Okay?”
“Yes,” I say again.
“She won’t care about you.” Daneca tilts her head to one side, like she’s seeing me for the first time. “You’ll just be some guy she once knew. Everything she feels about you—everything she felt about you—it will all be gone.”
I close my eyes and nod my head.
The first thing I do when I get back home is go down into the cellar. I open the cooler. Janssen is right where I left him—milk pale, with sunken eyelids and frosty hair. He looks like a demented marble sculpture—portrait of a killer, killed. All the blood must have made its sluggish way to his back before it froze. I bet if I turned him over, he’d be purple.
I strip off my right-hand glove and place my hand on his chest, pushing aside the stiffened fabric of his undershirt, letting my fingers rest against his icy skin.
I turn his heart to glass.
The change takes only a moment, but recovering from it takes longer. Once the blowback wears off, I rub my head where I smacked it against the floor. Everything aches, but I’m getting used to that.
Then I go upstairs, take the gun out of the plastic bag, close my eyes, and shoot two bullets into the ceiling of the parlor. Dust rains down on me, covering the room in a powdery cloud. A single chunk of plaster nearly brains me.
Cons aren’t glamorous. They’re hauling out the ancient vacuum from the closet, changing the bag, and making sure you get up most of the dust. They’re sweeping in the basement to hide that you were recently rolling around after a transformation. They’re fieldstripping the gun according to instructions on the Internet and carefully buffing off any fingerprints with a lightly oiled cloth, then wrapping the whole thing in paper towels. They’re driving a mile to an abandoned stretch of road and soaking the murderess’s coat and gloves with enough lighter fluid that they burn to ash. They’re waiting to make sure they burn to ash and then scattering that ash. They’re smashing any remaining buttons from the coat with a hammer, then tossing them along with the vacuum bag and any hooks or metal parts in different Dumpsters far from where you burned the clothes. Cons are all in the details.
By the time I’m done, it’s late enough to call Sam and get the next part of the plan under way.
My mother’s a purist when it comes to scamming people. She’s got her thing, and it’s pretty effective. Glamorous clothes, a touch of her hand, and most people are willing to do what she wants. But I’d never really thought about costumes or props until I met Sam. I have my computer open to Cyprus View’s website. They have examples of the layout of their apartments for prospective renters. Very helpful.
Sam’s expectantly holding up a fake wound on a thin rubbery piece of silicone. “Look, you said yourself that guard wanted to be a hero,” Sam is telling me.
It might be true that I said that. I don’t remember. I said a lot of things on the stakeout, mostly boring observations about the place or completely exaggerated claims about how I was going to beat Sam at cards. “But then we need another person,” I say. “That’s a three-person job.”
“Ask Lila,” he says.
“She’s all the way in the city,” I say, but it’s a halfhearted objection. The thought of seeing her one last time before I lose her is poisonously compelling.
“Daneca and I are still . . . I don’t know. Besides, she’s not the best actress.”
“She did fine at Zacharov’s fund-raiser,” I say, thinking of the way she smiled in my brother’s face moments after she slipped me a fake blood packet.
“I had to give her a pep talk on the way,” he says. “How about if I’m the one who calls Lila?”
Mutely I hand him my phone. I want her to come. If I resist this, I don’t think I will have any resistance left.
We pick Lila up at the train station in Sam’s hearse. He works on her in the back while I fiddle with the radio nervously in the front seat and eat a slice of pizza.
“Almost done?” I call, looking at the clock on the dashboard.
“Don’t rush the artist,” Lila says. Her voice goes through me like a knife, leaving a wound so clean I know it won’t even hurt until the knife’s pulled out.
“Yeah,” I say. “Sorry, Sam.”
Finally she climbs into the front seat. She’s got a bruise painted on her cheek. It looks real, partially hidden by curls of a long blond wig.
I reach out automatically to touch her face, and then jerk my hand back.
“Don’t mess me up,” she says with a lopsided grin.
“We ready to go?” I call into the back.
“One second,” Sam says. “I just have to get this scr
ape on my mouth, and it’s not sticking.”
Lila leans toward me, nervous and determined. “That thing you said before you hung up the phone,” she half-whispers. “Did you mean it?”
I nod.
“But I thought it was all fake—” She stops and bites her lip, like she can’t quite bring herself to ask the rest of the question, for fear of my answer.
“I faked faking,” I say softly. “I lied about lying. I couldn’t think of another way to make you believe we couldn’t be together.”
She frowns. “Wait. Then why tell me now?”
Crap. “Because I am about to be devoured by poodles,” I quip. “Remember me always, my love.”
Mercifully Sam picks that moment to lean into the front. “Okay, all done,” he says.
“Here’s what you asked me for,” Lila says, pulling a green glass bottle out of her backpack. It’s wrapped in a T-shirt. “Is this what you’re going to plant in her house?”
I take it, careful not to touch the neck of the bottle. It’s bizarre to think that this small thing is what Lila took from Philip’s house. It’s even more bizarre to know it used to be a living person. “Nope,” I say. “My plan is even more secret than that.”
She rolls her eyes.
I pull my pizza delivery boy cap low and start the engine.
The plan is pretty simple. First we wait until Bethenny Thomas leaves the building without her dogs. This is the twitchiest part, because she might decide to spend her Saturday night at home, curled up in front of the television.
At ten, she gets into a cab, and we’re on.
I go into the building with three boxes of pizza. I’m wearing the cap—which was pretty easy to lift from the busy shop where we ordered the pizzas—and regular clothes. Keep my head down in front of the security cameras. I say I have a delivery for the Goldblatts. We picked them because, of all the people we were able to identify as living in the building—thanks to the white pages online—they were the first not to answer when we called.
The big guy behind the desk looks up at me and grunts. He lifts the phone, pressing a button. I try very hard to act like I am bored, instead of nearly jumping out of my skin with adrenaline.
Sam comes roaring out of the darkness, hitting the glass wall of the lobby like he barely notices it. He starts screaming, pointing at the bushes. “Stay away from me. Stay the hell away!”
The guard stands up, still holding the phone but no longer paying any attention to it.
“What the hell?” I say.
Lila runs up the path toward Sam. She slaps him so hard that all the way inside the lobby, I can hear the crack of leather glove against skin. I sincerely hope that he taught her some kind of stage trick, because otherwise that had to hurt.
“I saw you looking at her,” Lila shrieks. “I’m going to scratch out your eyes!”
If he was a different person, the front desk guy might just call the cops. But when I saw him toss that homeless guy off the property Friday night, I realized that he’s not the type to call anyone if he thinks he can handle it.
Now I just have to hope I read him right.
When he puts down the receiver, I let out a breath I shouldn’t have been holding. That’s no way to look casual.
“Wait a sec,” he says to me. “I got to get these kids out of here.”
“Man,” I groan, trying to sound as exasperated as possible. “I need to deliver these pizzas. There’s a fifteen-minute guarantee.”
He barely even looks at me as he heads for the door. “Whatever. Go on up.”
As I step into the elevator, I hear Lila yell about how the front desk guy better mind his own business. I grin as I hit the button.
The door to Bethenny’s apartment is identical to all the others. White doors in a white hallway. But when I slip my pick into the keyhole, I hear the dogs start barking.
The lock is easy, but there’s a dead bolt on top that takes longer. I can smell someone frying fish across the hallway and hear someone else playing classical music with the sound turned way up. No one comes out into the hallway. If they had, I would have asked them for a number that’s on a different floor and headed for the elevators. Lucky for me, I make it inside Bethenny’s apartment without a lot of detours.
The minute I’m inside, the dogs run toward me. I close the front door and sprint for the bedroom, slamming the door in their snouts. They scratch against the wood, whining, and all I can hope is that they aren’t scarring the door too deeply. I silently thank the building again for putting the layout of their apartments online.
Inside I dump the boxes onto the wood floor and open them up. The first has the remains of an actual pizza in it. The few slices we didn’t eat are covered in pepperoni and sausage—in a pinch that might effectively distract the dogs.
The second contains the gun, wrapped in paper towels; baggies to put over my feet; bleach-soaked wipes; and disposable gloves.
The third pizza box has my getting-out-of-the-building outfit. A suit jacket and pants, glasses, and a soft leather briefcase. I change clothes quickly and then gear up.
As I tie the plastic over my feet, I glance around the room. The walls are a sea blue, hung with framed photographs of Bethenny in various tropical settings. She smiles at me, cocktail in hand, from a hundred pictures, reflected a thousandfold in the mirrors on her closet doors. I can’t help seeing myself too, dirty hair hanging in my face. I look like I haven’t slept in weeks.
The dogs stop whining and start barking. Over and over, a chorus of sound.
Dresses are strewn around the opening of her closet in frothy, glittering profusion, and shoes are scattered all over the room. On top of a white dresser, a tangle of gold chains droops into a drawer overstuffed with satiny bras.
I touch nothing except for the mattress. Lifting up one end, I get ready to shove my gun on top of the box spring.
Another gun’s already there.
I stare at the large silver revolver. It makes the pistol in my hand look dainty.
I am so thrown that I momentarily have no idea what to do. She already has a gun under her mattress.
I start to laugh, the hysteria bubbling up out of my throat. All of a sudden it overwhelms me. I can’t help it. I am crouched down in front of the bed, sucking in deep breaths, tears starting to run out of my eyes, I am laughing so hard. I’m laughing so hard that I am making no sound at all.
It feels as helpless as blowback, as helpless as grief.
Finally I get it together enough to put the Smith & Wesson between the mattress and box spring near the foot of the bed. I figure no one grabs for a gun there, and no one lifts up their mattress really high when they’re grabbing for a different gun.
Then I break down the pizza boxes, shoving them into the briefcase along with the jeans and jacket I was wearing when I came in. I dump the extra pizza, paper towels, and wipes in too. I change my gloves. Then I run a bleach-soaked wipe over the floor to get rid of any crumbs, grease, or hairs. I toe it along to the door just to be safe.
Outside the room the poodles’ barking has reached a fever pitch. I tuck the wipe into my pocket.
I hear one of the dogs thump against the knob, and suddenly, horribly, it turns. One of them must have caught it with a paw. A moment later they rush in, barking furiously. I barely jump up onto the bed in time to avoid getting bitten.
Okay, I know what you’re thinking. They’re poodles, right? But these things aren’t little fuzzy toy poodles. They’re standard poodles, huge and snapping at me, white teeth bared and a growl rumbling up their throats when I make a move toward the edge of the mattress. I look at the chandelier hanging above me and contemplate trying to swing from it.
“Hey,” I hear a voice call. “Beth? How many times do I got to tell you to keep those dogs of yours quiet?”
Oh, come on. This cannot be happening.
Of course, it wouldn’t be happening if I’d thought to lock the apartment door after I picked the lock. Cons are all in the details.
They’re about the little things that you either remember or you don’t.
“If you don’t shut them up, I’m gonna call the police,” the guy yells. “This time I mean it—Hey, what the—”
He stands in the doorway, looking at me, astonishment silencing him. In a moment he’s going to yell. In a moment he’s going to rush into his apartment and dial 911.
“Oh, thank God,” I say, trying to give him my most grateful look. I clear my throat. “We got a report—one of the neighbors complained. I had an appointment with—”
“Who the hell are you? What are you doing in Bethenny’s apartment?” The neighbor is a guy, balding and probably in his early forties. He’s sporting a pretty heavy beard and mustache. His worn T-shirt has the faded logo of a construction company.
“The apartment manager sent me to evaluate the situation with these dogs,” I shout over the din of barking. “The door was open, and I thought that perhaps Ms. Thomas was in. She’s been avoiding my calls, but I finally got her to agree to a meeting. I didn’t expect them to attack.”
“Yeah,” the guy shouts. “They’re high strung. And spoiled all to hell. If you want to get down from there, you better give them a treat or something.”
“I don’t have a treat.” I decide I better move, if I want to be convincing. I jump down from the bed, grab my briefcase, and run for the neighbor. I feel teeth close on my leg.
“Augh,” I yell, nearly falling.
“You stay,” the neighbor shouts at the poodles, which miraculously seems to make them pause long enough for us to slam the bedroom door.
I lean down and pull up the hem of my pants. My left ankle is bleeding sluggishly, soaking my sock. I have only a couple of minutes before my blood spills over the plastic covering my feet and hits the floor.
“This is ridiculous!” I say. “She told me this was the only time that she could meet, even thought it was extremely inconvenient for me. And she’s not even here—”
The guy looks back toward the door of the apartment. “Do you want a bandage or something?”