“Apparently,” says Agent Hunt, understanding me perfectly, “there was.”

  * * *

  Mercifully, after that they offer to get me some food. They leave me alone in a locked room with a piece of paper charting my gamma waves. It means nothing to me, except that I am well and truly screwed.

  I take out my cell phone and flip it open before I realize that this is probably exactly what they hope I will do. Call someone. Reveal something. The room is definitely wired; it’s set up for interrogation, whether they’re using the two-way mirror or not.

  There are probably hidden cameras, too, now that I think of it.

  I flip through the functions on my phone until I get to the one that lets me take pictures. I turn on the flash, aim at the walls and ceiling, and take picture after picture until I get it. A reflection. Pretty invisible when I was just looking at the frame of the mirror, but the tiny lens glows brightly with reflected light, captured in the photo.

  I grin and pop a stick of gum into my mouth.

  Three chews and it’s soft enough to stick over the camera.

  Agent Hunt comes in about five seconds later. He’s holding two cups of coffee, and he’s obviously been rushing. The cuff of his shirt is wet and stained with sloshed liquid. I bet he burned his hand too.

  I wonder what he thought I was going to do, once I was hidden from the camera. Try to escape? I have no idea how to get out of the locked room; I was just showing off. Letting them know I wasn’t going to fall for the really obvious stuff.

  “Do you think this is a joke, Mr. Sharpe?” he demands.

  His panic doesn’t make any sense. “Let me out of here,” I say. “You said I’m not under arrest, and I’m missing ceramics class.”

  “You’re going to need a parent or guardian to pick you up,” he says, placing the coffees on the table. He’s no longer flustered, which means they planned for me to ask to be let go. He’s back to a script he knows. “We can certainly get your mother to come down and get you, if that’s really what you want.”

  “No,” I say, realizing I’ve been outmaneuvered. “That’s okay.”

  Now Agent Hunt just looks smug, wiping his sleeve with a napkin. “I thought you’d see it my way.”

  I pick up one of the coffees and take a sip. “And you didn’t even have to spell your threat out. Honestly, I must be some kind of model prisoner.”

  “Listen, smart-ass—”

  “What do you want?” I ask. “What is all of this for? Fine, okay, I’m a worker. So what? You’ve got no proof that I’ve ever worked anyone. I’m not a criminal until I do, and I’m not gonna.” It’s a relief to tell a lie this big; I feel like I’m daring them to contradict it.

  Agent Hunt doesn’t look happy, but he doesn’t seem suspicious, either. “We need your help, Cassel.”

  I choke on the coffee.

  Agent Hunt is about to say something else when the door opens and Agent Jones comes in. I have no idea what he’s been doing all this time, but the lunch they promised is nowhere in sight.

  “I hear you’ve been a handful,” Agent Jones says. Either he was watching the camera feed or someone told him about my little trick, because he glances over at the gum.

  I try to stop coughing. It’s hard. I think some of the coffee went down the wrong pipe.

  “Listen, Cassel, there’s lots of kids like you,” Agent Hunt says. “Worker kids who fall in with the wrong element. But your abilities don’t have to lead you in that direction. The government has a program to train young workers to control their talents and to use them in the cause of justice. We’d be happy to recommend you.”

  “You don’t even know what my talents are,” I say. I really, really hope that’s true.

  “We employ all different types of workers, Cassel,” says Agent Jones.

  “Even death workers?” I ask.

  Agent Jones regards me closely. “Is that what you are? Because it would be very serious if it were true. That’s a dangerous ability.”

  “I didn’t say that,” I say, hoping that I sound unconvincing. I don’t care if they think I’m a death worker like my grandfather. I don’t care if they think I’m a luck worker like Zacharov, a dream worker like Lila, a physical worker like Philip, a memory worker like Barron, or an emotion worker like Mom. So long as they don’t guess that I’m a transformation worker. There hasn’t been one in the United States since the 1960s, and I am sure that if the government happened to stumble on one now, they wouldn’t just let him go back to high school.

  “This program,” Agent Jones goes on. “It’s run by a woman—Agent Yulikova. We’d like you to meet her.”

  “What does that have to do with you needing my help?” I ask.

  This whole setup feels like a con. The way they’re acting, the grim glances they share when they think I don’t notice. I’m sure their generous offer to let me be part of some secret government training program is part of the shakedown, what I’m not sure about is why they’re shaking me down.

  “I know you have some familiarity with the Zacharov crime family, so there’s no point in denying it,” Agent Jones begins, holding up his hand when I start to speak. “You don’t need to confirm it either. But you should know that over the past three years, Zacharov’s been stepping up assassinations both in and out of his organization. Mostly we don’t get too worked up about mobsters killing one another, but one of our informants was the most recent target.”

  A creeping dread chills my skin as he puts a black-and-white photograph down on the table in front of me.

  The man in the photo has been shot several times in the chest, and his shirt is a mess of black. He’s lying on his side. Blood has soaked into the carpet underneath him, and his loose hair partially obscures his face. Still, it’s a face I would know anywhere.

  “He was shot sometime last night,” says Agent Hunt. “The first bullet penetrated between the seventh and eight ribs and entered his right atrium. He died instantly.”

  I feel like someone punched me in the gut.

  I push the picture back toward Agent Jones. “What are you showing me this for?” My voice shakes. “That’s not Philip. That’s not my brother.”

  I’m standing, but I don’t even remember getting up.

  “Calm down,” Agent Hunt says.

  There is a roaring in my ears like a tide coming in. “This is some kind of trick,” I shout. “Admit it. Admit that this is a trick.”

  “Cassel, you have to listen to us,” Agent Jones says. “The person who did this is still out there. You can help us find your brother’s killer.”

  “You’ve just been sitting here chatting with me, and my brother’s dead? You knew my brother was dead and you just let me—you let me…,” I stammer. “No. No. Why would you do that?”

  “We knew it would be hard to talk with you after you found out,” Agent Jones says.

  “Hard to talk to me?” I echo, because the words don’t make sense. And then something else strikes me, something that doesn’t make sense either. “Philip was your informant? He would never do that. He hates snitches.”

  Hated. Hated snitches.

  In my family going to the cops is cowardly, despicable. Cops already can do whatever they want to workers—we’re criminals, after all—so going to the cops is kissing the ass of the enemy. If you turn someone in, you’re not just betraying the people around you. You’re betraying what you are. I remember Philip talking about someone in Carney who’d reported on somebody else for some petty reason—old guys I didn’t know. He spat on the floor whenever he said the man’s name.

  “Your brother came to us about five months ago,” Agent Hunt says. “April of this year. Said he wanted to change his life.”

  I shake my head, denying what has to be true. Philip must have gone to the Feds because he had nowhere else to go. Because of me. Because I thwarted his plan to assassinate Zacharov, a plan that would have resulted in Philip’s closest friend leading the crime family. A plan that would have gotten my brother riches and glory. Instead I got him killed; if Philip is dead, Zacharov must be behind it. I can’t think of anyone else with a reason. And what would Zacharov care about his promise to leave my family alone, especially if he was faced with the discovery that Philip made a deal with the Feds? I was an idiot for believing Zacharov’s word was worth anything.

  “Does my mother know about Philip?” I finally manage, throwing myself back down into a chair. I feel like I could suffocate on guilt.

  “We’ve managed to keep it quiet,” Agent Jones says. “As soon as you leave here, she’ll get the call. And we won’t be much longer. Try to hang in there.”

  “There’s a kitten poster like that.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own.

  They both look at me oddly.

  I feel suddenly so overwhelmingly tired that I want to put my head down right there on the table.

  Agent Jones goes on. “Your brother wanted to get out of organized crime. All he needed from us was to get a hold of his wife so he could apologize for what he put her through. We were going to send them into witness protection together. As soon as we got them into the program, he said that he’d give up everything he had on Zacharov’s hatchet man. Maybe bring down Zacharov along with him. The guy’s real bad news. Philip gave us the names of six workers this sicko killed. We didn’t even know for sure they were dead, but Philip was going to lead us to the bodies. Your brother really was trying to turn over a new leaf, and he died for it.”

  I feel like they’re talking about a stranger.

  “You find Maura?” I ask.

  Maura lit out of town last spring, their kid in tow, once she discovered that Barron had been changing her memories. He’d made her forget every fight she’d had with Philip and remember only some kind of sweet dreamlike relationship. But not remembering their problems didn’t stop those problems from cropping up again and again. Plus, being worked that often results in bad side effects, like hearing music that’s not there.

  Philip was devastated when she left. He blamed me more than Barron, which I don’t think is entirely fair, although I guess in the end I gave her the charm that let her realize what was going on. Still, I refuse to feel guilty about breaking up his marriage.

  I’ve got enough to feel guilty about already.

  Agent Jones nods. “We talked to her today. She’s in Arkansas. We contacted her for the first time about a week ago, and she agreed to hear your brother out; first step was gonna be getting them on the phone together. Now she says she won’t come back, not even to claim the body.”

  “What do you want me to do?” I ask. I just want this to be over.

  “Philip told us enough that we think you have access to information. Information we need,” says Agent Hunt. “You know some of the same people that he did—and you have connections to the Zacharov family that he never had.”

  He means Lila. I’m almost sure of it.

  “That’s not—,” I start, but Jones cuts me off.

  “We’ve been hearing about Zacharov making people disappear for years. Just poof! Nothing. No body. No evidence. We still don’t know how he—or his wetworks guy—did it. Please, just look at some of the cases. See if there’s something familiar. Ask around. Your brother was our first big break. Now he’s dead.” Jones shakes his head with regret.

  I grit my teeth, and after a moment he looks away, like maybe he realizes that was a jackass thing to say. Like maybe, to me, my brother was a human being.

  Like maybe if I start looking around, I’ll wind up dead too.

  “Are you even trying to find who killed Philip?” I ask, since they seem fixated on Zacharov.

  “Of course we are,” says Agent Jones. “Finding your brother’s murderer is our number one priority.”

  “Any leads on this case are going to point us directly at his killer,” Agent Hunt says, standing. “Just to show you we’re on the level, I want you to see what we’ve already got.” Reluctantly I follow him out into the hall and then through a door into the observation room behind the mirror. He presses a button on some video equipment.

  “This is sensitive material,” says Agent Jones, looking at me like he expects me to be impressed. “We’re going to need you to be a smart kid and keep this information under wraps.”

  On a small screen my brother’s condo complex comes to life in full color. It’s evening, the sun glowing from the edge of the building as it slips below the tops of the trees. I can see the heat shimmer on the asphalt of the driveway. I can’t quite see his unit, but I know it’s just to the right of the frame.

  “The complex put in these surveillance cams recently,” Agent Hunt says quietly. “There was a break-in or something. The angle’s terrible, but we were able to get this footage from last night.”

  A figure in a dark coat passes in front of the camera, too close and too fast for the film to register much. There’s no glimpse of the face, but a few thin fingers of a leather glove are visible at the hem of a billowing black coat sleeve. The glove is as red as newly spilled blood.

  “That’s all we have,” Agent Hunt says. “Nobody else in or out. It looks like a woman’s coat and a woman’s glove. If she’s Zacharov’s regular hatchet guy, shooting isn’t her usual method of killing. But lots of death workers turn to nonworker techniques after they lose too many body parts to blowback. That’s usually how they trip themselves up. Of course, she could be a new recruit Zacharov sent out blind, just someone to get a job done with no obvious connection to the organization.”

  “So you’ve basically got no idea,” I say.

  “We believe that the person responsible for the murders found out that Philip was going to finger him. Or her. When Philip came to us, asking to make a deal, we asked other informants about him. We know he had a falling-out with Zacharov and we know it had something to do with Zacharov’s daughter, Lila.”

  “Lila didn’t do this,” I say automatically. “Lila’s not a death worker.”

  Jones sits up straighter. “What kind of worker is she?”

  “I don’t know!” I say, which comes out sounding like the obvious lie that it is. Lila is a dream worker, a really powerful one. Powerful enough to make dreamers sleepwalk out of their own houses. Or dorm rooms.

  Hunt shakes his head. “All we know is that the last person to enter Philip’s apartment was a woman with red gloves. We need to find her. Let us focus on that. You can help by getting us the information that Philip died trying to impart. Don’t let your brother’s death be in vain. We are certain those disappearances and your brother’s death are linked.”

  It’s very moving, the speech. Like I’m really supposed to believe that Philip’s last wish was for me to square him with the Feds. But the vision of the woman entering his apartment haunts me.

  Agent Jones holds out some folders. “These are the names your brother gave us—the men he swore were killed and disposed of by Zacharov’s guy. Just look the pages over and see if anything jumps out at you. Something you might have overheard, someone you might have seen. Anything. And we’d appreciate it if you didn’t show these files to anyone else. It serves both our interests if this meeting never happened.”

  I stare at the tape where he’s paused it, like somehow I should recognize the person. But she’s just a blur of cloth and leather.

  “The school already knows I went for a ride with you,” I say. “Northcutt knows.”

  Agent Hunt smiles. “We don’t think that your headmistress will be a problem.”

  A terrible thought occurs to me, but I quash it before I can even articulate it to myself. I would never hurt Philip.

  “Does this mean I’m working for you?” I ask, forcing myself to smirk.

  “Something like that,” Agent Jones says. “Do a good job, and we’ll recommend you to come aboard with Agent Yulikova. You’ll like her.”

  I doubt that. “What if I don’t want to go to this training program?”

  “We’re not like the Mafia,” Agent Hunt says. “You can get out any time you want.”

  I think of the locked door of the room, the locked car doors. “Yeah, sure.”

  They drive me to Wallingford, but by the time I am back on campus, classes are half over. I don’t bother going to lunch. I head to my room, tuck the folders under my mattress, and wait for the inevitable summons from the hall master.

  We’re so sorry, he’s going to say. We’re so sorry.

  But I’m sorriest of all.

  4

  PHILIP’S FACE LOOKS LIKE it’s made of wax. Whatever they did to preserve it for the viewing gives his skin an odd sheen. When I go up to the casket to say my final good-byes, I realize they have painted the visible parts of him with some flesh-colored cosmetic. If I look closely, I can see traces of bloodless skin they missed—behind his ears, and in a stripe above his gloves but below the cuff of his sleeves. He’s wearing a suit Mom picked out, along with a black silk tie. I don’t recall him wearing either one in life, but they must have come from his closet. His hair has been pulled back into a sleek ponytail. The high collar of his shirt mostly obscures the necklace of keloid scars that mark him as a gangster. Not that there’s anyone in this room who doesn’t know what his job was.

  I kneel in front of his body, but I have no words for Philip. I don’t want his forgiveness. I don’t forgive him.

  “Did they take out his eyes?” I ask Sam when I get back to my seat. The room is filling up fast. Men in dark suits, sipping from breast-pocket flasks; women in black dresses, their shoes as pointed as knives.

  Sam looks at me, surprised by the question. “Probably, yeah. They probably use glass.” He blanches a little. “And fill the body with disinfecting fluid.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “Dude, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have told you that.”

  I shake my head. “I asked.”

  Sam is dressed a lot like Philip. I’m wearing my father’s suit, the one that had to be dry-cleaned to get rid of Anton’s blood. Morbid, I know. It was that or my school uniform.

  Daneca comes up to us, looking like she’s masquerading as her mother in a navy sheath and pearls.