“Make me pretty,” the man says, coming as close to me as he can with Stanley between us. He smells like stale sweat and vomit. “I want to look like a movie star.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I say, taking my hand out of my pocket. Bare. The air feels cool on my skin. I rub my thumb against my fingers in an unfamiliar gesture.

  The man dances away. Stanley turns to see what freaked the guy out, and backs off too. Ungloved hands get attention.

  “You sure he’s what you say he is?” the guy asks Zacharov. “This isn’t your way of getting rid of a problem, right? Or making me forget my own name?”

  “No need to bring a boy to do either of those things,” Zacharov says.

  That doesn’t seem to reassure the guy. He looks at me and gestures to his neck. “Show me your marks.”

  “I don’t have any,” I say, pulling at the front of my sweater.

  “We don’t have time for these pointless questions,” Zacharov says. “Emil, sit down now. I am a busy man and I do not oversee murders. I also do not take pointless risks.”

  That seems to settle him. He pulls up a folding metal chair and sits in it. Rust has eaten away at the joints, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy watching my hand.

  “What’s this for?” I ask.

  “I will answer all of your questions later,” Zacharov says. “But for now, do as I ask.”

  Stanley eyes me coldly. Zacharov’s not asking. There never were any good choices.

  Emil’s eyes go wide when I touch the pads of my fingers to his filthy cheek. I bet my heart is beating just as fast as his.

  I’ve never done anything like this transformation, something requiring fine detail and finesse. I close my eyes and let myself see with that odd second sense, let every part of Emil become infinitely malleable. But then I panic. I can’t think of a single movie star whose features I recall in detail. Not a guy, anyway. They’re all blurs of eyes and noses and some vague sense of familiarity. The only actor that comes to mind at all is Steve Brodie as Dr. Vance in The Giant Spider Invasion.

  I change Emil. I’m getting the hang of this. When I open my eyes, he looks like a passably hot dude from the 1970s. No more tattoos. No more scars. I fixed his ear, too.

  Stanley sucks in his breath. Emil reaches up to touch his face, his eyes wide.

  Zacharov is staring at me, one corner of his thin mouth lifted in a hungry smile.

  Then my knees cramp and I go down hard. I can feel my body start to spread, my fingers branching out into dozens of iron nails. My back spasms and my skin feels like it’s sloughing off me. I can hear a sound coming out of me, more a moan than a scream.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Emil yells.

  “It’s the blowback,” Zacharov says. “Give him some space.”

  I hear the table being dragged back as I flop around on the floor.

  “Is he going to bite his tongue?” That’s Stanley’s voice. “I don’t think that looks right. He’s going to give himself a concussion. We should at least put something under his head.”

  “Which one?” asks someone else. Emil? The guy by the door? I no longer know.

  It hurts. It really, really hurts. Blackness rises up, looming and terrible, before breaking over me like a wave, dragging me down to the bottom of the dreamless sea.

  When I wake, I’m on the cot, swaddled in Emil’s stinking blanket, and only Zacharov and Stanley remain. They’re sitting on the folding chairs, playing cards. The boarded-up windows have a halo of light around their edges. It’s still daytime. I can’t have been out for that long.

  “Hey,” says Stanley, spotting me shifting. “Kid’s awake.”

  “You did good, Cassel,” Zacharov says, turning his chair to face me. “You want to sleep some more?”

  “No,” I say, pushing myself up. It’s a little awkward, like I’ve been sick or something. The mask is gone. They must have taken it off me while I was sleeping.

  “You hungry?” he asks.

  I shake my head again. I feel a little queasy after the change, like I’m not sure where my stomach is. The last thing I want is food.

  “You will be hungry later,” he says, with such certainty that it seems impossible to contradict him. I’m too tired to bother, anyway.

  I let Stanley help me up, and he half-carries me out to the car.

  We ride for a while, with my head resting against the window. I think I fall asleep again. I drool on the glass.

  “Time to wake up.” Someone is shaking my shoulder. I groan. Everything is stiff, but otherwise I feel okay.

  Zacharov is grinning at me from the other side of the car. His silver hair is bright against the blackness of his wool coat and the leather seats. “Give me your hands,” he says.

  I do. One is gloved; the other one isn’t.

  He takes off my remaining glove and holds my bare hands in his gloved ones, palms up. I feel uncomfortably vulnerable, even though he’s the one who’s in danger of being worked. “With these hands,” he says, “you will make the future. Be sure it is a future in which you want to live.”

  I swallow. I have no idea what he means. He lets go, and I fish in my pocket for the other glove, avoiding his gaze.

  A moment later the car door opens on my side. Stanley’s there, holding it wide. We’re in Manhattan, skyscrapers looming over us and traffic streaming past.

  I shuffle out, breathing the car exhaust and roasting-peanut-scented air. I’m still blinking the sleep out of my eyes, but I realize that not being in New Jersey means that whatever I’ve been brought to do isn’t over.

  “Oh, come on,” I say to Zacharov. “I can’t. Not again. Not today.”

  But he just laughs. “I only want to give you some dinner. Lila would never forgive me if I sent you back on an empty stomach.”

  I’m surprised. I must have really looked in bad shape back at the warehouse, because I am sure he’s got better things to do than feed me.

  “This way,” Zacharov says, and walks toward a large bronze door with a raised relief of a bear. There’s no sign on the building; I have no idea what to expect when we go in. It doesn’t look like a restaurant. I glance back at Stanley, but he’s getting back into the driver’s seat of the Cadillac.

  Zacharov and I walk into a small mirrored entranceway with a polished brass elevator. There’s no furniture other than a gilt and black bench and, from what I can see, no intercom or bell. Zacharov fishes around in his pocket and removes a set of keys. He puts one into a hole on an otherwise blank panel and twists. The doors open.

  The inside of the elevator is richly burled wood. A video screen above the doors is showing a black-and-white movie without any sound. I don’t recognize the film.

  “What’s this place?” I ask finally as the doors slide shut.

  “A social club,” Zacharov says, clasping his gloved hands in front of him. Neither of us has pushed any button. “Here, things are private.”

  I nod, as though I actually understand what he’s talking about.

  When the elevator opens, we’re in a huge room—huge like, seriously, you can’t figure this place is really in New York. The marble floor is mostly covered in an enormous carpet. Along it are islands of two or four club chairs with high backs. The ceiling far above our heads is decorated with intricate plaster moldings. Along the nearest wall is a massive bar, its marble top shining against dark wood paneling. Behind the bar, on a high shelf, are several hulking jars of clear liquor with fruits and spices floating in them: lemons, rose petals, whole cloves, ginger. Uniformed staff move through the room silently, carrying drinks and small trays to the occupants of the chairs.

  “Wow,” I say.

  He gives me a half grin, one that I have seen on Lila’s face before. It’s unnerving.

  An old man with sunken cheeks in a black suit walks up to us. “Welcome, Mr. Zacharov. May I take your coat?”

  Zacharov shucks it off.

  “Would you like to borrow a sport jacket for your friend?” the man asks him, barely glancing in my direction. I guess I’m breaking some kind of dress code.

  “No,” Zacharov says. “We will have drinks and then dinner. Please send someone to us in the blue room.”

  “Very good, sir,” the man says, just like a butler in a movie.

  “Come,” says Zacharov.

  We walk through double doors into a far smaller library. Three bearded men are sitting together, laughing. One smokes a pipe. Another has a girl in a very short red dress sitting on his knee doing a bump of cocaine off a sugar spoon.

  Zacharov sees me staring. “Private club,” he reminds me.

  Right.

  In the third room a fire is blazing. The room is smaller than the other two, but there’s only one set of doors—the ones we came through—and no one else inside. Zacharov motions that I should sit. I sink into the soft leather. There’s a small, low table between us. A crystal chandelier swings gently above us, scattering bands of colored light across the room.

  A uniformed attendant appears. He looks me over, obviously skeptical, then turns to Mr. Zacharov. “Would you care for a drink?”

  “I will take Laphroaig with a single cube of ice to begin, and Mr. Sharpe will have—”

  “A club soda,” I say lamely.

  “Very good,” says the attendant.

  “After that you will bring us three ounces of the Iranian osetra with blinis, chopped egg, and plenty of onion. We will both take a little Imperia vodka with that, very cold. Then a turbot with some of the chef’s excellent mustard sauce. And finally two of your pains d’amandes. Any objections, Cassel? Anything you don’t care for?”

  I have never eaten most of the things he named, but I am unwilling to admit it. I shake my head. “Sounds great.”

  The attendant nods, not even looking at me now, and walks off.

  “You are uncomfortable,” Zacharov says, which is true but seems like an uncharitable observation. “I thought Wallingford prepared you to take your place in society.”

  “I don’t think they expect my place to be anywhere near this place,” I say, which makes him smile.

  “But it could be, Cassel. Your gift is like this club—it makes you uncomfortable. It’s a bit too much, isn’t it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A man may daydream of how he would spend a million dollars, but playing the same game with a billion dollars sours the fantasy. There are too many possibilities. The house he once wished for with all his heart is suddenly too small. The travel, too cheap. He wanted to visit an island. Now he contemplates buying one. I remember you, Cassel. With all your heart you wanted to be one of us. Now you’re the best of us.”

  I look into the fire, turning back only when I hear the clink of our drinks being set down on the table.

  Zacharov picks up his Scotch and swirls the glass, making the amber liquor dance. He pauses another moment. “Do you recall being thrown out of Lila’s birthday party because you had a fight with some kid from her school?” He laughs suddenly, a short bark of sound. “You really cracked his head on that sink. Blood everywhere.”

  I touch my ear self-consciously and force a grin. I stopped wearing an earring when I enrolled at Wallingford, and the hole has almost closed up, but I still have the memory of her with the ice and the needle that same night, her hot breath against my neck. I shift in the chair.

  “Back then I should have seen you were worth watching,” he says, which is flattering but pretty obviously not true. “You know I’d like you to come work for me. I know you have some reservations. Let me answer them.”

  The attendant returns with our first course. The tiny gray pearls of caviar pop on my tongue, leaving behind the briny taste of the sea.

  Zacharov seems like a benevolent gentleman, loading his blini with chopped egg and crème fraîche. Just a distinguished guy in a perfectly tailored suit with a bulge under one arm where his gun rests. I’m thinking he’s not the best person in whom to confide my moral quandaries. Still, I’ve got to say something. “What was it like for my grandfather? Did you know him when he was younger?”

  Zacharov smiles. “Your grandad’s from a different time. His parents’ generation still thought of themselves as good people, thought of their powers as gifts. He was part of that first generation to be born criminals. Desi Singer came into the world—what?—not ten years after the ban was passed. He never had a chance.”

  “Dab hands,” I say, thinking of Mrs. Wasserman’s version of this story.

  He nods. “Yes, that’s what we used to be called, before the ban. Did you know that your grandfather was conceived in a worker camp? He grew up tough, like my father did. They had to. Their whole country had turned on them. My grandfather, Viktor, was in charge of the kitchens; it was his job to make sure everybody got fed. He did whatever he had to do to make the meager rations go around—made deals with the guards, made his own still and distilled his own booze to trade for supplies. That’s how the families started. My grandfather used to say that it was our calling to protect one another. No matter how much money we had or how much power, we should never forget where we came from.”

  He stops speaking as the attendant returns, setting the fish down before us. Zacharov calls for a glass of 2005 Pierre Morey Meursault, and it comes a moment later, lemon pale, the base of the glass cloudy with condensation.

  “When I was a young man of twenty, I was in my second year at Columbia. It was the late seventies, and I thought the world had changed. The first Superman movie was on the big screen, Donna Summer was on the radio, and I was tired of my father being so old-fashioned. I met a girl in class. Her name was Jenny Talbot. She wasn’t a worker, and I didn’t care.”

  The fish is cooling in front of us as Zacharov strips off one of his gloves. His bare hand is striped with scars. They’re a ruddy brown and pulled like taffy.

  “Three boys cornered me at a party in the Village and pressed my hand against one of the burners on an electric coil stove. Seared through my glove, fused the cloth into my flesh. It felt like someone was flaying me to the bone. They said I should stay away from Jenny, that the thought of someone like me touching her made them sick.”

  He takes a long swallow of wine and pokes his fork into the turbot, one hand still bare.

  “Desi came to the hospital after my father and mother left. He wanted my sister Eva to wait in the hall. When he asked me what happened, I was ashamed, but I told him. I knew he was loyal to my father. After I’d finished the story, he asked me what I wanted done to those boys.”

  “He killed them, didn’t he?” I ask.

  “I wanted him to,” says Zacharov, taking a bite of the fish and pausing to swallow. “Every time the nurse changed the dressing on my hand, every time they dug tweezers into blistered skin to pull out cloth, I imagined those boys dead. I told him so. Then your grandfather asked me about the girl.”

  “The girl?” I echo.

  “That’s exactly what I said, in that exact incredulous tone. He laughed and said that someone put those boys up to what they did. Someone told them something to rile them up. Maybe she liked to have boys fighting over her. But he was willing to bet that that girl of mine wanted to end our relationship and had decided to throw me out like garbage. It was easier, after all, if she seemed like a victim rather than the kind of girl who liked messing around with workers.

  “Your grandfather was right. She never came to the hospital to see me. When Desi finally paid a visit to the boys, he found Jenny in one of their beds.”

  Zacharov pauses to eat a few bites. I eat too. The fish is amazing, flaky and redolent of lemon and dill. But I don’t know what to make of the story he’s telling.

  “What happened to her?” I ask.

  He pauses, fork in hand. “What do you think?”

  “Ah,” I say. “Right.”

  He smiles. “When my grandfather said we had to protect one another, I thought he was a sentimental old man. It wasn’t until your grandfather said it that I understood what it meant. They hate us. They might give us a smile. They might even let us into their beds, but they still hate us.”

  The door opens. Two attendants have arrived with coffee and pastries.

  “They’d hate you most of all,” says Zacharov.

  The room’s warm, but I feel very cold.

  * * *

  It’s late when Stanley drops me back at the house. I’ve only got maybe twenty minutes to get my stuff and get back to Wallingford before room check.

  “Stay out of trouble,” Stanley says as I hop out of the back of the Cadillac.

  I unlock the door and head for the back room, gather up my books and backpack. Then I look for my keys, which I thought were right with my bag but aren’t. I stick my hands beneath the cushions of the couch. Then I kneel down to see if they fell underneath. I finally find them on the dining room table, hidden by some envelopes.

  I start to head out when I remember that my car is still busted. I’m not even sure I brought the battery and fuses home from Sam’s house. In a panic, I run upstairs to my bedroom. No battery. No fuses. I retrace what my drunken steps must have been, all the way back to the kitchen. I discover that the coat closet is slightly ajar and, amazingly, the auto parts bag is inside of it, resting alongside an empty beer can. A coat is wadded up in the back, like maybe I knocked it off its hanger. I lift it, intending on putting it back where it goes, when I hear a metallic thunk.

  A gun rests on the linoleum. It’s silver and black with the Smith & Wesson stamp on the side. I stare at it, and stare, like I’m seeing it wrong. Like it’s going to turn out to be a toy. After a moment I hold up the wide-collared coat. Black. Big. Like the one on the video.

  Which makes that gun the one that killed my brother.

  I put both the coat and the gun back, carefully, thrusting the evidence as far into the closet as it will go.

  I wonder when she decided to shoot Philip. It must have been after she came back from Atlantic City. I can’t believe that she knew about his deal with the Feds before then. Maybe she went to Philip’s house and saw some of the papers—but, no, he wouldn’t be that stupid. Maybe she spotted Agent Jones or Hunt talking to Philip. It would take only a single look at either one of them to know they were law enforcement.