I think about telling Daneca the truth. Of all the people I know, she’s the one who would be the most proud of me. But it feels unfair to get them involved—no matter what they say, especially since this is something far bigger and more dangerous than anything I’ve been in the middle of before.

  “You know me,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m not much for politics.”

  She looks at me slyly. “Too bad you didn’t see it, because if I am made valedictorian of our class, I’d love to have help writing my speech, and Patton’s is the perfect model. It sets the exact right tone. But I guess if you really don’t care about that kind of thing—”

  “You want to tell everyone that today’s the day you speak from your heart and confess all your crimes? Because I didn’t think you had all that much to confess.”

  “So you did see it!” Sam says.

  “You’re a liar, Cassel Sharpe,” Daneca says, but there’s no heat in it. “A lying liar who lies.”

  “I guess I heard someone talking about it somewhere.” I smile up at the ceiling. “What do you want? A leopard can’t change his spots.”

  “If the leopard was a transformation worker, he could,” Sam says.

  I get the sense that maybe I don’t have to say anything. They appear to have put a theory together on their own.

  Daneca grins at Sam.

  I try not to think of the photo in Barron’s wallet or of the way she was smiling at my brother in the picture. I especially try not to compare it to her smile now.

  “Deal me in next go-around,” I say. “What are we playing for?”

  “The sheer joy of victory,” Sam tells me. “What else?”

  “Oh,” Daneca says, and gets up. “Before I forget.” She walks over to her bag and pulls out a bundled T-shirt. She unknots it and pushes back the cloth. Gage’s gun is there, oiled and gleaming. “I got this out of Wharton’s office before the cleaners came.”

  I stare at the old Beretta. It’s small, and as silvery as the scales of a fish. It shines under the light of the desk lamp.

  “Get rid of it,” Sam says. “For real, this time.”

  * * *

  The next day it starts to snow. The flakes float down, coating the trees in a thin powder, making the grass sparkle with ice.

  I walk from statistics to Developing World Ethics to English. Everything seems bizarrely normal.

  Then I see Mina Lange, hurrying to class, wearing a black beret dusted white.

  “You,” I say, stepping in front of her. “You got Sam shot.”

  She looks at me with wide eyes.

  “You’re a terrible con artist. And you aren’t a very nice person. I almost feel sorry for you. I have no idea what happened to your parents. I have no idea how you wound up stuck curing Wharton, with no end in sight and no way out and no friends you trust enough to let help you. I can’t even say that I wouldn’t have done what you did. But Sam almost died because of you, and for that I will never forgive you.”

  Her eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t mean—”

  “Don’t even try it.” I reach into my jacket and give her Yulikova’s business card and the wrapped T-shirt bundle. “I can’t promise you anything, but if you really want to get out, take this. There’s a death worker, a kid named Gage, who wants his gun back. You give it to him, and I bet he’d be willing to help you out. Teach you how to be on your own, get work, and not be beholden to anyone. Or you can call the number on the card. Yulikova will make you a trainee in her program. She’s looking for the gun too. She’ll help you too, more or less.”

  Mina stares at the card, turning it over in her hand, holding the bundle against her chest, and I walk away before she can thank me. The last thing I want is her gratitude.

  Giving her that choice is my own personal revenge.

  * * *

  The rest of the day goes about as well as any day. I make another mug in ceramics that doesn’t blow up. Track is canceled because of the weather. Dinner is a somewhat gummy mushroom risotto, haricots verts, and a brownie.

  Sam and I do our homework, flopped on our beds, throwing wadded-up pieces of paper at each other.

  It snows even harder while we sleep, and in the morning we have to fight our way to class through a volley of snowballs. Everyone arrives with ice melting in their hair.

  The debate club has a meeting in the afternoon, so I go to that and doodle in my notebook. Through sheer lack of attention I wind up stuck with the topic Why Violent Video Games Are Bad for America’s Youth. I try to argue my way out of it, but it’s impossible to debate the whole debate team.

  I am crossing the quad, heading back to my room, when my phone rings. It’s Lila.

  “I’m in the parking lot,” she says and hangs up.

  I trudge through the snow. The landscape is hushed, quiet. In the distance there is only the sound of cars moving through slush.

  Her Jaguar is idling near the pile of snow the plow built at one end of the lot. She’s sitting on the hood, in her gray coat. The black hat she’s wearing has an incongruously cute pom-pom at the top. Strands of gold hair blow in the wind.

  “Hey,” I say, walking closer. My voice sounds rough, like I haven’t spoken in years.

  Lila slides off the car and comes sweetly into my arms. She smells like cordite and some kind of flowery perfume. She’s not wearing makeup and her eyes have a slight puffy redness that makes me think of tears. “I told you I’d say good-bye.” Her voice is almost a whisper.

  “I don’t want you to go,” I murmur into her hair.

  She pulls back a little and twines her arms around my neck, drawing my mouth down to hers. “Tell me you’ll miss me.”

  I kiss her instead of speaking, my hands sliding up to knot in her hair. Everything is quiet. There is only the taste of her tongue and the swell of her lower lip, the curve of her jaw. There is only the sharp shuddering gasp of her breath.

  There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she’ll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way that I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue.

  It’s thrilling to realize that I’m allowed this at last, that for this moment she’s mine.

  Then she takes an unsteady step back. Her eyes shine with unsaid things; her mouth is ruddy from being pressed against mine. She bends down and picks up her hat. “I’ve got to—”

  She’s got to go and I’ve got to let her.

  “Yeah,” I say, curling my hands at my sides to keep from grabbing for her. “Sorry.” I shouldn’t already feel the loss of her so acutely, when she’s not yet gone. I have had to let her go so many times, surely practice ought to make this easier.

  We walk to her car together. The snow crunches under my feet. I look back at the bleak brick dorms.

  “I’ll be here,” I say. “When you get back.”

  She nods, smiling a little, like she’s humoring me. I don’t think she realizes just how long I’ve been waiting, how long I will wait for her still. Finally she meets my gaze and smiles. “Just don’t forget me, Cassel.”

  “Never,” I say.

  I couldn’t if I tried.

  Believe me, once upon a time, I tried.

  She gets into the car and closes the driver’s side door with a slam. I can tell it costs her something to act casual, to give me that last little wave and grin, to put her car into gear and start to pull out of the lot.

  That’s when it hits me. In a single moment everything becomes suddenly, gloriously clear. I have a choice other than this one.

  “Wait!” I yell, legging it over and knocking on the window.

  She hits the brakes.

  “I’m coming with you,” I say as she rolls the window down. I’m grinning like a fool. “Take me with you.”

  “What?” Her face looks blank, like she’s not sure she’s hearing me right. “You can’t. What about graduating? And your family? And your whole life?”

  For years Wallingford has been my refuge, proof that I could be a regular guy—or that I could pretend well enough that no one could tell the difference. But I don’t need that anymore. I’m okay with being a con artist and a grifter. With being a worker. With having friends who will hopefully forgive me for taking off on a mad road trip. With being in love.

  “I don’t care.” I get in on the passenger side, slamming the door on everything else. “I want to be with you.”

  I can’t stop smiling.

  She looks at me for a long moment, and then starts to laugh. “You’re running away with me with your book bag and the clothes on your back? I could wait for you to go to your dorm—or we could stop by your house. Don’t you need to get anything?”

  I shake my head. “Nope. Nothing I can’t steal.”

  “What about telling someone? Sam?”

  “I’ll call from the road.” I hit the knob on the radio, filling the car with music.

  “Don’t you even want to know where we’re going?” She’s looking at me like I’m a painting she’s managed to steal but will never be allowed to keep. She sounds exasperated and oddly fragile.

  I look out the window at the snow-covered landscape as the car starts to move. Maybe we’ll go north and see my father’s family, maybe we’ll try to find her father’s diamond. It doesn’t matter.

  “Nah,” I say.

  “You’re crazy.” She’s laughing again. “You know that, right, Cassel? Crazy.”

  “We’ve spent a lot of time doing what we’re supposed to do,” I say. “I think we should start doing what we want. And this is what I want. You’re what I want. You’re what I’ve always wanted.”

  “Well, good,” she says, tucking a lock of spun-gold hair behind her ear and leaning back in her seat. Her smile is all teeth. “Because there’s no turning back now.”

  Her gloved hand turns the wheel sharply, and I feel the giddy rush that comes only at the end of things, that comes when, despite everything, I realize that we actually got away with it.

  Every con artist’s fairy tale.

  The big score.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Several books were really helpful in creating the world of the curse workers. In particular, David W. Maurer’s The Big Con; Robert B. Cialdini’s Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion; Kent Walker and Mark Schone’s Son of a Grifter; and Karl Taro Greenfeld’s Speed Tribes.

  I am deeply indebted to many people for their insight into this book. Thanks to Cassandra Clare, Sarah Rees Brennan, Josh Lewis, and Robin Wasserman for looking at many, many permutations of scenes and for their suggestions on two scenes in particular. Thanks to Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner, Maureen Johnson, and Paolo Bacigalupi for the many helpful suggestions and general cheerleading while we were in Mexico. Thank you to Justine Larbalestier and Steve Berman for their detailed notes and focus on getting the details just right. Thank you to Libba Bray for letting me talk the whole end through with her. Thanks to Dr. Elka Cloke and Dr. Eric Churchill for their medical expertise and generosity. Thanks to Sarah Smith, Gavin Grant, and Kelly Link for helping me polish the whole book to a shine.

  Most of all I have to thank my agent, Barry Goldblatt, for all his sincere support; my editor, Karen Wojtyla, for pushing me to make these books far better and for the care she took with all aspects of the series; and my husband, Theo, who gave me lots of insight into private schools and scams and who once again let me read the whole book to him out loud.

  LILA ZACHAROV IN 13 PIECES

  THE SUMMER LILA CAME back from Europe, everything was different. She was used to drinking her coffee with a croissant dipped in it and taking the Metro by herself. She liked shopping in Le Marais. She had been to Rome and to Madrid and Marrakesh. Before her return, her father had even let her go to a salon and have her hair chopped to chin length and dyed bright pink. She knew she’d changed—but she figured everyone else would be the same.

  They weren’t.

  Cassel was taller, for one thing. He went from about her height to probably near six feet. It made him look alarmingly adult with the new hard angles of his face and a slight roughness to the skin of his jaw. He must have started shaving.

  Her mother was angrier. They fought constantly—over Lila’s hair, over how independent she was, and the music she listened to and the books she read. And boys. Every time a boy tried to chat her up on the beach, her mother interrogated her about every detail of what he’d said, warning her in dire terms about diseases and pregnancy. Her mother grew so paranoid that she actually relented about Lila hanging out with Cassel, since he was a known quantity and his grandfather was always home.

  So Lila and Cassel spent a lot of time sprawled on an old leather couch in the basement of his grandad’s house, renting black-and-white films where smoky-eyed starlets drank cocktails and laughed in the face of danger. They once even convinced his oldest brother, Philip, to drive them to a vintage store at an indoor flea market a half hour away. There Cassel got a fedora with a red feather in it while Lila bought a pair of huge sunglasses and a scarf to tie back her hair like an old-time movie star.

  Afterward they walked around, looking at the other stalls.

  “Did you see that knife in the shape of a snake?” Cassel asked. “Isn’t a knife-shaped knife scary enough? Why disguise it? I mean, how is a snake scarier than a knife?”

  Lila grinned. “I thought the rhinestone eyes were a very frightening touch.”

  “Look at this!” He grabbed a beret off a hat rack and plopped it down on her head. “I bet you wore one of these all the time in Paris.”

  She laughed, trying to yank it away from him. They spun around and she was suddenly very aware of him, of how close she was to being in his arms.

  “That’s how I pictured you, anyway,” he said, grinning, looking down at her, shockingly handsome with his sooty lashes and square jaw. He had the face of a pirate or a Romani prince.

  “Oh, you pictured me, did you?” she asked. “A lot?”

  His arms rested on her shoulders as he tilted the hat with gloved hands. He shook his head. “Barely ever.” Then, with a yank, he pulled the beret down over her eyes.

  She howled, pulling it off and chasing him through the aisles as shopkeepers yelled after them. It was only after they’d stopped in the parking lot, still laughing and gasping for breath, that she realized what it meant that her heart was still slamming against her rib cage, that she was still looking for an excuse to touch him, that her whole body seemed to thrum with joy at his happiness.

  But she had no idea what to do about it.

  * * *

  It’s not that Lila didn’t like weddings. It’s just that, by thirteen, she had gone to lots of them. Her father’s business was full of bad young men who planned on dying young and rich, with a wife and children to weep over their graves. Criminals were, as a rule, disgustingly sentimental.

  Her father had to preside over all the weddings, as necessary as the luck curse and the pair of rings. He had to give out envelopes of money to the brides, just like he gave envelopes to the widows at the funerals that would follow. And since her parents’ divorce, Lila had become the woman on his arm.

  She had acquired a closet full of dresses to go with her new role. Half of them were black.

  That day, she was in light gray. As the bride and groom danced, she played gin rummy with her cousin Anton for silver candied almonds. He mostly won.

  “Lila,” her father said, interrupting a game. His black silk suit looked perfectly pressed, red diamond tie pin stabbing through his ivory tie, keeping even that in place. “Do me a favor.” He’d been drinking steadily since they arrived, but he didn’t slur his words.

  “Sure,” she said.

  He reached into his inside breast pocket and took out an envelope. “Hand this to the new Mrs. Consenza. Tell her it’s from the family.” Ice cubes clinked as he swished them around his highball glass. He took a swallow of amber liquor.

  “Okay,” she said.

  His gloved hand patted her shoulder. “There’s my good girl.”

  She rolled her eyes as he walked off.

  “Give me that,” Anton said, reaching for the envelope. “I’ll do it.”

  She pulled her hand off the table, shifting the envelope to her lap. “No.”

  “How about I play you for it? We finish out the hand.” He was smiling, but it looked forced.

  She stood up. “What’s wrong with you?”

  His eyes flashed with the promise of violence. “You’re too young to represent the family. That’s all. Look, in a couple of years, things will be different.”

  “You don’t get to decide that,” she said. It was a little thing, an errand. She wouldn’t have thought twice about it if Anton hadn’t been so weird. But now, stubbornly, she stood up and walked to the head table.

  The couple was still spinning around the dance floor. They looked happy, entirely focused on each other, eyes bright with joy.

  Lila waited until the bride came back from dancing, flushed and giddy.

  “From the family,” Lila told her, putting the envelope into her hand.

  The bride’s hand trembled as she took it. She gave a quick, nervous grin. “Thank you. Tell your father thank you.”

  “We both wish you the best,” Lila improvised.

  The bride and groom thanked her again, sincerely. They seemed to accept without question that she spoke for her father.

  And if she told them something else some other time—even gave them an order—she bet they’d accept that without question too.

  She could see why Anton wanted people to believe that he spoke for her father. Why he wanted her to get used to letting him boss her around. Why she couldn’t let him.