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CHAPTER ONE

MY BROTHER BARRON sits next to h a wide yellow straw He’s got the seat of my Benz pushed all the way back and his feet up on the dash, the heels of his pointy black shoes scratching the plastic With his hair slicked back and hishis eyes, he looks like a study in villainy

He’s actually a junior federal agent, still in training, sure, but with a key card and an ID badge and everything

To be fair, he’s also a villain

I tap ainst the curve of the wheel and bring a pair of binoculars to my eyes for about theon the wrong side of Queens “What is she doing in there? It’s been forty minutes”

“What do you think?” he askscare of shady business so Zacharov’s gloves stay clean”

“Her dad won’t put her in any real danger,” I say, but the tone ofto convinceto convince my brother

Barron snorts “She’s a new soldier Got to prove herself Zacharov couldn’t keep her out of danger if he tried—and he’s not going to be trying real hard The other laborers are watching, waiting for her to be weak Waiting for her to screw up He knows that So should you”

I think of her at twelve, a skinny girl with eyes too large for her face and a ni on the branch of a tree, eating a rope of red licorice Her lips are sticky with it Her flip-flops are hanging off her toes She’s cutting her initials into the bark, high up, so her cousin can’t claiher than he ever will

Boys never believe I can beat them, she told me back then But I alin in the end

“Maybe she spotted the car and went out the back,” I say finally

“No way sheeh the car “We’re like ninjas”

“So soood at it yet, no ency, Yulikova, has been encouraging me to shadow Barron, so I can learn secondhand and can keep ures out how to tell her bosses that she’s got hold of a teenage transformation worker with a bad attitude and a crie, Barron’s stuck teaching raduate fro

Of course, I’m pretty sure this isn’t the kind of lesson Yulikova’s been i

Barron grins, white teeth flashing like dropped dice “What do you think Lila Zacharov would do if she knew you were tailing her?”

I grin back “Probably she’d kill me”

He nods “Probably she would Probably she’d killyou”

“Probably you deserve it,” I say He snorts

Over the last fewI ever wanted—and then I threw it all away Everything I thought I could never have was offered up on a silver platter—the girl, the power, a job at the right hand of Zacharov, the most formidable man I know It wouldn’t even have been that hard to work for him It probably would have been fun And if I didn’t care who I hurt, it would still all be mine

I lift the binoculars and study the door again—the worn paint striping the boards and crued as if it had been gnawed on by rats

Lila would still be mine

Mine The language of love is like that, possessive That should be the first warning that it’s not going to encourage anyone’s betterment

Barron groans and throws his cup into the backseat “I can’t believe that you black Johnny Law and now I have to sweat it out five days a ith the other recruits while you use irlfriend How is that fair?”

“One, I think you mean the extreirlfriend Three, I just wanted to make sure she was okay” I count off these points onyou should want is fairness”

“Stalk her at school,” Barron says, ignoring everything I’ve just said “Come on I have to et a couple of slices I’ll even buy”

I sigh The car is stuffy and ss And Barron is probably right—we should give this up Not for the reason he’s saying but for the one that’s i okay to lurk around outside buildings, spying on girls you like

My fingers are reaching reluctantly for iving up suray trench I study the quicksilver gestures of her gloved hands, the sway of her earrings, the slap of her heels on the steps, and the lash of her hair She’s so beautiful, I can barely breathe Behind her follows a boy with his hair braided into the shape of two antelope horns His skin is darker thana folded-up wad of so that looks like cash into an inside pocket

Outside of school Lila doesn’t bother wearing a scarf I can see the grim necklace of marks on her throat, scars black where ash was rubbed into them That’s part of the cere your skin and swearing that you’re dead to your old life and reborn into wickedness Not even Zacharov’s daughter was spared it

She’s one of the back

“Well, now,” says Barron, gleeful “I bet you’re thinking we just observed the end of a very naughty transaction But let’s consider the possibility that actually we caught her doing so”

I look at hi?”

“Like aic the Gathering Maybe they’re training for a tourna he won”

“Funny”

“Maybe he’s tutoring her in Latin Or they were paintingher shadow puppetry” He loved hand

I punch Barron’s shoulder, but not really hard Just hard enough to lasses, pushing theher on his nose

The boy with the braids crosses the street, head down, hood pulled up to shadow his face Lila walks to the corner and raises her hand to hail a cab The hips at her hair, old

I wonder if she’s done her homework for Monday

I wonder if she could ever love ain

I wonder just howher Probably really, really mad

Cold October air floods into the car suddenly, tossing around the empty cup in the backseat

“Co down atout “Grab some quarters for the meter, and your stuff” He jerks his head in the direction of the boy with the braids “We’re going to follow him”

“What about that phone call?” I shiver in reen T-shirt My leather jacket is wadded up in the backseat ofit on

“I was bored,” Barron says “Now I’m not”

Thispeople, I picked Lila as et half as a joke, half out of sick desire I didn’t think that Barron would agree I didn’t think that we’d actually see her leaving her apart into a town car I for sure didn’t think that I would wind up here, close to actually finding out what she’s been doing when she’s not in school

I get out of the car and slam the door behind me

That’s the proble

“Feels alent work, doesn’t it?” Barron says as alk down the street, heads bowed against the wind “You know, if we caught your girlfriend coive us a bonus or so prize pupils”

“Except that we’re not going to do that,” I say

“I thought you wanted us to be good guys” He grins a too-wide grin He’s enjoying needlingonly makes it worse, but I can’t stop

“Not if ither,” I say, my voice as deadly as I can make it “Never her”

“Got it Hurting, bad But how do you excuse stalking her and her friends, little brother?”

“I’ it”

Following—stalking—someone isn’t easy You try not to stare too hard at the back of his head, keep your distance, and act like you’re just another person freezing your ass off in late October on the streets of Queens Above all you try not to seeent wannabe

“Stop worrying,” Barron says, strolling along beside uy will probably be flattered He’d think he was overnment tail”

Barron is better at acting casual than I a to lose if we’re spotted Lila couldn’t possibly hate him more than she does Plus, he probably trains for this all day, while I’e there is no way I a to attend

It still annoys s Mostly, all those competitions were ones I lost

We were the two youngest, and when Philip would be off with his friends on the weekends, Barron and I would be stuck doing whatever errands Dad needed doing, or practicing whatever skill he thought we needed to learn

He particularly wanted us to be better at pickpocketing and lock-picking than ere

Two kids are the perfect pickpocket team, he’d say One to do the lift, the other one to distract or to take the handoff

We both practiced dips First identifying where Dad kept his wallet by looking for a bulge in a back pocket or the way one side of his coat swung heavily because soood; Barron was better

Then we practiced distraction Crying Asking for directions Giving the mark a quarter that you claim they dropped

It’s like stage ot to ht in front of my face

When Dad didn’t feel like fending off our clu us to the barn and show us his collection: He had an old metal tackle box with locks on all the sides, so you had to run the gauntlet of seven different locks to get into it Neither Barron nor I ever ed

Once we learned how to open a lock with a tool, we’d have to learn to pick it with a bobby pin, with a hanger, then with a stick or soreat at locks, since I was pretty sure I wasn’t a worker back then, and since I already felt like an outsider inI was better at than all of the else

It sucks to be the youngest

If you get into the supersecure box, we’ll sneak into the movie of your choice, Dad would say Or, I put candy in there Or, If you really want that video gaet it for you But it didn’t matter what he proed to pick three locks; Barron ed five

And here we are again, learning a bunch of new skills I can’t help feeling a little bit competitive and a little bit disappointed in myself that I’m already so far behind After all, Yulikova thinks Barron has a real future with the Bureau She told

I think she figured I was joking

“What other stuff do they teach you at federal agent school?” I ask It shouldn’t botherit? Good for him

I guess what bothersit better than I am

He rolls his eyes “Nothingbehavior You know, doing whatever the other person’s doing” He laughs “Honestly, undercover’s just like being a con et Befriend Then betray”

Mirroring behavior When a lass, so should you When he smiles, so should you Keep it subtle, rather than creepy, and it’s a good technique

Moht it to me when I was ten Cassel, she said, you want to kno to be the uy anyone’s ever met? Remind them of their favorite person Everyone’s favorite person is their own damn self

“Except now you’re the good guy,” I say, and laugh

He laughs too, like I just told the best joke in the world

But now that I’ about her She’s beenher worker talent—euy who hated curse workers to begin with and now is on national news every night with a vein popping out of his forehead, calling for her blood I hope she stays hidden I just wish I knehere she was