White Cat (16 page)

“The thing’s probably giving fleas to my mother’s couch,” Sam says, which is perfect. I wish I could tell him that, but all I can do is give him a grateful glance.

The mark hands me the form, and this time I know what to do. I write down my age as nineteen, specify a veterinarian, and make up a name that’s not even close to my own.

“Do you have any ID?” he asks.

“Sure,” I say, and reach into my back pocket for my wallet. I flip it open and touch the place where driver’s licenses go. Mine’s not there.

“Oh,
man
,” I say. “This isn’t my day.”

“Where’d you leave it?” the guy asks.

I shake my head. “No idea. Look, I totally understand if that breaks the rules or whatever. I have one other place to hang up fliers, then I’ll go look for my license. Maybe your friend can give me a call and I can just drop the cat with her. My sister will understand.”

The guy gives me a long evaluating look.

“You have the adoption fee?” he asks.

I look down at the paper, but I already know what it says. “Fifty bucks, sure.”

The door rings, and some people walk through it, but the man behind the desk keeps his eyes on me. He licks his lips.

I take out the cash and set it down on the counter in front of him. I’ve blown through a chunk of my savings in the last
few days, between bad bets and spending. I’m going to have to be careful if Lila and I wind up living on the rest.

“Okay, I’ll hook you up,” the mark says, taking the money.

“Oh,” I say. “Cool. Thanks.” I know better than to overplay it.

“So, this long-haired cat,” Sam says, and I freeze, willing him not to stick his foot in it. He’s looking at the guy behind the counter. “Do you need to call your friend or anything?”

“I will,” he says, and I can see the red creeping up his neck. “I want to surprise her.”

A woman walks up to the desk, a filled out form clutched in her hand. She looks impatient. I have to push.

“Can we take the cat now?” I ask. I put the bracelet down on the counter. “Oh, your friend will probably want her collar back too.”

He looks at the woman and then at me. Then his hand closes over the bracelet and he heads into the back and comes back a few minutes later swinging a cardboard pet carrier.

My hand shakes when I take it. Sam grins at me in amazement, but all I can think of is that I have her. I did it. She’s right here in my hands. I look through the air holes and I can see her, prowling back and forth. Lila. A cold jolt of terror runs through me at the wrongness of her imprisoned in that tiny body.

“Be back in an hour,” I tell the guy, hoping I never see him again.

I hate this part.

I always hate the part where I know they are going to wait, their hope souring into shame at their own gullibility.

But I clench my jaw, take the cat carrier with Lila in it, and
walk out the door.

When I open it up in the parking lot of the coffeehouse, the first thing she does is bite me hard on the heel of my hand. The next thing she does is purr.

Mom says that because she can make people feel what she wants them to, she knows how they think. She says that if I was like her, I’d have the instinct too. Maybe being a worker tempts you to be all mystical, but I think mom knows about people because she watches faces very closely. There’re these looks people get that last less than a second—micro-expressions, they call them, fleeting clues that reveal a lot more than we wish. I think my mother sees those without even noticing. I see them too.

Like, walking back toward the coffee shop with the cat in my arms, I can tell that Sam is freaked out by the con, by his part in it, by my planning it. I can tell. No matter how much he smiles.

I’m not my mother, though. I’m no emotion worker. Knowing that he’s freaked out doesn’t help me. I can’t make him feel any different.

I dump the cat onto one of the café tables and grab some napkins to wipe the blood off my wrist. My hand’s throbbing. Daneca is smiling down at the cat like she’s a full set of Gorham silver recently fallen off a truck.

Lila cries, and the barista looks over from behind the espresso machine. The cat cries again, then takes a lick of the foam on the edge of Daneca’s paper cup.

I just stare at Lila the cat, utterly incapable of doing more than smothering the strange keening sound that’s crawling up the back of my throat.

“Don’t,” Daneca says, waving the cat off. The cat hisses and then slumps down on the tabletop. She starts licking her leg.

“You won’t believe how he did it,” Sam tells Daneca, leaning forward eagerly.

I look at the barista, at the other customers, and then back at him. Everyone’s already paying us too much attention. The cat starts chewing on the end of a claw.

“Sam,” I say, cautioning.

“You know, Sharpe,” he says, looking at me and then around. “You’ve got some interesting skills. And some interesting paranoia.”

I smile in acknowledgment of his words, but it hurts. I’ve been so careful not to let anyone at school see the other side of me, to see what I am, and now I’ve blown that in a half hour.

Daneca tilts her head. “It’s sweet. All this trouble for a kitty.” She brushes the top of the cat’s head, rubbing behind her ears.

My cell rings in my pocket, vibrating. I stand up, dropping the bloody napkins into the trash can, and answer the phone. “Hey.”

“You better get over here with my car,” Grandad says. “Before I call the cops and tell them you stole it.”

“Sorry,” I say contritely. Then the rest of what he said sinks in and I laugh. “Wait, did you just threaten me with calling the police? Because that I’d like to see.”

Grandad grunts, and I think maybe he’s laughing too. “Drive on over to Philip’s—he wants to have some kind of dinner with us. He says Maura’s going to cook. You think she’s a good cook?”

“How about I pick up a pizza?” I say, looking at the cat. She’s rubbing against Daneca’s hand. “Let’s just chill out at the house.” I don’t think I’m ready to see Philip and not spit in his face.

“Too late, you little slacker. He already picked me up and you’re my ride home, so get your ass over to your brother’s apartment.”

I start to say something back, but the line goes dead.

“You in trouble?” Sam asks. The way he says it, I wonder if he’s thinking about how to get out of here if I am.

I shake my head. “Family dinner. I’m late.” I want to tell them how grateful I am, how sorry I feel that they had to get dragged into my mess, but none of it’s true. I’m just sorry for myself. Sorry that now they know something I didn’t want them to. I wish I could make them forget. For a moment I understand that memory working impulse right down to my bones.

“Uh,” I say. “Can either one of you hold on to the cat for a few hours?”

Sam groans. “Come on, Sharpe. What’s really going on here?”

“I’ll take her,” Daneca volunteers. “On one condition.”

“Maybe I could keep her in the car,” I say. Mostly I want to stare into her strange cat eyes and look at her tiny paws and ask her if she’s Lila. Even though I’ve already decided. I want
to decide again.

“You can’t keep a
cat
in a
car
,” she says. “She’ll get too hot.”

“Of course. You’re right.” I smile, but it feels like a rictus. Then I shake my head, like I’m trying to shake off my expression. I’m way off my stride. I’m rattled. “Could you hold on to her overnight?”

The cat growls deep in her throat.

“Trust me,” I say to the cat. “I have a plan.” Daneca and Sam look at me like I’ve lost my mind.

I don’t want to be away from her, but I’m going to need a little time to get the rest of my money out of the library and get a hold of a car. Then we can leave town. That’s the only way she’s going to stay safe.

Daneca shrugs. “I guess, but I’m going to the dorm tonight. My parents have some conference, so they’re driving up to Vermont after dinner. My roommate’s not allergic or anything, though, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to hide her. I think it will be okay.”

Lila hisses, but I get up anyway, imagining them having a sleepover party together. I wonder what kind of dreams Daneca is going to have.

“Thanks,” I say mechanically. My mind is racing with plans.

“Wait,” she says. “I told you there was a condition.”

“Oh,” I say. “Sure.”

“I want you to give me a ride home.”

“I can—,” Sam starts.

Daneca interrupts him. “No, I need Cassel to take me. And to agree to come in the house for a minute.”

I sigh. I know her mother wants to talk to me, probably because she thinks that I’m a worker refusing to join the cause. “I don’t have time. I have to get to my brother’s place.”

“You have time,” Daneca says. “I said just a minute.”

I sigh again. “Okay, fine.”

Daneca’s house is just off the main street in Princeton, an elegant old brick Colonial with green and amber hydrangeas framing the front walk. It stinks of old money, of the kind of education that allows the elite to stay that way, and of intimidating privilege. I have never even broken into a house like that.

Daneca, of course, goes inside like it’s nothing. She drops her book bag in the entryway, sets down the cat carrier on the polished wood floor, and heads down a hallway filled with old etchings of the human brain.

The cat cries softly from her cage.

“Mom,” Daneca calls.
“Mom.”

I stop in the dining room, where a blue and white vase filled with only slightly wilted flowers rests on a polished table, between silver candlesticks.

My fingers itch to shove those candlesticks in my bag.

I look back toward the hall, instinctively, and see a blond boy—he looks like he’s around twelve—standing on the stairs. He’s watching me like he knows I’m a thief.

“Uh, hi,” I say. “You must be Daneca’s brother.”

“Screw you,” the kid says, and walks back up the stairs.

“In here,” Daneca’s mom calls, and I head in that direction. Daneca’s waiting for me near a half-open door to a room filled to its high ceilings with books. Mrs. Wasserman sits on a
small sofa near a desk.

“Get lost?” Daneca asks me.

“It’s a big house,” I say.

“Well, bring him in,” Mrs. Wasserman says, and Daneca ushers me inside. She flops down onto her mother’s wooden desk chair and spins it a little with one of her toes.

I am left to perch on the edge of a brown leather ottoman.

“It’s nice to meet you,” I say.

“Really?” Mrs. Wasserman has a whole mess of light brown curly hair that she doesn’t seem to bother corralling. Her bare feet are tucked up under a soft-looking oatmeal throw. “I’m glad. I heard that you were a little bit wary of us.”

“I don’t want to disappoint you, but I’m not a worker,” I tell her. “I thought maybe there was some misunderstanding.”

“Do you know where the term ‘worker’ comes from?” she asks, leaning forward, ignoring my floundering.

“
Working
magic?” I ask.

“It’s much more modern than that,” she says. “Long, long ago, we were called theurgists. But from about the seventeenth century until the 1930s, we were called dab hands. The term ‘worker’ comes from the work camps. When the ban was passed, no one knew how to actually enforce it, so people waited for prosecution in labor camps. It took the government a long time to figure out how to conduct a trial. Some people waited years. That’s where the crime families started—in those camps. They started recruiting. The ban created organized
crime as we know it.

“In Australia, for instance, where working has never been illegal, there is no real syndicate with the kind of power our crime families have. And in Europe the families are so entrenched that they are practically a second royalty.”

“Some people think workers are royalty,” I say, thinking of my mother. “And Australia never made curse work illegal because it was founded by curse workers—or dab hands or whatever—who’d been sent to a penal colony.”

“You do know your history, but I want you to look at something.” Mrs. Wasserman places a stack of large black-and-white photos in front of me. Men and women with their hands cut off, balancing bowls on their heads. “This is what used to happen to workers all over the world—and still does in some places. People talk about how workers abused their power, about how they were the real power behind thrones, kingmakers, but you have to understand that most workers were in small villages. Many still are. And violence against them isn’t taken seriously.”

She’s right about that. Hard to take violence seriously when workers are the ones with all the advantages. I look at the pictures again. My eyes keep stopping on the brutal, jagged flesh, healed dark and probably burned.

She sees me staring.

“The surprising thing,” she says, “is that some of them have learned to work with their feet.”

“Really?” I look up at her.

She smiles. “If more people knew that, I don’t know if gloves would be as popular. Wearing gloves goes back as
far as the Byzantine Empire. Back then people wore them to protect themselves from what they called
the touch
. They believed that demons walked among people and their touch brought chaos and terror. Back then workers were thought to be demons who could be bargained with for great rewards. If you had a worker baby, it was because a demon had gotten inside of it. Justinian the first—the emperor—took all those babies and raised them in an enormous tower to be an unstoppable demon army.”

“Why are you telling me this? I know workers have been thought of lots of different idiotic ways.”

“Because Zacharov and those other heads of crime families are doing the same thing. Their people hang around bus stations in the big cities waiting for the runaways. They give them a place to stay and a few little jobs, and before they know it, they’re like the Byzantine child-demons, in so much debt that they might as well be prisoners or prostitutes.”

“We have a boy staying with us,” Daneca says. “Chris. His parents threw him out.”

I think of the blond boy on the stairs.

Mrs. Wasserman gives Daneca a stern look. “That’s Chris’s story to tell.”