Black Heart by Holly Black Page B

“Your grandfather is teaching me how to play poker.”
    If I know Grandad, that means what he’ll really be teaching Sam is how to cheat.
     
    Barron offers to let me take his bed, saying that he can sleep anywhere. I’m not sure if he’s suggesting that there are beds all over town for him to slip into or just that he’s not picky about sleeping on furniture, but I take the sofa so I don’t have to find out.
    He digs up a couple of blankets that used to be at the old house. They smell like home, a somewhat dusty stale odor that’s not entirely pleasant but that I inhale greedily. It reminds me of being a kid, of being safe, of sleeping late on Sundays and watching cartoons in my pajamas.
    I forget where I am and try to straighten out my legs. My feet kick against the armrest, and I remember that I’m not a kid anymore.
    I’m too tall to be comfortable, but I curl on the couch and manage to doze off eventually.
    I wake up to the sounds of Barron making coffee. He pushes a box of cereal at me. He’s terrible in the morning. It takes him three cups of coffee before he can reliably put together a whole sentence.
    I take a shower. When I come out, he’s wearing a darkgray pin-striped suit with a white T-shirt under it. His wavy hair is gelled back, and he’s got a new gold watch on his wrist. I wonder if that was in the FBI warehouse too. Either way, he looks like he made an impressive effort for a Sunday afternoon.
    “What are you all dressed up for?”
    Barron grins. “Clothes make the man. You want to borrow something clean?”
    “I’ll muck through,” I tell him, pulling on my T-shirt from yesterday. “You look like a mobster, you know.”
    “That’s another thing I’m good at that most trainees aren’t,” he says, getting out a comb and running it through his hair one last time. “No one would ever guess that I’m a federal agent.”
    By the time we’re ready to leave, it’s early afternoon. We get into Barron’s ridiculous Ferrari and head upstate, toward Paterson.
    “So how’s Lila?” Barron asks once we’re on the highway. “You still hung up on her?”
    I give him a look. “Considering you locked her in a cage for several years, I guess she’s okay. Comparatively speaking.”
    He shrugs, glancing in my direction with a sly look. “My choices were limited. Anton wanted her dead. And you surprised the hell out of us by transforming her into a living thing. After we got over the shock, it was a relief—although she made a terrible pet cat.”
    “She was your girlfriend ,” I say. “How could you have agreed to kill her?”
    “Oh, come on,” he says. “We were never that serious about each other.”
    I slam my hand down on the dashboard. “Are you crazy?”
    He grins. “You’re the one who changed her into a cat. And you were in love with her.”
    I look out the window. The highway is flanked by towering soundproofing walls, vines snaking through the gaps. “Maybe you made me forget almost everything, but I know I wanted to save her back then. And I almost did.”
    His gloved hand touches my shoulder unexpectedly. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I really did start messing with your memories because Mom said it would be better for you not to know what you were. Then, when we got the idea to go into the killing business, I guess I thought that so long as you didn’t remember, nothing we made you do counted.”
    I have no idea what to say in return. I settle for not saying anything at all. Instead I lean my cheek against the cool glass of the window. I look at the stretch of asphalt highway snaking in front of us, and I wonder what it would be like to leave all of this behind. No Feds. No brother. No Lila. No Mom. No mob. With just a little magic I could change my face. I could walk out of my life entirely.
    Just a few fake documents and I’d be in Paris. Or Prague. Or Bangkok.
    There I wouldn’t have to try to be good. There I could lie and cheat and steal. I wouldn’t really