Page 8 of Pulling Strings

“Fuck.” My groan stretched the word into several syllables.

“Did you forget?”

“No.” But I’d sure tried to last night. Drinking was my preferred method of coping with problems I didn’t know how to solve.

“It’s a big one this year.” Isha dabbed my knuckle with the paper towel. “Grimm says he’s going to let Donovan join the gang. I bet he’s excited.”

“Oh, he’s tickled pink,” I grumbled.

“And you aren’t?” Isha arched a brow.

My brother’s initiation had been all the talk for days. Weeks, even. The Reeves job had been my only respite from having to hear about the upcoming party and the activities that would follow. Joining a gang like the Bloody Hex wasn’t as simple as accepting an invitation. We had criteria and conditions that weren’t waived even for someone who’d grown up in our midst.

Disdain must have been plain on my face because Isha paused her work to stare at me.

“You aren’t,” she said.

I sighed.

Six years my junior at freshly twenty, Donovan currently filled the role of errand boy for our criminal outfit. He had no record, no kill count, and no appreciation for having made it to adulthood without Grimm tagging him with the gang’s mark as proof of ownership.

He might have been welcomed into the fold yearsago—they hadn’t waited for my coming of age to absorb me into their ranks—but Donovan lacked the thing Grimm valued most in his acolytes: magical power.

Most of our city’s residents descended from centuries-old bloodlines, and my brother and I were no exception. Pursuant to the Capitol’s push on intermarriage, even our human mother was a sign of our father’s fealty to his government. So, Donovan wasn’t strange in his humanity. There were plenty like him in our world. But not in the gang. It welcomed unnecessary risk.

“You know he just wants to be like you,” Isha said. “Who wouldn’t?” She leaned in to dab at the blood beading on my knuckle.

“Idon’t even want to be like me,” I said, squirming. “It’s exhausting.” Not to mention the moral complications that came with murder. I may have squashed my Jiminy Cricket conscience years ago, but Donovan still had innocence worth protecting.

Isha reached to the tray table and came back with a glob of jelly on her gloved finger. “It’s also glamorous. From the outside, at least. All the fame and glory, the women…” A coy smile pulled at the corner of her lips. She smeared the antibiotic around my ring of fresh ink before adding a strip of gauze and a bandage.

Grimm hadn’t divulged his intentions for my brother, but the only reason he kept any of us around was to keep his own hands pristine clean. Grimm was the face of the gang; the brain that told the body where to go and what to do. In that way, he was a better puppeteer than I’d ever been.

Imagining Donovan as another dog on Grimm’s leash sickened me to the point I sat upright. “He’s about to get run over by a fucking bus and he doesn’t even see it coming.”

Isha’s eyes met mine again, searching.

I was rarely so candid, but I’d known Isha long enough—and intimately enough—that every conversation was like pillow talk.

“Am I supposed to watch him die, Ish?” The hitch in my voice slipped out unchecked.

“Literally or figuratively?” she asked.

“Maybe both.” I swung my legs over the side of the chair and stood, seized by a sudden headrush that reminded me I had yet to find food.

Isha fished into her hip pocket for a pack of Virginia Slims and a lighter. She dumped two cigs into her hand, then tucked them between her lips, lighting both before handing one to me.

I took the cig for a greedy drag. My lungs swelled with warm smoke, chased by the feeling of settling calm. That would keep the hunger pangs at bay for another hour or so.

Isha puffed smoke rings into the air. They stretched wide and thin, dissipating into the cloud of incense she’d had burning since before I arrived.

“Have you talked to Donovan about this? Told him your concerns?” Isha asked.

So had begun last night’s descent into today’s disaster. I’d always had reservations about my brother’s involvement in the Bloody Hex but kept them to myself. Rumors reached the top quickly in a group as small as ours. Any one of us questioning Grimm’s infinite wisdom was the nearest thing to treason. But, with Donovan’s initiation looming, I couldn’t sit by in silence.

My brother had been there at the beginning of the night, when I was still of the mind to pretend that we were having the same private celebration we enjoyedevery year on the eve of his birthday. I meant to tell him, but I never got a word in. He was too busy going on about what life would be like now that Grimm and the others would see him as an equal.

The gang hadn’t always been hospitable to the two kids Grimm dumped unceremoniously into their midst. They were more likely to joke about killing us or using us as bait to entice the Capitol. At some point that changed, and they welcomed us into the fold. Rather, they welcomedme. Donovan had always been a hanger-on, so I understood what Isha meant about him wanting more. I’d seen a hunger growing in him for years. He had wants and desires he’d enumerated last night. Had I been so dramatic when I was nineteen?

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