Page 72 of The Curse Workers

I look at Lila. “Can we actually get there by nine?”

She spreads open the schedule. “Yeah, plenty of time. That was perfect.”

“See? I came in useful. Maybe I’ll come in useful again.”

She sighs. Nods.

I carefully feed a twenty into the machine out by the steps and punch in our destination. The change comes in coins, silver dollars ringing against the tray like bells.

* * *

You can’t take a train from the middle of Jersey directly to Atlantic City. You have to ride all the way to Philadelphia and change trains at Thirtieth Street Station for the Atlantic City line. As soon as we settle into our seats, Lila rips open the bag and eats the three convenience store chocolate bars in quick greedy bites. Then she wipes her face with a fist, knuckles down over her cheek to her nose. It isn’t a human gesture, or at least it isn’t how humans make the same gesture.

Uncomfortable, I look out the cracked grimy glass at the sea of houses blurring past. Each one, full of secrets.

“Tell me what happened that night,” I say. “The rest of it. When I changed you.”

“Okay,” she says. “But first I need you to understand why my father can’t know what happened to me. I’m his only child and I’m a girl. Families like mine—they’re really traditional. Women might be powerful workers, but they’re seldom leaders. Get it?”

I nod my head.

“If Dad found out what happened, he’d bring down vengeance on Anton and your brothers—maybe even on you. But afterward I’d be the daughter who needed to be protected. I could never be the head of the family.

“I’m going to get my own vengeance and I’m going to save my father from Anton. Then he’s going to see that I deserve to be his heir.” She crosses her legs, propping her feet next to me. My boots are huge on her, and one of the laces has come undone.

It’s hard to picture her as the head of the Zacharov family.

I nod again. I think of Barron kicking me in the ribs. I think of Philip looking down at me as I writhed. Anger rises up in me, white hot and dangerous. “You’re going to need me to do that.”

Her eyes narrow. “Is that a problem?”

I loathe them, but they’re my family. “I want you to leave my brothers out of your plans.”

I can see her jaw clench as she brings her teeth together abruptly. “I deserve revenge,” she says.

“You want to deal with your family your way. Fine. Let me deal with my family.”

“You don’t even know what they did to you.”

I flinch from the surge of dread I feel. Swallow it down. “Okay, tell me.”

She licks her lips. “You want to know what happened that night? I told you that they were arguing. Anton told Barron to get rid of me. You were supposed to turn me into… into something. Something glass so he could smash me. Something dead so I’d be dead. That’s what they kept saying while you were pinning me to the floor.

“Philip said that if you didn’t do it, they were going to have to hurt me and it would make a mess. Barron kept saying something about remembering what I did to you and I kept shouting that I didn’t do anything.” Her gaze drops for a moment.

Tells. Everyone has them. “Why did Anton want you dead?”

“He wants to take over my family. He was afraid Dad would never tap him as his heir with me around. So he always wanted me dead. He just needed a way to make it happen that wouldn’t implicate him.

“The excuse for getting rid of me was that Barron had asked me to make some people sleepwalk out of their houses. I would brush against them during the day, and then that night they’d have a dream and they’d get up and go stand on their lawns. Sometimes they woke up on the way out and the curse faded, sometimes not. I didn’t know what it was for. Barron said they were people who owed my father money and that Barron would be able to talk to them, keep them from getting hurt. Anton found out that Barron had used me to help and told him that I had to be killed or else.”

“Or else what? What’s the big deal about making people sleepwalk?” I lean back. The vinyl seat squeaks.

“Um, your brothers? They make people disappear. That’s what they do.”

“They kill people?” My voice comes out too loud. I don’t know why I’m shocked. I know criminals do bad things, and I get that my brothers are criminals. I had just assumed that whatever Philip did for Anton was small time. Leg-breaking stuff.

Lila frowns at me and looks around the train, but even after my outburst no one seems interested in us. Her voice goes low, to practically a whisper, like she can make up for my mistake through overcompensation. “They don’t kill anyone. They get their little brother to do it for them. He turns people into objects. Then they dump the objects.”

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