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wearing a long black coat, and when she speaks, her breath condenses in the air like the ghosts of unspoken words. She looks like a ghost herself, all black and white in the shadow of leafless trees. “My father wants to see you,” she says.
    “Okay,” I say, and follow her. Just like that. I’d probably follow her off a cliff.
    She leads me to a silver Jaguar XK in the parking lot. I don’t know when she got the car—or her license—and I want to say something about that, offer her some kind of congratulations, but when I open my mouth, she gives me a look that makes me swallow the words.
    I get in quietly on the passenger side and take out my phone. The inside smells like spearmint bubble gum and perfume and cigarette smoke. A half-empty bottle of diet soda is resting in the cup holder.
    I take out my phone and text Daneca: Can’t make it 2nite.
    A few seconds later the phone starts ringing, but I set it to vibrate and then ignore it. I feel guilty for standing her up after making a promise to be more honest, but explaining where I am going—no less why—seems impossible.
    Lila looks over at me, half her face lit by a streetlight, blond lashes and the arch of her brow turned to gold. She’sso beautiful that my teeth hurt. In psychology class freshman year our teacher talked about the theory that we all have a “death instinct”—a part of us that urges us toward oblivion, toward the underworld, toward Thanatos. It feels exhilarating, like taking a step off the edge of a skyscraper. That’s how I feel now.
    “Where’s your dad?” I ask her.
    “With your mom,” Lila says.
    “She’s alive?” I am so surprised that I don’t have time to be relieved. My mother is with Zacharov? I don’t know what to think.
    Lila’s gaze finds mine but her smile gives me no comfort. “For now.”
    The engine starts, and we pull out of the parking lot. I see my own face reflected back in the curve of the tinted window. I might be going to my own execution, but I don’t look all that torn up about it.

CHAPTER FOUR
    WE DRIVE INTO THE basement garage, and Lila parks in a numbered spot next to a Lincoln Town Car and two BMWs. It’s a car thief’s dream lot, except for the fact that anyone who steals from Zacharov will probably get dropped off a pier with cement boots on.
    As Lila kills the engine, I realize that this will be the first time I’ve ever seen the apartment where she lives when she’s with her father. She was quiet on the drive, leaving me with plenty of time to wonder if she knows that I followed her yesterday, if she knows that I’m being recruited for the Licensed Minority Division, if she knows that I saw her order a hit or that I have Gage’s gun.
    To wonder if I’m about to die.
    “Lila,” I say, turning in my seat and putting my gloved hand on the dashboard. “What happened with us—”
    “Don’t.” She looks directly into my eyes. After a month of being forced to avoid her, I feel stripped bare by her gaze. “You can be as much of a charming bastard as you want, but you’re never going to bullshit your way into my heart again.”
    “I don’t want that,” I say. “I never wanted that.”
    She gets out of the car. “Come on. We have to get back to Wallingford before curfew.”
    I follow her into the elevator, trying to behave myself, trying to puzzle through her words. She pushes the P3 button. I guess the P stands for “penthouse,” because soon we are whirring up the floors so fast that my ears pop. She lets her messenger bag drop off her shoulder and hunches forward in her long black coat. For a moment she looks frail and tired, like a bird huddling against a storm.
    “How did my mother wind up here?” I ask.
    Lila sighs. “She did a bad thing.”
    I don’t know if that means working Patton or something else. I think about the reddish stone my mother was wearing on her finger the last time I saw her. I think too of a picture I found in the old house, of a much younger Mom