“Oh shit,” I said. “Okay.”
She didn’t look the way hekamists were supposed to look. Not at all old like the crones you see arguing for hekamists’ rights on TV, or the villainous or misunderstood hekamists in movies; not decrepit and twisted and cackling, or willowy and braless and high on nature. There weren’t supposed to be any young hekamists anymore at all. Twenty years ago a bunch of them tried to take over the government of France, and now supermarkets and restaurants are constantly under inspection, and it’s illegal to join a coven pretty much everywhere, and so the ones who are left are all going crazy and dying out.
So this girl’s whole life was illegal.
She counted the bills slowly and didn’t look up. “You’re not going to report me, are you?” she asked, trying to keep her voice casual.
“Oh definitely. This is a sting. I’ve got my brother on a wire—he’s a cop—and he’s dying to bust the underage hekamist trying to turn the high school baseball team into her sex slaves.”
“Seriously.”
“Seriously, I would never do that. I’m not a puritan; I don’t care what you do. This is business.”
The hekamist folded the money in half and put it in one of her jacket pockets. Her fire-breathing eyes softened. “Do you know anything about hekame?”
“No.” I grinned. “Are you going to teach me?”
“You wish.”
“So I take it we have a deal?”
She nodded, and I saluted her and backed away. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
“Echo,” she said. “That’s my name.”
“Echo. See you tomorrow.”
I knew she would do what I asked, and not only because of the money. She struck me as someone who did what she said and said what she meant.
Also, back then, I assumed a lot of shit. I thought the world would bend to what I needed it to be. If I thought of something, I did it. If I wanted something, I took it. If reality didn’t quite line up to what I had in my head, then reality was the problem, not me, and eventually reality would cave to my demands, just like the hekamist’s daughter had.
I didn’t understand. I’d been nothing but lucky the whole time. The world doesn’t bend for anyone, not even Markos Waters.
The next night, Win was dead.
PART II
My favorite memory of Ari is from a dance—no surprise. Not one of her performances, which were beautiful and complicated like moving sculpture, but the Homecoming dance junior year. We’d been going out for a few months, and I knew I liked her—a lot—but Homecoming changed everything.
It didn’t start out great. The suit my mother had found at Goodwill and the homemade corsage my sister Kara had made for Ari from a neighbor’s rosebush—they made me feel like an imposter, like a con man who’d lied his way into someone else’s life. I blamed that for the black cloud that followed me into the gym, even though the truth was I’d been under the cloud for days—maybe weeks.
(Maybe even my whole life. For as long as I could remember there’d been a weight attached to me. Some days it barely registered on the scale; others it felt as heavy as sandbags. This started out as a sandbag day.) It didn’t help that dating Ari felt like the biggest act of fakery of all. She was so beautiful and talented and strong and blah blah blah. Those were the things that had drawn me to her, but now that we were together, her beauty and talent and strength seemed to keep me at arm’s length. I was average in every way. I played shortstop (decently) and the trumpet (badly). I had a sister and a mother who I loved, plus good grades and loyal friends. Ari was exceptional. She was one of the best ballet dancers in the country. She had overcome a tragic past. She was vivid, the part of the painting the artist spent all day on before hurriedly sketching me into a corner.
On the night of the dance, once we arrived at the gym, Ari found her friends and went off to dance. Markos and I stood in a corner trading Markos’s flask back and forth.
“Hottest girl in the grade?” Markos asked.
“Ari.”
“Come on. For real.”
“I’m for real. What are you saying about my girlfriend?”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll rephrase. Hottest girl who I could hook up with?”
“Serena Simonsen.”
“You came up with that quick! You sure you don’t want to go for her yourself?”
“Dude, come on. You know I wouldn’t.”
He saluted with the flask. “Always such a good boy.”
Across the room I spotted Ari dancing, and I could tell she was really trying to let loose—stop counting the beats, stop spotting her turns. She wanted to fit in with the rest of us normals. The fact that I knew her well enough to know what she was thinking hit me with a pang right between my ribs, and I felt sorry for Markos that he thought being a “good boy” was a bad thing.
“How about Kay Charpal?” I said, since she was dancing right next to Ari.