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"A shadya e the victiain That’s bad business, but what do these kids know? They’ve got no respect anymore" She looks at me intently "Your family never told you any of this?"

"I’m not a worker," I remind her, but shame heats h That they didn’t speaks volumes about what they think of me

"But your brother--," she says

"Can it be reversed?" I ask, interrupting her I really don’t want to talk about ht now

She looks at aze Then she clears her throat and starts talking like I wasn’t just incredibly rude "Meic’s pere their minds You canout there, but they can take a good look at you and decide otherwise"

I force a smile, but my stomach feels like I’ve sed lead "What about transfors her shoulders The bells on her skirts jingle "What about it?"

"Is it permanent too?"

"Another transfor as the person was turned into a living thing A changer can turn a boy into a boat and then back to a boy, but the kid won’t live through the transfor, that’s that"

That’s that I want to ask her about a girl changed into a cat, but I can’t risk being that specific I’ve risked enough

"Thanks," I say, standing I’m not sure what I learned, except that the answers I need aren’t going to be easy to get

She winks "You tell that grandfather of yours that Crooked Annie was asking after hih I knoon’t If I told him I was down near Carney, he’d want to knohy

I start down the aisle when I re in town?"

Lila’sup the pay phone at the sound of her voice, about the way she looked at me when she found me in the hotel rooht she saw some secret darkness in me that even I hadn’t seen

"Sure is," Annie says "Can’t leave Carney, or that husband of hers is going to come after her"

"Cohter of theirs got to and won’t tell him I told her not to worry She’ll outlast him Even the Resurrection Diaot in Paris with Lila?" I re to do with Rasputin, but I didn’t remember that it had a name

"Supposed to hold a curse so that the wearer never dies Sounds like a load of crap, right? That would mean a stone could do more than deflect curses But it seems to work No one’s killed him yet, and plenty of people have tried I’d love to have a look at it" She tilts her head to the side "You were in love with his girl Lila, huh? Now that I think of it, I re after her You and that brother of yours"

"That was a long tio"

She leans up to kiss"Two brothers in love with the saoes well"

Barron dated lots of other girls while he dated Lila Girls his age, girls that went to his school and had their own cars Lila would call and ask for Barron, and I would tell soh, but she always believed Then we’d talk until either Barron caht to her or she fell asleep

The worst tih, hen he was home and he talked to her in a bored voice while he watched television

"She’s just a kid," he told irlfriend Besides, she lives, like, two hours away"

"Why don’t you duht about the sound of her breath on the phone, evening out into sleep I didn’t understand how he could want anyone s"

I slammed my hand down on the breakfast table Stacks of plates and junk quivered "You’re just dating her because she’s Zacharov’s daughter"

His grin widened "You don’t know that Maybe I’ her just to mess with you"

I wanted to tell her the truth about hi

The yakuza put pearls in their penises, one for every year they spend in jail A guy makes a slit in the skin of his penis with a strip of bamboo and pushes the pearl inside It ured it couldn’t be nearly as bad to shove three tiny pebbles under the skin of

In the backseat of Grandad’s car I fold up the left leg of ht were the necessary supplies at the nearbylot, I du and onto the seat First I shave a three-inch spot on my calf with a disposable razor and splash it clean with bottled water It’s slow going The razor’s cheap, and by the ti fro to mop up what’s likely to be more blood than I expected I take offI have a bottle of hydrogen peroxide to sterilize with, but I don’t Maybe I’ll have the balls to use it at the end, but right nowa razor blade out of a box of theuiltily out theof the car Fah the lot, children pushed in the baskets of carts,trays of coffees Don’t look, I tell theoes in so easily and with so little pain that it frightens eness h my limbs It even seems to trickwhere the flesh parts Then blood bloo strip of red<ins class="adsbygoogle" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true"></ins>