Embers & Ash Read online

  Two fresh deaths, one I caused, the other I committed.

  You weren’t born to kill, I thought, looking into my own eyes in the rearview mirror. You do it to protect yourself. If you die, no one will save your family.

  The car was silent except for the rain outside.

  Doesn’t make it right, I thought, looking away from myself.

  Throughout the past six months, I’d learned a hard, indelible lesson. The unspeakable acts I’d committed—the things I was forced to do, and chose to do—erased parts of who I was. My senses of sympathy and compassion were waning. Worst of all, human life had begun to seem expendable. I felt like a building whose original bricks were being removed from the foundation, one by one.

  Those spaces couldn’t remain empty. No one is immune to her own experiences.

  My survival habits had become less conscious and more instinctive—more an ingrained part of who I was. The original Sara Jane felt like a childhood friend who’d moved to another place, never to return.

  Did I even remember who she’d been?

  It was if I’d taken a step away from the old me, and then another, and when I looked back she was opaque, difficult to bring into focus. But then, when I really thought about her, a singular trait she’d possessed rose to the top and surprised me—hopefulness. Despite a lack of friends and the insularity of my life, I’d once thought that every new day came with its own happy possibilities. But since my family was kidnapped, almost from the moment I became counselor-at-large, that belief—that illusion—had been torn away piece by piece. Belonging to the Outfit was as much of a balancing act on the edge of a knife as a self-imposed life sentence in prison. There was no escape. The organization needed a Rispoli as counselor and so it owned them, generation after generation.

  It owned me.

  My belief in a joyful future had disappeared with the old Sara Jane.

  My concern now was who I’d be when this ordeal ended, however it ended.

  I had once resisted going down the road before me—the one leading deeper into the Outfit, toward increased violence as I sought my family—but now I was in its ruts, part of the flow, and turning around was no longer an option.

  What I wanted more than anything was to stop before I went too far.

  When I was younger and broke a rule, or got too angry at my little brother, my dad would warn me that there was always a line that shouldn’t be crossed. I’d never again be who I used to be, but if I could stop before crossing that line, maybe I could save a part of myself. I clung to the thought like a life raft in a raging sea.

  I’d talked to Doug about those feelings, of course.

  I discussed everything with my friend, who had a talent for drawing me back from the edge of emotional cliffs.

  Your life is dangerous and unfair, he’d said recently, but you can’t waste one second being a victim. Stay in the moment, and do what’s necessary to save your family.

  For half a year, I’ve been terrified that the boss of the Outfit, Lucky, would discover my excuse for their absence—that my dad is gravely ill—is a lie.

  I could have admitted they’d been kidnapped, but for so long I didn’t know who’d taken them or why; I had no proof it had even happened other than our ravaged home. It was more than likely the suspicious old man would’ve assumed that my dad had faked his disappearance, gone to the Feds, and was in the process of betraying the Outfit. In that case, my life would have been worth little. The organization would not tolerate a rat, or even the daughter of one, in its midst.

  I glanced at my phone, seeing that half an hour had passed since Doug had sent the text urging me to hurry back to the Bird Cage Club. He’d worry if I didn’t reply soon, so I tapped out a message that I was safe and on my way. And then, phone in hand, I was overcome by an urge to talk to someone else.

  What would I say to him?

  Maybe that my odd behavior had been caused by family issues. Or that the half-truths and outright lies I’d told were due to circumstances beyond my control.

  Those explanations were too weak, far too lame.

  I owed him more.

  I owed him the truth—about my family, and about me, as counselor-at-large.

  Somewhere nearby, a siren screamed and died. The quiet phone glowed in the cloudy darkness. If I paused I wouldn’t call. My fingers moved over the keypad and I waited—one ring, two rings—until Max said, “Hello?”

  The boy I loved, greeting me from sunny California.

  Hearing his voice, I touched a brass key inscribed with U.N.B. 001 that hung at my neck. Max rode a cool old Triumph motorcycle and had given me a T pendant, which I’d once worn in place of the key, sort of like a steady ring. But my existence was one big, dangerous secret—the opposite of steady—so I kept lying to him about why he couldn’t meet my family, why I was so standoffish at times, until it was obvious I was hiding something. Inevitably, my deception broke us apart. He left school (Casimir Fepinsky Preparatory—good old Fep Prep), Chicago, and me, and moved to Los Angeles with his dad. Afterward, I replaced the T pendant with the key, a cold, constant reminder of my search for ultimate power.

  “Hello?” he said again.

  My number was blocked. He didn’t know who was calling him, but like every curious person, he kept listening. It’s me, Sara Jane! I screamed in my mind. Tell me to head west and not stop until I reach L.A.! Tell me to save the last shred of myself so I can be with you, and be happy!

  I couldn’t let him tell me those things because I might do them.

  I might leave Chicago behind if he told me in his reassuring voice that another existence was possible.

  Except it wasn’t, and I would never leave the city without my family.

  Good-bye, Max, I thought, hanging up.

  And then the Lincoln filled with flashing red light and the bwaa! bwaa! of a fire engine’s horn. I twisted the keys as the car roared to life, realizing what an idiot I was, waiting to be attacked. But no—the large red truck sped past filled with goggle-free firemen, kicking up a swell of water. I exhaled, watching it go, and then stepped on the gas and headed toward the Bird Cage Club.

  Back to the life that was my only choice.

  3

  IN CONTRAST TO THE RAIN CLOUDS BLANKETING the Loop—Chicago’s nickname for its vast downtown area, looped by elevated trains—entering the Bird Cage Club at the top of the Currency Exchange Building was like walking into an exploding star.

  A large, round electrical outlet stood in the middle of the former speakeasy; in the 1920s, its huge lightbulb sent out a beacon to alert thirsty Chicagoans that illegal booze was flowing. Doug had been trying to make it work for months, and now, blinking into its intense glare, I realized he’d succeeded. “Doug!” I said, shielding my eyes. “You’re burning the retinas out of my head!”

  “Oh! My bad!” he said, and the room went gray. “You didn’t come right back after I texted you, so I decided to work on it, and guess what? It wasn’t the bulb after all! It was the wiring! I ripped out the old . . . ,” he said, and then paused. “You’re soaked.”

  I saw him clearly now—baggy jeans, T-shirt bearing one of his favorite movie quotes (“Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.”), and a welder’s mask over his face. “Would you take that off?” I said. “I’ve endured enough freaky eye coverings for one day.”

  It clanged to the floor as he crossed the room. “The goggle guys again?”

  “Two of them. In a ComEd van this time.”

  “You escaped, obviously. Where are they?”

  “Not heaven.”

  “Crap. Did you . . . ?”

  “Yeah, I did. One of them, at least,” I said quietly. “I didn’t mean to.”

  He spotted my burned fingers and lifted his eyebrows. “Looks like he touched a live wire named . . . um, let me guess . . . Sara Jane?”

  “Something like t
hat.”

  In his best therapist voice, he said, “You want to talk about it?”

  “No. I think I’m okay,” I said.

  “Except for that hand. Listen, I can say this because we’re BFFs . . . you’re an idiot.” He hurried away and returned with ointment and bandages. “You have to take an aspirin every day or you’ll fry yourself . . . to . . . death! Do I really have to remind you?”

  He didn’t, but he did, and still I avoided taking the pills.

  Watching Doug dress my wound, I realized again how much I depended on him, and as his own hand shook slightly while applying medicine to mine, I thought of how much he’d endured over the past several months. He’d beaten his addiction to Sec-C, the drug-infused soft serve ice cream, and emerged dramatically thinner. Exercise was sharpening the edges of his body. His face, with its ruddy complexion and spray of freckles, had grown angular, and even the sandy-colored bush on his head had been reshaped into a presentable haircut.

  Step-by-step, my friend was taking control of his physical self.

  It was his emotional self that concerned me.

  Once he was clean, Doug’s natural obsessiveness had come roaring back, fixated on the Troika of Outfit Influence. He was as crazed as I was to find that hidden object or location, and to unearth the ultimate power buried beneath it. If anything, his focus on saving my family—our “noble quest”—had increased. But Sec-C had been designed to burrow into other parts of his mind, the places where a person locks up the most personal thoughts about himself. He despised his appearance, with the heaviness of his body weighing him down mentally as well. For most of his life, he’d considered himself capable of little more than consuming mass quantities of Munchitos and movies. Sec-C made him feel attractive, but it went far beyond that; it made him believe he could take on the world, and win. Since those positive feelings had dissipated, his greatest fear was regression—not to Sec-C, of course, but to resuming an existence, as he’d put it, as a useless lump.

  It was the PAWS talking.

  He’d researched it online—Post Acute Withdrawal Syndrome—PAWS for short, which was ironic, since Harry, our little Italian greyhound, provided Doug with daily doses of sympathy and affection. The main characteristic of the syndrome, common among ex-addicts, was intense, needling self-doubt. It also came with panic attacks, minor and major, brought on by stressful situations. Trembling, sweating, loss of breath, dizziness—Doug had felt them all over the past month. The ones he hadn’t experienced, and dreaded most, were hallucinations (the freeze response, where stress renders a person unable to move), and aphasia (the temporary inability to speak).

  That didn’t seem to be a problem now.

  His mouth was going a mile a minute, asking me about the Russians, how I’d escaped, if anyone had seen me. As he finished wrapping my hand in gauze, I told him everything about Skull Head and Goatee, careful not to exclude a single detail, and then put the cherry on top.

  “Elzy,” he said quietly. “How did she get control of the Russian mob?”

  “How did she infiltrate the cops?” I said with a shrug. “She grew up with a dad in the Outfit. Elzy knows a lot of tricks and lots of bad people.”

  Doug nodded, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a square, steel lighter. He lit one, coughed smoke, and said, “Let’s think this through.”

  It was my turn to lift eyebrows. “You’re smoking?”

  “Can’t sneak anything past you.”

  “Doug, what the hell? Since when?”

  “Since recently, okay?” he answered, smoke snaking above his head. “And what the hell is that nicotine has a calming effect on people with PAWS. Besides, all great detectives . . . Humphrey Bogart as Philip Marlowe, Jack Nicholson as J.J. Gittes . . . required a cigarette to help them think.”

  “You know what it makes me think? Rotten teeth, lung cancer, and addiction. Seriously, you just got one monkey off your back and now you’re starting all over.”

  “Relax, Surgeon General. I smoke Chippewa Naturals. They’re non–habit forming. Look, the package says so, right there.”

  “Oh, well, as long as it says so. Who would ever lie about tobacco?” I said, staring at him. “You’re self-medicating, Doug. When are you going to quit?”

  “When you start self-medicating,” he replied, blowing a smoke ring. “One little aspirin, every morning.”

  It was a staring standoff until I said, “Let’s think this Elzy thing through.”

  “As if it’s a movie,” he said. “Act one. She sends Poor Kevin and a bunch of cops to capture you and the notebook . . .”

  “So she can gain control of ultimate power,” I said. “She’s not sure what it is, doesn’t even know it’s called ultimate power. But she knew there was something in the notebook that could help her take over the Outfit.”

  “But she fails to get her hands on it. She disappears . . .”

  “In the meantime, Juan Kone kidnaps my family . . .”

  “He wants a different type of power,” Doug said. “Enzyme GF. The thing floating in Rispoli blood that creates ghiaccio furioso. Wants to create and sell armies of cold fury freaks to the highest bidder.”

  “Act two,” I said. “Juan also fails, but not before someone disguised as an ice cream creature snatches my family again . . .”

  “Ice cream creatures. Those red eyes.” Doug shuddered.

  “It had to have been Elzy. She infiltrated both the cops and Juan’s operation. Damn, she’s good . . . in a terrible way,” I said. “Speaking of eyes. Look what I got.” I pulled Goatee’s goggles from my pocket and handed them to Doug.

  He ran a thumbnail over the lenses, then hurried them to the control center. It was covered with laptops and reference books on every conceivable subject to do with Chicago, all assembled to help us find my family. Riffling around, he came up with a thick, black folder.

  La Ciencia de Ghiaccio Furioso—The Science of Cold Fury.

  We’d taken it from Juan Kone’s laboratory before torching the place.

  It explains how part of my brain produces enzyme GF when I feel threatened or angry. The enzyme travels via electrical impulse, fills my eyes, and produces a powerful laser effect called cold fury. My adversary absorbs it with his gaze, triggering his deepest fears and broadcasting them back to me. I’ve learned to use the anger component to control it—to turn it on and off literally in the blink of an eye.

  The problem is Au 79, the periodic symbol for gold.

  My ancient ancestors, Egyptian assassins, believed that eating raw gold extended their lives; instead, it became part of Rispoli DNA, glittering from our eyes. Au 79 has no effect on cold fury—but cold fury affects the gold, which is a highly conductive metal.

  If I get threatened, or channel my anger, my eyes flood with enzyme GF.

  An electrical impulse delivers the enzyme but also charges the gold, turning me into a walking, talking lightning bolt. The more emotional I become, the more enzyme is released, the more voltage fills my body. I can release some of it (just ask Goatee) but not all. If left unregulated, I could electrocute myself from the inside out.

  That’s where aspirin comes in.

  Its main ingredient, acetylsalicylic acid, blocks the gold from becoming electrified. After learning of it, I recalled how my grandpa and my father each took an aspirin every day. I had once asked my dad why he popped the pill. “It’s good for you. Thins the blood,” he’d said, then locked his eyes onto mine. “When you get a little older, you should take one every day, too. Just in case.”

  Good advice that I couldn’t follow.

  Even though it could kill me, I needed the electricity. Beyond a left hook, beyond cold fury, it was my last line of defense.

  Doug looked up from the folder. “Juan Kone was a genius. Sick and twisted, but a genius. The ice cream creatures were his lab rats. He pumped
them full of chemicals, trying to turn them into supersoldiers.”

  “Must’ve been a disappointment when their brains blew up like grenades.”

  “True, but he succeeded in another way. They produced a weird little enzyme of their own, Enzyme R, that turned their eyes red and gave them the ability to withstand cold fury. It’s right here,” he said, pointing at a document, “how Juan extracted creature blood and used it to make his own red contact lenses.”

  “Enzyme R. If Juan could make contacts—”

  “Maybe someone else could use it for easy-to-wear, easy-to-remove goggles? Perfect for catching Sara Jane Rispoli,” Doug said.

  “Elzy wanted ultimate power, but she also wanted me. If I surrendered the notebook and joined her, with her brains and my cold fury we’d rule the Outfit together,” I said. “My guess is that her basic plan hasn’t changed. Instead of Poor Kevin in a mask—”

  “She’s got a bunch of ex-con gangsters in goggles,” Doug said, following my thought. “Plus, this time she has your family. If she doesn’t catch you, it’s a major bargaining chip to force you to give up the notebook and go to work for her.”

  I nodded. “Even the street war makes sense. Elzy knows that Outfit members never really want to fight, it messes up the profit margin. I think she’s pushing them to the limit, hoping they’ll surrender.”

  “And then what?”

  “She’ll probably do what the Outfit does to smaller, weaker gangs. Absorb them.”

  “Absorb them,” he said. “You think Elzy’s planning a merger?”

  “More like a hostile takeover. The Russians are brutal and there seem to be a lot of them. The tables have turned. In this case, the Outfit is feeling more like the smaller, weaker gang. That, plus cold fury and me, plus the notebook? Elzy would rule Chicago, just like she’d always planned.”