“That, and Dad knew a guy. Bunch of guys. He always does. Strings were pulled. Officials looked the other way. Forms got signed. I fought him. I did. But not that much. Not enough. And then I thought, well, if it’s happening anyway, better to be on the inside. Maybe from there, I could do some good. Maybe inside, I could help. So I came aboard.”
“And how’d that go?” Her tone is less psycho-rhetorical than deep-fried sarcasm.
“That’s the sick part.” That is? “I’m better at running this company than he is. He’s always on about how I don’t have that cutthroat instinct. I’m not willing to do what it takes to get things done, make the hard calls, put it all on the line, first to the finish at all costs. That’s true. But people don’t like him. They don’t trust him. Everyone likes me.” He sounds ashamed, sorry about it. “People like me and believe me. They go above and beyond for me. They want to help me out. They trust me. I don’t know who was more surprised, me or Dad, but it turns out, I’m good at this.” He looks up, and his eyes meet hers again and hold, steady, unfaltering. “And then I couldn’t leave because now, well, now I’m all that’s standing between you and him.”
“I’m not sure—” she begins, but he reads her mind.
“It could be so much worse.”
“It’s pretty bad already.”
“I’m invested in you,” Nathan says. “All of you. I feel responsible for you. What happened wasn’t my fault exactly, but there would have been no 606 without me. I owe you. I have to make it up to you.”
She blinks. “You can’t.”
But he shakes his head, won’t hear her. “It’ll be different this time, Nora. We fixed it. The 606. We had this incredible team of researchers and scientists. We had the budget and the manpower this time. And the years. The test results are astonishing. It’s better now. It’ll be different this time. I swear.”
“So you’re here for a do-over.”
“Not a do-over. A do-better. All the good things we promised before. None of the bad ones. My dad thinks I’m stalling. Dragging my feet. ‘Pussyfooting around like the pussy I am.’” He nods an apology in my direction and makes quotation marks with his fingers to show me such language is beneath him and it’s only his father who would use it. But it’s not his language that offends me. “I keep telling him it’s easier said than done to get work started in this town. But honestly? It’s true. I want to slow down and do this right this time.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I want to do it right?”
“Sure it’s fixed.”
The faintest of doubts flickers over his face like a hair got caught in his eyelashes for a moment. “Sure as you ever get in this business. Or any business. Sure enough.”
“Sure enough for whom?” Nora asks.
But he answers a different question. In fairness, it’s the pertinent one. “He’s my father, Nora.”
“So you care about us, just not as much as you care about your father.”
Nathan shrugs but holds her gaze. “He’s family.”
“There are more important things than family.” She turns her head away from me when she says it, as if I won’t hear if I can’t see. “And there are other families besides yours.”
He smiles sadly and opens his hands, like what can he do. “It’s my legacy.”
I don’t know if he means GL606 and what it wrought are his legacy, or the need they engendered for him to risk everything by trying to fix it. But it doesn’t matter. Because I’m starting to realize: so far, we’ve been doing everything wrong.
One
I am learning magic.
I am learning everything.
I have stopped going to tutoring altogether. Mrs. Radcliffe gave me shit about it. Petra gave me shit about it. Even the Kyles gave me shit about it. I could tell them it wasn’t helping anyone anyway. I could tell them they should hire someone with training and a degree in teaching kids with poisoned blood instead of foisting it off on Track A as if the only skills required are average intelligence and showing up. I could tell them I don’t owe them anything since drawing the long straw was just as likely as drawing a shorter one, and I didn’t get to pick my straw any more than anyone else did. But among the things I don’t owe them is an explanation. So I don’t tell them anything.
Instead, I am learning magic. Making small objects disappear and reappear, picking your card, reading your mind. River isn’t supposed to show me how. I know the whole magician’s code thing sounds cheesy, but I get it too—it’s not really magic, so if everyone knew how to do it, it wouldn’t be cool anymore. Sometimes in order to preserve the enchantment, you have to know less.