He closed his eyes briefly and swore.
At some point, when I was twelve, Adam got hired for a job. The ultimate score. Paulie didn’t know what the gig was, just that over a few months, Adam became withdrawn. One night shortly before my thirteenth birthday, my dad came to Paulie, scared. Whatever he was involved in, it was deep and deadly. In order to protect us, my father decided to leave. Pretend we didn’t matter.
Paulie’s words washed over me, reducing me to a ghost wandering through my youth, searching in the blackness for a spark of hope and finding none. If Dad had cared about a get-rich con to set him up for life, he could have charmed some wealthy asshole into handing everything over. He was ironically unmaterialistic. He liked the con more than the gains. This wasn’t about money, which meant that Dad’s ultimate score was the promise of immortality.
“Did he ever mention Chariot to you?”
Paulie shook his head. “Like some name for the con? Nah, nothing like that. He called it the Holy Grail payout.”
The Sefer would seem like a Holy Grail to those obsessed with it.
Chariot. Chariot. Chariot. The word thudded dully in my ears with each heartbeat. Should I mourn my father for being a fool? Hate him for that same reason?
“Who was he working for?” I said.
“There were some secrets he wouldn’t even share with me. Adam called him 26L1.”
“Real helpful. Where did Dad go?” My voice sounded tinny. Or maybe my body was just too far away.
“Nowhere at first. He had to stick around and see this job through.”
A vein pulsed in my forehead. “Was he in town for my birthday?”
Paulie nodded.
Mom had planned to throw a party, because thirteen was a milestone, but to me it was simply one more day in my tally since he’d left. Talia had tried to make the day normal. She’d bought me a sugary supermarket cake and queued up my favorite films, like the three of us had always done.
It was so normal, it hurt.
“When did he leave? As far as you know?” I glanced longingly at the bottles of booze in the corner but they were empty and there wasn’t a fresh stockpile.
“Not until after your accident.”
“Which was a Friday,” I said.
“I know, kid. Talia phoned me. The sight of you laying there…” He pulled a silver flask out from the side of his chair, uncapped it and took a swig. “Here.”
I took it and drank deep.
“Adam phoned me late Monday night, early Tuesday morning,” he said.
I sat up straight. That was the night he’d visited me in the hospital. The night my magic had first manifested. “How can you be sure?”
“I’ve gone over those last days a million times, trying to see what I missed. If I could have done something different. They’re etched in my mind.” Paulie fiddled with his belt, his gaze distant for a moment. “You know, I was quite the forger back in the day. It’s how I bought Inferno.”
“Yeah. Paintings mostly.”
Paulie rubbed his thumb and index finger together. “Good money in that. But I could forge anything. Adam called with a special request. Two items. A fake passport issued out of Montreal in the name of Avi Chomsky.”
Same initials, of course, because it was easier to remember a fake name that way, and Adam had grown up in Montreal and was bilingual if his French was ever tested.
“And the other forgery?”
“To reproduce a scroll. Rush job.”
The flask slipped from my hand, boozy fumes wafting up as the liquid pooled onto the floor. “Was the scroll old? Yellow, kind of brittle?”
“That’s it. Written in Hebrew and… some other language.” Paulie was starting to slur. I was losing him.
Dad hadn’t bluffed Gavriella about possessing the scroll. But which version had he planned on giving her?
“What happened to the scroll?” I said.
Paulie’s head nodded forward. “Took it. With the fakes. Thursday. Last time I saw him.” The pauses between words got longer.
I reached for him, and his eyes shot open.
“Never rush a con,” he said in a bleak voice, before nodding off.
If my father had lived by a rule, it was that one. Rushing a con was a surefire route to disaster. He’d spend hours in his cramped study with the door locked. I’d crept in once, when he’d gone for a coffee refill. Even with his Charmer magic, he’d compile detailed profiles on his targets, writing cramped notes in some code I couldn’t decipher. In retrospect, it wasn’t all that different from the legwork I put into a case. Except with more fleecing and a deluded self-righteousness about the fact that he only hit those who deserved it.
Amazing what my mother had turned a blind eye to in the name of love. Guess she’d found a strategy that worked for her—and kept it up to this day.
“Did you ever hear from Dad again?” I shook Paulie, but he was out too deeply to rouse.
Unibrow returned. “You need to leave.”
“What’s wrong with him?” I said.
“Too much.”
“Of what?”
“Everything. Let’s go.”
“Wait—”
Unibrow grabbed me around the waist, carrying me off like I was a football.
I struggled, but without my enhanced strength couldn’t budge his grip. “I just need to know what happened to my—”
Unibrow carried me through the house, dumped me outside, and slammed the door.
Dad had witnessed my magic and then commissioned the fake scroll. Why?
I sat on the stairs, my head pressed to my bent knees. If he’d initially left to protect us, could that desire have gotten stronger after seeing my magic?
What if Dad had made a deal to give them not just the scroll, but Gavriella as well? In return, Chariot would help him leave town, and set him up somewhere, maybe even to continue doing their bidding. But they’d leave us alone and my secret would be safe.
Adam would have required something irresistible to bring Gavriella close enough to use his Charmer magic on her and capture her for Chariot. If I were Chariot? I wouldn’t risk any real
