Because of what he’d done.
Because he was ashamed.
Because he was her brother.
“Oh, Augie,” Neva whispered, without a shred of artifice: her agony was genuine. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you ask for help?”
Augie—not a guise, not an imitation: Augie—studied her, blinked, and stood. “Because the truth hurts in our family. And I’ve always tried to spare you pain, to protect you. I wish to God I still could. But I’m weak.”
He walked to her. “Speaking of weakness, when I stood behind that oaf in the Anthropology Building while he ogled those cowry shells, I suddenly desired them like nothing else in my life.”
The notes of his whistling, still curving under and around his words, changed character slightly, compelling Neva to dig in her pocket, withdraw the necklace, and offer it to Augie.
As he accepted the shells, his eyes closed rapturously. “Yes—that’s the feeling,” he said, caressing each cowry in turn. “I see why you took these. How odd that mere shells can have such power ...”
She watched him play with the necklace. What would happen when he put it on? When her brother, with so many “acquired” talents, donned what amounted to an amplifier, an artifact that might have belonged to a “twisted clan” with “bad blood”? Would it still have the same strength with just three shells?
With a grunt of insight, he fit two of the remaining cowries together along their score marks, creating the same crescent shape marring Derek’s flesh below and the insects’ above.
“My sign,” Augie murmured. “Would you believe I dream of these sickles now and again?” He raised the necklace over his head, spread its cord above him, and ... held it there for a moment, contemplating the simple, mystical circle he’d formed.
Neva opened her mouth to utter a warning, but it wouldn’t pass her lips—as if her words had grown arms that clung to her teeth, defying her tongue’s attempts to force them out.
Even so, Augie didn’t look like he could be dissuaded. Eyes aglow, he brought the necklace down slowly, his identity flickering—in anticipation? A white man. A Chinese girl. A colored woman. A white boy. Too many guises to count; so many “acquisitions.” At last, after he’d savored the process for a preposterous length of time, the cord settled around his shoulders, the shells rested against his chest, and ...
He choked.
Chapter Thirty-Three
THE NECKLACE CLOSED about Augie’s neck with predatory speed. Eyes bulging, he clawed at the cord, yanking it so hard Neva heard one of his fingers snap. But the leather had assumed the strength of steel—no matter how forcefully he pulled, the necklace only sank deeper into his skin.
And he stopped whistling.
As Neva began to regain control of her body, she reshaped the sides of her skull so that a bit of bone poked through the inside of each ear and molded to its shape, muffling her hearing. Then, once her legs obeyed her commands again, she rushed at Augie. Brin staggered into motion at almost the same time.
Derek beat them both.
He was mad with fever—Neva could see it in the way his teeth gnashed, his nostrils flared, and his hands clamped around Augie’s jugular.
“Don’t!” she shouted, trying to break Derek’s hold without touching the shells.
Brin skidded to a stop, brandishing a knife and looking for an opening. But before she could find one, the insects fell from the ceiling in a hailstorm of mandibles and stingers.
It was the Algerian Theatre all over again—bugs everywhere, going everywhere—yet only for a second. Derek’s wrists brushed the shells around Augie’s neck, and an enormous current sent the pests shooting off like a puff of dandelion seeds. In similar fashion, Derek, Augie, and Neva flew apart faster than a cluster of struck billiard balls, each crashing into a different wall or pile of crates. During Neva’s flight, her foot collided with Brin’s temple, knocking the Irishwoman to the ground as well.
And then Neva couldn’t see or move.
It wasn’t just that her right leg was pinned beneath an enormous crate. Her limbs were rubbery as eels, still smarting from Derek’s electrical burst. They wouldn’t respond to her attempts to shift them, to bend them free, and trying only made her body hurt worse. Hopefully this paralysis would wear off faster than the first.
Her sight came back before anything else. After a minute or two, she could make out Derek lying at a sharp, unnatural angle against the far wall. But he still breathed, and his right hand twitched every few seconds, jiggling the leather cord threaded through his fingers.
The cord that was broken on one end and no longer held any shells.
He must have been holding it when he loosed the current. And when Augie ricocheted in one direction and he in another, the necklace had parted for him, only leather in his grasp when it had been something much harder in his brother’s.
But if the necklace were broken, did that mean Augie was ...
Free. He was free and treading on dead insects as he walked towards Brin; he’d recovered faster than anyone else, no doubt due to the healing abilities he’d acquired from Kezzie.
Yet Neva could see a red line around his neck, and he moved slowly—the shells had weakened him. Maybe only temporarily, but if she could get herself up, get herself moving ...
Her fingers flexed, but that was all.
Augie knelt beside the insensible Irishwoman, pried the knife from her grip, and used the blade to cut a slit in the back of Brin’s hand. Then he kissed it, as gentlemanly as you like, except that he licked his lips after, luxuriating in the blood he’d taken from her.
The knowledge he’d acquired.
Neva still couldn’t move much when he turned to the far wall and contemplated his brother. What she could see of Augie’s expression was dark. How he must have hated Derek after Mr. DeBell revealed the truth. Derek, who’d had to bear the label
