He dropped like a ball of lead. The other scrambled for his fallen weapon, but Marcella was there first, pinning his wounded hand to the floor with the heel of her shoe.
“You crazy bitch,” he bleated as she bent down and wrapped her hand around his mouth.
“That’s no way to talk to a lady,” she said, digging her nails into his skin. It withered in her grip, flesh peeling back to reveal bone that thinned and cracked until the slightest pressure made it shatter.
Marcella straightened, dusting her palms. She swore softly. There was a crack in her manicure.
June whistled a low, appreciative sound. “Well, that was fun.” She was perched on the sofa, legs swinging girlishly. She hopped down and started toward the glass doors, their surface now flecked with blood.
“Come on,” she said, passing Tony’s sideboard. “I need a real drink.”
X
THREE WEEKS AGO
EAST MERIT
MARCELLA had been to her fair share of bars, but these days, most of them had glowing stained glass, leather booths—at the very least, a menu.
The Palisades had cracked windows, wooden stools, and a grimy chalkboard.
It wasn’t that Marcella didn’t know this world—the world of astringent well drinks and tabs paid in petty cash—but she’d left it behind on purpose. June, on the other hand, seemed right at home, elbows leaning on the sticky counter. She was herself again—not the girl Marcella had glimpsed so briefly in Hutch’s office, or the one June had worn on their way in, but the one she had met at the Heights, with those loose brown waves, that long peasant skirt.
June ordered a double whiskey for herself and a martini for Marcella, which turned out to be straight vodka, ungarnished. Which, at the moment, she really didn’t mind. She stood at the bar, sipping the drink.
“Fuck’s sake, sit down,” said June, swinging around in her seat. “And stop wrinkling your nose.” The girl lifted her drink. “To a good day’s work.”
Marcella reluctantly perched on the stool, studying June over her glass.
She was brimming with questions. Two weeks ago, Marcella had been a beautiful, ambitious, but slightly bored housewife, with no idea that people like June, like her, existed. Now, she was a widow, one with the ability to ruin anything she touched, and she wasn’t even the only one with powers.
“Can you be anyone?” she asked June.
“Anyone I touch,” said the girl. “If they’re alive. And if they’re human.”
“How does it work?”
“Dunno,” said June. “How do you burn people alive?”
“I don’t,” said Marcella. “Burn them, that is. It’s more like . . .”—she considered the drink in her hand—“ruining. Wood rots. Steel rusts. Glass returns to sand. People fall apart.”
“What does it feel like?”
Like xsfire, thought Marcella, but that wasn’t quite right. She remembered how it felt when Marcus crumbled in her arms. The simple, almost elegant way he came apart. There was something raw about her power. Something limitless. She said as much.
“Everything’s got a limit,” said June. “You should find yours.”
The girl’s gaze darkened, and Marcella remembered the space between bodies, the brief glimpse of that other shape. “Did you feel it?” she asked. “When he shot you?”
June raised a brow. “I don’t feel anything.”
“Must be nice.”
June hummed thoughtfully, and then asked a very different kind of question. “Do you remember your last thoughts?”
And the strange thing was, Marcella did.
Marcella—who never remembered her own dreams, who rarely remembered a phone number or a catchphrase, who’d said a thousand angry things in the heat of passion and never recalled a single one of them—couldn’t seem to forget. The words echoed inside her skull.
“I will ruin you,” she recited, softly. Almost reverently.
Now, somehow, she could.
It was as if she’d forged the power through her own formidable will, tempered it with pain and anger and the vicious desire to see her husband pay.
And so she had to wonder: what kind of life—what kind of death—made a power like June’s? When Marcella asked, the girl went quiet, and in that quiet, Marcella felt the girl gaze into her own internal flame.
“My last thought?” June said at last. “That I would survive. And no one would ever be able to hurt me again.”
Marcella raised her glass. “And now no one can. And on top of it, you can be anyone you want.”
“Except myself.” There was no self-pity in June’s voice, only a wry humor. “Irony’s a bitch.”
“So is karma.” Marcella twirled her glass. “You know my story,” she said. “What’s yours?”
“Private,” said June shortly.
“Come on,” she prompted.
June raised a brow. “Oh, sorry, if you thought this was a girls’-night-out kind of thing, where we get drunk and bond, I’ll have to pass.”
Marcella looked around. “Then what are we doing here?”
“Celebrating,” said June, tossing back her drink and signaling for another before pulling a slip of rolled paper from her pocket. At first, Marcella thought it was a cigarette, but then, as June unfurled it, Marcella realized it was a list.
Four names in tight scrawl.
Three of them had already been crossed out.
And there, at the bottom—Antony Hutch.
As Marcella watched, June plucked a pen from the edge of the bar and struck the name out. “Well, that’s done,” she said, half to herself. And just like that, June was back, a manic light in her eyes as she spun in her seat, folded her arms on the bar. “What do you plan to do next?”
Marcella looked into her empty glass. “I think,” she said slowly, “I’ll take over the mob.”
June snorted into her drink. “Brilliant.”
But Marcella wasn’t joking.
She had only settled for a place at her husband’s side because no one would give her a seat at the table.
But she was done settling.
According to Marcus, power belonged to the man with the biggest gun. Marcella thought of the remains of Tony Hutch’s body, staining his white carpet.
“How many of us do you think there are?”
“EOs?” June hesitated. “Who knows? More than you’d think. We don’t exactly go around advertising.”
“But you can find them.”
The glass was halfway to June’s mouth. Now it stopped. “What?”
“Your power,” said Marcella. “You said when you touch someone, you can take their appearance, but only if they’re human. Doesn’t that mean you can tell when they’re not?”
June’s smile flickered, and returned twice as bright. “You’re awfully sharp.”
“So I’ve been told.”
June stretched on her stool. “Sure, I can tell. Why? You looking to find more of us?”
“Maybe.”
“Why?” June shot her a sideways glance. “Trying to eliminate the competition?”
“Hardly.” She finished her drink and set the empty glass down, running a gold nail around the rim. “Men look at anyone with power and see only a threat, an obstacle in their path. They never have the sense to see power for what it really is.”
“And what’s that?” asked June.
“Potential.” Marcella tightened her fingers on the stem of her glass. “This ability of mine,” she said as her hand glowed red, “is a weapon.” As she spoke, the glass dissolved to sand, slipping through her fingers. “But why settle for one weapon when you can have an arsenal?”
“Because an arsenal stands out,” said June.
Marcella’s lips twitched. “Maybe it should. People with powers like ours, why should we hide? The life I had is gone. There’s no getting it back. I’d rather make a new one. A better one. One where I don’t have to pretend to be weak to survive.”
June chewed her lip thoughtfully. And then, having answered what private question she’d been pondering, June sprang to her feet.
“Come on.”
Marcella didn’t know if it was the girl’s sudden, infectious energy, or if she simply had nowhere else to go, but she stepped down from her stool.
“Where are we going?” asked Marcella.
June glanced back, a wicked light in her eyes.
“I’m in the mood for music.”
* * *
IF the Palisades had been a dump, the Marina was worse. An underground bunker, half bar and half seedy jazz club, and every surface sticky. Small round tables, trimmed by rickety chairs, half of them empty. A low stage along the back wall, bare but for a few instruments and a standing mic.
June slung herself into a vacant seat and gestured to the chair across from her.
“What are we doing here?” asked Marcella, eyeing the whole situation with suspicion.
“Darling,” said June, with dramatic flair. “You must learn to blend in.” As she said the words, she changed, shedding the bohemian brunette for an older black man in a faded button-down, sleeves rolled to the elbows.
Marcella stiffened. The lights were low, but not that low. She glanced around. “Not exactly subtle.”