RED GLOVE: Volume 2 (The Curse Workers, Band 2) - Softcover

BLACK, HOLLY

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1481444549 ISBN 13: 9781481444545

Verlag: Pocket Books, 2024

Inhaltsangabe

Curses and cons. Magic and the mob. In Cassel Sharpe’s world, they go together. Cassel always thought he was an ordinary guy, until he realized his memories were being manipulated by his brothers. Now he knows the truth―he’s the most powerful curse worker around. A touch of his hand can transform anything―or anyone―into something else. After rescuing his brothers from Zacharov’s retribution and finding out that Lila will never be his, Cassel is trying to reestablish some kind of normalcy in his life. That was never going to be easy for someone from a worker family tied to one of the big crime families, and a mother whose cons get more reckless by the day. But Cassel is also coming to terms with what it means to be a transformation worker and figuring out how to have friends. But normal doesn’t last very long―soon Cassel is being courted by both sides of the law and is forced to confront his past. A past he remembers only in scattered fragments and one that could destroy his family and his future. Cassel will have to decide whose side he wants to be on because neutrality is not an option. And then he will have to pull off his biggest con ever to survive. Love is a curse and the con is the only answer in a game too dangerous to lose.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Holly Black is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of fantasy books, including the Elfhame books, The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, The Spiderwick Chronicles, and the Charlatan Duology, as well as an Arthurian picture book called Sir Morien. She has been a finalist for an Eisner Award and a Lodestar Award, and the recipient of a Mythopoeic Award, a Nebula Award, and a Newbery Honor. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages worldwide and adapted for film and television. She currently lives in New England with her husband, daughter, and son in a house with a secret library. She invites you to visit her online at BlackHolly.com.

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Red Glove CHAPTER ONE
I DON’T KNOW WHETHER it’s day or night when the girl gets up to leave. Her minnow silver dress swishes against the tops of her thighs like Christmas tinsel as she opens the hotel door.

I struggle to remember her name.

“So you’ll tell your father at the consulate about me?” Her lipstick is smeared across her cheek. I should tell her to fix it, but my self-loathing is so great that I hate her along with myself.

“Sure,” I say.

My father never worked at any consulate. He’s not paying girls a hundred grand a pop to go on a goodwill tour of Europe. I’m not a talent scout for America’s Next Top Model. My uncle doesn’t manage U2. I haven’t inherited a chain of hotels. There are no diamond mines on my family land in Tanzania. I have never been to Tanzania. These are just a few of the stories my mother has spent the summer spinning for a string of blond girls in the hope that they’ll make me forget Lila.

They don’t.

I look up at the ceiling. I keep on staring at it until I hear my mother start to move in the adjoining room.

Mom got out of jail a couple months back. After school let out she relocated us both to Atlantic City, where we’ve been grifting rooms and charging up whatever food and drink we want to them. If the staff gets too demanding about payment, we simply move down the strip. Being an emotion worker means that Mom never leaves a credit card at the desk.

As I think that, she opens the door between our rooms.

“Honey,” Mom says, as though it’s not at all weird to find me lying on the floor in my boxers. Her black hair is up in clips and wrapped in one of her silk scarves, the way she always wears it when she sleeps. She’s got on the hotel robe from the last hotel, tied tightly around her ample waist. “You ready for some breakfast?”

“Just coffee, I think. I’ll make it.” I push myself up and pad over to the complimentary pot. There’s a bag of grounds, sugar, and some powdered creamer sitting on a plastic tray.

“Cassel, how many times do I have to tell you that it isn’t safe to drink out of those things? Someone could have been brewing meth in it.” Mom frowns. She always worries about the weirdest things. Hotel coffeepots. Cell phones. Never normal stuff, like the police. “I’ll order us both up coffee from the kitchen.”

“They could be brewing meth there, too,” I say, but she ignores me.

She goes into her room and I can hear her make the call. Then she comes back to the doorway. “I ordered you some egg whites and toast. And juice. I know you said you weren’t hungry, but you need to keep your strength up for today. I found us a new mark.” Her smile is big enough that I almost want to smile along with her.

That’s my mom.

Believe it or not, there are magazines out there called, like, Millionaire Living or New Jersey Millionaires or whatever, that feature profiles of old guys in their homes, showing off their stuff. I have no idea who else buys them, but they’re perfect for my mother. I think she sees them as gold digger shopping catalogs.

That’s where she found Clyde Austin. He’s on the page after a feature with curse-worker-hating Governor Patton at his mansion, Drumthwacket. Despite a recent divorce, according to the article, Austin still manages to enjoy a lifestyle that includes a private plane, a heated infinity pool, and two borzois that travel with him everywhere. He has a home in Atlantic City, where he likes to go out to dinner at Morton’s and play a little blackjack when he can get away from the office. The picture of him shows a short, squat dude with hair plugs.

“Put on something dirty,” Mom says. She’s at her desk, altering a new pair of bright blue gloves. She’s seeding them with tiny holes at the fingertips: small enough to go unnoticed, big enough for her skin to touch the mark’s.

“Dirty?” I say from the couch I’m slumped on in her suite. I’m on my third cup of coffee, all three choked with cream. I ate the toast, too.

“Wrinkled. Something that makes you look homeless and desperate.” She begins to take down her curls, one by one. Soon she’ll start rubbing gunk into her skin and curling her eyelashes. It takes her hours to get ready.

“What’s the plan?” I ask.

“I posed as his secretary and pretended I forgot when his reservation was for,” Mom says. “At Morton’s. Wasn’t it great how the magazine comes right out and says where to find him? It absolutely worked. He’s going to eat there at eight o’clock tonight.”

“How long have you known that for?” I ask her.

“A couple days.” She shrugs, making a careful line of black above her eyes. There’s no telling how long she really knew. “Oh—and grab the plastic bag over by my suitcase.”

I slug down the last of the coffee and get up. The bag contains panty hose. I put them on her desk.

“They’re for you.”

“You want me to look homeless, desperate, but also kind of fabulous?” I ask.

“Over your head,” she says, turning in her chair and miming the gesture like I’m a moron. “If Clyde works out, I want him to be able to meet you as my son.”

“It sounds like you’ve really got some plan cooked up,” I say.

“Oh, come on,” she demands. “School starts in less than a week. Don’t you want to have a little fun?”

Several hours later Mom clops along the boardwalk behind me in platform heels. Her white dress blows in the late summer wind. The neckline is low enough that I’m worried her boobs are going to actually fall out if she moves too fast. I know it’s disturbing that I notice, but I’m not blind.

“You know what you’re supposed to do, right?” she says.

I wait for her to catch up. She has on gold lame gloves and is carrying a gold clutch purse. I guess she decided against the blue. Altogether it’s quite an outfit. “No, why don’t you tell me for the millionth time?”

I see the fury pass over her face like a storm. Her eyes go hard.

“I’ve got it, Mom,” I say in what I hope is a conciliatory way. “Go on ahead. We shouldn’t be talking.”

She totters off toward the restaurant, and I walk to the railing, looking at the sea. It’s the same view I had from Zacharov’s Atlantic City penthouse. I think of Lila with her back to me, staring out at black water.

I should have told her I loved her back then. Back when it would have meant something.

Waiting is the hardest thing about any con job. The moments slip by and your hands start to sweat, anticipating what’s coming. Your mind wanders. You’re all keyed up from adrenaline, but there’s nothing to do.

Distraction leads to disaster. Mom’s rule.

I turn back toward the restaurant and slip my gloved hand into my pocket, touching the wadded-up piece of panty hose. I hacked off the foot with a room service knife.

I keep focused, eyeing the crowd, watching my mother vamp up her incredibly slow stroll. We could be here awhile. And, honestly, this plan might not even work. That’s another thing about cons; you have to go after a bunch of marks before you find the perfect one. The one you can really take for all he’s worth.

We wait for twenty minutes, almost a block apart from...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Pocket Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2024
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1481444549
• ISBN 13: 9781481444545
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 352
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande