Black Heart by Holly Black Read Free Book Online

decked out in lingerie and looking like Bettie Page—a picture obviously taken by a man who wasn’t my father and who might have been Zacharov. I have a lot of reasons to worry.
    The elevator doors open into a massive room with whitewalls, a black and white marble floor, and what looks like a Moroccan style wood ceiling at least eighteen feet above us. There’s no carpet, so the tap of our shoes echoes as we walk toward the lit fireplace on the opposite wall, flanked with sofas, and with two people mostly hidden by shadows. Three huge windows show Central Park at night, a patch of near blackness in the shimmering city surrounding it.
    My mother sits on one of the couches. She has an amber-colored drink in her hand and is wearing a filmy white dress I’ve never seen on her before. It looks expensive. I expect her to jump up, to be her usual exuberant self, but the smile she gives me is subdued, almost fearful.
    Despite that I nearly collapse with relief. “You’re okay.”
    “Welcome, Cassel,” Zacharov says. He’s standing by the fire, and when we get close, he crosses to where Lila is and gives her a kiss on the forehead. He looks like the lord of some baronial manor, rather than a seedy crime boss in a big Manhattan apartment.
    I incline my head in what I hope is a respectful nod. “Nice place.”
    Zacharov smiles like a shark. His white hair looks gold in the firelight. Even his teeth look golden, which reminds me uncomfortably of Gage and the gun taped to the wall of my closet. “Lila, you can go do your homework.”
    She touches her throat lightly—gloved fingers tracing the marks she took, the marks that make her an official member of his crime family, not just his daughter—rage in every line of her face. He barely notices. I’m sure he doesn’t realize that he just dismissed her like a child.
    My mother clears her throat. “I’d like to talk to Cassel alone for a moment, if that’s all right, Ivan?”
    Zacharov nods.
    She gets up and walks to me. Linking her arm with mine, she marches me down a hallway to a massive kitchen with ebony wood floors and a center island of a bright green stone that looks like it might be malachite. While I sit down on a stool, she puts a clear glass kettle on one of the burners. It’s eerie, the way she seems to know Zacharov’s apartment.
    I want to grab her arm to reassure myself that she’s real, but she’s moving restlessly, not seeming to notice me.
    “Mom,” I say. “I’m so glad that you—but how come you didn’t call us or—”
    “I made a big mistake,” Mom says. “Huge.” She takes a cigarette from a silver case, but instead of lighting it she sets it down on the counter. I’ve never seen her so agitated before. “I need your help, sweetheart.”
    I am uncomfortably reminded of Mina Lange. “We were really worried,” I say. “We didn’t hear from you for weeks, and you’re all over the news, you know? Patton wants your head.”
    “We?” she asks, smiling.
    “Me. Barron. Grandad.”
    “It’s nice to see you and your brother so close again,” she says. “My boys.”
    “Mom, you are on every news channel. Seriously. The cops are looking everywhere for you.”
    She shakes her head, waving away my words. “WhenI got out of prison, I wanted to make some quick money. It was hard, sweetheart, inside. I spent all the time when I wasn’t planning that appeal planning what I would do when I got out. I had a few favors to call in and a few things put away for a rainy day.”
    “Like?” I say.
    Her voice goes low. “The Resurrection Diamond.”
    I saw it on her finger. She wore it once, out to lunch, after Philip died. The stone’s a pretty distinctive color, like a drop of blood spilled into a pool of water. But even when I saw it, I thought I must have been mistaken, must have misunderstood, because even though I knew Zacharov wore a fake diamond on his tie pin, that didn’t mean he’d lost the original. And it certainly didn’t mean