He wasn’t here to gloat. He was here to recruit me.
That’s what all of this had been about, all the letters and the messages and the hints and temptations. He didn’t just want me to kill, he wanted me to kill for him. I embalmed the wrong body because I completely misread his intentions: he wouldn’t use the voice I hated for a recruitment speech. I gestured at Nathan’s body, my careful trap completely untouched. “You want another Nathan Gentry?” I asked. “Another human thrall?”
“I’ve had my fill of human thralls,” said Potash’s head. “These puppets are of limited use in the coming war.”
“What else is there?” I asked. “You want a … partner? I told you before, I’m not like you.”
“But you could be,” he said. The ghostly whisper filled the room. “We can perform another ritual.”
“No…,” said Brooke.
“The time is coming,” said Rack. “The conditions are right. What would you give up to become Gifted?”
20
I stared at him in shock. “You’re going to make more Withered?”
“Gifted,” said Potash’s voice. The ashy soulstuff in Rack’s chest shifted and bubbled as he watched me. “The ones you call Withered were weak. They allowed themselves to grow soft, or tired, or sloppy. I can teach you how to stay strong.”
“So I can kill homeless people in a Midwest backwater?” I asked. “Is that the glory you’re offering me?”
Brooke’s grip tightened on my arm. “Don’t make him mad.”
Potash’s voice laughed: a dry, empty chuckle. “You think you could do better?”
I realized with a start that I did think so. I’d seen so many Withered wasting their lives in dead-end towns, hiding or coping or merely surviving, pointless and lost and alone. All that power, and this was all they could think of to do with it. I had nothing—all weakness and no strength—and I’d still managed to kill four of them. I’d maneuvered myself onto a government strike force. Give me some actual power and I wouldn’t let it rot in a one-bedroom apartment. I ignored the talking head and looked at Rack, looked right into his eyes. “You used to be gods, and now look at you. You’re damn right I could do more with your ‘gifts’ than you have.”
The head laughed again. “This is why I chose you. You can see the possibilities in a way most others can’t.”
“But I’m not like you,” I said again, though it felt different this time. Was my life really any different from theirs? I had the same kind of apartment Cody French had lived in. I even had the same dog. I mocked them for their empty lives, moving from one kill to the next with no higher ambition, but how was my life any better? At least they were acting. I was only reacting: traveling where they traveled, living where they lived. I was letting them dictate the course of my life, as much a puppet as Nathan, or Potash’s lifeless head. That most of them didn’t even know they were controlling me only made it worse.
“You say you aren’t like us,” said the voice. “You aren’t like them, either. You never have been. The freak in the shadows, the killer in a little boy’s body. Do you really want to spend your life like that? Never peaceful, never happy—”
“I’ve been happy,” I said fiercely.
“Once,” said the voice. Rack stared down like a monolith. “Once, for a few weeks, long ago. But she’s dead now, isn’t she?”
“Don’t you dare talk about—”
“Marci Jensen was everything you’d ever wanted,” said Potash’s voice. Rack’s head nodded. “Yes, I know all about her. I’ve done my research—I’ve e-mailed at length with your aunt and your sister. Lovely people. I have been following you almost as long as Nobody, watching your methods, waiting to see how you’d react to each new thing. You have a cold-blooded calmness no Gifted could ever match; a precision, a gift for making death. The war is coming now, relentless and inevitable, and you will be its greatest soldier. I want you on our side.”
“So you talk about Marci?”
“Marci was the personal connection you’d never thought you could make,” he said, “filling your life with a joy you’d never experienced from any other person. But she’s gone now. You’re emptier than you ever were before. She gave you a heart, but all it does is break.”
“And this is your sales pitch?” I asked. My voice was louder than I intended, harried and desperate. These were the feelings I tried to keep hidden, because I didn’t know what else to do with them. They were too raw, too loaded with guilt and anger and bottomless despair.