The walls feel like they’re closing in, the overstocked boxes and bins of this cramped storage room are slowly inching forward. So the Unit was following me at Sigma Phi. Did they trail me into the party? Or is Frain bluffing?
“If you want to accuse me of something, why don’t you just say it, Agent Frain? I’ve got nothing to hide.” I paste on a smile and push out from my seat to stand. “I appreciate your offer, but getting myself killed isn’t something I’m interested in. So with all due respect, I’d like you to take me home.”
“Sit down, Danfrey.” Frain’s face hardens. “Let’s spin this another way. The same D Street thugs who sold out your father for poaching his own company’s cures? They went on record when we first brought them down to the station, claimed they saw someone else in the shadows of your father’s cellar when they made that final exchange.” He pauses. “Neither of them caught a face, of course. But they described him as tall, young. Not enough to build a case on, but enough to raise some eyebrows.”
“Are you attempting to threaten me, sir?”
“Just stating the facts.”
My facade of a smile feels even stiffer, thinner. “Sounds more like rumors to me,” I manage. “You’d need more than that to even get the papers’ ears.”
But Frain’s face stays stone. “We also pushed your father in prison, Alex. Offered him a better deal if he walked us through the process of shine transference. Even put some pressure on him. And he couldn’t do it.” I don’t move, I don’t speak, but my heart pounds like a drum inside my chest. “Can you imagine that? The country’s most well-known white-collar sorcerer can’t brew sorcerer’s shine, a magic spell that every sorcerer’s capable of,” he says, “which leads me to the only real conclusion. That Richard Danfrey was obviously the mastermind behind his D Street racket, but he wasn’t the magic.” He leans forward, drops his voice, and says, “Now, I’ve got you on low-level charges, eyewitnesses to your little reveal off O Street tonight. Plus enough to go on to reopen Richard Danfrey’s case—your case. And if I’m successful? You spend the rest of your life behind bars.”
My heart is now sputtering, racing, flying. But it’s not the threat of jail that’s set me off, or my father getting “pushed” by the Feds. It’s my mother. I think of the mania of the press when my father was indicted, the reporters banging on our door, Mom locking herself in her room, crying, sobbing at all hours of the night. Her walking into my room like a strange, tormented ghost: He betrayed us . . . you’re nothing like him, Alex, nothing. Tell me. Swear it. Even though she knew. She had to have known.
I close my eyes to blink out the memory.
“I know you joined the Unit to try and escape your past.” Frain uses a different, softer tone. “But sometimes fate’s chips fall in the damnedest of ways. You can use what’s happened to your family and put it to work for your country. You can help, Alex, and in a way that only you can.”
I choose to focus on the trees, because the forest is too dark, too thick, too dangerous. “Sir, let’s just say I was even entertaining the idea of doing this. Guys like Colletto, like McEvoy, they’re smart. They’ve lied and cheated and killed their way to the top. I can’t just be planted and expect it to all work out—”
“Like I said, we’d do it right, Alex,” Frain interrupts gently. “Believe me, this is one shot for us, too. We’d sever your ties with the Prohibition Unit. We’d stage a bust, charge you for attempting to move some of Danfrey Pharma Corp.’s remedial magic into the black market on your own. A minor charge, but enough to look credible. We even have a cell mate lined up for you out at Lorton Reformatory, some low-life, low-rank runner in McEvoy’s operation who got picked up by the coast guard a couple weeks back for smuggling fae dust. You make nice with him, he introduces you to the Shaws when you get out. Then you win them over one at a time and claw your way up to McEvoy.”
I lean back in my chair. The fear is in my throat now, tastes like metal, bile. Could I even do something like this? Do I have a choice? “Those thugs would eat me alive.”
He shakes his head. “You know how to reinvent yourself, what it takes to stay above water, that much is clear,” he says. “Think about what you’ve done to survive the storm surrounding your father—you’ve lied, manipulated, deceived your way right into the agency that should have brought you down. You’re a survivor, Danfrey.”
A survivor. I’ve never, ever thought of myself that way.