“What did you think I would say? That I’m a saint? That I love coming to the rescue of damsels in distress? We both know that I’m no hero and you’re no damsel. Sorry, princess, this isn’t that sort of story.”
I purse my lips at his condescension. Luca is hardly my idea of a fairy-tale hero.
“Fine. I agree with you—the killer could be in Gomorrah,” I admit. “We can be partners. We don’t have to be friends.” My voice is biting.
He hesitates. I can’t possibly have offended him after that speech of his. “Fine.” He resumes his pacing. “It strikes me as odd that Nicoleta is the only one without any strange abilities.”
I suppose the pleasantries are over.
“Nicoleta does have abilities,” I say.
“But she doesn’t have an act.”
He’s certainly done his research.
“That’s because she’s terrible at performing. We need a stage manager, anyway,” I say. “Nicoleta is much stronger than she looks. She could probably snap iron, if she wanted to. She just...isn’t always strong. Only when she’s upset or scared, so it’s hard to work something like that into the show.”
“And you didn’t plan the abilities, right? They were, um, born that way?”
I wonder how he could possibly know this and hesitate before giving my answer. “Yes.”
“What is your inspiration for each illusion?”
“I wanted them to be my family.”
“In theory, could you recreate Gill or Blister if you tried?”
I grimace at the idea of trying to replace them. That wasn’t what Luca was implying, but that is what his words conjure, nonetheless.
“No. I could, I suppose, create people similar, but much of their personalities—and their abilities—weren’t in my original plans. I could make up, for instance, another two-year-old boy, but he may or may not turn out to be like Blister, regardless of how much I try.” I picture Blister in my head, his sweet face and big, brown eyes, and the anger and grief settle in my stomach, heavy and hollow. “And usually before creating that sort of illusion, I feel, I don’t know, a spark. Inspiration, I guess.”
“You just said your inspiration was family members,” Luca says.
“I don’t know how I do it, exactly. But the idea comes to me somehow. To make a sister. To make an uncle. I wake up picturing them in my head, and there is a need to create them, like an empty space in my mind that needs to be filled. It’s the same space they go when I make them disappear. The locked Trunks.”
There’s a pause. “Maybe you could elaborate—”
“It’s hard to explain. Why does this matter?”
“I like having the whole picture.”
“But it’s not an exact science. It’s an art.”
“You’re not a thinker, are you?” He runs his hand through his chin-length blond hair while I seethe at the insult. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about jynx-work,” he says, sitting on the floor and motioning for me to join him. “About all the different sorts. Where I come from, people only spoke about them as if there is one type: demon-work.”
He slides into a seat at the table, and from this close, I can smell his sandalwood soap. “Where are you from?” I ask.
“The city-state of Raske,” he says matter-of-factly. I’m surprised he even answered at all. He seems the sort who’d be private about himself. Or maybe I only think that because he’s so different from everyone else in the Downhill, all clean and polished. “Very minor city. In the northeast. The one with the clock tower.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” I say.
“You’ve never heard of the Tower of Raske?” Now that he says it...maybe. In one of Villiam’s lessons.
“Isn’t von Raske your name?” I recognize it from when Nicoleta was talking about him.
“I just go by Luca now.” He drums his fingers against the bamboo floor. I remember that we’re not friends; he has no obligation to share anything about himself with me. “So, jynx-work. It appears to me, from the time that I’ve spent in Gomorrah, that there are three extremely common types: fortune-work, charm-work and shadow-work. Seems like eighty percent of jynx-workers here practice one of them.”
“Are you just going to ramble the entire time?”
“Yes, I am. It’s not like you’re paying me. The least you could do is listen to me ramble.”
“Do you do this to all of your clients or just me?”
“What would give you the impression that you’re special?” He lies down on his back so that I can’t see him because of the table between us. Always moving. It’s hard to keep track of him. “There are also a few less common forms of jynx-work that are still well-known. Like fire-work and mind-work. I’d put illusion-work in this category, because almost everyone has heard of it, but you’re the only illusion-worker I’ve actually met.”
“There isn’t another illusion-worker in Gomorrah,” I say.
“So I assumed,” he says. “Now, there’s one last category of jynx-work. The abnormalities. The ones that only one person is known to have, particular to that individual. Like my poison-work.” Luca’s words begin accelerating beyond the point of comprehensibility. I wonder if he’s even talking for my benefit or simply to hear the sound of his own voice. “I want to focus on the possibility that these incidents have nothing to do with your illusion-work and everything to do with the jynx-work of the killer. Assuming that your illusions are, in fact, entirely illusions, and unable to be killed without the use of jynx-work.”
“Do you always do this?” I ask.
“Do what?” Luca asks.
“Talk at someone rather than to someone. So fast I can’t keep up. Then I end up looking like a fool.”
“I always just assumed you are a fool,” Luca says from the floor. I open my mouth to retort, furiously, but then hear him chuckle softly. “Joke. I was joking. Don’t look at me like that. Sometimes I make jokes. I’m not a total freak.”
The word freak makes me tense. It’s not a word I associate with many others except myself and my illusions, so it’s strange to hear it from someone else’s mouth in reference to themselves. Luca may be an Up-Mountainer in Gomorrah—a rarity—and have a rather unusual jynx-work ability, but is that worthy of being called a freak?
“Did you leave Raske because you were a jynx-worker?” I ask.
“Why the personal questions?”
“You don’t have to answer. I was just curious.” I look around his tent, which lacks any personal possessions besides a few books and essential furniture. Even when misfits run away from home to join Gomorrah, they take a few things with them. If I were going to run away somewhere, I’d take my bug collection. Judging from his home, Luca doesn’t have anything he truly values. If he could only take one item with him, he’d probably reach for his bottle of gin.
“No, it’s fine,” he says, in a way that makes me think maybe it’s not fine. But I don’t bother stopping him, as he’s already started talking at a hundred words per minute again. “For most of my life, I didn’t know I was a jynx-worker. I left after the last of my family died. I didn’t have any reason to stay. And if the people in the city found out what I was...they’d probably have burned me at the stake. Sometimes I amuse myself by thinking about what they would have done after I wouldn’t die.”
“Is that a joke, too?”
“No. Yes. I don’t know. I suppose my jokes are rather morbid.”
He smiles his full smile, the one with the dimples, and I catch myself smiling back. I immediately stop. It’s not fair to my family to be smiling when everyone else is grieving. It’s not fair to Gill and Blister. Not so soon after their deaths.
“Back to where we were before,” Luca says, as though he never paused his initial thoughts. “You say your illusions can’t die. For the moment, let’s assume you’re right. So who can kill someone who can’t die? Well, someone with a unique ability to do so. The common jynx-work, like fortune-work and charm-work, hardly seem capable of that. Nor do some other well-known kinds, like mind-work or fire-work. It seems the best guess is that whoever did this has a unique ability, one like mine.”