Pax blinks the 6 a.m. from his eyes and tries to focus. He takes the canvas.
I watch as he scans it, realizing it’s him and me and this stranger, Nirav.
I see his gaze linger. Harden. Goose pimples rise on his bare, tanned arms.
My skin reacts similarly. I know this sensation. This is my Team of Light alerting me,pay attention.
And then, the shadows. A darkening, a thickening of air, swarms Pax. Swallows him like storm clouds. His face changes, gloom and anguish cutting across it, and he grimaces until he looks almost animalistic. Wolflike. His aura is lightning bolts.
I take a step back. That kind of intensity is seductive. I’ve lost myself to that kind of power before. Never again.
Pax dusts his fingers lightly over the canvas, then withdraws them quickly, as if his fingertips burn after they pass over one of the faces. As if the evil in that face is contagious.
Pax jabs at Nirav’s canvas.
“This is Max Blanck. The owner of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Do you know…?”
Pax cannot even finish the question, his voice a fist in his throat.
Max… Blanck?
Oh, I know.
My heart lurches.
My stomach lurches.
My vision darkens on the edges, like smoke encroaching. Pax’s shadowy darkness sneaks around me, too.
“Are you certain?”
Pax’s jaw is taut, his teeth clenched. “Oho, I am certain. I’ve fantasized about pressing my thumbs into his fat neck, crushing his windpipe.”
Max Blanck is the sonofabitch who kept the doors of his sewing factory locked so his workers wouldn’t take advantage of their breaks.
Max Blanck is the sonofabitch who killed 146 workers when that factory caught fire.
Max Blanck is the sonofabitch who killed Daisy.
And?
Max Blanck is the sonofabitch who
GOT
OFF
SCOT-FREE.
(And I am as guilty as the one who lit the match.)
CHAPTER NINE
Pax is practically panting. He turns to the boy. Both pairs of eyes darken: Pax’s like storm clouds, Nirav’s like pools of ink. “Who are you?” he asks of Nirav. I halfway expect him to bare fangs.
I blink. “You two don’t know each other?”
The boy shakes his head.
