Black Heart by Holly Black

information directly from us. You know there’s a rumor that there’s a transformation worker in China? Many people in our government feel that that information was carefully planted.”
    “If they have one at all, you mean?”
    She nods, a smile pulling at one corner of her mouth. “Exactly. Now go freshen up.”
    In the bathroom I manage to slick my hair back with water and take a safety razor to my stubble. Then I gargle with mouthwash. When I emerge, I do so in a cloud of mint.
    Yulikova’s gotten a third chair from somewhere and is arranging them near the window. “Much better,” she says.
    It’s something that a mother would say. Not my mother, but a mother.
    “You need help with anything?” I ask her. It doesn’t seem like she should be moving furniture.
    “No, no. Sit down, Cassel. I’m fine.”
    I grab a chair. “I don’t mean to pry,” I say, “but we’re in a hospital. You sure you’re fine?”
    She sighs heavily. “No getting anything past you, huh?”
    “I also often notice when water is wet. I have a keen detective’s mind like that.”
    She has the good grace to smile. “I’m a physical worker. Which means I can alter people’s bodies—not to the extent that you can, but brutal basic things. I can break legs and heal them again. I can remove some tumors—or at least reduce them in size. I can draw out an infection in the blood. I can make children’s lungs work.” I try not to show how surprised I am. I didn’t know physical workers could do that. I thought it was just pain—sliced skin, burns, and boils. Philip was a physical worker; I never saw him use it to help anyone.
    “And sometimes I do all those things. But it makes me very sick. All of it, any of it, hurting and healing. And over time it has made me sicker. Permanently sicker.”
    I don’t ask her about the legality of what she’s doing. I don’t care, and if she doesn’t care either, well, then, maybe we have something in common after all. “Can’t you heal yourself?”
    “Ah, the old cry of ‘Physician, heal thyself!’” she says. “A perfectly logical question, but I am afraid I can’t. The blow-back negates any and all positive effects. So occasionally I have to come here for a while.”
    I hesitate before I ask my next question, because it’s so awful. Still, I need to know, if I’m about to sign my free will away on the strength of her promises. “Are you dying?”
    “We’re all dying, Cassel. It’s just that some of us are dying faster than others.”
    I nod. That’s going to have to do, because Agent Jones walks back into the room with an orange cafeteria tray, the whole thing piled with sandwiches, muffins, fruit, and coffee.
    “Put it on my bed. We can buffet off of that,” she tells him.
    I retrieve a ham sandwich, a cup of coffee, and an orange and sit back down while Jones and Yulikova choose their food.
    “Good,” she says, pulling the wrapper off what looks like a lemon poppy seed muffin. “Now, Cassel, I’m sure you’re familiar with Governor Patton.”
    I snort. “Patton? Oh, yeah. I love that guy!”
    Jones looks like he wants to choke the sarcasm out of me, but Yulikova just laughs.
    “I thought you’d say something like that,” she says. “But you should understand—what your mother did to him and then what was done to fix him—he’s become more and more unstable.”
    I open my mouth to object, but she holds up her hand.
    “No. I understand your impulse to defend your mother, and it’s very noble, but right now that’s irrelevant. It doesn’t matter who’s to blame. I need to tell you something confidential, and I need your assurance that it won’t leave this room.”
    “Okay,” I say.
    “If you’ve seen him on the news recently,” Yulikova says, “you can almost see Patton losing control. He says and does things that are extreme, even for anti-workerradicals. But what you can’t tell is how paranoid and secretive he’s become. People very high up in the