“Why do you feel that way?”

I raise an eyebrow. “Well, that’s your job, right? To figure that out?”

She folds her arms in front of her. “If that’s how you feel.”

“Now we’re just going in circles.”

“Okay, then let’s move forward. What about your stepmom upsets you?”

“I mean, they haven’t…It’s not like she did anything, it’s what she sort of left out.” I try to hold ground, but I’m losing it fast. She’s good. “It’s fine that they went off and had their own family. But there weren’t two Christmases or group gatherings. He…” Deep breath. Drop your shoulders. Calm. “He left, and all they knew about it was that he left us for them. There was always that underlying feeling, like we were something that happened once, y’know? You can hear, in those little kids’ voices, that we’re people they have to see sometimes.”

I’m expecting her to hit me with another tough one, but instead she nods and looks at me. “Did you see your dad?”

“Just as we left. He nearly ran into me and Randall, and I was a bit of a jerk to him. I just smiled and thanked him for the suit, and then had Randall drive off.”

She smiles, finally. “Like a thief in the night, right? Keep the mystery and all that around you.”

I hadn’t thought of that. That was it exactly. “Well, yeah. I didn’t have much to say to him, anyway…y’know?”

She nods and leans back a bit. “What’s the tuxedo for?”

“Um, what do you know about ‘Weimar’?”

She laughs, and I feel okay, which makes no sense.

H OW DID it happen?”

The time traveler (he refused to give his name) looked thoughtful. “What? Your death, or becoming Tyrant?”

“Both, I guess.”

“Well, you became Tyrant about five years or so before your death,” he says, as though he’s recounting a story from his past. “It was around Halloween or so, a little after, in 2015. November. Yeah, definitely November; I remember it was broadcast during the marathon. You’d been around-you were a fucking superhero, for God’s sake, so everyone knew about you-for a while before that. But still, you were a legend, so no big deal, right? And then, one night, you killed the mayor.”

“I WHAT?!”

“You killed Mayor Rothchild on national television, as well as the guards, the security, the cameramen…pretty much everyone who could’ve posed a threat to you. And then you got in front of the camera and declared yourself Tyrant of New York City, and said that if anyone thought otherwise, they could happily take it up with you.”

I sat down on the cold concrete of the rooftop and rolled a pebble between my fingers. This was madness. I was a protector. “Why? Why did I declare myself Tyrant?”

“The venom,” he said. “It took control. You realized that things would never change, no matter how much you fought, and you let the venom take control. You performed all these acts, yeah, but you weren’t really the one driving the bus, if you know what I mean. Don’t get me wrong, the city was still safe, but in a Machiavellian sort of way. An iron fist, ruling through fear. You let down your morals, and it took advantage of the opportunity.”

“So how did…” I pointed at him. This was an awkward transition.

“You were killed five years after you declared yourself Tyrant, but the venom left your system before they got to it. You hadn’t really been part of the show for a while, so they just put a bullet in you and continued hunting for the venom.”

Icy fingers caressed the back of my skull and sent chills through my blood. “And the venom found you.”

“Not quite,” he whispered. “First it found Renée.”

CHAPTER NINE

BEFORE THIS NIGHT, “Weimar” was eternally linked in my mind to one image-a swastika. Knowing my friends, I assumed that I was in for a history lesson.

I show up at the apartment building and am immediately given a cavity search by a massive doorman with a name tag reading BRAWN. I swear to God, his name is actually Brawn (silently, I pray the tired-looking guy behind him, staring at a stack of security screens, is wearing a tag reading BRAINS, but sadly, his name is Colin). The entire time I’m there, Brawn, good ol’ Brawn, gives me a look that lets me know that he’s the type of guy who will be necessarily polite to me right up until I step out of line and he tears out my larynx with his bare hands. You’d think that if enough kids show up in tuxes, he’d assume all of them are going to the same place. The whole thing makes the venom sneer and pant and pound its fist on the table of my mind, livid with contempt. However, seeing as Brawn makes Andrew Tomas look like a mosquito, the venom seethes, letting the rage rush through me without breaking open like a boil. It knows this isn’t a battle worth getting into. It’s wicked and arrogant by nature, yeah, but the venom isn’t stupid.

Finally, after checking out his clipboard, Brawn consents to let me upstairs, noting that he doesn’t want “any craziness or such” (Too bad, too-I LOVE craziness or such!). I choke down big mouthfuls of verbal razors and let the elevator door shut behind me.

The door opens again, and my hatred takes a backseat to awe. Whoever the host is, he’s rich. Like, buying-your-kids-out-of-any-trouble-they-might-someday-get-into rich; Trump money. Because the elevator door does not open to a hallway like a normal person’s would. It opens to the apartment itself, to a massive white foyer full of girls in flapper dresses and boys in tuxes. I recognize a lot of them from the party in the park, but not enough. Immediately my coat and shirt become itchy, stuffy, way too uncomfortable.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, first Brawn, now this. Let’s just go home.

This is important. Casey and Renée are counting on me. We need this.

We?

A man in a tux grabs me by the collars and giggles maniacally in my face. “Guten abend, mein kleiner Schnurrbart! May I take your coat?”

Staring hard at him, I realize it’s Casey and start laughing. “You crazy bastard! This place is utterly amazing! Whose is it?”

“One of zese beyutiful people,” he says, his accent somewhere between German, Russian, and Rastafarian. He sweeps his arms across the room. “Look at zem! All such beyutiful people! Even ze orchestra es beyutiful.”

“Casey, you’ve been drinking.”

“No, YOU’VE been drinking!”

“No, I haven’t!”

“Why the hell NOT?!”

“Good question. Better go remedy that.”

“You better believe it.” And with a shriek, he disappears into the crowd.

I filter through the mass of people, in awe of pretty much everything. The clothes, the makeup, the house, fill me with utter amazement. It’s a loft apartment, obviously, but it’s been divided up into different rooms using curtains hung from the ceiling. Normally a house like this would just piss me off something terrible-Manhattan decadence at its worst-but considering how the party’s set up and the type of people in attendance, the whole place just seems magical and hilarious. One room is the bar, where boys in tuxes and suits are yelling loudly while drinking beer, another a ballroom full of kids dancing to music that sounds somewhere between hardcore punk and big-band swing. There are some others, too, but the bar is really all I care about right now. And lo and behold, standing behind the bar is Tollevin the Tower, shooting me the biggest shit-eating grin I’ve ever seen. I smile back at him, resting myself on the bar and taking my handkerchief from my breast pocket (I figured since I get sweaty when I’m nervous, it was the ideal accessory) to wipe my brow.

“What’ll it be, Locke?” he yells above the din.

“What’s good?” I ask, glancing at the rainbow of bottles behind him. If there’s a time to learn about liquor, it’s now.

Tollevin grabs a bottle reading GLENLIVET and pours some into a tumbler glass for me. “You seem like a Scotch kind of guy. Try this.”