The Dazzling Heights

She had a terribly morbid habit of composing epitaphs each time she set aside an identity, though she never shared them with her mom. She had a feeling that Elise wouldn’t find them quite so amusing.

Calliope tapped at the new wrist computer, pulling up her list of contacts—empty, as usual—and noticed to her surprise that there wasn’t a school registration listed. “You’re not making me go to high school for this one?”

Elise shrugged. “You’re eighteen. Do you want to keep going to school?”

Calliope hesitated. She’d gone to school so many times, playing whatever role their particular scheme cast her in—a long-lost heiress, or a victim of some conspiracy, or occasionally just as Elise’s daughter, when Elise needed a daughter to seem attractive to some victim. She’d attended a preppy British boarding school and a French convent and a pristine public school in Singapore, and had rolled her eyes in sheer boredom at each one.

Which was how Calliope had ended up running a few cons of her own. They were never as big as Elise’s cons, which netted their real payout; but Calliope liked to do something on the side if she saw an opportunity. Elise was fine with it, as long as Calliope’s projects didn’t impede her ability to help out her mom whenever she was called upon. “It’s good for you to get some practice,” Elise always said, and let Calliope keep everything she earned herself—which supplemented her wardrobe quite nicely.

Usually Calliope tried to gain the interest of a wealthy teenager, then conned him into buying her a necklace, or a new handbag, or the latest Robbie Lim suede boots. On a few rare occasions she’d managed to get bitbanc payments—not gifts—by pretending to be in serious trouble, or by finding out people’s secrets and blackmailing them. Calliope had learned through the years that rich people did a lot of things they would rather keep buried.

She briefly considered going to high school, doing the same thing as usual, but she quickly dismissed the idea. This time, she would go bigger.

Oh, there were so many ways to hook a mark—the “accidental” run-in, the sidelong glance, the nuanced smile, the flirtation, the confrontation, the accident—and Calliope was an expert in all of them. She’d closed out every con she’d ever started.

Except Travis. The one mark who’d ever left Calliope, rather than the other way around. She’d never figured out why, and it still nettled her, just a little.

But he was just one person, and there were millions here. Calliope thought of all the crowds she’d seen earlier, streaming in and out of elevators, rushing home or to work or to school. All of them preoccupied with their own small worries, clutching at their impossible dreams.

None of them even knew she existed, and if they did know, they wouldn’t care. But that was what made this game fun: because Calliope was about to make one of them care, very much. She felt a bright, glorious, reckless rush of anticipation.

She couldn’t wait to find her next mark.

AVERY

AVERY FULLER WRAPPED her arms tighter around herself. The wind tore at her hair, yanking it into an unruly blond tangle, whipping the folds of her dress around her like a banner. A few droplets of rain began to fall. They stung lightly where they touched her bare skin.

But Avery wasn’t ready to leave the roof. This was her secret place, where she retreated when all the furious lights and sounds down there, in the rest of the city, became too much to bear.

She looked out to the hazy purple of the horizon, which stretched into a deep fathomless black overhead. She loved the way she felt up here, aloof and alone and safe with her secrets. It’s not safe, a nagging feeling told her, as a pair of footsteps sounded. Avery turned around, nervous—and broke into a smile when she saw that it was Atlas.

But the trapdoor flung open again and suddenly Leda was there, her face suffused with anger. She looked thin and drawn and dangerous. She wore her very skin as if it were armor.

“What do you want, Leda?” Avery asked warily, though she didn’t really need to ask; she knew what Leda wanted. She wanted to break her and Atlas apart, and Atlas was the one thing Avery would never, ever give up. She took a step in front of him as if to protect him.

Leda caught the gesture. “How dare you,” she spat, and reached out to shove Avery—

Avery’s stomach lurched, her arms wheeling as she tried desperately to cling to something, but it was all too far away, even Atlas, and the world had devolved into a blur of color and sound and screaming, the ground hurtling ever faster toward her—

She sat up abruptly, a cold sheen of sweat on her brow. It took her a moment to recognize the dim bulkiness of her surroundings as the furniture in Atlas’s bedroom.

“Aves?” Atlas murmured. “You okay?”

She curled her knees to her chest, trying to slow the erratic beating of her heart. “Just a nightmare,” she told him.

Atlas pulled her close and wrapped his arms tightly around her from behind, so that she was safe in the warm circle of his embrace. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Avery did want to talk about it, except she couldn’t. So she turned around to silence him with a kiss.

She’d been sneaking over to Atlas’s room every night since Eris died. She knew she was playing with fire. But being with the boy she loved—talking to him, kissing him, just inhaling his presence—was the only thing that kept Avery from spinning off the edge lately.

And even here, with Atlas, she wasn’t wholly safe from herself. She hated the web of secrets that kept tightening around her, driving an invisible wedge between them, though Atlas had no idea.

He didn’t know about the delicate balancing act Avery now found herself in with Leda. A secret for a secret. Leda knew about them, and the only reason she hadn’t blasted it to the world was that Avery had seen her push Eris, up on the roof that night. Now Avery was hiding the truth about Eris’s death under threat from Leda.

She couldn’t bring herself to tell Atlas about it all. The knowledge would only hurt him, and the truth was, Avery didn’t want him to learn what had really happened that night. If he knew what she’d done, he might not look at her this way anymore—with such blinding love and devotion.

She wrapped her fingers tighter in the curls at the base of Atlas’s neck, wanting to stop time, to disappear into this moment and live in it forever.

When Atlas finally pulled away, she felt his smile, even if she couldn’t see it. “No scary dreams anymore. Not while I’m here. I’ll keep them away, I promise.”

“I dreamed that I lost you,” she blurted out, a note of trepidation threading through her voice. Now that they were together, against all odds, losing Atlas was her greatest fear.

“Avery.” He put a finger under her chin and gently lifted it, so that she was looking into his eyes. “I love you. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know,” she replied, and she knew that he meant it, but there were so many obstacles in their path, so many forces stacked against them, that at times it all felt insurmountable.

She lay back down in the soft, warm space next to his body, but her thoughts were still scattered. She felt like she was coiled too tightly and couldn’t be unwound.

“Do you ever wish another family had adopted you?” she whispered, voicing a thought she’d had countless times. If he’d ended up with some other family, if some other boy had grown up as her adopted brother, then Atlas wouldn’t be forbidden. She wondered what it would have been like, meeting him in school, or at some party; bringing him home to meet the Fullers.

It would all be so much easier.

“Of course not,” Atlas said, startling her with the vehemence of his tone. “Aves, if I’d been adopted by a different family I might never have met you.”

“Maybe …” She trailed off, but she couldn’t help thinking that she and Atlas were inevitable. The universe would have conspired for them to meet, some way or another, pulling them together with a gravitational force that was all their own.

“Maybe,” Atlas conceded. “But that’s not a risk I’m willing to take. You’re the most important thing in the world to me. The day your parents brought me home—the day I first met you—was the second-best day of my life.”