When no one spoke a word, he took another foal, and hobbled it, and left it alive to scream like the dogs had screamed. After that, they sent X away, first to other doctors, then to the most expensive boarding schools in Switzerland. He’d hated them for that, and nursed the hatred, feeding on it for five years of solitude and denial, of unanswered letters and canceled visits, a lifetime of aching to belong, and knowing he could not, and rocking himself to sleep in the dark of every single night. They were so weak! Too weak to accept or love or answer the phone on Christmas Eve. That was too much to accept, so X took a cab to the airport in Geneva, cleared customs on a forged passport, and made his way to the winter estate, where he used the holiday quiet to kill them all.

X could remember their deaths without emotion, though their weakness still disgusted him, the way they’d whimpered and writhed, and sworn their love for him had never died. Only their softness was unconditional. So different from Jason, X thought: Jason, who was capable and quick, but also profound of thought and strong and utterly unafraid of his own capacity for violence. Were X to make a list, it would require pages to describe all the things he admired about Jason French: his courage and conviction, his awareness of self. Even his recklessness was absolute, but only when he chose abandon. Of course, Jason had a streak of self-denial that X found mildly irritating. Beyond that, he was the one thing X had sought his whole life. He was an equal; he was worthy.

Maybe it was a short list, after all.

29

The waiting room at Lanesworth Prison smelled like old sweat and stale air. When the guard came for me, I left my friends on a hard bench, and followed him to a blank room with a table and two chairs. A minute later, Jason entered the room, shuffle stepping in full restraints. He eyed me unhappily. The stitches. The bruises. “What are you doing here? I told Dad to keep you away.”

“I’m not really listening to Dad these days.”

Jason sat, chains clattering. “It’s dangerous for you to be here, to be seen here. Do you understand what I’m saying? People will hurt you to get to me.”

“It looks as if they’re getting to you just fine.”

“My face? That’s just prison. What’s your excuse?”

“Hells Angels. The Carriage Room.” I shrugged like it was nothing. “They didn’t like the questions I was asking.”

“Questions about me?”

“You. Tyra.”

“Damn it…”

“You did have a fight there. It did have to do with Tyra.”

“That was about guns.”

“But she was part of it.”