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chair in the same subtle motion. “You need to grow you some gonads. Doing nothing is not a policy. It’s not a strategy. It’s simply doing nothing.”
    “He wouldn’t want this.”
    “And how would you know what Arthur wants?” she says, taunting. “He hasn’t spoken to you in months.”
    “I visit his bedside many times a day,” Weems responds, defensive despite himself. “He speaks to no one. That part of his mind has been damaged.”
    “He speaks to me,” she insists.
    “Prove it,” he suggests. “Make a digital recording.”
    “It’s more a mind-meld kind of thing,” she says with a seductive smile, shaping her recently plumped lips. “I look into his eyes and I know what he wants. I know it as deeply and as surely as if he’s spoken. Arthur is beyond words now. He wants me to act as his voice to the world.”
    Weems sighs, puts a hand to his forehead, intending to shield the flash of cold rage in his eyes. “If it was only speaking, that would be one thing,” he says, in his most reasonable voice. “But to hatch this lunatic plot? Endangering God knows how many children? To put us all at risk of arrest? Not to mention what it will do to recruitment and revenues if the truth comes out. It’s insane, Eva. And whatever our differences, I never doubted your sanity.”
    “There is no God.”
    “What?”
    “You just said ‘God knows how many children.’”
    “It’s an expression, Eva. Don’t try to change the subject. You reached out, willful and shameless in your ambition, you set loose a man you know is capable of murder, andnow terrible things are going to happen in some little town that’s never done us any harm. If your hand is found in this, and surely it will be, we’ll all be destroyed.”
    She laughs. “Wendall, don’t be so dramatic. You sound like some old fruit from a daytime drama. ‘Dear me, we shall all of us be destroyed!’ You’re being ridiculous. No one will ever know—Vash will see to that, and when it’s all over, Arthur’s wish will have been carried out.”
    “And you’ll take control of the entire organization. You, speaking for Arthur, with the help of that thug Kavashi.”
    “Pretty much, yeah.”
    “And where do I figure in your great plan? Me and those I represent?”
    She shrugs. “You don’t. Retire. Write your own book. Start another enterprise. It makes no difference to me. You and all your friends ride off into the sunset, that’s the bottom line.”
    “Which you think will happen because why? Because you want it to?”
    “No, Wendall. Because he wants it to.”
    Weems shakes his head. They’ve had variations on this conversation before, never settled anything. “You lie so well,” he says, almost with admiration. “If I didn’t know better.”
    “When it comes to lying, I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
    “Naked ambition,” he says.
    She stands up from his custom-built command chair, strokes her hands on her hips playfully. Poisonously. “What are you saying, Wendall? You want to see me naked? Does little Wendy have a woody for pretty wittle Eva the Diva?”
    “Get out,” he says.
    She gives him an air kiss as she passes him by. “You’ll try and stop me,” she whispers huskily. “You’ll fail.”
    7. The Bad Clown
    Most of the kids, as they stream into the bleacher seats, contrive to sit with friends. The teachers remain at the aisles, directing traffic, making sure the individual homerooms don’t get blended. Order must be maintained or, as Mrs. Delancey is fond of saying, all heck will break out.
    All heck. Noah loves the way she says it—the twinkle in her eye—and also her other favorite phrases like “think smart and you’ll be smart” and “one fish doesn’t make a school,” which she had to explain to some of the slower kids wasn’t about school construction but the way fish—and people—react to other fish and people.
    Although most of his classmates find Noah interesting or at least entertaining,