Ace of Shades_The Shadow Game Series Read online

  “The writer?”

  Enne perked up and slid into the chair next to him. Maybe he would turn out to be a promising source after all. “Have you seen her?”

  “I don’t go looking for trouble, missy,” he said. “You don’t look like you do, either.”

  “I was told writers like her come here.”

  “They did, when they were alive.” He looked at her pointedly, and Enne, again, felt herself standing at the edge of that cliff. She was tired of feeling this way. Angry for feeling this way. She could no longer tell if she needed to sob or to scream. “Maybe there’s something else I can do for you,” he offered. “You need a job?”

  “I’ve got a job. What I need is information.”

  “Ah, but the Orphan Guild can always get you a better job.”

  “The Orphan Guild?” The name sounded familiar—maybe something she’d read in her guidebook. Likely something to avoid. She looked around the room for an excuse, for an exit.

  “Not from the city? Most people would know the Orphan Guild. It’s the name of opportunity.”

  “I’m not an orphan,” she said defiantly. Not an orphan. Not a doll. Not a lost cause.

  “What are your talents?” he asked. Something about his voice reminded Enne of Mistress—sweet as syrup. The way he leaned forward, the glimmer in his eyes, it was all very alluring. He did have something to offer, she felt instinctively. He was trustworthy. Speaking with him was a good decision.

  She leaned closer, an invisible force drawing her to his voice. She wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or something else.

  “I’m a dancer,” she offered to him. “And a split counter.”

  “The Scarhands could always use counters. We have a lot of them, in the Guild,” he said thoughtfully. “A shame to scar those pretty hands, though.”

  He reached out and touched Enne’s cheek, then turned her head side to side, inspecting her. At first, Enne let him. He was trustworthy. He was no threat.

  “I’m a bad counter,” she admitted, because she felt like she needed to be honest with him. “And...” She searched for the words, and it was growing more difficult to find them, more difficult to remember why she’d denied the young man earlier. “I don’t want a job.” She tried to peel her eyes off him and his sleazy smile to find the others. Levi. Jac. Reymond. She squinted around the cabaret, but it was hard to picture their faces. Whenever she tried, she saw the young man’s.

  He clicked his tongue and turned her head back toward him. Her shoulders relaxed. “Split counters aren’t bad counters, missy. Maybe that’s not really your talent.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “We have blood gazers. They’re complimentary.”

  “Blood gazers?” Enne repeated, confused.

  “They can see your talents. Lots of people are mistaken about them, you know.”

  His words struck a nerve, and Enne shook her head, the hold of the trance fading. She squeezed the edge of the table, her thoughts veering in several directions. Talents. His voice. Mistaken. A secret.

  Maybe mommy didn’t really know the daddy after all, she heard Alice’s sneer. But her comment had been just a competitor being cruel. It shouldn’t have shaken Enne like it had.

  Were you that terrible? Levi had asked about her rehearsal.

  The truth was quite the opposite—she’d been a natural. She still remembered the look on Alice’s face when she’d perfected the simple routine in a matter of hours. How the entire troupe had noticed her, applauded her, and the rush that had sped through her chest.

  She should’ve told Levi instead of making it a secret. But it felt like a secret. Like something wrong.

  Something wrong with her.

  The more the thoughts shook her, the more she listened to the other voices, the less she remained under the young man’s spell. She pushed her seat away from him.

  “Stop it,” she told him.

  “Stop what?”

  She willed herself to get up, but her body felt heavier than usual—and not from the alcohol. “Let me go.”

  “I’m just doing you a favor,” the young man said, licking his lips. “I could give you a name of a gazer. It never hurts to know.”

  “I don’t want to know,” she snapped. She dug her fingernails into her thighs.

  “Don’t be thick, missy. It’s free of charge.”

  Enne tried to gather up the strength to move, but she couldn’t lift herself from her seat. His voice felt like an anchor dragging her below the surface. It’s a favor, she heard. He’s trustworthy. Kind. Helpful.

  The young man started writing down a name and an address on the back of a business card. “She’s dependable,” he said, “and she owes me a favor.”

  Enne knew she shouldn’t reach for it. She tried not to. But her arm lifted—not like a puppet, but more as if drawn to a magnet. Her fingers trembled.

  Someone shouted behind her and, in a blur, ran and snatched the card out of the young man’s hand. Reymond grabbed Enne by the arm and hoisted her up, seething.

  “Are you even allowed in here?” he spat at the young man. His voice sounded like the strings of a violin snapping. Enne jolted from her chair, alert, awake, and backed away from both of them.

  The man frowned. “Eight Fingers. You know her?”

  “He’s a Chainer, missy,” Reymond snarled, and Enne’s blood chilled as she remembered the man she’d seen on Chain Street. A debtor. A street slave. Another few minutes under his spell, and she could’ve been just like him. “Favors,” Reymond growled, brandishing the business card, “don’t count if you steal them.” His breath reeked of liquor.

  “I’m not like them,” the boy said.

  “Can’t change what you are. You’re a poacher.”

  “I’m a salesman.”

  “Does Levi know you’re here?”

  “I’m not afraid of Pup,” he challenged. “Besides, Sundays are my nights off.” He grinned wickedly. “I figured you might remember.”

  Reymond went scarlet. “Muck off, Harvey.”

  He yanked Enne away from the table, back toward the bar. “I leave you alone for fifteen minutes, missy, and you manage to find the seediest person here.” He shook his head. “Don’t tell Levi about this. He’ll blame me, and he hates the Guild. He and Mardlin are real holier-than-thou about it.” Reymond took the card out of his pocket. “What did Harvey give you?”

  “It’s nothing,” she muttered.

  “I can hear lies, missy,” he hissed.

  “It is nothing. I...didn’t want to take it.”

  Reymond squeezed her arm tighter, so tight it hurt. “Why is it that half the time you speak, I can hear the lies on your lips?”

  Enne’s ears heated in a sort of shame. She hadn’t realized she’d been lying to him—and to herself. She did want to know after all. She’d broken plenty of Lourdes’s rules since leaving home, but doubting her mother felt like the worst sort of betrayal.

  Reymond leaned down lower. “I don’t care if you hide something from me, but I know you’re hiding something from Levi. Why is he helping you?”

  “Because I’m paying him to,” she said, her voice rising. She snatched the card out of his hand and thrust it in her pocket.

  “You’re lying again.”

  She froze. She intended to pay Levi, once they found Lourdes. Enne didn’t have access to the bank account or the volts on her own. But if Reymond told Levi, then Enne would be without help. Levi had promised they were in this together, and she thought she believed him, but it was hard to be sure. Volts were more of a guarantee than good intentions.

  “Levi’s in trouble,” Reymond said. “He won’t tell me exactly what it is, but I have my suspicions. And if I find out you’re leading him into more, or if anything happens to him, then I will find you.” He didn’t need to add on another threat. Enne understood him pe
rfectly well. “Levi isn’t like us. He’s better than us.”

  Us, he said. But he and Levi were both criminals—Enne was better than both of them.

  “I’m not like you,” she snapped.

  “Lourdes was. I recognize a familiar face when I see one.”

  He let her go, and Enne rubbed her arm where he’d squeezed, where her muscles ached.

  “They’re over there.” He nodded at a table in the corner, where Jac and Levi were laughing over several empty glasses. Reymond left her to join them, and Enne wandered over slowly, slightly shell-shocked, still slightly drunk.

  Levi locked eyes with her, and he smiled. It made her stomach knot. She needed to sober up.

  “I like the lipstick,” he said.

  “Did you find anything?” she asked, ignoring Reymond’s suspicious stare as she slid into the seat beside Levi.

  Levi held up a napkin. “I won this.”

  “Impressive.”

  “No, there’s an address on it. We’ll go tomorrow.”

  Enne relaxed. They wouldn’t leave empty-handed.

  She wasn’t empty-handed, though. She still had the business card in her pocket. It was a terrible idea, but she did want to know the truth about herself.

  Of course, she’d rather hear it from her mother. And the address Levi had could lead them straight to Lourdes, which meant Enne didn’t need a blood gazer. Not yet.

  “I didn’t find anything,” Jac said sheepishly.

  “I met another Salta,” Enne told them. “She’s dancing now.” Demi was still onstage, somehow wearing even less than she had before. The raunchy music and raunchier moves made Enne flush. Still, she had to admire Demi’s technique. She was very graceful.

  “Maybe Levi could’ve gotten you a job here.” Jac slapped Levi on the back.

  Levi looked away hurriedly and took a sip from his already empty glass.

  Jac turned to her. “Too much for your sensibilities, missy?”

  “I’m not a prude,” she countered, even if the suggestion made her cheeks flush furiously.

  Jac snorted. “Could’ve fooled me.”

  She pointed at Levi’s tie. “You weren’t wearing that earlier.”

  “I like it,” he said.

  Reymond rolled his eyes. “I shouldn’t leave any of you alone in cabarets.”

  “Go easy on us,” Levi said, slipping his arm around Enne’s shoulders, forgetting that she was sore. She cringed, but this time, didn’t feel like pushing him away—drunk Enne didn’t so much mind that smirk of a smile. She resisted the urge to lean into him and scolded herself—maybe Levi was the only person she knew in New Reynes, but that didn’t mean they were familiar.

  “Besides,” he said, unaware of Enne shifting with sudden embarrassment under his arm, “we got what we came for.”

  Demi’s act ended with her brandishing sparklers in both her hands, her leg propped against a barstool, her slip scandalously riding up. The audience—their table included—cheered, and the four of them decided that was their cue to leave.

  But Enne hadn’t gotten what she’d come for. As they made their way up the stairs, she scanned the faces in the crowd one last time. Lourdes was nowhere to be found.

  DAY THREE

  “All stories about the city are true.”

  —The City of Sin, a Guidebook: Where To Go and Where Not To

  LEVI

  Levi was still nursing a slight headache the evening after their night in the Sauterelle. The vomiting had stopped sometime that morning—right before making himself a Walk of Shame, the city’s supposed hangover cure. A dull ache above his brow bone lingered throughout the day—while he leaned against his shower wall, letting the hot water trail down his shoulders and back, trying to remember exactly how he’d made it back to his room last night. While he collected his paycheck—two hundred volts—from Vianca’s secretary. While he sat on his couch, painting, wondering when Vianca would return from her hopeless campaigning so she could pay him out of his desperate situation.

  Eight more days.

  He now had two thousand, three hundred volts toward his ten thousand. The only others he could count on were the five hundred volts from the Irons’ collections this week. Everything else, he’d have to earn at the gambling table. Or beg out of Vianca.

  Or help Enne find Lourdes and claim his payout.

  He was pondering the address Dice had given him the night before when he heard a knock on the door. Levi shoved the napkin in his pocket and rose to answer it.

  Enne waited in the hallway. She was dressed in her regular clothes, but her face was flushed—likely from rehearsal, Levi realized. He narrowed his eyes. She’d been nearly as drunk as him last night, but looking at her now, you’d never know it.

  “Where’s your hangover?” he asked as she marched past him. “That’s unnatural.”

  “I drank water when I got home, like my guidebook suggested.” She inspected him, her lips pursed. “You look terrible.”

  “Exactly what kind of guidebook is that, anyway?”

  She pulled it out from her purse and examined the back cover. “I don’t know. I bought it in Bellamy.”

  “Why do you have it with you now?”

  “It has a map.”

  “I know where we’re going.”

  She tapped him on the forehead with the book. He winced from his headache and swatted her away. “You couldn’t tell which way was up or down last night.”

  He grabbed his jacket and hat, feeling sour. “We’ll get mugged walking around with a map. That tourist nonsense is an affront to everything I stand for.”

  “What do you stand for? Bravado?”

  “Obviously.”

  They stepped into the hallway, and while Levi paused to lock the door behind them, an older man walked past. He wasn’t a hotel guest—they didn’t stay in this wing. The only people who lived up here were Vianca’s associates, and Levi recognized this man. He belonged to one of Vianca’s Apothecary families, the ones who brewed the drugs she distributed in the city. They were treated like royalty, both in St. Morse and throughout New Reynes. The man even walked like a king, his head high, his Gershton designer suit freshly pressed, his presence impressively regal. Apothecaries disgusted Levi, who couldn’t help but remember Jac during his bad days.

  Enne started walking behind the man toward the elevator, but Levi held her back.

  “We don’t ride with him,” he said in a low voice. “St. Morse policy.”

  “Is he Vianca’s husband?”

  Levi snorted. “Vianca’s husband has been dead for over a decade. That’s just one of her friends.”

  “How can the Augustines be a crime Family if there’s just Vianca?”

  “There used to be more. Now there’s just Vianca and her son, Harrison. I heard he despises her and lives somewhere across the world.” Levi shrugged. “I figure he’s the only sane one in the tree.”

  After the Apothecary disappeared into the elevator, Levi and Enne made their way down the hallway. They waited several extra moments before ringing the bell.

  Levi took a deep breath and stared at the emerald green wallpaper; the color always reminded him unpleasantly of Vianca’s aura. Wherever he went within St. Morse, within the place he lived, he felt locked within her cage. She was everywhere he looked.

  Every night, he wore her suit, played her games, did her dirty work. He slept in a grand suite on the top floor reserved for her closest friends and associates, on silk sheets in a royal-sized bed. But he was not her prince, not her friend; he was her dog.

  And every night he spent trapped in her empire, he dreamed of building empires of his own.

  He took a deep breath and tried to turn his thoughts around. Tried to convince himself that Lourdes Alfero would be waiting for them, alive and well, wherever this address was. He
wanted that so badly he could feel it like an ache inside his chest. He needed it to be true.

  Eight more days.

  His desperation unsettled him. He wasn’t the sort of person to seek out addresses drunkenly written on napkins, to abandon all of his logic when faced with a difficult situation. To watch helplessly as his gang crumbled. To be caught within the clutches of a delusional old woman.

  The ache he felt wasn’t just from the desperation to survive, but for his second chance—to be the man he was supposed to be.

  The elevator opened for them, and they stepped inside. Enne wore a worried expression that matched his own, fiddling with her Mizer coin.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked, as if he didn’t already know.

  “I’m bracing myself for disappointment,” she said matter-of-factly. In just a matter of days, Levi had come to understand that this was how she spoke when her only other option was breaking down. Her expert poker face showed nothing, but to Levi, it showed everything.

  He considered reaching out for her hand—there was little else he could provide as comfort—but then the elevator doors opened. Enne pocketed her coin and strode out in front of him.

  Outside, the sun was setting, and Tropps Street was only just beginning to stir. The lights glowed but did not flash. The air smelled of beckoning restaurants and that ever-present eau de piss. Levi looked to Enne, as he usually enjoyed the disgust or discomfort often apparent on her face, but instead, she appeared pensive.

  “Where did you get this address?” she asked.

  “A friend.” Levi hadn’t actually caught Dice’s real name.

  “That sounds very legitimate.”

  “You have quite the attitude today.” And everyday, he added to himself.

  He prepared himself for one of her classic, ladies-don’t-have-attitudes retorts, but instead she murmured, “I was promoted today.” She looked down at her shoes. There was no pride in her voice, as he would’ve expected. Only uncertainty.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The Glaisyers are considered a top-tier orb-maker family, aren’t they?” Enne asked quietly.