Chapter Four
LOLA
The pain that rushes through me at the sight of my father is one that should have dulled by now. After all, I’ve been meeting with him as the mythical seaspawn I’ve named Nocturne for weeks.
Yet his eyes locking on mine cleaves me in two.
Once, I might have hated him. The girl I was before the Liar’s Dice Tournament would have.
But now my memories echo with his strangled cry from the secret revealed on Nic’s stage, when he slammed his fist into the corpse he thought was Enzo, when he believed I was gone.
And because of that, my anger has changed.
No longer do I hate him because he didn’t come for me, didn’t try to rescue me, didn’t look for me. I hate him now for all the choices he made that led us there in the first place.
He bargained my life in exchange for something he valued more. The father I thought he was never would have done that.
So, though the little girl inside me longs to sink into his embrace, to breathe in the familiar scent of coffee and orange liqueur that cloaks him like cologne, the hardened thief I’ve become holds her distance.
“How have you been, Nocturne?” Father asks, gaze traveling across the illusory mist of my face, the snakelike smoke of my hair.
“Cut the pleasantries, Magnus,” I say with a voice sharp and cruel enough to mask the pain in it. “I don’t have all night.”
“Of course,” he says, lips pursing as he crosses to a small desk against the wall where a shiny black briefcase lies on its side.
He twists the dials on its clasp, its lock clicking as loudly as an old clock.
I’ve picked at least twenty briefcases just like it, and I know the instant the combination hits home and the mechanism inside bolts free.
“Forty pounds of voratium for the Stanson job, as promised.” He pulls open the top, revealing an array of raw, glimmering black voratium pieces, all cut into disks like Nic’s gambling chips and arranged in careful rows.
“Do you mind?” I raise a brow.
“Go right ahead.” He steps back, gesturing for me to approach.
I cast tendrils of shadow toward him along with the illusory sensation of weight so that when a ghostly hand made of night presses against his chest, he takes several more steps back, alarm widening his eyes.
To his credit, he recovers his composure quickly.
I count out the voratium carefully, fingers listing along the glassy edges of the chips.
I never planned on becoming a seaspawn criminal like the Sinclair brothers, but when the Unbreakable Lie prevented me from asking Enzo any of the questions I needed answers to, clamping my mouth shut anytime I tried, I grew desperate.
I’d needed to look to the other players in my kidnapping for information.
Players like my father.
But I couldn’t go to him as myself. I needed an alter ego he would respect enough to speak to and fear enough not to hurt. That’s when the idea of Nocturne came to me. With my ability to channel both Enzo’s and Nic’s powers, I could pull off a pretty convincing disguise.
Thanks to the Devious brothers’ reputation, Aethera’s underbelly was all too willing to welcome a new seaspawn devil, and my father, Salazar, and the other smaller crime families leaped at the chance to win over the rumored daughter of the goddess of night to their causes.
I complete odd jobs for them as Nocturne, and they reward me with the voratium I use to practice my magic.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve slowly built a foundation with my father, and tonight I think I’ve finally reached the point where I might be able to dig for one of those puzzle pieces I crave without raising suspicion.
“These chips are perfection,” I murmur. “It’s clear why the Liar chose you as his supplier.”
St. James’s mouth twitches in the faintest smile. “Best voratium you’ll find anywhere.”
“I’m sure such expertise comes with risks.”
“Every business owner faces risk.”
“Ah, but not every business owner has so many enemies,” I point out.
His smile fades. “To what enemies are you referring?”
I shrug, plucking up a chip and rolling it around my palm. “I heard your daughter was kidnapped by such an enemy.”
The air in the room stills as his lips thin. “She was kidnapped by the Thief. Not a political enemy nor a competing voratium supplier.”
“The Thief ?” I raise my brows as though this is new information. “I thought it was Salazar who took her.”
He scoffs, and I hold my breath, waiting.
I’ve wanted to ask Enzo a hundred times what happened that night.
How he got my father to enter the tournament.
How he knew which secret my father would bargain.
How he made sure my father lost. I won’t be able to press too hard here if I want to keep up my charade, but perhaps my father will reveal a detail tonight. Something I can grasp onto.
“Salazar did take her,” he says, clasping his hands behind his back, “but the Thief bested him.”
“Why?”
“He wanted Magnolia, I assume.” His eyes flash. “He was the one who convinced me to enter. Made me think he wanted the Unbreakable Lie. Told me he’d find someone for me if I won it for him.”
“Find someone for you? Who?” My eyebrows rise. Who could have possibly been more important to him than me? Important enough to risk my life in a game?
And how did Enzo learn about this person?
St. James regards me carefully, unlacing his fingers. “Why all the questions, Nocturne?”
I sigh, as though the matter is of little consequence to me. “Curiosity, I suppose.” I drop the chip back into the suitcase. That might be all the information I get from him tonight, but it’s something. A piece to the puzzle. A start.
“Speaking of the Thief . . . ,” he says as I slot the briefcase closed and twist the lock. “I have another job for you.”
“Oh?” I lift the case from the table and face him.
His oily criminal smile makes my stomach churn.
I hate seeing him like this, dressed in his expensive jackets and silky shirts with bulbous platinum rings on every finger and designer sunglasses crowning his head.
The man in my memories wears simple trousers and old button-down shirts with chocolate stains on them.
He sits at the kitchen table peeling oranges and scraping flecks of their skins into his slow-roasted coffee.
He smiles like he means it and comes up with corny puns to make me laugh.
I hardly recognize this version of him.
His gaze sharpens. “I want you to find him.”
The command hits me like a punch even though I’ve been expecting it for weeks.
Of course he wants Nocturne’s help finding the Thief; he’s been searching for us—for me—since he glimpsed me at the Liar’s Dice Tournament finale four months ago.
It’s why the Tentacles have reduced our number of jobs, why we have to go out in pairs, why our heist was nearly compromised tonight.
“The Thief is unfindable,” I reply as my pulse quickens.
“Even for you?” He raises a brow.
“You are chasing a shadow, sir.”
“There has to be a way to catch him. To hurt him. Perhaps during the eclipse coming up in a few days. My studies show that occultations such as a solar eclipse may interrupt the flow of starlight from the heavens, if only for the instant of totality.”
“I know magic, Magnus.” Addressing him by his name instead of as “Father” intensifies the nausea wrenching my stomach into my throat, but I push on.
“His magic does not come from the stars, so the eclipse will not affect him. And there is no way to force him to stay corporeal if he doesn’t want to. You would do better to move on.”
“Move on,” he repeats slowly, as though tasting the salt in the words. “I cannot. Will not.”
“Because of your daughter?” I ask.
His eyes snap to mine. “I intend to get her back.”
A jolt slices through me, stinging of regret and guilt and anger.
What would he do if I told him who I am? Would he weep with joy and gather me in his arms? Send me right back into that gilded cage, an asset to be guarded, an heir to train up to her duty, a secret to be kept? Now that I’ve tasted freedom, I cannot return to that life.
“Have you ever considered,” I say, feigning boredom, “that if she wanted you to find her, she wouldn’t be making it so difficult?”
His jaw tightens, glare going icy.
“She was at the tournament, apparently of her own free will and choice,” I press on. “I didn’t hear any mention of chains or ropes keeping her there.”
“If you think chains and ropes are the only things that imprison people, you are a fool.” His voice is a rumble barely louder than a whisper, and it sets my teeth on edge.
He’s not going to let up.
An idea begins to take root in my mind. Perhaps I could use this to lead him away from the Tentacles while also digging more answers out of him. It’s a risk, but every deal I’ve made with him has been, and this one could pay off in more ways than one.
I sigh. “I cannot catch the Thief, but I could get your daughter. She, at least, is not a ghost. But I would require quite a steep price.”
He purses his lips. “Very well. If you return Magnolia to me, I will reward you handsomely.”
“With what?”
He nods at the briefcase in my hands. “Thirty of those.”
My jaw drops. Thirty? That would be worth . . . billions of plats.
Tears sting in my eyes. My pulse skitters. Money was supposed to be the thing he loved more than anything. More than me.
A faint buzzing prickles through my body like thousands of tiny ants crawling underneath my skin. A ringing trills in my ears, faint at first, but growing louder.
The Unbreakable Lie.
I zero in on Enzo’s emotions. They crescendo in time with the buzzing. He’s on his way, likely thanks to my onslaught of emotion, and the Unbreakable Lie needs me to get out of here before he catches me.
“You have yourself a deal,” I say to my father, holding out a hand.
Hope glimmers through the ice in his eyes, but he does not smile. He grips my palm, shaking it once. “Thank you, Nocturne.”
“I’ll be in touch.” I turn on my heel.
“Wait.”
But I’m already crossing to the exit. “I’m afraid I’m very short on time, Magnus. Have a good evening.”
“Nocturne—”
I yank open the door and move fluidly up the stairs, sweep past the guards, and slip through the crowd. Enzo’s emotions are close.
I rush out onto the street. Tugging on Enzo’s quickly approaching magic, I try to ripple into noncorporeality, but the power is frozen solid in my veins. The harder I pull on it, the colder it grows, keeping my body firmly physical.
Enzo must be near enough to notice if I wield his magic—something that would clue him in to my duplicity. So instead, I try to use Nic’s to render myself invisible, but the Unbreakable Lie bars that as well.
No amount of intangibility can hide me from Enzo. If he wants to find me and cannot see me, he’ll follow the tether of our heart.
Thoughts whirring, I jog away from Luxuria. Should I get rid of the Nocturne illusion? Turn back into myself before Enzo appears?
The prickle of my father’s guards watching raises the hairs on the back of my neck. They’d recognize me if I dropped my disguise.
So what do I do?
Headlights from an oncoming car cut across my face, and a spasm of excitement bolts through me from Enzo, a desperate hope like a wildfire, and it triggers a panic that fills me with adrenaline.
Enzo is here. In that taxicab.
The Unbreakable Lie buzzes into a wildfire inside me.
I break into a run.