Chapter Six
NIC
Forsyth is pretty good at Riptide, but the one thing he lacks is my keen talent for artifice. After years of manipulating people, I don’t need to see their lies or smell their secrets to be able to predict what they’ll do. I simply have to pay attention.
So I let Forsyth gain the advantage for a while, just for fun, before annihilating him in the final round.
When I drop the winning card onto the pile between us, he stares at it, pressing his palms flat against the table. “I—wow. You . . . shit.”
“Now for that secret you owe me.” I share a knowing smile with Laurel that feels like oil on my face. I hope to the Deep that whatever I get from him won’t give us too direct a first target for her purge.
Forsyth clears his throat. “Well, I suppose there was this one night about two years ago—” he begins, but I shake my head, reaching out to Laurel, who drops an empty voratium die into my palm.
“Allow me,” I say, tugging Forsyth’s collar aside to press the metal to his sternum.
Forsyth stares down at the die, gulping.
“Hold still.” I close my eyes, and soullight unspools around me like threads in a tapestry.
Years of doing this, of strumming my hands along secrets like they’re strings on a harp, has given me an instinct for the juiciest, most salacious secrets.
But if I want to keep Laurel spinning her wheels, I can’t show her any of those.
I shuffle through the more middling memories, grasping one at random and drawing it into the voratium.
Then I curl my fingers around the die to let the secret sink through my fingers.
Stardust dances on the inside of my eyelids, coalescing into the form of a pair of people—Forsyth standing alongside a young woman I recognize instantly as Ostena Vesnes, one of the contestants in my tournament this year.
Then St. James sprouts in a high-backed leather chair behind his desk, scrutinizing them over steepled fingers.
“Ostena,” he says. “I’d like you to be my right hand.”
“What?” Forsyth splutters. “But, sir—”
St. James shoots him a dark look. “It was she who brought me the information I wanted, not you. And it was she who saw to it that Hildebard’s betrayal was made known.”
“But it was my idea!” Forsyth protests. “She only did those things because I asked her to!”
“Thank you, sir.” Ostena throws a wink at Forsyth that makes him seethe as she tips her head in St. James’s direction. “It is an honor.”
“Now go. I’ve got things to do.” He waves them away.
As soon as the door clicks shut behind them, Forsyth rounds on her. “You double-crossing bitch. You did this on purpose.”
“Of course I did, darling.” She grins up at him, ruby-red lips glimmering in the moonlight from the window. He snarls again before pressing his mouth to hers. She winds her hands around his neck and up into his hair.
“Defy me in front of St. James again,” she says between kisses, “and I’ll cut off your balls in your sleep.”
He growls as though that’s the most attractive thing he’s ever heard, his hand snaking around her waist.
Yes, this is exactly the kind of secret that will endear Laurel to me.
I smile as the vision fades and open my eyes. “Pleasure doing business with you, Mr. Lott.” I reach out for a handshake.
He grasps my hand, then yanks me close, pressing a pistol to my chest. “Hand over the die, and no one will get hurt.”
Laurel watches with amusement. She could jump in to save me, but it seems she wants to see what I’ll do.
The show must go on, I suppose.
I force out a silky laugh. “Don’t be silly, Mr. Lott.”
“You think I’m bluffing?” Forsyth angles the gun toward my shoulder and pulls the trigger.
At first I feel nothing, and then the pain hits me, white and hot and fast. I do not flinch, do not cry out. I want to throttle him. Doesn’t he know what he’s done? Laurel will not let an act like that go unanswered. Not when she believes the gods are counting on her to stop people like him.
The least I can do is make sure it is I who punishes him and not her.
I maintain an easy smile and let out an amused laugh. “Hand me another die, would you, Laurel?” I say cheerily, and she drops one into my outstretched palm.
Forsyth has only an instant to raise his brows in confusion before I slam him with an illusion of pressure that sends him shuffling backward to get away from it, tripping over his chair and smacking hard onto the floor.
I press into him with more illusion. Not pain, not agony, not fire.
Endless weight—the kind that has sweat trickling from his brow as he struggles to breathe.
The tavern has gone silent, everyone staring at us. I rise, retrieving my fedora from the table and setting it atop my head as Laurel slides her arm through my elbow.
“Good evening,” I say to the room before stooping over the young man mewling on the floor. “Let that be a lesson to you next time you try a stunt like that with a seaspawn.”
But then something pulls at my magic from outside, dragging massive amounts away, tilting me like gravity for the second time tonight.
Lola.
The sudden shift jostles the illusion I’m casting, and I lose my grasp on it. Forsyth scrambles to his feet and sprints out the door.
“No,” Laurel whispers, lurching after him.
Panic stings through me. If Lola is out there, the last thing I need is for Laurel to catch sight of her. Especially if Lola is using my magic. Nothing will draw Laurel’s attention like hints of another person stealing power from the stars.
I ram past her through the door, casting an illusion of an empty street so that regardless of what’s out there, she won’t see a thing.
I skid to a stop on the sidewalk, and Laurel catches up seconds later, clinging to my arm as she peers up and down the street. “I didn’t see where he went, did you?”
But I’m looking northward, through my own glamour to where Lola appears to be battling my brother wearing an illusionary disguise I recognize instantly from the papers.
Nocturne.
I study the threads of magic coursing from me to her, golden light blazing between us.
She’s casting a powerful visual illusion of utter darkness to Enzo alongside a feeling of suffocating weight similar to what I just did to Forsyth.
Like she’s giving the shadow a heft so crushing that Enzo’s brain may short-circuit.
Sure enough, an instant later, he slumps over her, rippling into invisibility as his hold on the magic keeping him corporeal breaks.
Lola pushes weakly to her feet, chest heaving.
The Nocturne illusion bleeds away, and she staggers as though she can barely hold up her own weight.
Her hair is a tangle around a flushed face shining with sweat, and her expression is anything but triumphant as she leans on the nearest lamppost to steady herself.
Gods, she’s beautiful.
“What are you smiling about?” Laurel asks.
I blink, mentally kicking myself. “The secret we got. It shows who St. James’s new right hand is. Our job was successful.”
Her eyes narrow, and then my nerves buzz with the feel of her in my body. She puts my hands on as though they’re gloves and forces me to drop the voratium still clutched in my hand.
Shit.
The illusion fades instantly, and Laurel’s eyes snap to Lola. Recognition narrows her glare as she glances to me and back again. “That’s her, isn’t it? The one people thought you were in love with during your game.”
“She’s just some girl,” I say, mouth suddenly dry. “Magazines print whatever juicy gossip they think will sell, regardless of its veracity.”
Her lips purse.
Run, I want to scream at Lola. Get out of here!
But her limbs are quaking, clearly so heavy with fatigue she can barely move.
“She’s got a lot of sin in her,” Laurel muses, and I hate what those words mean. That she’s strumming along Lola’s nerves. That she’s testing her to see if she might be able to puppet her around the way she does me.
“Who doesn’t?” I ask. “Surely she, out of everyone in this city, is not your highest concern.”
Laurel seems to hear the desperation I’m trying so hard to keep out of my voice because her eyes snap to mine. She reaches for the sash at her waist and pulls out a small engraved pistol. “Shoot her.”
I blink. “What?”
“You heard me. If she’s just some girl, then get rid of her.” She holds out the pistol for me to take. “The gods have decreed she’s a sinner—they’ve shown me through my magic. So do it.”
I lick my lips. Laurel’s presence vibrates against the marionette strings inside me. If I want Lola to get out of here alive, I need to move quickly before Laurel decides to take over and do it herself.
“Fine.” I snatch the pistol as though I couldn’t care less and point it at Lola. Then I take a step forward as though to get a better aim, fake a stumble, and trip into Laurel, slamming us both to the ground as I fire past Lola.
Lola whirls, eyes widening.
I don’t need to sense emotions to feel the way glimpsing me pointing a gun her way breaks her. I see it in the way her body twitches. In the way her jaw hardens. In the way she blinks several times in rapid succession.
She snatches up a briefcase from the sidewalk and stumbles into the bushes, vanishing just as Laurel pushes herself upright.
“You . . . you did that on purpose.” Laurel’s voice is not cold or angry the way I expect it to be. It’s barely more than a whisper. Almost like she’s choking back sobs.
“I tripped.”
She stares at me for several long moments. A thousand emotions chase themselves across her face like shadows in the starlight. Frustration. Confusion. Fear. Her magic floods through me, rooting me to the spot, slamming my jaw closed so hard it sings.
The prickle of her control delves beyond my voluntary movements. My lungs solidify so I cannot draw in air. My pulse halts as my heart stops beating. Pain explodes in my skull, but I cannot cry out.
Then she swallows, eyes widening, and she releases me, stumbling backward. “I—I . . .”
I cough, doubling over.
“I have to go,” she chokes out before sprinting away, disappearing up the road and around the corner.
I rub my chest, gasping for air. What just happened? Why did she run?
Could something like this have happened before? Her taking over someone to the point of stopping their heart?
Pondering what that might mean for my goal, I shove the pistol into my belt and stride toward the place where Enzo disappeared. He’s flickering back into view, groaning as he regains consciousness.
“Enzo, you fool.” I crouch next to him, taking in the dozen or so pendants hanging from his neck, my gaze settling on a gold chain sporting a bluish-violet shard of voratium. Unlike the others, where the soullight inside flickers like a phantom caught in a glass, this one pulses a steady rhythm.
That must be the one from the secret Lola accidentally revealed during my game, where Enzo pressed a gem to her chest and forged some sort of heart bond with her. I wrap my fingers around it, and it thrums, steady and sure, in my palm.
“This is her, isn’t it?” I murmur.
“None”—Enzo coughs—“of your business.” He seizes me by the throat and slams me to the pavement, pinning me with his teeth bared.
“Good to see you, too,” I grit out, not even bothering to fight.
He glares down at me, the ring on his thumb digging into my windpipe. “I envy all the people who don’t know you.”
“Do you now?”
“You tried to turn Lola against me.” His eyes flash.
“Oh, it doesn’t seem like you needed me at all for that.”
He pushes off me and dusts his jacket. “Piss off.”
“I’ll think about it.”
I catch a faint new thread of magic braiding through him, vibrating with the same wrongness I saw in Laurel’s veins.
Lola must have used her Unbreakable Lie on him.
“Do me a favor and go lie down on some train tracks,” Enzo says, jogging off before I can get a better look at it.
“See you later,” I call after him.
“I sure the depths hope not.” He shifts first into a shadow and then into nothing, leaving me alone on the street.
I sigh, pushing to my feet and crossing to the bushes where Lola disappeared, clambering through to the road on the other side.
She was incredibly weakened, so she can’t have gotten far.
I tap into my magic, trailing it up the street and around a corner. When it pulls me closer to the Liar’s Den, however, doubt curls in. Laurel’s sure to seize control over me again soon. Do I really want her to find me with Lola after I just told her I didn’t care about her?
I slow to a stop, hands clenching. I need to apologize to Lola. Explain as best I can. Warn her.
But Laurel knows how to access my body. That makes me a liability. A risk.
I need to draw her as far away from Lola as I can.
Gritting my teeth, I swivel south and jog several blocks away, then meander through the streets, hoping that when she finally looks for me, she’ll think this nothing more than a quiet evening stroll.
Far too soon, a prickle dances in the back of my head. An awareness slipping into my bones. Laurel turns my gaze this way and that, likely checking to see where I am and what I’m doing. Using my own eyes for surveillance.
“Time to come home, Nic,” she says with my mouth, and the eeriness of her speaking to me with my own voice sends goose bumps pimpling down my arms. “I’ve found just the place for us.”