Chapter Nine
ENZO
Panic yanks me out of a deep, terrified slumber. I jolt upright.
I’m in my room in the Brig. I was asleep. Something woke me.
I shove my blanket off and push to my feet. I was having the nightmare again. The one that’s less a dream and more a memory of those first weeks after the curse took hold and deprived me of everything that made me human. It’s been months since the last time it made an appearance.
But the panic that roused me wasn’t mine. It was Lola’s.
I try to focus on the emotions coming from her, but my mind is still whirring with the horrible nightmare, my brain muddied with the past.
As far as I can tell, Lola isn’t panicking anymore.
Perhaps she, too, was dreaming. Crossing to my desk, I pull out my pocket watch.
It’s nearly nine in the morning—much earlier than my typical noon wake-up time—but the idea of going back to sleep and returning to my nightmare has me yanking on my shoes and dashing to the kitchen.
The bitter aroma of freshly brewed coffee soothes my nerves, and I cross directly to where a percolator bubbles over a small cookfire.
“It’s probably steeped long enough,” Arden says, oversize limbs poking out of one of our leather chairs like pins in a cushion. “Would you bring me a cup?”
“ ’Course.” I carefully remove the percolator from the heat and carry it to the stone ledge we use as a countertop—the detail that prompted me to designate this part of the Brig’s cavernous system of old lava ducts as the kitchen.
(Well, that, and the fact that the ceiling features one of the vents from the original volcano that reaches all the way above the surface of the ocean. Perfect chimney for cookfire smoke.)
“We really need to get Isla to tinker somewhere else,” I say, pushing her assortment of car parts out of the way so I can set the percolator onto the counter. “Did she dismantle an entire engine here?”
“I think two, actually,” Arden says with a chuckle.
After handing him his mug—black, the disgusting way he prefers it—I dump a healthy measure of sugar into my own, then fish into a small hole in the wall we’ve insulated as a makeshift icebox for a jar of cream, which I pour into my cup until my coffee reaches the perfect golden color.
With a sigh, I settle onto the armchair I personally lifted from the mayor’s house. “Couldn’t sleep?” I ask. “Soren’s snoring keep you up again?”
Arden smirks, sipping at the steaming drink. “I was worrying.”
I furrow my brow, as though puzzled. “You? But you never worry.”
He gives me a facetious glare, then chucks a pillow at me, which I block with a kick.
“What’s giving you stomach ulcers this time?” I tease, leaning back into my chair.
“For the record, I’ve never once gotten a stomach ulcer.” Arden jabs a finger at me.
“Forgive me. Just a few heart attacks.”
He sticks out his tongue. “I’m still concerned about those two St. James goons we let go.”
“Have you been out here all night?”
“Didn’t want to wake Soren with my ulcers and heart attacks.”
“Shouldn’t have bothered,” Soren says, slumping into the room and pressing his lips to Arden’s brow in greeting. “I can’t sleep when you’re gone anyway.”
“You mean all I had to do to get Soren not to sound like a bear being mauled all night long is separate you two?” I ask, affronted.
“I don’t snore,” Soren retorts, his deep bass voice scratchy with fatigue.
“You should have shot St. James’s men, boss,” Arden says to me.
I sigh. “I know.”
“Why didn’t you?” Soren pours his own mug and leans against the counter, studying me with intense onyx eyes.
“The look on Lola’s face . . .” I swallow as the intensity of her desperation flares in my memory.
“Nobody likes to see people shot,” Arden replies. “But leaving them alive was foolish.”
“She was forced to watch her loved ones die the night she was kidnapped.” Saying the words out loud tightens my stomach. “That kind of thing leaves a mark.”
“What if they tell St. James what we stole?” Soren asks, perching on the armrest of Arden’s chair. “What if he figures out we’re targeting lumenoring equipment and predicts we’re heading to Opalton next?”
“Then she’ll have to watch all of us get shot,” Arden adds, “and I’d bet everything in our treasury that will leave a far worse mark than seeing those no-name henchmen die.”
“I took a calculated risk,” I say. “Because I had to.”
“You didn’t have to.” Soren mops a large hand down his face.
This is more words than he usually speaks in a whole week; he’s typically the silent protector type.
Quiet. Contemplative. Perceptive. Perfect for keeping watch and especially good at bringing the muscle with his six-and-a-half-foot-tall frame and experience as a security guard for celebrity Shirley LaCour.
“One person’s trauma shouldn’t put the rest of us at risk. ”
I sigh. I’ve never run my gang of thieves as though I’m in charge and they are my subordinates. We work together. So even though the idea of explaining my reasoning feels like baring a vulnerability, I set my jaw and meet their gazes in turn. “You know I rescued Lola from Salazar.”
They nod. I explained all this when I brought her here after the Liar’s Dice Tournament.
“Well, I was the reason all that happened. I convinced Magnus St. James to enter the tournament. I bribed him.”
“With what, exactly?” Arden’s expression has not changed.
“I told him if he entered the tournament, I’d help him find someone.
” Memories of that night sizzle in the back of my mind.
Sneaking into his bedroom, waking him from a dead sleep just to show him I could.
He tried to shoot me, but I’d gone noncorporeal, reappearing to press his own blade to his throat.
Haven’t heard from Nell lately, have you? I taunted as he bared his teeth in the dark. Do you want to?
Arden shifts forward, his long blond hair spilling over his shoulders. “Who?”
“Someone he’d been looking for a long time. I told him I’d help him win the tournament. Made him think my goal was the Unbreakable Lie. He knew I couldn’t enter myself, so he didn’t question that.”
“But you were after . . . ?” Soren prompts. Both of them are watching me, unblinking, and I wish I didn’t have to worry if they’ll see me differently after I tell them the next bit.
“I knew he had a secret daughter,” I admit. “Once he was in the tournament, it was only a matter of tipping off Salazar to make sure St. James lost.”
“So when Lola’s existence was revealed and Salazar targeted her, you were there, ready to ‘save’ her.” Arden sits back, pursing his lips, holding his coffee mug just inches away from his nose. “She knows all this?”
“Uh . . . part of it,” I hedge.
Soren frowns. “Which part?”
“She knows I set this up . . . She just doesn’t know the details.” I pause, meeting their eyes in turn. “And I’d appreciate if you kept what I just told you to yourselves until I figure out how best to share the information with her. I don’t want to lose her.”
“Lose her?” Arden asks. “It’s not like she can take her heart back, can she?”
I shake my head. “No, but . . .” How do I explain to them the way Lola and I are? My Tentacles have been like family, but they always saw me for my value as the Thief. I provide them with magic, with purpose. I’m their boss.
With Lola, I’m just Enzo. Someone she loves simply because she genuinely enjoys being around me. How do I put into words the fact that it isn’t just her heart I need to survive, but also her friendship?
“It’s complicated with the heart bond,” I finally say. “It gets weaker the farther away she goes, so I need to keep her close.”
“Hmmm . . . ,” Soren says, twisting his fingers through his locs, pondering.
“Look, I agree. I should have shot those men.” I take another slow drag from my coffee. “But at least now you understand where I’m coming from.”
“I think we should send a couple of us into town to see if there are stirrings of a St. James retaliation,” Arden says, and a warm relief trickles behind the caffeine in my veins.
It seems they’re not going to press the issue, which, between the mishap with the St. James men and the run-in with Nocturne, eases my turmoil a bit.
And though they don’t seem keen on keeping secrets from Lola for me, I know I can trust them.
I nod. “Good idea.”
“I’ll do it,” Soren offers. “But I’ll need you to empty the tattoo first. I’m about out of room.” He rolls up his sleeve, extending the inked arm my way.
I pull a ring from my pocket and press it to his tattoo, drawing the glowing light from the inked suckers into the metal until it shimmers an otherworldly blue.
“Me too,” Arden pipes up, setting aside his coffee.
As I repeat the process for him, Jade shuffles into the room, heading straight for the percolator.
“You’ll have to start a new batch,” Soren says. “I got the last cup.”
She sighs and sets about dumping the grinds and cleaning out the chambers. “Rude.”
“You two made it back okay last night?” Arden asks Jade, watching me pull the soullight out of his tattoo with his eyes wide like he hasn’t seen me do this a hundred times. “Lola all right? She seemed pretty shaken.”
“She’ll sleep it off,” Jade says, grinding some beans in a bowl. “Be right as rain in an hour or two.”
“Oh, she’s not sleeping,” Arden says. “I was worried”—I feign a gasp, and he throws an obscene hand gesture my way—“so I checked on her an hour ago. She’s not in her room. I assumed she was with you?”
“She . . . uh . . . did mention something,” Jade says, eyes flicking to the door as though hoping Lola might walk through it, “about checking our voratium supply? She wanted to make sure we have enough before the Opalton job.”
“She’s not in the treasury,” Isla says, padding into the room shouldering a pile of tools and mechanical parts. “I was there just now.”
“Oh.” Jade’s cheeks go faintly pink.
“She’s not here?” Soren turns to me, brows raised. “Did you know?”
I shake my head. I didn’t know. But now that some of my earlier panic has cooled and I can focus on our heart bond, it’s pretty clear she’s gone ashore.
“Maybe she went to get us pastries.” It probably should bother me that Lola didn’t tell me where she was going, but somehow, I’m not worried.
I trust you, her voice echoes in my head, and all at once I see her in my mind’s eye again, radiant in the shadow of the Liar’s Den after the tournament, her words breaking me open, giving me hope.
Wherever she is, whatever she’s doing, it’s going to be all right. She’s loyal. She’s one of us.
“She’s not supposed to go out alone,” Soren says. “None of us are.”
“I made the rule,” I retort. “I’m aware.”
“What, so last week when I went out for a little swim without Arden, I was put on washroom duty, but if Lola does it, it’s fine?” he asks, voice hardening.
“I never said I wouldn’t put her on washroom duty.”
“But you sent out the whole crew to find me.”
“I didn’t know where you were. I can sense her. It’s different.”
“Then what is she doing right now?” Arden asks, raising a brow. “If you can sense her so well?”
I sigh, draining the last of my coffee. “I’ve explained how this works at least thirty-seven times. I don’t have the faintest idea what she’s doing, but I know she’s fine.”
“But of all of us,” Isla says, adding her gears and pistons to the pile on the counter, “Lola’s got the most recognizable face.”
“She knows how to stay hidden.” I push to my feet. “But don’t mistake me—she’s going to be hearing about this.”
Arden slouches back into his seat as he and Soren share a look that has my teeth on edge.
This conversation needs to end. “Why don’t we go over the Opalton job coming up?” I say briskly.
Jade and Isla glance at each other.
“I guess . . . I’ll fetch the file,” Arden says, hopping up and darting into the hallway toward the records room.
Our target for this upcoming job is Aurelia Levenne, the head priestess at the zenithic temple in Opalton. According to my research, to make a new moonshard, I’ll need a large, unblemished piece of voratium, and the supply logs in the Aetheran temple mentioned one was shipped there last week.
“The priestess,” Jade begins, but her words dislodge something in my head.
A memory.
Another priestess who would come to visit my father’s parish in Warthington, the small town on the outskirts of Aethera where Nic and I grew up.
She often dined with us before services.
She was funny, and she peppered her sermons with entertaining anecdotes that made the midnight service much less dull.
A flash of Nocturne from last night strikes through those memories. The curve of her jaw, her sharp cheekbones . . . even the indistinct shape of her eyes match what I remember of that priestess.
Could it be that the reason Nocturne felt so vividly familiar to me was because I’d met her before she’d become seaspawn?
I bolt out of my chair. “I have to go.”
Soren cuts off midsentence, blinking. “Now?”
“It’s something for the Opalton job. I’ll explain when I get back.” I gesture at Arden, who has just returned with a stack of Opalton maps and blueprints for its temple. “Proceed without me.”
“Sure,” Jade says faintly, glancing at Soren and Arden. “Good luck with . . . whatever you’re doing.”
I rush through the corridor, heart pounding as I plunge into the wall, dashing through tunnel, ship, coral, and deep.
When I get to the first street near the beach, I leap in front of a taxi, letting my body glimmer into view as I shout, “I need a ride.”
“Where to?” the cabby asks as I slide into the back seat.
“Warthington,” I say with a hope-drunken grin. “The church.”