Chapter Twenty-Three
LOLA
All too soon, it’s the morning of Nocturne’s game.
Isla and I stride side by side down the same street Arden and I visited yesterday to see my father.
This time, we’re aiming for the building on the other corner—a tall, sleek thing with far too many windows glaring down like glassy eyes—where Moratin Salazar, the very gang lord who ordered my kidnapping four years ago to draw my father out of hiding, does many of his dealings.
I typically avoid this whole area, but my father promised he’d have the voratium I needed ready today, and the fact that Isla and I are supposed to be getting information about Salazar is the perfect cover story.
I just need to split off from her without rousing suspicion.
“All right. Let’s enter through the fire escape,” I say, pointing. “Salazar’s office is on level eighteen, I believe.”
Isla launches up the ladder, and I trail after her, fingers listing over the pocket where I’ve stored a pile of Jade’s voratium poppers.
We make quick work, slinking silently as cats to the eighteenth floor. The door is locked, of course, but Isla pulls out a little device she and Jade constructed, which she fits to the window. The contraption slices the window clean as butter.
“Diamond saw,” she says with a wink when she catches sight of my dumbfounded expression.
“Seems awfully expensive when we could just go noncorporeal . . . ,” I say.
“Enzo’s rules are Enzo’s rules.” She shrugs. “Take it up with him.”
I sigh as her contraption lifts the glass free. Isla pushes it in, and it hits the carpet with a thunk as she clambers like a spider through the opening.
I make to follow her, digging my hand into my pocket and flinging the voratium poppers behind me. They hit the ground below an instant later, detonating with a sound like multiple gunshots. I whirl to peer over the lip of the fire escape.
“Who’s there?” Isla whispers.
“You go on ahead,” I say, feigning concern. “Get what you can from Salazar’s office. Meet me down the street behind the dumpster in ten minutes. I’ll go stake it out.”
She nods, stowing her device in her pocket and scurrying away.
I launch into the air, going noncorporeal as I sail toward the ground. Pausing only to retrieve the remnants of the exploded poppers, I duck into the alley as constables rush about, searching for the source of the gunshots. Then I race up the street and into my father’s building, heart pounding.
As I reach the top floor, St. James is peering cautiously out his door. “Marlo?” he calls to the man standing guard at the end of the hall. “Did I hear a gun?”
Every part of me goes twitchy at the sight of him, and the memory of his hand clamping on mine skirts like a ghost in my peripheral vision. Holding my breath, I slip past him into the office. A massive latched black box sits on his desk.
“There she is,” I whisper. Glancing over my shoulder to make sure my father is still preoccupied, I let Enzo’s magic go long enough to grasp the box and render it noncorporeal.
Dropping a piece of parchment on the desk in its place (Thank you.
—N ), I scurry past my father once more, down the stairs, and out to where Estelle is idling in a motorcar two blocks north.
“I have to get back. Isla might be in trouble,” I say as I slide the box into the back seat. “You’ve got the caterers and entertainment all set up for tonight?”
She nods once. “You got the game all planned out? Voratium pieces where they need to be for the illusions?”
I scan quickly through my mental map of where I planted everything last night when Isla and Arden were asleep. “I think so. But I have to get back to the Brig, and I won’t be able to break free again until the game tonight.”
“Got it. Go!” Estelle waves me off, and I sprint back the way I came.
Gunfire splits the air as I come around the corner, and I gather in all the strength I have left in my bracelet to tear forward.
Isla pelts out the front door of Salazar’s building, pointing a gun over her shoulder, eyes frantic, and I let myself back into my physical form in time to grab her arm and drag her toward the sea. “Come on!” I shout.
“Lola?” she gasps. “Thank the gods, where were you?!”
“Got held up. I’ll explain later.”
I spend the rest of our trek back through the waves concocting a story I pray will hold out long enough to get us through this weekend.
Gods, I’m in over my head.