Chapter Twenty-Five
LOLA
Enzo is late.
I search the horizon, fidgeting with my gown, willing him to materialize as the sun sinks toward the sea.
Sunset is when things are supposed to begin. The musicians have begun to play, and my illusions, set in pieces of voratium I placed strategically around the square, are working beautifully. Everything is going according to plan.
But the main stage, which I had set up on City Hall’s steps between massive marble pillars, stands empty waiting for Nocturne. Hundreds— if not a thousand—people mill about, whispering excitedly, waving gloved hands, and tossing perfectly coiffed hair.
I was hoping Isla, Arden, and I would be able to meet Enzo, Jade, and Soren before things got underway.
Debrief about the Opalton job, establish our game plan for tonight.
I then would find a way to excuse myself—perhaps spill something on my dress so I could rush to a rest-room.
At that point, I’d sweep onto the stage as Nocturne, then return as Lola once I finished and pretend I was disappointed to have missed the introduction.
But they’re not here yet. If Enzo arrives while I’m onstage and can’t find me in the crowd, he’ll likely focus on our heart, which will lead him right to me.
There’s no telling how the Unbreakable Lie might compromise me then to keep Enzo from learning I’ve deceived him— and I can’t risk it undermining the plan.
“Where are they?” I murmur to Isla and Arden, who stand at my side dressed in matching glittering blue.
Isla straightens her blond wig. My father promised he wouldn’t attend the game, but as he’s been hunting us for months, we’ve donned disguises to keep from being recognized. “Can’t you tell how close he is?” she whispers back.
I sink into our heart for the dozenth time in the last five minutes. “He’s moving quickly. They’re likely in a cab or on the subway. And they’re close.”
Blowing out a slow breath to calm my nerves, I smooth my skirt.
I don’t have many dresses down in the Brig, at least none fancy enough to wear to a party like this, so Isla and I stopped at a shop before we came.
It’s a simple, elegant gown—a floor-length, sleeveless, silky number that drapes carefully in all the right places with matching gloves that reach above my elbows, within which I’ve concealed several voratium bracelets.
And it’s the exact turquoise of the orchids in Nic’s underground grotto.
I try not to think of Nic every time I glimpse my reflection in a mirror or window, but I can’t seem to help searching the crowd for him anyway.
He’s on the other end of the square now, and though I haven’t looked his way in ten minutes, I can feel him every time I dip into my magic.
A chill in my peripheral vision, a spark of electricity just out of sight.
I try not to hope he’s watching me. He’s with Laurel again, after all.
But even as I try to shake away his gaze, my pinkie finger still sparks with the feeling of his curling around it for a second there on the dance floor. His words, hushed and urgent in my ear. Stay away from Laurel. She’s dangerous.
When I met his gaze, it seemed like how he used to be. No icy glow in those irises, no cold wall keeping me out like when he tried to shoot me or when I met him in that church.
But I don’t have time to puzzle through what that glow or its absence might mean. It’s probably another lie meant to confuse me, like all the others.
“It’s about to set!” someone cries, pointing at where the last edge of the sun clings to the watery horizon.
Whispers rustle as the light sinks out of sight. The musicians silence their instruments—just as I instructed them to, damn me—and the crowd hushes, turning expectantly toward the stage.
Enzo is probably about two miles away. I cannot go up there, not when he’ll come here looking for me.
Pulling at the icy sensation of voratium against my wrist, I craft an illusion on the spot. A darkness unfurling from the horizon exactly where the sun just disappeared. Tentacle-like ribbons of smoke crawling out of the ocean.
Delighted shrieks ripple on every side as the spectators take notice.
One mile until Enzo is here.
More ropes of ebony fling out of the sea, braiding upward, forming elongated human shadows dancing across the water, growing until their outstretched arms dust the stars.
Something is missing. I frown as the eerie silence presses in. I haven’t practiced as much with creating auditory illusions outside of altering my own voice, but whenever Nic put on a show at the Liar’s Den, it was always accompanied by perfectly coordinated music.
I weave an eerie, resonant melody I heard once long ago on a record my nursemaid owned. A single violin. The audience holds its breath, spellbound.
I can’t help myself; I grin. No wonder Nic put on so many parties. This is creativity on another level—art like I haven’t experienced in all my life. It’s fun.
“Lola! Isla! Arden!” a voice whispers, and we glimpse Enzo.
Missing most of his jewelry and wearing a voratium disguise, he’s unrecognizable except for those green eyes I’d know anywhere, even framed with pale lashes and drooping, elderly skin under silver-white hair.
He and Jade shoulder past the nearest onlookers to meet us, while Soren—also in disguise—rushes to Arden.
“Sorry we’re late,” Enzo breathes. “What did we miss?”
“It’s just starting,” I whisper, keeping my illusion flowing.
“Nocturne hasn’t arrived yet,” Isla adds.
“Perfect.” He raises his gaze to the dancing phantoms in the sky, a grin lighting his face as he presses a hand to my shoulder.
Now that the show has begun and I have literal glamours flowing out of me, I can’t very well rush off to a restroom. I may have practiced a lot over the past few months, but I’m not that good.
I seek out Estelle lurking in the shadows behind one of the pillars, looking at me with wide eyes as though to say, What the depths are you doing?
Go, I mouth to her, tilting my head toward the stage. Please.
Her perfectly arched brows rise in shock. Me? she mouths.
I nod vigorously. Now!
Pursing her lips, she strides up the steps, and I cast an illusion of invisibility over her at the same instant I send my shadowy dancers in the sky toward the stage. They prowl through the streets, climbing spiderlike over buildings until they coalesce on top of Estelle.
I’m going to have to turn her into Nocturne.
Not even pausing to second-guess the decision, I increase the intensity of the shadows’ movement. Agitated, they draw tighter as the music accelerates.
Then I detonate the illusions like a bomb.
The illusory sound is an explosion. It echoes off the buildings, rattling windows as the shadows balloon outward like shrapnel, smoke whipping people’s faces.
Gritting my teeth, I pull Nocturne out of Estelle with the ice in my veins. The glamour unfurls from the smoke, hair a mist of shadows, face a pale smear, eyes dark and gray and fathomless as she cocks her head and smiles.
When she speaks, I hush every sound in the square.
“Hello, dear Aethera,” she breathes into their ears. “Welcome to Enclosure.”
With that, I shoot walls of darkness around the square that meet overhead like a dome. Enzo gasps, grabbing my arm, and I almost laugh, excitement thrumming through me far more powerful than even the magic.
“Enclosure,” Jade hisses. “Like the children’s toy?”
Audience members whisper excitedly about the popular game—a handheld wooden contraption composed of little mazelike compartments encasing a tiny metal ball.
My father brought one home to me for a birthday years ago, and I played with it obsessively.
To win, the child turns the toy this way and that, using gravity to maneuver the ball through the mazes inside each enclosure until it finally slides entirely out.
It took me months to succeed with my first one, after which my father got me progressively more difficult versions with increasing numbers of chambers and more complex movements to trip the trap doors between them.
“Maybe,” I agree with Jade in a whisper, as though I don’t know it’s precisely that.
I make Nocturne’s face glow, the only thing visible in the dark.
“This is how the game will work.” I channel the words through Nocturne, grateful I decided to keep her face indistinct from the beginning so I don’t have to be as precise with her mouth movements.
“Aethera is now our game board, and on this game board, there are three magical enclosures—one for each night of the game. Tonight’s task, should you wish to play, will be to locate and enter the first before its walls go up at midnight.
You will receive a single clue to help you find it. ”
“A clue?” Enzo whispers, and I startle so hard the Nocturne illusion flickers.
I grip mentally onto the magic to steady it.
“Jumpy, are we?” he teases.
“Depths, Enzo,” I rasp, “are you trying to kill me?”
“I’ll never tell.” He is practically bouncing on the balls of his feet with nervous energy. “What kind of clue do you think she’s going to give us?”
“I don’t know,” I reply.
“I hope it includes cinnamon buns. I’ve been craving them.”
“Make sure you are inside the boundary of the enclosure by the time the clock finishes its toll,” I have Nocturne continue. “Anyone outside at that point will be eliminated.”
“That’s kind of terrifying,” Soren says under his breath.
“I love it,” Enzo says.
“Of course you do.”
Nocturne raises her pale hands. “Only those within the enclosure who find the exit by sunrise will receive the clue for the next location— which they will once again need to enter before the following midnight.” Her breath goes soft as wind.
“The first player to make it out of the third enclosure will win.”
She lowers her hands, and the walls domed above us fall in time with them. Storm clouds rise from her feet, curling around her in fanciful arcs.
“Wait . . . is that—?” Soren asks, pointing toward one of the ribbons of smoke behind her.
Frowning, I push up my glasses to see better.
The smoke has twisted into the shape of a hand. Why is it doing that? I certainly wouldn’t have . . .
The fingers move, forming an unmistakable rude gesture.
Arden laughs. “It is!”
Electricity races through my system as I let my gaze go hazy so I can see the threads of magic.
Dozens of streams of light braid from me to the stage, but a few pour from somewhere off to the right.
I follow them to a shadow perched on the lip of a fountain, elbows on his knees, chin propped on his hand as he looks straight at me.
When our gazes meet, he touches two fingers to the brim of his fedora.
Nic.
I search for Laurel, but she seems to have disappeared.
Heat flames in my cheeks as Nic gives me that charming grin I wish wasn’t so familiar. I scowl, reaching with my mind toward the soullight threads extending from him to the stage, and yank them back. They snap, and the obscene hand gesture vanishes.
With an amused smirk on his lips, he focuses on the illusion of Nocturne. My magic threads tug sideways toward him.
“Not today, Your Royal Liar-ness,” I mutter under my breath.
“What was that?” Enzo asks.
But I don’t respond. Instead, I channel an illusion of fanged bats toward a waiter walking past Nic with an array of champagne glasses. He stumbles, dumping the entire platter onto Nic, who, covered in bubbling champagne, topples backward into the fountain.
Grinning, I return my full attention to Nocturne. She’s flickering, her face more of a smudge than normal due to my inattention, but I capitalize on that, use it like it was done on purpose as I pull apart the illusion. Estelle rushes, still invisible, out of sight.
“Good luck, dearest Aethera,” Nocturne’s whisper echoes across the square as she fragments into smoke that billows into the sky, rearranging itself into words.
Writing our maps.
Growth and collapse.
Stars and their gaps.
Two hundred laps.
“What does that mean?” Enzo says as the words fade into nothing.
“Was that the clue?” Arden pipes up. “Did you write it down?”
“Write it down on what, exactly?” I ask.
Enzo gestures at me. “Didn’t you bring a notebook?”
I snort. “Where exactly would I store something like that in a dress like this?”
He pats at his jacket. “I don’t know. It’s a thing for you. You’re always making sure things have pockets.”
“This one doesn’t, unfortunately.”
Enzo pulls out a candy wrapper. “This is not going to be big enough to write on.”
“It’s okay. I think I remember,” Jade says. “Something to do with maps?”
“Writing our maps. Growth and collapse . . .” Enzo taps his chin. “Something confusing perhaps, and maybe prolapse?”
“Gross.” I giggle. “Writing our maps. Growth and collapse. Stars and their gaps. Two hundred laps.”
“Whoa.” Jade gapes at me. “That was freaky.”
“Freakishly impressive,” I correct. “We all know I’m the smart Tentacle.”
“Is that what we all know?” Arden asks, raising a brow.
I stick out my tongue at him, dodging a glance to where Nic is wringing water from his tuxedo jacket with one hand and fishing his smooshed fedora from the fountain with the other. He raises an eyebrow at me and smirks.
Enzo doesn’t seem to have noticed his brother is here, and he’s certainly not going to be happy about it. Though he’s going to figure it out eventually, I don’t think I have the mental fortitude to deal with the inevitable fistfight that will ensue if he does right now.
“Why don’t we go somewhere a little more private?” I ask, steering Enzo and the others in the opposite direction. “That way no one will overhear us when we figure out where the first enclosure is.”
“I’ll get us some pastries for the road. Let’s meet in there in five minutes.” He waves at a record shop locked up for the night on the corner before elbowing through the crowd toward the refreshment table.
“You go on ahead,” I tell the others. “I’m going to grab some water.”
They nod and dart away.
I take the chance to compose myself, tugging my glove down as discreetly as I can to check on the voratium on my wrist.
Someone claps behind me, slow and deliberate.
“Bravo, my dear.”
I turn to see a very waterlogged Nic continuing his dramatic applause, hair hanging over his scarred brows and dripping down his cheek.
“Truly incomparable magic,” he continues, a sardonic grin on his maddening face. His eyes, unlike before, bear that disconcerting pale glow. The walls are up. The Nic I know is buried in magic again, it seems. “Pity you had to steal it.”