He furrowed his eyebrows. “Yes. Why does that matter?”
“The Saltas aren’t. We’re common. We’re for the background of a performance or for cheap cabarets.” Levi could nearly hear the chip on her shoulder as she spoke. “Every day at school, every single day, I’ve stayed late after rehearsal. I’ve worked until my feet ached. I’ve fought just to be noticed, just to be included. And—”
“Where are you going with this?”
She handed him a business card. It was black with gold cursive typeface. “I’d like to go here, if your address on a whiskey-stained napkin turns out to be nothing.” Her tone was unsure. It sounded more like a request than a demand.
Harvey Gabbiano.
Salesman.
Levi’s blood chilled. “I know who this is. He works for the Orphan Guild. No way are we going to see him. He’s bad news.”
“I know that. But we’re not going to see Harvey—we’d be visiting the address written on the back.” She cleared her throat. “To see a blood gazer.”
Levi puzzled this. Blood gazers were typically hired to determine paternity, by wealthy families embarrassed by illegitimate offspring or by sex workers seeking to determine the talents of their children. He always associated them with the opening of a joke—“A father walks into a blood gazer’s office...”—but Levi had never actually met one. They weren’t common.
“There are professional blood gazers, you know,” he said. “No need to sneak off to some Orphan Guildworker who lives in—” he studied the address on the card “—Dove Land.” All the more reason not to visit.
“If Lourdes lied to me about my talents, I’m sure she did so for a reason,” Enne retorted. “There must be something to hide.”
Levi handed her back the card. “Let me get this straight. You learn how to do a cartwheel, and now you think you might have an acrobatics talent.”
Acrobatics talents weren’t common. In fact, Levi knew of only one family—the Dondelairs. Everyone on the North Side knew their story. The daughter who’d found friends in criminals, who’d set fire to the capitol building and laughed as she bled to death. The son who’d left rubble and ruin in his wake. The family who’d obsessed over the inexplicable and the unnatural, right until the moment of their deaths. One by one, they’d hanged.
Legends of the North Side typically ended in blood.
“I’ve managed more than a cartwheel,” she murmured.
“You don’t sound convinced yourself.”
She lifted up her chin defiantly. Levi tried to decide if it was cute or snobbish. “I want to go.”
“Then convince me. You sound like you’re asking for permission.”
“I don’t need your permission.”
“But you want it. And I think it’s a terrible idea.”
“Don’t I look like I could have an acrobatics talent?”
“I’m not arguing that you’re not short enough.”
Her nostrils flared. “You’re intolerable.”
“I’d rather not see the headlines tomorrow. ‘Murdered girl’s body found washed up in the Brint.’ Intolerable, I know.”
They didn’t speak until they reached the border between Iron and Scar Lands. Levi turned them right, in the direction of the river and the Factory District. Within a few blocks, the bustling and lights of Tropps Street faded away, and they roamed through residential roads and warehouse lots.
“What’s that smell?” Enne asked.
“The Brint.” The river water was roughly the color of ham stew. “We’re close.”
She covered her nose. “How close?”
Levi looked at the street signs around them. He’d heard of the road before. Probably passed it once or twice. It was somewhere around here.
“A few blocks,” he said, though he was no longer sure.
Levi had only just begun to enjoy the peace and quiet when Enne spoke up again. “I want to go, whether you go with me or not,” she said. Levi grimaced. He was more than done with this conversation. “If nothing turns up at this place, then I’ll find the blood gazer myself.”
It’d barely been three whole days, and she seemed to have already forgotten how she’d first arrived in New Reynes. Chased by whiteboots. Belongings gone. Frightened. Na?ve.
“Don’t be thick. You’d be walking straight into Dove Land alone. Maybe listen to your guidebook for once on this one and don’t go.”
“The guidebook practically says the entire city is off-limits,” Enne snapped. “But I’ll go anywhere to find Lourdes.”
He frowned as he read the nearby street sign.
“Are you even listening—?”
“What’s the name of that street again?” he asked. He’d thought it would be here. Instead, they’d reached the edge of a residential complex, and they stared in confusion at the empty warehouse lot in front of them and the river and South Side beyond it.
“Are we lost?” she asked.
“We’re close.”
She grumbled something under her breath, then pulled her guidebook from her purse.
“You’re ruining my reputation,” he grunted, trudging off ahead of her to retrace their steps.
“The map says to turn here,” she argued.
“It’s definitely not there. I remember that.”
“The book says—”
“Muck the book.”
Enne rolled her eyes and marched to the left, in the direction that Levi was certain led to nothing more than factories and mills. He shoved his hands in his pocket and waited. No way was Enne going to go off on her own now that it was getting dark. She acted brave, but soon she’d be running back, if he waited long enough.
He tapped his foot as she disappeared around the corner.
After another minute passed, his irritation turned to worry. He pictured a trigger-antsy Scarhand crouching behind a train car as she passed, and Enne’s face when she turned to find a pistol pressed against her temple. Levi felt for his knife in his one pocket and his gun in the other as he ran after her.
She was in no distress. No pistol to her head. She was leaning against a doorframe, her face hidden behind her guidebook, humming a waltz. Levi scowled as he climbed the steps beside her.
“The Wayward Inn,” Levi read on the sign on the door. “Bit secluded for an inn.”
The building was made of New Reynes’s signature white stone and wedged in between a series of row homes. A wreath with daisies and a blue seersucker bow hung on the door.
“This is where you apologize for your pigheadedness,” Enne said.
Levi ignored her and opened the door.
Inside, it was clean and empty. Levi walked up and rang the bell sitting atop the counter on a white doily.
An old woman appeared from another room. Like the inn, she was also tiny, well-dressed and unassuming. She wore a strand of pearls and a floral shawl. Levi wondered how Lourdes had managed to find the quietest, most Bellamy-like inn on the North Side. The whole place smelled like chamomile soap.
“Can I help you?” she asked, narrowing her eyes. “If you’re looking for a place to say, the Wayward Inn has a strict policy that unmarried men and women are to sleep separately. Women are on this floor, men on the top floor and I sleep in the middle.” This struck Levi has quite the oversight, and he wondered exactly what sort of nighttime activities occurred on their isolated floors while the old lady slept unaware.
“We’re not looking for a room,” Enne said hurriedly, her face red and clearly offended. Levi smiled wryly, then drummed his fingers against the counter in annoyance. He knew from experience he wasn’t that unappealing. “We’re searching for a woman named Lourdes Alfero, and we have reason to believe she could be staying here.”
“The inn is empty,” the woman answered, and Levi could nearly feel Enne’s disappointment, as if a palpable heaviness had descended on the room. Or maybe it was his own.
Eight days. And a dead end.
“Then maybe you’ve seen her,” Enne said, her voice and expression too collected, too poised. Levi squeezed her shoulder. “She’s in her early thirties. Fair-skinned. Blonde. Brown eyes.”
“There was a woman staying here like that last week,” the woman mused. “She checked out abruptly, even left something behind. Who are you to her?”
“Her daughter.”