Enne pursed her lips—she didn’t deserve Zula’s anger. “It’s hot to the touch. Do you know what it is?”
“It’s a tragedy,” Zula snapped. “Countless people died because of what it is. I won’t divulge its secret.” Zula’s vagueness was grating on Enne’s nerves. She’d traveled a thousand miles and overcome horrendous obstacles to find answers, and now this woman would withhold them from her?
“Please,” she said, but her aggravation was obvious through her mask of politeness. “I need to know.”
“Then you’ll be disappointed. You should return it.”
Enne slid it back into her purse, though she had no intention of returning it at all. She retrieved the second item and placed it in front of the woman. “What about the orb?”
Zula took a shuddering breath. “I know what it is. Where did you get it?”
“It was in the bank,” Enne said.
She frowned. “That doesn’t make sense. Lourdes wouldn’t own anything like that.”
Levi picked it up and inspected it. “These aren’t volts,” he said, which Enne already knew. “But...” He shivered. “I can sometimes feel traces of Mizer auras left on volts, but this isn’t a trace. It feels...alive.”
“Have you ever heard of the Shadow Game?” Zula asked them. Enne’s and Levi’s heads shot up, and a sickly dread caught in Enne’s throat. “So you have. The Phoenix Club hasn’t opened the House of Shadows since the Great Street War. At least, not until eight days ago.” She opened a drawer from behind her desk and pulled out a second black orb, identical to the other, except empty inside. “The Shadow Game is a game of death, and the players bet their lives. These orbs hold life energy. They are deadly poker chips.”
Levi hurriedly set the orb back on the table. “Whose life is inside this one, then?”
“That’s a very good question. Only one player in history has ever survived the Shadow Game, but now that she’s dead, there shouldn’t be any life left inside it.” Zula’s eyes narrowed as she inspected Enne—her gaze fixed more over her shoulder than on Enne’s face. “I don’t know the details of that night, but it’s possible Gabrielle didn’t play with her own life. She wasn’t alone in the Game.”
“You mean Gabrielle Dondelair,” Enne guessed. “My birth mother.”
“Lourdes said she’d never tell you that,” Zula said sharply.
Enne’s breath hitched. There was no question now. What they’d learned about Gabrielle was absolutely true. “I saw a blood gazer. I did my research.”
“You saw a blood gazer?” Zula gaped. “You know your father’s blood name?”
“Do you know who he was?” Enne asked.
Zula slammed the desk drawer closed, making both Enne and Levi jolt. “I cannot speak his names.”
“But...I should know. I deserve to know.”
“I’d tell you if I could. His identity is protected, and he went to great lengths to see it so.” That meant his secret was sealed by a Protector, someone like Lourdes. Enne felt like she was grasping at smoke, trying to connect glimpses of the past together.
Enne cleared her throat. “But he is...dead, right?”
Zula took a shaky breath. “Yes. He’s gone.”
Enne knew this. Of course she did. But it still hurt to hear it, after hoping...over and over again.
“When you said that Gabrielle wasn’t alone in the Game,” Levi said, “what did you mean?”
“There was only one other person involved that night. Since these orbs are used for nothing beyond the Game, and since it cannot belong to Gabrielle, then that only leaves her daughter.” Zula met Enne’s eyes solemnly. “Gabrielle must have been playing for your life that night.”
Enne swallowed and stared at the orb. That was her own life inside it?
“The reason I bring up the Game,” Zula said gravely, “is because of why you’re here. Lourdes had been running from the Game for some time, but eight days ago, they found her, and she was invited to play.”
The shell Enne had carefully built around her heart shattered, and no number of words or rules would piece it back together now. Before Zula even confirmed Enne’s darkest fears, tears began to well in Enne’s eyes.
“Muck,” Levi whispered.
“Of all the stories from the Great Street War, Lourdes’s was the most heartbreaking of them all,” Zula said, shaking her head grimly. “Until the end, she did everything in her power to protect you. And now, here you are, a curse in your shadow, an omerta around your neck.”
The past tense struck Enne deep and low, like a bell toll that shook inside of her.
She would’ve known, she would’ve felt it if Lourdes had died.
She placed a hand over her mouth. Her chest heaved, though she hadn’t started to cry yet. She hadn’t even taken a breath.
“With the omerta, you can’t go home,” Zula continued. “You must keep your secret from Vianca at all costs. And, more than anything, stay away from the House of Shadows. Lourdes did not die so you would, too.”
“Enough,” Levi snapped. He reached for Enne’s hand, but Enne’s gaze was firmly rooted on the floor.
“The only fortune in any of this,” Zula continued, “is that you have no power yet. That’s better for you. And better for New Reynes.”
“Enough!” Levi hollered. He stood abruptly, grabbing Enne by the shoulder and hoisting her up, as well. Enne leaned into the support of his arm around her, holding her breath so as not to cry. She should say something, she knew. Levi shouldn’t fight this battle for her. But it felt pointless, knowing she’d already lost the war. “If you were really Lourdes’s friend, you could try showing an ounce of compassion.”
Zula’s expression hardened. “This story will end badly.”
The same words Lola had spoken the other day.
This story is already over, Enne thought. I’m trapped here, and I’m alone.
Levi pulled Enne toward the door, and she numbly followed. “I don’t expect we’ll be back,” he spat. He was right. Enne had no intention of ever seeing this awful woman again, even if she had been Lourdes’s friend.
“I’m the only one left who remembers,” Zula said solemnly. “If I need to find you, I will.”
“Don’t.” Levi slammed the door.
Outside, he shushed Enne even though she wasn’t crying and pressed her against his chest. “I’m sorry,” he said. The words were gentle, but uselessly so. Enne was already broken. “I’m so sorry.”
Lourdes had died the day before Enne reached New Reynes. All this time she’d been searching for her face in the crowds, wandering memories of her in her dreams, and she’d been chasing a ghost. Had she left earlier... Had she asked questions earlier...
“It was always the two of us and no one else,” Enne whispered. “And now I’m alone.”
Without Lourdes, Enne was truly lost. Her mother was the only one who’d remember the girl Enne had been before, now that Enne was already starting to forget herself. Lourdes was her lighthouse, her guideline, and now Enne had no way of finding her way back—to Bellamy, to herself or to the life she’d once lived.
Her mother had probably died thinking that, at the very least, her daughter was safe at home. And that was the tragedy of it all.
“You’re not alone,” Levi murmured, squeezing her tighter. Enne looked up at him, studying her own heartbreak reflected in his eyes. Finally, she began to cry.
Compared to her mother, Levi was a pale sliver of light, a fraying thread—but he was something. And so she nodded and let him guide her home.
DAY EIGHT
“Legends of the North Side are born in the gutters and die on the gallows.”
—The City of Sin, a Guidebook: Where To Go and Where Not To
ENNE
Enne curled into a fetal position and leaned against the pole on a corner of the trapeze platform. The dusty windows of the practice warehouse gleamed with moonlight and the flashing advertisements of Tropps Street. She’d been here all night, ever since the show ended hours before.
It was the second performance Lourdes had ever missed.