“Don’t make me leave,” he pleaded, even though he hated to beg. They were supposed to be partners. Equals. “You’re the only one who knows why I want this. It was my idea. And if you send me away, then I’ll keep hanging around here until you show up again. If you can hunt me down to where I live, then I can find you, too.”
Her voice rose. “Just to prove something?”
“Isn’t that what you’re doing by going to see Charles?” he countered. “You’re terrified of him. Even when you worked alone, you chose Delia over him—and she was every bit a monster. You know them, but they somehow no longer know you. How can I be your partner if I don’t know the whole truth?”
She even looked pretty when she cringed. “You know me better than anyone else does. Isn’t that enough?”
“No,” he rasped. “It’s not.”
He pulled her down so she sat beside him. With the den loud with howls and whistles from the next fight, there was no one to overhear. She could either trust him, or she could at least be honest with him and tell him, flat out, that she didn’t.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” she told him.
“Do you even want me here? Do you want me to stay?”
“Of course I do.” She dug her nails into both her knee and his.
“Then tell me the truth.Allof it.” He didn’t mean to growl, but he was angry—angry and frightened. Charles hadmurderedDelia. If they were going to face him together, then Jac needed to know what they were up against. Not the rumors—the truth.
Her gaze fell to the cut across his lip. “I don’t want to.” She leaned toward him, close enough for him to smell the taffy on her breath. He realized she wasn’t actually looking at the cut. “I’m sorry, but—”
“No,” he said, catching her hand midair as it drifted toward his waist. “You don’t get to play this game.” Because he was terrified that if they did, she would win. “The only game we’ll play tonight is all or nothing.”
Sophia pulled her hand back. “I can’t make you leave. This is your war as much as mine. So we’ll accept Charles’s invitation together.” She slid back and stood up. “But no games.”
Then she left Jac to ice his wounds alone.
ENNE
With the whiteboots trapped in the South Side, Scrap Market had taken up its first permanent residence in history. Gone were the days of varying hours, of packing up stalls and moving them at a moment’s warning. The Scarhands had used their stock market wealth to purchase an apartment building in the Factory District, and vendors had taken up shop in each room. Every floor offered a different category of wares. The higher you ascended, the less innocent they became.
Enne climbed the stairwell to the topmost floor and entered a hallway filled with Scarhands. The doors to each apartment were open, revealing weapons displayed on lounge furniture and photographs of for-sale identities covering everything like wallpaper.
Though dressed primly for a South Side Party later that morning, the only attire Enne wore that mattered were her white gloves and silk mask. She paid no mind to the whispers and glances thrown her way as she walked past. Not until she came face-to-face with someone she recognized. Someone who, she immediately realized, was another loose end.
The girl straightened and lifted her head as Enne approached the door. She had brown skin and bobbed hair. Like all the others, scars crisscrossed her palms.
“Does Pup know you’re here?” Enne asked. She hoped, for Levi’s sake, that he didn’t. Even if the Irons had prospered under the North Side’s new regime, he wouldn’t take it well if he learned his old protégée now worked for Jonas.
“No,” Mansi answered coolly.
“What have you told Scavenger?” Enne asked, because of course Mansi would remember who she really was. Enne doubted the Irons received many visitors who burst into tears in their living room, as she had on her first day in New Reynes.
“Everything.”
Enne’s heart sank. That meant Jonas knew her name—and maybe more. She’d previously threatened him with Vianca, but how long would that threat retain its bite?
“I have an appointment,” Enne told Mansi stiffly. The girl nodded and opened the door.
Jonas sat cross-legged in his desk chair, his greasy hair pulled back from his face. Enne braced herself for his usual corpse-like stench, but the room actually smelled pleasant, due to whatever candle was burning on the end table.
“Enne Salta,” Jonas said, grinning wickedly. Enne scowled at hearing her name and hastily shut the door behind her. “I’ve been looking forward to this appointment all night.” As she took a seat in front of him, he opened a folder and slid her a photograph across the desk. It was Enne’s last school portrait. “The Bellamy Finishing School of Fine Arts. Bottom of your class.”
“I don’t want trouble, Jonas,” she said, since they were apparently on a first-name basis now.
“Trouble?” He lifted his eyebrows. “Do you have other secrets I should know about?”
“My associate called you yesterday about hiring someone who can alter memories. Do you have someone who could help us?” The sooner they disposed of Roy Pritchard, the better. She didn’t want a second handsome whiteboot to come looking for him. Or worse, for the Spirits to grow any more distracted. When he wouldn’t stop sneezing and they realized he was allergic to Marcy’s cats, every one of the girls had offered their rooms as a replacement.
