“In less than a month, Aldrich Owain will attend the election’s first debate,” she told Roy. “You’re going to tell me how to kill him.”
Grace flung off her covers. “What are you doing?” she hissed.
Enne barely recognized the growl in her voice when she answered, “I’m finally doing something.”
“By threatening to kill him?” Roy shot Grace an appreciative glance, which Grace didn’t return. “Don’t look so grateful, whiteboot. If I had my way, you would’ve been dead weeks ago. You think I like hearing you snore all night?”
“You talk in your sleep,” he muttered.
Grace’s eyes widened. “You haven’t said a word since the night you got here, andnowyou decide to talk?” Grace kicked the radiator he was handcuffed to. “You don’t smile. You don’t frown. You knock on the floor when you need to piss, like I’m not even worth your words, andnowyou speak?”
Roy turned his head to the side and didn’t say anything.
Grace scowled, grabbed Enne by the arm, and dragged her to the other side of the room. “Who is Aldrich Owain?”
Enne hadn’t told anyone about her plan, because she wasn’t going to be talked out of it. She knew revenge would do nothing to heal the painful hole in her heart, but she didn’t care. It would still feel good to put a hole in his.
And so she answered, “He’s one of the people who killed my mother.”
Grace eyed Enne carefully. “There are times for blood, but this isn’t one of them.”
“He deserves to die,” Enne snapped.
“I’m not talking about Owain—I’m talking abouthim, and whatever it is you stormed in here to do.” Grace gestured to the whiteboot, who glared at them. “Tell me why you need him.”
Enne’s eyes widened in surprise. She hadn’t expected Grace’s support—she hadn’t expected anyone’s.
“There will be whiteboots guarding the debate,” Enne answered, “and Roy was a whiteboot. He’ll know what sort of weapons they’d carry, how many they’d station.”
“But why there? You’ll be more at risk for getting caught.”
Because Enne wasn’t Ivory. She wouldn’t kill Aldrich Owain in the quiet seclusion of his home, leaving his body and a murderer’s calling card for a neighbor to find. She didn’t want to send the Phoenix Club that blatant a message—not yet.
She wanted to make them look over their shoulders. She wanted them to fear the creak of floorboards in the middle of the night, to mistake the shadows in their bedroom for doom. She wanted them to know, deep in their cruel, eternal hearts, that death was coming for them. She wanted them paranoid. She wanted them weak.
And so she’d decided that her first murder would look like an accident.
Owain, a newspaper mogul, would undoubtedly attend the upcoming debate. And if he was shot amid the chaos of a crowd turned violent, no one would suspect foul play.
But rather than explaining all that, Enne only answered, “Because it feels right. It has to be there.”
Grace narrowed her eyes and paused. “Fine. Then I’ll talk to him.”
“But—”
“Put your gun away. I can do this.”
Roy hadn’t cooperated with them since he’d arrived, so Enne had no idea why Grace thought she could convince him. In her nightdress and without her eyeliner, she was far less fearsome than usual. But still, Enne trusted her third, so she did as she was told.
Grace sat down in front of Roy. “I just want to talk,” she said. “Do you know why I used to work as an assassin?”
Roy said nothing.
“I did it for the volts. I bet you hate that, right? A lot of whiteboots just want to wave their guns around, but not you. You’re the noble type. I can tell.” Grace lay down and propped her head on her elbow. “I probably could’ve been a Dove, but creepy cults aren’t really my style. So I let Séance make an honest woman out of me.”
Roy snorted, but still said nothing.
“What’s so funny?” she asked. “Go on. You’ve been watching me so closely these past few days—I see you looking. I bet you have a lot to say.”
