Jac craned his head to look, but as soon as he did, another shot fired. He cursed and pulled back. “If we go back inside, we could find another exit.”
“Come out!” the other person shouted.
Levi cleared his throat and called out, “We don’t want trouble.”
There was a strangethumpon the ground, and after several moments of silence, Jac nodded and charged out from behind the wall, pistol raised. He blanched and immediately lowered it. “Come look,” he croaked.
The three of them did, and Enne gasped when she saw a young man lying face-down on the pavement, gun still clutched in his hand. His sleeve was stained with blood.
“I know him,” Lola gasped, rushing toward him. With Jac’s help, they turned the body over. He’d been shot in the chest—quite a while ago, judging by how much he’d bled. His eyes were closed.
“Is he dead?” Levi asked.
Lola felt for a pulse, then her eyes widened and she slapped him lightly on the cheek. “No. And he’s from the Guild.”
His eyes fluttered open, then he grasped wildly at Lola’s hands. He coughed, spewing blood on her front. “I can’t go back,” he rasped. “I can’t go back.”
Jac pressed against the man’s chest to stem the bleeding, but the man writhed in agony. He rolled onto his side, revealing a heinous exit wound. Lola tried to pin him down, but his face only filled with more panic.
“It’s me,” Lola told him. “You’re going to be—”
“I can’t go back!”
Enne cringed and squeezed Levi’s hand as Lola tried to calm the man. Gradually, he stopped fighting and stilled. It happened so suddenly that Enne could scarcely believe what she was looking at—that a stranger had gone from a man to a corpse right in front of her.
A siren sounded in the distance, frighteningly close.
“The whiteboots heard the gunshots,” Levi said. “Get up. We need to go.”
“So we just leave him here?” Lola snapped.
“It’s that or get caught,” he answered.
Levi pulled Enne away, but even as they ran down the street, she turned once more to look at the body. It seemed insignificant in comparison to the death she’d witnessed the previous night, but she needed to see it and remember it. These were the terms of the assignment Vianca had given her. This—not a stolen kiss—was the price to pay in New Reynes for something you wanted.
Enne pictured each of the faces of the Phoenix Club, as quickly and deftly as she’d so often recited her mother’s rules.
Her reason for wanting power seemed so clear now. She saw it in the body bleeding out in the alley. In the bruises covering Levi’s skin. In the memory of her mother. In the anger steeping inside of her, hot and quiet and simmering.
Vianca wanted righteousness.
Levi wanted glory.
And she, Enne realized, wanted revenge.
JAC
“Ah.” Levi grimaced as Jac opened the trapdoor to Zula’s basement. “There’s that smell.” The office ofHer Forgotten Historieswas cloaked in darkness, the only light source the faint flame above Levi’s fingers.
Jac watched the way Levi winced with each step as he descended. It was hard to tell exactly what was hurting him, other than everything. Jac still had a few sore spots from his boxing match at Dead at Dawn, but he had the Mardlin strength talent—he was made of stronger stuff than his friend.
But Jac didn’t have it in him to both hate Levi and feel sorry for him. So as he waited at the top of the stairs, pinching his nose, he settled on the former.
“What are you doing?” Levi asked.
“I’m not staying here.”
Levi and Jac had a lot in common. They both liked to gamble. They had mastered the art of hungover mornings, of sneaking into variety shows, of wandering the streets at moonlight hours searching for food or beds or both. Levi had helped Jac clear his debt at his One-Way House. Jac had sworn Levi that oath he’d always wanted. Their first jobs, first romances, first troubles—they’d seen each other through them side by side.
