by Amanda Foody
Grace wiped the blood off on her dress, which was too black to show the stain. “Let’s build our own empire.”
6
“Sometimes they call them the Bargainer. Sometimes the Devil. I guess it depends on who tells the story.
“Legend goes that either the Bargainer approaches you, or you have to summon them. Some people claim you need to stand at a crossroads. Others say to make a sacrifice. But all of them are wrong.
“The only thing that summons the Bargainer is chaos.”
—A legend of the North Side
JAC
Jac stared out the black-tinted window of the motorcar as they passed over the Brint. He’d only visited the South Side a few times, and he always felt dreadfully out of place. Jac wore the suit Enne had bought him—with a checkered shirt and leather shoes worth more than a week’s salary at Liver Shot—and even though it fit perfectly, it still felt like a costume.
Levi sat across from him, reading today’s copy of The Crimes & The Times. Dark circles hung beneath his eyes, like he hadn’t slept all night. Jac wanted to ask about it, but then he remembered how Enne had returned to the party yesterday in tears. How Levi hadn’t returned at all.
Sophia was the first to speak. “You don’t like this,” she said to Levi.
“I don’t,” he agreed. He set the newspaper down in his lap, revealing a front-page photo of the destroyed Revolution Bridge.
“Why not?” Jac demanded. Last night, after listening to their plans, Levi had merely muttered to Jac, “I trust you,” before abandoning them to interrupt Enne at a card table. Now Jac realized Levi hadn’t listened at all.
“Harrison wants to quietly back the winner of this feud,” he answered. “Nothing about you is quiet. How are you even connected to the Family?”
“I’m Charles’s and Delia’s sister,” she answered. “We’re all half siblings.”
“Do they know about you?”
“No,” she answered, but Jac knew that wasn’t the full answer—he just didn’t know what the truth was.
“How do you plan on winning this?” Levi asked. “At best, you control one den.”
“I know all the supply routes.” Sophia’s words were smooth from her rehearsal that morning with Jac. “I’ve met nearly all the Apothecaries, who are more interested in stability than loyalty. With Harrison’s resources, we could convince them of my leadership and block Delia’s and Charles’s shipments. We—”
“‘We’?” Levi repeated. His gaze flickered to Jac, and he narrowed his eyes. “All Harrison needed was a name. That’s the whole assignment. The whole p-promise.” He stuttered a bit on the last word.
Jac straightened. “I’m helping her.”
“You don’t need to.”
“I want to.” He kept his voice firm, but he still withered at the dark expression on Levi’s face. Even though he’d braved some of his worst fears these past few weeks—and set them aflame—part of him still looked to Levi to anchor him.
Silence fell a second time, and it didn’t let up until the motorcar stopped.
At least Levi trusted him enough not to turn the car around, Jac told himself. The thought didn’t make him feel any better as he climbed out and stared at the Kipling’s Hotel in front of him.
Even more than its adjacent high-end department store, the hotel was famous for murder. On the first day of the Revolution, the best friend of the prince of Reynes was shot in the head in the bathtub of the grand suite. Now the hotel had been transformed into a sort of museum, with tours open during business hours. The decorations inside had a disturbing sort of glamour, with vases full of glass eyes, and scarlet carpets dripping down marble stairs.
Jac shook his head and rubbed his Creed. He was a sorry excuse for a member of the Faithful, but even he could tell this place was unholy.
A man stood up from a chaise in the lobby, wearing an eyepatch and a slim-fitting suit. Jac guessed him to be in his thirties, and like his mother, his eye was so green it looked like a jewel you could pluck out.
Despite his haggardness, Levi plastered on a million-volt smile and smoothly shook Harrison’s hand. Unlike Jac, Levi wore his suit like it was made for him.
“Have you seen the papers?” Harrison asked Levi. “If I’d known your stunt would have this level of repercussions, I never would’ve agreed. They’re adding travel and licensing restrictions to those with Talents of Mysteries, like we’ve gone back in time twenty-five years. It’s barbaric. Even if it barely affects the South Side, I still—”
“They’re considering restrictions—”
“It’ll happen, mark my words,” he said darkly. Then Harrison shifted his gaze to Jac.
“Harrison, this is Jac Mardlin, my second,” Levi introduced. Jac took Harrison’s hand to shake, even though it felt wrong. An ex-Family prince and an ex-addict weren’t the sort of men who usually crossed paths.
“And this is Sophia Torren,” Levi told him.
Harrison cleared his throat with surprise. “You look like a Torren,” he managed, and Jac couldn’t tell if that was a compliment or an insult. Sophia’s brown curls did resemble those of her siblings, but the differences between them still seemed obvious to Jac. Her green eyes, for instance. And her lack of bloodlust.
Harrison shot Levi a wary look, one that twisted Jac’s stomach like a corkscrew. They might fail before they’d even had a chance to plead their case.
Sophia seemed to share his thoughts, because she told Harrison, “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“I’m afraid I can’t say the same.”
“Yes. Purposefully so.” She flashed a winning smile, and Jac had to admire the confidence of her bluff. It was hard not to be charmed by her.
Sophia’s response relaxed Harrison’s shoulders. “We can talk in my room.” He led them to an elevator, and from there, to an upper floor suite. The morbid decor in Harrison’s rooms matched the rest of the hotel. From the coffee table, a radio replayed Sergeant Roy Pritchard’s same statement about the explosion at Revolution Bridge, assuring the citizens of New Reynes that they were still safe and that the efforts to clean out the North Side would be tripled.
“Ever hear of this station?” Harrison asked.
“Can’t say I have,” Levi answered.
“The host—Bobby Vance—is a friend of mine. By the end of this show, I told him he’d receive a phone call with information about the next don of the Torren Family.” Harrison tapped his watch. “We have twenty-eight minutes. I hope he’s not left disappointed.”
Jac grimaced as he sat on the sofa. Augustines, Torrens, they were all the same. Even if Harrison had exchanged casinos for opera houses and Tropps Street for Guillory, he was still running an elaborate power scheme.
Regardless, they still needed him. So Jac sat on the couch and said, “We better hurry up, then.”
Sophia took the spot beside him, and though neither Harrison nor Levi could see it, she hooked her fingers around Jac’s behind their backs. He didn’t know if she’d done it to comfort him or for her own support, but, either way, he liked it.
“I’m Charles’s and Delia’s half sister,” she explained. “I grew up in an orphanage in the Factory District and didn’t know my talents until I met a blood gazer.” It was a sadly common story in the North Side, but Jac didn’t believe a word of it. “Over a year ago, I began working at a Rapture den to get a better sense of my siblings. I was...curious. But by the time I was promoted to manager, I realized how despicable each of them was. So I’ve spent my time interacting with the underbosses, collecting knowledge on the inner workings of the empire, and growing familiar with their Apothecary network.”
“All to become donna?” Harrison asked. “Ruling a casino and narcotics empire hardly seems a likely dream for a young woman.”
A comment like that might’ve made Jac stumble, but Sophia betraye
d no such weakness. “At my age, what was yours?” she asked.
A ghost of something unpleasant crossed his expression. “I know better now.”
“Then you’ll sympathize when I tell you I don’t wish to run my Family’s empire. I want to destroy it.”
There was an unmistakable glitter in Harrison’s eye. “Well, that’s...interesting.”
Interesting is good, Jac reassured himself, but his anxiety was much louder. Interesting is bad, very bad. Interesting is a disaster.
“I can get you your votes, but after the election, I’ll watch Luckluster burn,” Sophia said. “That’s the deal I’m offering.”
“I thought I was the one making the offers,” Harrison said with amusement. Then he sat down in the armchair across from her, and the two of them leaned forward, matching each other’s serious expressions. “It’s been a long while, but I know Delia and Charles. They take pleasure in torment. And as much as I hate to support either of them, how can my conscience allow me to support you, someone so young and inexperienced, when they are your opponents? They won’t care that you’re family. They won’t want to kill you, they’ll want to crush you. And they’ll enjoy doing it.”
Jac remembered the terror on Sophia’s face last night when she’d agreed to this. Harrison was telling her nothing she didn’t already know.
Jac squeezed her fingers tighter. She squeezed back.
“I understand perfectly,” Sophia answered coolly. “I’ve always understood this, but even if you choose not to sponsor me, I won’t back down. Delia already sees me as a member of her inner circle. I’ll bide my time until I have the chance, and I’ll still try to destroy her, no matter the price.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Harrison said.
“Actually, I do,” she snapped. She let go of Jac’s hand and stood up, her voice rising. “I have already gone to extremes to see this through, and I will win. Every time I look in the mirror, I see them and the evil they do. I’m tired of that guilt. I’m tired of doing nothing.”
Harrison said nothing for a long while, only examined Sophia with growing unease. Jac wanted to add something, even just useless words about Sophia’s management of Liver Shot, but it was Levi who spoke next.
“Jac?” he asked. “Can I talk to you in private?”
Jac nodded and followed Levi to the room’s corner.
“I think I know why you feel you need to do this,” Levi started.
“You think?” Jac countered.
“But even if Harrison agrees to this, you don’t need to stay with her. You could come back.”
Jac hesitated. He liked the Irons—missed the Irons. And he missed his friend. But working with Sophia meant something more to him than the Irons ever had, and he didn’t want Levi to make him say that.
“It would be amazing if you stopped the Torrens from selling Lullaby,” Levi said. “But even if the Torrens fell, one of the gangs or some other Family would pick it up. It’ll never end. And you heard what Harrison said. This isn’t just a game. It’s dangerous.”
Jac rolled his eyes. “Wouldn’t you know a thing or two about that?”
“I would.” Levi’s voice was slipping back into the same weariness from earlier. He’d gotten nearly everything he’d ever wanted when Revolution Bridge fell, but Jac had never seen his friend act so defeated. “So I won’t ask you not to do this. I’m just worried.”
If Levi didn’t want to worry, then he shouldn’t have given this assignment to him in the first place. But he didn’t say that. It frustrated Jac that Levi only seemed to understand pieces of why this mattered to him, but that didn’t mean Jac needed to be cruel.
“If Harrison agrees,” Jac continued, “then Sophia needs to win. She needs to provide votes so that Harrison can join the Senate and kill Vianca. I told you I’m going to help free you, and I am. I’m going to see this through.”
Levi gave him a cheap excuse for a smile. “The Irons aren’t the same without you.”
Somehow, Jac doubted that. But he told Levi what he wanted to hear. “Only a few months until everything is normal again.”
Then he turned, eager to end their conversation. In the sitting area, Harrison was on the phone.
We did it, Sophia mouthed, then shot Jac a wink.
A thrill stirred in Jac’s stomach as he sat back down beside her. She threw an arm around his shoulder. It was a thoughtless touch—the sort she might’ve done during a shift at Liver Shot. He didn’t know if he should read more into it, but he wanted to.
“I knew we’d manage this.” Sophia grinned and twirled a dark curl around her finger. “You were amazing, Todd.”
“I didn’t do anything,” he mumbled. “And you can stop calling me Todd, you know.”
“I could,” she said, with a smirk that told Jac she probably wouldn’t.
“So if we’re going to be partners,” he said, keeping his voice low. “You need to tell me—all this talk about knowing your siblings or not knowing them. Which is it?” He thought of the strange reflection of someone else in Delia’s glasses. “What really happened between you and them? Why don’t they recognize you now?”
Sophia’s smile fell. “I can’t tell you that.”
“Of course you—”
“I can’t,” she said flatly. She slid her arm away. “You wouldn’t believe me, anyway.”
Before Jac could argue, Harrison hung up the phone and adjusted the volume on the radio. “Vance was thrilled,” Harrison said. “This will be the biggest story of the week.”
“There has been a fascinating update in a story currently playing out on the North Side.” Jac assumed it was Vance speaking on the radio now—he had one of those fast-talking radio voices, exactly the sort to be narrating their victory.
Jac should’ve felt excited—he was finally part of a story, a legend in the making—but he didn’t understand why Sophia had shut him out. Whatever happened, he thought they were partners.
“After the death of Sedric Torren, it’s been uncertain who would inherit the Family’s casino business. Although it seems likely to pass down to one of Sedric’s two older cousins, Charles or Delia Torren, we’ve just been informed of another candidate in this race—Sophia Torren, a family relative.”
Sophia gave a whooping cheer and jumped to her feet.
As Vance continued, Harrison dialed down the volume and turned to the window. “Across the river right now, your siblings and my mother are deeply unhappy.”
“Good,” Sophia said seriously.
“Wait,” Levi said, his voice sharp. “Can you turn the radio up again?”
Harrison obliged.
“What an incredible back-to-back story. Captain Hector has just called to say that Delia Torren has been found dead in her Tropps Street hotel, the cause of death being eight gunshot wounds. Though it remains undetermined who killed her—”
“Charles,” Sophia whispered hoarsely.
Harrison rubbed his temples. “I’m sure Charles hasn’t heard the news about you yet.”
“Yeah, he’s probably driving back to Luckluster with his sister’s blood on his hands, thinking he’s won,” Levi said darkly. He glared at Jac, but Jac avoided meeting his eyes. “You think you made him deeply unhappy? How about furious?”
Jac fingered his Creed necklace. There was no going back now. Not for Sophia. Not for either of them.
Sophia’s confidence from earlier was gone. When she reached for Jac’s hand, he felt a taffy wrapper crushed between their fingers.
Jac leaned closer to her. “I told you I would help you, no matter what.”
He meant his words to be reassuring—they were both scared, but they were in this together. She could trust him.
“I know,” she whispered, and pulled her hand away.
Jac’s face burned. She still wouldn’t tell him her secret
, and he now had a terrible feeling he didn’t know what he was getting into. And even worse, that his story was slipping away from him.
“Well, that’s one less opponent standing,” Harrison declared. When he spoke, his gaze was fixed on Sophia—he didn’t look at Jac at all. “I guess it’s time to play.”
LEVI
To a casual observer, when the Irons strutted into the Catacombs that night, it was a repeat performance—even if the circles under Levi’s eyes told a different story. His associates flanked him on either side, dressed in smart suits with flashes of silver—the shimmer of jewelry or the glint of a concealed blade.
Several guards stood at the top of the stairwell, and Levi noted that Narinder wasn’t among them. Then he turned and saw Narinder playing onstage, his violin propped against his shoulder, his eyes closed. Levi knew he needed to thank Narinder for letting them continue to use his club—and Tock for convincing him—but he didn’t feel brave enough to face him again. Enne would be at this meeting, and that—more than the musician, more than business—pressed anxiously on his mind.
Then I’m glad we’re both miserable, she’d snapped at him. Those words had kept him awake all last night.
After the guards confiscated his weapons, Levi made his way into the meeting room. This time, he was the last one to arrive. He’d planned it like that.
Enne looked away the moment he entered, her gaze fixed firmly on the table. Levi should’ve been strutting into this room with pride, but he stopped dead at the threshold when he saw her. All he could feel was shame, and want, and shame for wanting.
“We’ve been kept waiting,” said a woman’s voice, turning his attention away.
Levi had never seen her face before, but he instantly knew who she was. She looked maybe forty-five years old, with hair so white it appeared translucent. She wore white clothes as well, but there was something unnerving about her dress. It hung on her like a hospital gown, and its hemline was filthy, its sleeves dotted with what Levi assumed were specks of blood. She wore white bandages around her hands and bare feet that fluttered like ribbons.