King of Fools

by Amanda Foody

  “I know who you are,” Lola said, stepping forward. “I know your voice. You’re Sergeant Roy Pritchard. You’re the whiteboot who led the Orphan Guild operation. You gave an interview on the radio afterward.”

  The other girls quieted. Nearly all of them had been present for the attack on the Guild.

  They definitely weren’t giggling anymore.

  “If that’s true,” Enne said, “then why are you here alone?”

  Lola picked up the mask that Grace had thrown away. “I knew I saw something strange earlier. I spotted someone wearing this when we were leaving the Orphan Guild. He followed us here.”

  Enne didn’t like this. Why would the sergeant have acted alone? Once he’d spotted the finishing school, he could’ve left at any time and called for backup. And if he’d done that, he wouldn’t have snuck inside by himself—he would’ve planned an ambush.

  “If you don’t want to kill him,” Marcy suggested, “the Scarhands know people who can muddle memories. I’ve done jobs for them before.”

  Enne didn’t fancy the idea of visiting Jonas, but that was the best idea they’d come up with. “Someone call the Scarhands and schedule me an appointment for tomorrow morning with Scavenger. Lola, see if you can find any information about whether the sergeant was recently let go from the force, or a reason why he’d be acting alone.” Roy stiffened at her words, but still said nothing. “Grace, get everyone back to work. We’ll need to spare someone every few hours to watch him, and we can’t afford to fall further behind on work. I’ll take the first shift.”

  As the girls scattered, Enne flopped down on Marcy’s bed. She grabbed Marcy’s pistol from her bureau and set it on the nightstand, then reached for the most recent edition of The Kiss & Tell.

  “If you try anything, I’ll kill you,” Enne told him, and she meant it. She would protect her girls, no matter what.

  Sergeant Roy Pritchard turned his pretty face away and glared at the floor. Enne ignored him as she stroked Veil and read the front page exposé, which speculated about the woman behind the criminal enterprise that had revolutionized the North Side.

  After finishing it, Enne flipped back to the glossy portrait on the tabloid’s cover and gave her own wanted poster a kiss.

  JAC

  In the month since their meeting with Harrison Augustine, Jac and Sophia had mastered the art of persuasion. Defeating Charles Torren wasn’t like a simple game of cards. It was night after night of sweet-talking dens and clientele and Apothecaries into abandoning the man currently paying them, all to support a teenage girl they’d never heard of.

  It began with intimidation.

  “How do I know you’re really who you say you are?” a den manager might ask.

  “Charles has never once denied who I am,” Sophia would respond. “You should ask him, after you tell him how you agreed to meet with me.”

  Then they needed to charm.

  “There’s been trouble all across the North Side,” Jac would say, taking a protective step closer to an Apothecary. The woman was nearly twice his age, but the team had learned her sort was the type he could most easily sway. “We all know Charles’s reputation. If you were in trouble, would you rather be going to Charles, or to us?” He stood taller, arms crossed, trying to emphasize the build of his strength talent. “To me?”

  “W-well...” the woman would stammer, a flush creeping across her face.

  The last, most important step was to remind them that even though Sophia and Jac were inexperienced and risky, they were also rich—thanks to the under-the-table support from Harrison Augustine.

  “We’ll give you twenty percent more than whatever he pays you,” Sophia would say, batting her eyelashes at the burly supplier. “Maybe even twenty-five, just for that smile of yours.”

  Now they controlled almost half of the Torren dens in the Casino District. They were earning volts in addition to spending them. And they could finally celebrate.

  Jac was all grins as he swirled a straw around his glass of iced water, his head lazily propped on his hand.

  “I don’t know why you’re so proud,” Sophia teased from beside him. “I wouldn’t be, if the only people I could make swoon were lonely, forty-year-old women.”

  “I believe what you keep meaning to say is ‘thank you,’” Jac said.

  “So you keep trying to remind me.” She leaned into his shoulder.

  Jac bristled. He didn’t want to dredge up their same, familiar fight, but he couldn’t help himself as he swept aside the taffy wrappers on the bar and pulled their ledger closer. On it was a list of dens, some circled, some crossed off.

  “I don’t understand why Charles hasn’t made a move yet,” he murmured. “That doesn’t seem like him.”

  “Stop doing that,” Sophia said sharply. She turned her head so her chin rested on his shoulder, and Jac could feel her warm breath on his neck. He’d seen Sophia flirt with enough den managers to know how she used charm like a weapon, but Jac wouldn’t fall for it—not even if he wanted to.

  “Then tell me the truth,” he told her, forcing himself not to stare at her lips. “Tell me why Delia never recognized you. Tell me what happened between you and your family.”

  Sophia pulled away from him with pursed lips. Jac scolded himself—he was staring. “You’re right—this isn’t like him. Charles hits when you don’t expect it. He hits where you are weakest, and he hits until you break.” She shook her head. “Now I’m anxious. Does that make you happy?”

  He sighed and stood up. “I’m going to find the washroom.”

  Before he moved away, Sophia reached into his pants pocket and pulled out his pack of cigarettes. She threw them across the bar.

  “What was that for?” he snapped, even though he knew his smoking habit had worsened recently. “I’m just going to piss.”

  “Then it shouldn’t matter to you.” She waved him away, her face buried in the ledger, her fingers fiddling with her coin.

  Jac groaned under his breath as he made his way around back. They made good partners, but she still kept a wall between them, between her and the world. And she only reached over that wall to steal his cigarettes.

  So what if she cares? he thought angrily. If she cared more, she’d treat him like a real partner, and she’d tell him the truth.

  After he finished in the washroom, Jac opened the door back into the hallway and was startled to find a man standing behind it.

  “Oh, um, sorry,” Jac muttered, moving aside to let him walk past.

  The man shoved something in Jac’s hands. A red envelope. Jac stared at the words on the front for several moments until he worked out what they said. Todd Walsh.

  As the man who’d delivered it hurried out the back door, Jac frowned and tore the envelope open. He spilled the contents into his hand, and a syringe gleamed on his palm. It was filled with a clear, murky liquid—a high enough dose of Lullaby to lull out for twelve hours, maybe even more.

  Jac froze. He knew where the delivery had come from, and suddenly, it was like the past two years of sobriety meant nothing. No matter how many times he’d resisted, and prayed, and made himself stronger, he hadn’t changed.

  He hits where you are weakest.

  Jac’s palms began to sweat, and all of his worries from the past few weeks surged inside him. That Charles would come for them. That the North Side would crumble. That Levi’s stunts would finally get him killed. All the scenarios he’d dwelled on returned to him in such vivid detail that he could almost convince himself they’d already happened. His heart beat furiously, his pulse anxious and all over the place. His lungs felt tight. His life might be different now, but he was still trapped, still overwhelmed.

  And part of him still wanted the fix.

  He tried to pull himself out of it. He thought about the smell of gasoline at the den he’d burned, and how good it had felt to dest
roy a place so like the others that haunted him. But still, he didn’t let go of the syringe. He didn’t move at all.

  He thought about how he’d almost died. About the man whose name Jac now used as his own, and how cold he’d been when Jac had found him...only a few hours too late. Jac shivered, but it still wasn’t enough to let go.

  And so he thought about Levi. Who had dragged him unconscious to New Reynes North General. Who had trusted him. Who would blame himself.

  Jac dropped the syringe on the floor and shattered it beneath his boot.

  “Muck,” he choked out, running his hands through his hair. He took several deep, steady breaths, but he couldn’t stop himself from shaking.

  I didn’t do it, he thought. I crushed it.

  But another thought was louder. He hits where you are weakest, and he hits until you break.

  Vomit bubbled up his throat. His fears were all he could see. The North Side falling. Levi dying. Himself fading.

  And the worst part of it was that he knew the lull would take those fears away.

  Before he knew what he was doing, Jac stormed across the den and wrapped tape around his fists. He dropped an orb with forty volts into the bookie’s jar. “I’ll take next. Whoever you got.”

  I sold it all but my pride when I came to this town.

  Jac’s opponent was no bigger than he was. In fact, he looked like he’d already been in a number of fights that night, his lip swollen and his knuckles chafed. Jac didn’t mind. This just meant that he was faster. Each of his blows landed, one after the other. He would keep fighting with everything he had, and that was how he would win.

  He continued for several rounds. Until he stopped winning.

  His opponent’s fist knocked him square in the jaw, sending Jac reeling back. His thoughts funneled, and he braced himself on the chain-link fence surrounding the pit as he spit out a mouthful of blood. He wiped what remained of it on his sleeve and straightened, his fist raised.

  The next time he got hit, he landed on the floor. The air rushed out of him, and he groaned and rolled onto his back. His opponent stood over him, waiting for Jac to forfeit.

  But Jac didn’t want to give up. He wanted to win. He wanted to burn down a hundred more dens and smash a thousand more syringes. To hear the referee’s whistle rather than sirens. To become so strong he wouldn’t spiral the moment he caught a glimpse of Lullaby.

  He lost, of course. No sooner did he climb to his feet than he was knocked back to the ground again. He clutched his stomach at the pit’s edge, trying hard not to throw up.

  The referee whistled, calling the fight for Jac’s loss. Once his nausea passed, Jac limped to the exit and crashed in the nearest empty booth. He grabbed an abandoned glass on the table and fished out the ice to press to his lip.

  He sighed as he leaned his head back. Logic reminded him that he never would’ve won all night, and he’d taken four fights to lose. Was that how long it would take Charles to wear him down? Or would it be next time? Would it be never?

  Sophia appeared over him, her expression livid. “What was that about?” she demanded.

  “I was in the mood,” he grumbled.

  “To get your ass kicked? Exactly what sort of mood is that?” She brushed her thumb over the cut under his lip, making him wince—and shudder. “You might need stitches.”

  He shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

  She let go of him, shoving him away as she did so. “What aren’t you telling me?” Jac didn’t know how she saw through him so easily, but she always did.

  “You were right about Charles. He did go for where we’re weakest.” He told her what the man had given him outside the bathroom, not quite meeting her eyes. “I shattered it.”

  Sophia reached into the pocket of her dress and removed a red envelope, identical to the one Jac had received. “You’re not the weakest part of this. I got one, too.”

  A surge of relief went through him, followed by curiosity. “What was in yours?”

  “An invitation...and a picture.” Sophia’s hand trembled slightly as she handed them to Jac. He traced his finger over the photograph first. It was clearly Sophia as a child, standing between two teenagers he realized were Charles and Delia. A family portrait.

  Jac opened his mouth to ask about it, but she snatched the picture back and slid him the invitation. It was printed on luxurious black card stock with embossed red font. Luckluster colors. “Charles wants to meet.”

  “I bet he does. I bet he’s thinking about bleeding us out on his carpet.” Charles wanted to run the Torren empire, and Sophia wanted to destroy it. There was no room for negotiation.

  “I think I should go,” she said quietly. “I think I need to face him.”

  “I don’t think we—”

  “You’re not going.”

  He frowned. “If you’re going, so am I.”

  “You told Levi you’d get out if it became dangerous, and it has. If Charles keeps sending you Lullaby—”

  “Don’t you trust me?” he snapped. “I told you I destroyed it.”

  She pushed his hair off his forehead, pressing tenderly on what he felt was a bruise beginning to form. “You ran from one destruction to the next. Don’t make me watch that.”

  His heart fell. That was the same as telling him no. She didn’t trust him. Nobody did.

  “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. All of it.” He didn’t mean to growl, but he was angry—angry and frightened. Charles had murdered Delia. 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 Fact
ory 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.”