Ace of Shades (The Shadow Game #1)(26)

Once he crossed the threshold, he found himself dressed in a smart suit, far nicer than his St. Morse uniform. The mud squished beneath his oxfords, and it smelled of earth. He was in a graveyard. The sky was gray, as the sky in New Reynes tended to be. The City of Sin followed him wherever he went, even in his dreams.

Levi moved to return to the hallway—graveyards unnerved him, as cliché as that was—and tripped over one of the headstones. It was painted metallic silver.

Levi Canes Glaisyer, it read.

Levi scampered to his feet and backed around it. On its other side was a face: the Fool, one of the Shadow Cards, the invitation to the Shadow Game. The bells on the Fool’s hat chimed, high-pitched and eerie in the silent graveyard. The diamonds and triangles painted on his face spun like pinwheels, and he strutted toward the cliff in front of him. Levi reflexively took a step back, as though he could also fall.

The Fool laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed.

It’s not real, Levi assured himself. It’s only a nightmare.

But it didn’t feel like one. The earth sticky under his shoes, the cold sweat dripping down his neck, the Fool winking from his headstone—how could this all be in his head?

He whipped around and faced a new row of fresh, unfilled graves. He peered into the first hole, above which the headstone said Jac Dorner Mardlin. Jac’s coffin was lidless. Soot coated his blond hair and cap, and his eyes were wide-open, his mouth twisted into an unnatural scream.

Levi jolted back with horror and nearly stumbled into the next grave. It was Chez’s, and beside him, Mansi’s, and dozens of other Irons from around the city. Levi bit back a wave of nausea looking at Mansi’s gray-toned skin and lifeless eyes, matching the bodies of the other kids around her. Even if the investment scheme had gotten in the way of most of Levi’s responsibilities as lord, he still cared. They were his kids. His to protect.

This was all Levi’s fault.

He ran back to the hallway. The moment he crossed the threshold, his shoulders relaxed, his guilt and fear fading along with the nightmare.

There were hundreds of doors, but none of them was the right one.

Suddenly, a white door blasted open. Fire spewed out, reaching into the hallway, reaching for him. Levi raced out of its path. His back pressed against one of the black doors, the heat licking his cheek. Ghost-like faces flickered within the flames, their eyes an eerie, glowing purple, watching him.

All at once, they screamed.

*

Levi gasped and woke in the Tropps Room at St. Morse. His suit and vest were wet from his spilled glass of champagne. A few people at neighboring tables pointed at him as he dried off his pants with a handkerchief, his fingers trembling.

A dream, he told himself, shaking his head to clear it. A nightmare. But he could still hear the Fool’s laugh. He could still picture Jac’s contorted scream.

On the face of the Shadow Card, a metal tower stretched toward the night sky, disappearing amid clouds and stars. Several men climbed its spiral staircase, and one fell from it to the ice below.

The Tower. In the Shadow Game, it represented chaos and ruin.

He shoved it in his pocket as nausea stormed in his stomach. The Phoenix Club’s private execution game was a myth, and Levi had always taken the North Side’s legends with a grain of salt. There was no house of horrors hidden within the city. There was no wandering devil bargaining for your soul. And there was no game you couldn’t win.

But there could be no mistake—the Game did exist. The card and the visions proved it.

Have you ever considered that you might be in over your head? the whiteboot captain had asked him this morning, and the words made Levi sick. He’d always known Vianca’s scam was dangerous, but he was the Iron Lord. He was cunning. He was clever.

If he didn’t collect Sedric’s volts in time, he was dead.

Levi’s break ended, and a new group of players sat down. Every card he drew was lousy: a single queen and the lowest of every other suit. The house’s pile of chips shrank, and his profits slumped to 20 percent.

A man in a bowler hat took his eighth pot. Levi tried to focus on his game to see if he was counting cards, but he was panicked. He was sloppy. And his mind kept straying back to Sedric Torren.

If the Torren Family wanted him dead, why would they use the Shadow Game instead of one of their own men? Sedric’s cousins—the brutal, notorious siblings, Charles and Delia—never turned down an opportunity to kill. Levi had heard rumors that Charles was experimenting to see how many times he could shoot someone before they bled out, and that Delia had a knife collection made from the bones of each of her victims.

If Sedric wanted Levi dead, he didn’t need the Shadow Game to do it.

Which meant Sedric was showing off his friendship with the Phoenix Club. Sedric had inherited his position as don less than a year ago, after his father’s death. Since then, in an effort to squash his rival, Vianca Augustine, he’d befriended the wigheads, begun a campaign for office and declared himself an honorary South Sider.

He would make a spectacle of Levi, just to show he could.

After another round, the players headed to the poker and roulette tables. Levi’s profits plummeted to a meager 18 percent, a good percentage for a mediocre player. Not for him.

Even if he played his best at St. Morse, ten days wasn’t enough time to come up with ten thousand volts.

He traced his finger along the edge of the Shadow Card in his pocket. In the stories, receiving one meant only one thing: a warning. Make the Phoenix Club happy, or go buy a cemetery plot.