Ace of Shades (The Shadow Game #1)(54)

“Enne.”

“Well, Enne—” she held out her hand “—no guns in the office. I’ll keep it in my desk until we’re done with our little chat.”

Enne grimaced. How did Lola know she was carrying a gun? “I’d rather keep it.”

“Relax, missy. What’ve you got to be afraid of?” Lola grinned widely. “You can keep your knives. Those I like.”

Enne sourly handed the pistol to Lola. The worst danger was past, now that she no longer walked the streets, but she still would’ve felt more comfortable with the gun at her side. She’d never used one before, of course, but assumed she could figure it out if she needed to.

Lola walked away, playing her harmonica, and Enne closed the door behind her. The “office” was really a cellar with a single desk and a wine rack. Lola collapsed into her seat, deposited the gun into a drawer and pulled out a foot-long scalpel.

The color drained from Enne’s face. “What is that for?”

“Do you know anything about blood gazers?”

Don’t let them see your fear.

Enne could almost hear Lourdes’s voice in her head as she took a step closer to Lola, a girl who looked as if she could chew Enne up and spit her out like a sunflower seed. If Enne was a white picket fence, then this girl was chain links.

“I’m afraid not,” Enne responded.

Lola eyed her suspiciously. “Give me your hand.”

Enne leaned across the table and held it out, trembling.

“I’m just gonna prick your finger,” Lola said.

“That’s a big knife just for that.”

She smiled. “It is, isn’t it?” She dug the tip into Enne’s skin, and a droplet of blood seeped out. Lola squeezed more out of Enne’s finger. The pain was unpleasant, but bearable. It was Lola herself that made Enne nervous. Doves were assassins, so just what else did Lola use that knife for?

“Almost done,” Lola said gently as she pinched Enne’s skin to coax out more blood. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Oh, um...I’m visiting New Reynes.”

She snorted. “What? No blood gazers where you’re from?”

“Something like that.”

Then Lola did the unthinkable. She dabbed both her pointer fingers in Enne’s blood and smeared it on her eyes.

Enne grimaced in disgust. She had no qualms about the sight of blood—it was the look on Lola’s face, not the blood itself, that unnerved her. Lola licked her lips and grinned, as if savoring the feeling on her murky pink eyes.

“It’s not like I drank it,” the blood gazer joked.

Enne’s resolve wavered during the several moments of silence that passed. Maybe Levi had been right, and this was a terrible idea. Maybe she wasn’t ready to hear the truth about herself. If she found out Lourdes had been lying, she’d resent her mother. But if she found out there’d been no lie at all, and she’d doubted Lourdes unfairly, she’d resent herself.

Then Lola startled. Her gaze shot toward Enne, and she wiped the blood out of her eyes and eyelashes, smearing it onto her knuckles.

“Is this some kind of a joke?” Lola growled. She stood up and walked toward Enne before she could back away. Lola grabbed a fistful of Enne’s blouse.

“No,” Enne yelped.

“Then you must be pretty damn thick.”

Enne’s eyes flickered toward the door. Whatever Lola had seen, she didn’t like it. But Enne couldn’t leave without knowing the truth.

And she was getting awfully tired of people in this city calling her thick.

“What do you mean?” Enne asked coolly.

“You should be dead.” As Lola reached for her knife on the desk, Enne managed to squirm out of her grip. Enne backed several feet away, close to the door. She shakily reached into her pocket for Levi’s gun, then remembered with a surge of dread that Lola had locked it in her desk.

“Whatever you saw,” Enne said, fighting to keep her voice under control, “there’s nothing I can say until you tell me what it is.”

Lola lunged so that she blocked Enne’s path to the door. She held the knife out, pointed toward her. “There isn’t anything to say. You’re a Mizer, and it would be better for this whole city if you were dead.”

Confusion swamped her, followed by panic. The words echoed around the cold cement walls, and Enne shivered down to her bones, trying and failing to make sense of Lola’s words. The Mizers were dead. Obviously, Lola had make a mistake.

But that didn’t matter. Enne could tell the blood gazer was certain by the way Lola glared at her and locked her jaw. Whether or not Lola told the truth, if she turned Enne into the wigheads, her accusation alone would warrant a death sentence. Enne would watch tomorrow’s sunrise from the gallows.

Which left Enne with three options.

She could try to talk Lola down and plead for her life.

She could escape, but with Lola forever believing this mistake and possibly revealing it to the entire world.

Or...Enne could kill her.

The last thought wasn’t a whisper or a shadow. It didn’t lurk. It didn’t send quakes of guilt or uneasiness through Enne’s heart. As her first night in New Reynes had proved, Enne could do what it took to survive. She wouldn’t have lasted this long otherwise.