Ace of Shades (The Shadow Game #1)(65)

“You’re right,” she said, reaching for her drink. “We probably should ask Lola.” The whiskey and coffee liqueur burned their way down her throat.

“There’s something else,” Levi said, sliding closer again. Now Enne had her arms wrapped around her knees, and Levi was seated facing her, only inches from her feet. She curled in her toes and looked everywhere but at his face. “That card left in Lourdes’s hotel room wasn’t just a normal playing card.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s called a Shadow Card.” He bit his lip. “During the Revolution and through the Great Street War, the Phoenix Club was famous for playing something called the Shadow Game. It’s a card game where the invited players are...killed.”

Her stomach clenched. This was it...this was when she learned that her mother was dead.

“The cards all symbolize different things. Only one card is used for the actual invitation: the Fool,” he explained. “That wasn’t the card in Lourdes’s hotel room, which meant the one we found was only a warning.”

“So either Lourdes is hiding from the Phoenix Club,” Enne said darkly, “or she’s already dead.”

“Yes. I suppose it’s been that way all along.” He placed a hand on her knee. “It isn’t as bad as it—”

“Why didn’t you tell me about this yesterday?” She shoved his hand off.

“It was dangerous to talk about it in the open. I was going to tell you when we got back to St. Morse, but then you wanted to be alone. And by alone, I mean, steal my best pistol and stroll over to Dove Land behind my back.”

Enne curled herself tighter into a ball. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. I was supposed to come to New Reynes and discover there’d been some terrible storm—maybe that no ships had been sailing for months. And Lourdes would just be here, waiting for her chance to come home.” She could picture Lourdes seated outside a café on the South Side, smoking a cigarette and reading the newspaper. In Enne’s fantasy, Enne ordered herself a pastry and sat down beside her, and Lourdes told her all about the adventures she had in the City of Sin.

And then they went home.

“I wasn’t supposed to be a Mizer.” Enne took another sip of her drink. “How am I supposed to go back?”

After the things I’ve done, she added silently.

“Sometimes we’re not who we want to be because we’re supposed to be something else,” he said. She wondered if he even believed that himself.

Enne leaned against Levi’s shoulder, and he wrapped his arm around her. It was a dangerously easy move to make. She felt both comfortable and restless at the same time. Daring herself further, she pressed her cheek into his chest.

“I’m supposed to be dead,” she whispered.

“That’s not what I meant.”

Enne stared at Levi’s hand, palm facing up on his knee. It would be so easy to take it. But, certainly, she’d had enough thrill for one night. Any more touching and he would know what she was feeling, and she wouldn’t be able to take it back. If he knew, if he slid his arm further down her waist, or brushed his forehead against hers, then all she would be able to say was yes.

“I can’t even make volts. My talent isn’t ‘triggered’ yet, or whatever Lola said.” She was rambling. She crossed her arms, keeping her hand a good distance away from his. “That strikes me as very unfair. Think of how rich we’d be.”

Enne bit her lip. She definitely shouldn’t have said “we.”

“That would...solve a lot of problems,” he said slowly. “But then your eyes would turn purple, and it’d be very hard to protect you, then.”

“And you would, wouldn’t you?” she breathed. These words, too, were a dare. “Protect me?”

Silence. When she looked up at him, her cheek still pressed against his shoulder, he was watching her carefully. He swallowed. “Yes.”

Enne had never truly had a friend. Lourdes was the only one who’d ever listened and advised and cared. And so she was surprised by this truth—that she had become unlikely friends with a street lord. Maybe even more than friends. When she looked at him, she saw someone invested in her search to find her mother, someone who understood the helplessness of Vianca’s stare. She suddenly realized that, if he was the one in distress, then she would rush to save him, too.

“You’re going to laugh when you hear this,” Enne started.

“I usually do—”

“When I left rehearsal today, every single person knew my name.” She fiddled with her shirt. Even after telling him the truth of her talents, this confession somehow felt more personal. Maybe because she knew it sounded absurd, even before she explained it. But still, she wanted to share it, and she knew that he would listen. “I’ve gone to school with girls my entire life who forget my existence regularly. I could walk beneath a spotlight and be mistaken for a shadow.”

“Your schoolmates were snobbish,” he said.

She shook her head. She knew it would be difficult to put into words. “It’s more than that. I stand at the back of the stage for every show. I’m marked absent when I’m the first to arrive. I introduce myself again and again, only to be forgotten.” Her breath hitched for a moment, and she quickly swallowed down her flood of emotions. She felt like she was carving herself open and laying it bare. The worst hurt in the world was the kind you grew to accept. “That’s the reason I began to doubt. Not because of Lourdes’s lies or how easily I’ve picked up acrobatics. But because I have never impressed anyone—not ever. But since I arrived in New Reynes, people have seen me.”