The Shadow Game series

“You’re a dancer. We’ve got several groups of performers—”

“I’m not that type of dancer.”

“And St. Morse isn’t that type of establishment.” He stood and turned into a narrow hallway, motioning for her to follow. By the time she got up, he’d disappeared into the room at the end, and she realized with no small amount of horror that it must have been his bedroom.

“What are you doing?” Enne called from the doorway, unable to even peek inside.

“Finding you something to wear. Your clothes belong in an antique shop.”

Enne sniffed in indignation. Her outfit was considered fashionable in Bellamy, where women had a sense of modesty.

“What do you expect me to wear?” she asked. “Trousers?” Or worse, one of those fishnet numbers she’d seen all over Tropps Street?

He emerged with a dress and an easy smile. “What? Don’t you trust me?”

“Hardly.” And certainly not with that gleam in his eyes. Or with the not-entirely-unpleasant smell of his citrus cologne.

She allowed herself to admit that Levi Glaisyer was very good-looking—at least, in an up-to-no-good way that she supposed some people found attractive. He was of fairly average height, but his build was slender and trim. Of all his noteworthy features—his smooth brown skin, the sharp slopes of his cheekbones—the most identifiable was his hair. It started bronze at the roots, but the tight curls gradually turned to black at the ends, as if singed.

Sometimes talents, especially Talents of Mysteries, carried a particular physical characteristic with them—like the purple eyes of the Mizers. She remembered Levi melting the lock earlier and lighting Reymond’s cigar. He might have had a fire-making talent, but the fire-makers she’d met in the past were different—they smelled of smoke and depleted the oxygen from the air around them, suffocating anyone in close contact. He didn’t smell like...

Levi smirked, and Enne realized with a start that she’d been staring.

To avoid his gaze, she spent several moments examining the dress. It was floor-length, with a gold ribbon trim lining the silky, sage-colored fabric. It was actually rather nice. “Where did you get this?” she asked as she daringly entered his room and took it from his hands.

“I’ve got a collection of lost things.”

Lost things? Oh. He meant left behind. She lifted the dress up to hide her mortified expression.

“You get dressed,” he said. “I’ll be out here.”

“Levi,” she protested as he walked away. “This is ridiculous and unnecessary. My clothes are perfectly fine.” Although, as she looked down, she noticed that her hemline was rather filthy.

“Look, missy,” Levi said flatly. “You can call as much attention to yourself as you want, but I prefer to keep my head down. Time to fit into our society.” He closed the door but kept talking, his voice diminishing. “Now get changed. I’ve things to do and only time for half of them.”

Hmph. Though her attire did stand out in this city, it was for the right reasons. But the dress he’d chosen didn’t appear too outrageous, and the color would suit her nicely.

As she changed, she realized how low the neckline was cut. Goodness, she thought, it would be almost like strutting around topless. She turned to his wardrobe and rooted around for a new outfit. Nudged between another blouse and several pairs of men’s undershirts in various sizes—this was quite the collection—she selected a red dress with a more conservative front.

When Enne returned to the sitting room, she found Levi in the armchair turning the glass conch shell over like an archaeologist examining a fossil. He raised his eyebrows upon seeing her in a different dress.

“Where did you buy it?” she asked, referring to the conch. “It’s beautiful.”

“I made it. There was a shell like this in my house when I was young, so I tried to replicate it.”

“You have a glassmaking talent?”

“No, an orb-making talent. But I don’t use it much.” He talked with a kind of bitterness, as if admitting to something shameful. The orb-making talent certainly explained his hair and his affinity for fire; she’d never met an orb-maker, but she should’ve guessed it before. They had nearly as much lore surrounding them as the Mizers did. Most of them were even executed alongside the Mizers, so there weren’t many families left.

“Then why be a card dealer and a...” She didn’t say criminal, in case she might offend him, though Levi seemed to take pride in his particular line of work. “Orb-makers could make a very fair living.”

“You mean, why be poor when I could be rich?” He laughed hollowly. “For plenty of reasons. For one, most people assume orb-makers are Mizer sympathizers, and I’d rather not associate myself with that muck. The only reason my family survived was because we haven’t called attention to ourselves.”

Enne flinched at Mizer sympathizers and survived. She didn’t like how, in only one morning, New Reynes had drawn a heavy, black line connecting those two phrases to her mother, followed by a bloodred question mark.

For the second time that day, Enne wondered how she would face it if she never learned the truth about Lourdes’s other life. The newspapers...the monarchists...the Mizer sympathizers...it was so far from what she knew about Lourdes.

But what did she know about her mother?

Lourdes had taught her how to analyze people meticulously. She had a method to this, and a set of rules that she observed with an almost religious reverence. Enne could replicate her skills in a heartbeat.

But they never worked on Lourdes.

It began with a person’s air. Lourdes was tall with features full of right angles and fair colors. She dressed fluidly—a practice uncommon but not unheard of in Bellamy, where reputation depended on social circles and income and nothing else. Her Protector talents—her blood and split talents were the same, making her exceptionally powerful—made her every word sound consoling, soothing, no matter how sharp her tone. She followed each code of societal etiquette, but did so with such precision that it always seemed as if she were poking fun.

Next was what you could’ve gathered from pleasant small talk. Lourdes claimed she was thirty-seven years old, but she looked no more than thirty. Her family—now all dead, as far as Enne knew—had vacationed in Bellamy when she was young, but she hadn’t moved there until she’d adopted Enne, and no one in Bellamy knew her from her childhood.

Last were the more intimate details. Within the privacy of their home, Lourdes cursed. She read New Reynes newspapers. She sang loudly and terribly. Enne had seen strange scars shaped like perfect circles on the inside of her elbows. She’d heard her laugh too hard or yell in a way that made the beads on their chandelier quiver, but she’d never seen Lourdes shed a tear. She’d seen Lourdes walk into her office each morning with a cup of coffee and lock the door behind her, and Enne, for years, had been too nervous to follow her inside.

Enne loved her, but she didn’t understand her. No one in Bellamy did. It was why their names rarely graced the guest lists of balls and salons, why no one ever paid attention to Enne.

Now Enne wanted to understand, and she regretted, more than anything, avoiding these questions before.

“I want to hear everything,” Enne told Levi seriously. “Everything you know about the monarchists, the Mizer sympathizers, this world. Lourdes never shared any of this with me, and I need to—”

“Have you ever considered that your mother purposely kept you in the dark?” he asked—not unkindly, but not gently, either.

Yes, she thought.

Instead she answered, “Why would she do that?”

“No idea, but before we chat with Vianca Augustine about hiring you, it’s very important that we’re on the same page. If you haven’t noticed by the decor of this casino, Vianca has a fetish for all things Mizer. She certainly knows who Lourdes is, but—” he said loudly as Enne began to interrupt “—under no circumstances should you ask Vianca about Lourdes. Under no circumstances should you ask Vianca anything.”

The way Levi spat out Vianca’s name, Enne wondered what exactly he’d asked of Vianca. Or what she’d asked of him.

“Mizers created volts, that was their talent,” he began.

“I know that—”

He shushed her. “Being an orb-maker, I was taught a lot about Mizers—I’m sure I know more than you. We’re different from the metalsmiths or glassmaker families. As you might know, Mizers don’t technically make volts—they make energy. Orb-makers filter that energy into volts, sort of like a by-product. Without orb-makers, no one would’ve ever started using volts as money. Without orb-makers, holding that energy in your skin would be unbearably painful.”

Enne was tempted to interrupt and remind him that very few people stored volts in their skin. In Bellamy, it was considered too lowbrow not to use orbs—they weren’t that expensive. And in New Reynes, she imagined such a method could prove risky. With enough practice, someone could steal your volts with only a graze of your skin. Forgoing orbs was impractical.

“The Mizers were all systematically murdered during the Revolution. Adults and children alike,” Levi said gravely. “There were protests, of course, but the Phoenix Club didn’t much care. Twenty-five years ago sounds like a long time, but not for the North Side. Mizers are still a political topic, but we don’t need them anymore, now that volts can be manufactured artificially. Still, the monarchists have been slowly gaining momentum to fight against corruption.”

“Do you agree with the monarchists?” Enne asked quietly. Levi almost made it sound like the monarchists were in the right, when all Enne had ever associated them with was extremism and violence.

He smiled in a way that wasn’t much of a smile at all. “I don’t involve myself in politics.”

Seeking reassurance, Enne took her token out of her pocket. It’d always seemed like a unique trinket, something pretty Lourdes had thought Enne might like. Now Enne saw the woman in the cameo as a Mizer queen. She saw the Revolution. The queen’s execution. The murder of every Mizer and their sympathizers. She couldn’t decide which was more horrific: that Lourdes had gifted her an object with such a blood-soaked history, or that Enne had treated it as a trinket.

“I still...” She squeezed the token, and it felt warm and steady in her palm. It was her only comfort away from home, alone in this city. “I still can’t picture Lourdes being involved with monarchists.”

“She was more than involved. She was Séance, practically the face of the Mizer sympathizers’ crusade.” He gazed at Enne fiercely, the judgment clear in his dark eyes. What exactly did Levi Glaisyer think of her—that she was desperate? Foolish? Childish? She wondered why she cared. “Why did you think she came to New Reynes so often?”

“She said she was visiting friends,” Enne answered.

“She never thought to bring you to meet those friends?”

“It was more important I stay in school.”

“You never questioned that?”

She squeezed the token in her fist. Was this some kind of interrogation?

“She’s my mother. Why should I have questioned her?” Although Enne had certainly had her suspicions, she’d ignored them. Admittedly, there had once been a time when Enne resented Lourdes for her secrets, for her strange behavior, for the way she alienated Enne from any chance of society’s approval.

But now, with Lourdes’s whereabouts and even survival unknown, she hated herself for those thoughts.

“It’s easy for Protectors to keep secrets,” Levi prodded. “They never seem as if they’re lying. It never occurred to you—”

“No. It didn’t.” Enne’s voice rose, marking the dozenth time she’d broken the show no emotion rule. She didn’t appreciate what Levi was suggesting, that Lourdes would use her talents to purposefully keep Enne in the dark. If a Protector officially swore their powers to someone, they were forever bound to act in that person’s best interest, no matter the implications for themselves. Lourdes had never sworn to anyone, thank goodness. The practice was barbaric and unused since the Revolution. Levi was suggesting Lourdes was protecting someone—probably someone in New Reynes—and, by extension, that Enne hadn’t even noticed that her mother’s life was barely her own.

“I trust her,” Enne snapped. What did he want her to say? That yes, it had occurred to her that Lourdes had purposefully kept information from her? Of course it had. Enne knew Lourdes kept secrets, but he made it sound as if their entire relationship was a lie, and Enne would never believe that. “I trust her. Maybe trust is a foreign concept to you.”

She realized, once she said it, that the words had come out rather harsh. This whole time, Levi had kept a remarkably cool expression. She was the one working herself up. For a moment, she considered apologizing. Then...

“Maybe naïveté is a foreign concept to you,” he said drily.

That thought vanished.

“How dare—”

“If you’re so jumpy answering my questions, how are you going to last one night on the North Side? How are you going to face Vianca Augustine?” He shook his head, and Enne couldn’t decide if she felt ashamed or aggravated. He wasn’t being fair. “I’m just trying to keep you from getting yourself killed.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. It wasn’t as though she was in any real danger. At least, as long as she didn’t speak to any whiteboots again.

He leaned forward and steepled his fingers, his expression grim. “Have you ever heard of the Phoenix Club?”

“Only now, when you just mentioned it,” she answered.

“They’re the most powerful and dangerous people in the Republic. Businessmen, wigheads, scholars...all with a talent for immortality. They’re the ones who orchestrated the Mizer executions. The whole Revolution, even.”

She searched his expression for one of his telltale smirks, but found none.

“There’s no talent for immortality,” she said. “That’s impossible.”

He sighed, cracked his neck and checked his watch. Enne’s nostrils flared. If anyone had a right to feel impatient, it was she. “Chancellor Semper himself is part of the Phoenix Club. He’s their leader.”

She barked out a laugh. “You expect me to believe that?”

Levi stood. “Fine, missy. I was trying to prepare you. But if you’re so sure of yourself, you’re obviously ready for Vianca.”

He walked to his front door and motioned for her to follow. Enne hesitated, wanting to challenge him. But if she kept arguing, she might start crying again. The urge to do so throbbed in her chest, and if she even used enough breath to say fine, it would explode. She’d already cried twice this morning. She didn’t know how she had enough tears left for a third.

They were silent until the elevator reached the bottom floor, where she followed Levi through another hallway lined with portraits of Mizer monarchs with amethyst eyes.

“You should address Vianca as Madame,” he said, more like a warning than a suggestion. “She likes that.”

“I’m more than comfortable addressing superiors.” Her voice sounded steady and precise. The streets might’ve been Levi’s arena, but etiquette was hers. After everything she’d faced so far this day, an interview with Vianca Augustine hardly intimidated her.

Enne held her head up high, smoothed down her hair and focused. She repeated Lourdes’s rules in the back of her mind.

His eyes trailed over her—almost enough to ruin that focus. “I take it you didn’t like my choice of dress for you.”

“It was inappropriate. Particularly for an interview.”

“Maybe that’s why I liked it.”

He smiled, and no, no, she wouldn’t let that smile break her resolve to be aggravated with him. She stared in the direction of her pointed-toe heels, hidden underneath the hem of the dress, and hoped with every fiber of her being she wasn’t giving him the satisfaction of blushing like a Bellamy schoolgirl.

“Though I will admit, this dress is a bit long,” she commented, trying to remain aloof.

“Yeah, you should grow some.”

She couldn’t think of a snappy enough retort, so, left with no other options, she let out a hmph.

He snorted, but then his smirk receded. “I’m sorry, Enne. I haven’t been trying to upset you. But this city...it’s rotten, down to its very core. And you need to be prepared for what you might face. Or learn.” He looked away and stared at his oxfords. “I’m trying to help you.”

He was attempting to soothe her, but his honesty made Enne only feel worse. Maybe she was no match for this city. Maybe the North Side would take everything she had and spit her out into the harbor. Maybe the streets where Lourdes walked freely would spell ruin for her daughter.

They walked into a waiting room with several marble busts lining the walls. A pale, fragile-looking woman hunched over a desk in the corner. She startled at the sight of them.

“Levi,” she exclaimed, standing as he approached and even giving a slight bow of her head. She had a pinched nose and a collar so tiny it was a wonder she could breathe. She drank in the sight of him, never once glancing at Enne. “I wasn’t aware you had an appointment.”

“I don’t. Is Vianca available right now?”

“Yes.” She hesitated before adding, “I can announce you if you wish—”

“We’ll announce ourselves.” He grabbed Enne’s wrist and tugged her to the door on the far side of the room. “Here we go.”

He knocked.

“Come in,” a woman’s voice invited.

Before opening the door, Levi bent down, his lips inches from her ear. “Whatever you do, don’t let her see you squirm.”

ENNE

Enne and Levi stepped inside a dark office with emerald velvet curtains and matching chairs. Behind Vianca’s desk hung a mural of another Mizer family: two parents, two daughters and an infant on the mother’s lap—the last royal family of Reynes, executed twenty-five years ago during the Revolution. Mahogany bookcases lined the side walls, filled with more vases, marble busts and antiques than books.

Amid the darkness of the room, Vianca Augustine was fair. Her white hair and ivory, sallow skin made her appear ghostlike, and there was certainly something haunting about the emptiness of her gaze. Soulless. She looked to be in her sixties, and her age was exaggerated by the powdery makeup caked within the creases of her face. Despite her ornate dress and overwhelming amount of jewelry, nothing about her was elegant. She had clearly never been beautiful, and—judging from the severe frown lines and pruned wrinkles around her pursed lips—she had never been kind, either.

“Levi,” Vianca said. She spoke his name slowly, as if savoring its taste. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“I owe this girl a favor. She needs work, and with all I need to juggle at the moment—” He smiled, a bit too widely. “It would put my mind at ease knowing she gets settled.”

Vianca raised her pencil-drawn eyebrows and shifted her gaze to Enne. “What’s your name, girl?”

Grace, Enne told herself. I am grace and ease.

“Erienne Abacus Salta, Madame.”

“A dancer? I already have more dancers than I need. And usually my dancers come with a vocal or instrumental split talent. What use do I have for a dancer who can count?”

Enne wasn’t sure how to respond, especially as, truth be told, she wasn’t much of a counter at all.

“She’s a gymnast, as well,” Levi added quickly. “I heard there’s a spot open for a new acrobat.”

Enne struggled to contain her alarm. She hadn’t bargained for that. She didn’t know the first thing about gymnastics.

“Is she, now?” Vianca asked, not looking at Enne so much as through her. “You may go, Levi. I’ll speak to Miss Salta in private.”

He blinked in surprise, then nodded. After giving Enne a final weary look, he slipped out the door. Enne tried not to let his apparent nervousness bother her. She had faced worse interviews for admission to her finishing school.

Vianca beckoned her forward, and Enne moved to stand in front of one of the chairs before the donna’s desk.

“Do you plan on taking a seat, Miss Salta?” she asked.

“Not unless you ask me, Madame.”

Vianca’s green, lizard-like eyes inspected every foot, inch and hair of Enne’s body. Her lips curled, and Enne couldn’t help but notice her uneven red lipstick. “Sit.” Once Enne had taken a seat, Vianca asked, “Where are you from?”

“Bellamy, Madame.”

“That’s quite a journey. How long have you lived here?”

“About half a day, Madame.”

That made Vianca smile. For a moment. Enne hadn’t been trying to be humorous.

“Is Levi trying to court you? He serves a number of roles for me, and I require him to have a clear head. If his belle is living within St. Morse, it will distract him.”

Enne would never walk out with a card dealer, not if she planned on keeping the last shreds of her reputation intact. And if the card dealer in question was Levi, she’d also need to salvage what remained of her dignity. Even if he was attractive, she had no patience for his jokes and smirking. “No, Madame. Nothing like that.”

“Then why is he so interested in your well-being?”

Enne uttered the first lie she could think of: “He owes a favor to my father.”

“I should’ve guessed Levi would be in debt to a counter. How good are your counting abilities?”

Enne could barely add or subtract without the use of her fingers. “Quite good, Madame.”

“Are you literate?” With each new question, Vianca leaned closer to Enne over her desk, almost close enough to grab her.

“Yes, Madame.”

“How well you can read?”

“I read very well, Madame,” she answered, barely able to hide the bite in her voice.

“Who taught you?”

“I went to finishing school. The Bellamy Finishing School of Fine Arts.”

“Did you really? They don’t accept just anyone. You must be the only Salta in your class.”

Enne kept her hands folded calmly in her lap, despite the fury shooting through her like an electric current. The Saltas might’ve been the lowest and most common dancing family, but she wasn’t ashamed of her name. It didn’t matter that her talents didn’t compare to her classmates. She’d worked for her place at that school, for her future.

“I was, Madame.”

Vianca was now bent so close to Enne that Enne could smell her musky perfume. “And you must be quite intelligent to have passed the entrance exams.”

It wasn’t a question, so Enne stayed quiet.

“Is there anything else I should know about you, Miss Salta? Anything else that could be useful to me?”

“No, Madame.”

“Pity.” At last, Vianca leaned back in her seat and drummed her fingers against a stack of papers. Each of her rings—there were almost a dozen—shimmered. Unlike Reymond’s, these appeared to contain real jewels. “How old are you, Miss Salta? You must be at least fourteen to work here, and I don’t make exceptions.”

Enne cringed inwardly. This interview had already been the best test of her etiquette skills she’d ever experienced, and it had been only a few minutes.

“I turned seventeen in February, Madame,” she said.

“You look quite young. Oh, he would like you,” she murmured, more to herself than to Enne. Enne didn’t ask what or whom she meant. “I’m glad to hear you have a background in gymnastics. Levi was quite right; we are looking for some acrobats.”

If Levi’s smile looked like a smirk, then Vianca’s looked like a sneer.

“But I think I’ve found an additional use for you,” Vianca purred.

Enne nodded and pretended like she was following along, though the unsettling satisfaction on Vianca’s face sent an uneasy feeling through her stomach. This interview was highly unlike any that she had experience before.