“Criminal you’ve been going totea partieswith? Yeah, I can’t imagine why I’m overprotective.” Delaney shook her head. “I don’t know what we’re doing here. That girl stormed out of here like she was off to kill the Bargainer herself, but—”
“Thatgirlcan level an entire building in less than a minute,” Levi cut in from beside Enne.
Poppy clapped her hands together in delight. “Iknewyou had a North Side boy. You should’ve seen the way I squealed when I first saw your pictures in the papers. I wasright.”
Enne flushed. “It wasn’t... I mean, at the time, I don’t—”
“What Enne is tryingto say,” Levi said, straightening his tie, “is that she’s far more North Side than I could ever aspire to be.”
“Oh, I like him,” Poppy said.
“Time to leave,” Enne muttered, her cheeks heating. She pushed Levi toward the door. “You and I need to talk, anyway.”
But before they could reach the exit, Harvey blocked their path.
“I...” He cleared his throat. “I just want to say that I’m glad to work with you. And I’m sorry for...” His voice trailed off, probably because none of them had time to list all the deeds Harvey Gabbiano needed to apologize for.
He held out his hand.
“I’m just sorry,” he murmured.
Enne wasn’t sure she forgave him, but hehadbeen a help. And she was also impatient to talk to Levi. So she shook Harvey’s feverishly warm hand, bid him a quick goodbye, and guided Levi into the hallway. Finally, they could have their privacy.
“You shouldn’t have given me your card,” she hissed. “If we don’t manage to kill the Bargainer, what’s stopping her from killing me like she killed all the other Mizers? What if—”
“Did it ever occur to you that if Lola is with the Bargainer, she’s the one stopping the Bargainer from killing you?” Levi asked.
Enne stilled. “Tock said Lola hates me.”
“Lola might’ve betrayed a few people here, but we all have, at some point or another. And we all want the same thing, ultimately—to survive this game. So we’re going to need to learn to trust each other,” he said. “Even Harvey. Because that’s what it’ll take to break this game. This is bigger than just us.”
Enne reached into her pocket and clutched her tokens in her fist.
Levi slipped an arm around her waist. He dropped his voice to a gentle whisper. “Tomorrow, I have something to show you. It’s an after, I think. A life once this game is over.”
“If we live to see it end,” Enne said darkly.
He kissed the top of her head. “We will.”
SOPHIA
Harrison offered to drive her home. Poppy and Delaney had stayed at the Catacombs—to dance of all things. Dancing felt like the last thing Sophia wanted to do right now.
A heavy energy hung in the motorcar, as if the air had thickened and she could feel New Reynes’ pollution like a wax coating on her skin. The two of them should feel hopeful—even if they didn’t know how to kill the Bargainer, they’d learned doing so would break the game. This hell could all be over, and soon.
But Sophia couldn’t shake off her fear. The Bargainer had touched so many lives, and so long as Sophia listened to her fragile, self-destructive heart, her Torren talent was a double-edged sword.
“She’s saved people,” Sophia told Harrison, who sat beside her in the backseat of his private car. The words clawed their way out of her, and she felt like she was retching, breaking. She didn’t like being vulnerable. Her own body rejected it, as though weakness was cancerous. But she didn’t want to dance with the girls, and she couldn’t sit in Jac’s apartment anymore, searching for hidden cigarettes that she could no longer find.
The problem with destroying her Family’s empire was that now she had no family left.
“If we kill her, if all her shades break, then there are people who would be hurt,” Sophia continued. “There are people who would die.”
“This is a dangerous train of thought,” Harrison said softly.
“All of my thoughts are dangerous lately.” She took a breath, but she couldn’t inhale fully, not in this air. Her heart pounded, each beat like a sledgehammer to her ribs. She cracked the window, but the cigar-fumed air of Tropps Street was no better. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“Did you imagine the Bargainer to be a monster?”
