Lola hadn’t lived through the Revolution, but even so, it sickened her to learn the corruption behind it. In their three days together, in rescue missions and cheap cabarets, Lola had let herself forget who Arabella truly was, but Lola saw her clearly now.
Arabella was a monster.
“You’re quiet,” Arabella said softly.
“I—I want to know why you’re telling me this,” Lola stammered, then she grabbed the Dead Cat Bounce and sipped only to feel something cold wash down her throat.
“I told. I want your help.”
Arabella took something out of her pocket and slid it across the table. A prayer card. Lola gaped at the photograph of Enne, clearly taken from her finishing school’s yearbook. She lifted the card to stare at it closer, because even if she knew those pearls, knew that face, Lola barely recognized the sorry sort of smile of the girl in the portrait, so different from the Enne whom Lola knew now.
Even so, Enne’s image forced a surge of anger in Lola’s stomach. She unconsciously reached her hand to the wound on the side of her head, and it throbbed as her fingers grazed the bandage.
“You know why I like you, Lola?” Arabella asked.
Lola faltered, unaware that the person often dubbed as “the Devil” had actually grown fond of her. “Um, why?”
“Because you understand the power of legends.”
Of course Lola did. She’d lost her brothers to the stories of these streets. She’d bargained for the truth of one herself.
Arabella tapped the prayer card. “So consider that. And tell me Enne’s real story.”
“She’s...” Lola swallowed, knowing how carefully she’d need to choose her words. Even if Lola had never been so furious with Enne, Enne—the last surviving Mizer—was all that stood between Arabella and her post-Revolution vision for the world. And Lola didn’t want to see Enne dead. “She used to go to finishing school. She’s a dancer. She likes, I don’t know...sugar.”
“You’re more descriptive in your files,” Arabella said flatly. “I know you can do better.”
She could, but Lola didn’t know what Arabella was after—the satisfaction of her curiosity, or justification for whatever she planned to do next.
“If you’ve read my files, then you already know it all, anyway,” Lola said uneasily.
“But I want to hear it from you, not from some papers. Tell me how you met.”
Lola’s hands shook, and she hid them beneath the table. “We met last June,” she relented. “I was working as a blood gazer for the Orphan Guild—”
“The business that the malison runs, the one everyone is talking about?” asked Arabella, frowning. “You keep quite the company for someone who prides themselves on not being a person worth writing about.”
Lola scowled. “Coincidence. But anyway, Enne and I got into a fight when I realized she was a Mizer. She made me swear a street oath to her, and that’s how we became friends.” Arabella snorted, but Lola ignored her and continued. “She’s snooty. Not very dependable. Whenever it comes time to make a decision, she makes it alone because...” She thought of Enne’s gloomy expression in the prayer card. “I think that’s what her life was always like before New Reynes—alone.”
Lola stopped, knowing that if she told Arabella the whole truth, it would damn Enne. How could it not? Vianca Augustine’s cruelty aside, Enne was far from innocent.
“You hate her, don’t you?” Though there was a lilt at the end of her sentence, Lola didn’t get the sense that Arabella had meant it as a question.
Lola’s mouth went dry, and unintentionally, she stole a glance at her brother, who now sulked by the stage. The musicians played a jazzy number, a song Lola actually knew, had played along to herself on her harmonica. But hearing it now, Lola couldn’t remember why she’d liked it.
“I think I hate myself,” Lola said, sighing, “for not guessing that she would betray me. Everyone always does.”
Then Lola’s eyes widened. She was forgetting herself, forgetting the weight of this conversation, and so she quickly steered it away from Enne. “But what about Bryce? He’s looking for you. He wants his bargain.”
Arabella laughed. “He’s a fool if he thinks that the flimsy shade of this game will be enough to kill me. He thinks he’s holding my life hostage, that I’d crawl to him and offer a bargain to end the game.” She grinned mischievously. “Maybe I’d rather play it. Maybe I’ve already made my move.”
“Is that what this conversation is?” Lola asked, her skin crawling. She felt thickheaded now for not realizing it earlier. “Your honesty is a weird way to make me trust you so that I’ll give you my card.” The joke was on Arabella—Lola knew better now than to trust anyone.
The Bargainer frowned. “I’m not after your card, Lola.”
“I suppose killing me would be easier.”
Arabella coughed, and once she started, it took her several moments to stop. A rattling sound came from her chest with each tremor, and she grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself.
