15
Nes
“I aim to surprise,” Nes said.
Phineas grinned wider, his eyes sparkling with the type of greed that made her stomach queasy. “And delight,” he added with a wink.
Creep. She tried to smile politely at him, but she could feel the grimace for what it was. She couldn’t help it. Her former boss always made her nose wrinkle.
“You dyed your hair since we last spoke,” she said. She didn’t mention how he’d somehow managed to do the same to his eyes.
Phineas tossed his head, the long blond locks twirling with an unnatural flair. “It’s been a while since you last saw me.”
Nes stiffened. Since she last saw him. Not since he last saw her.
She’d walk out of this closet right now if she didn’t need the information he had. But she did. So she would act polite, even if she couldn’t look it. Even if all she wanted to do was pin him to the wall by his ears and demand he get her father out of prison.
She nodded to Phineas. “A week.”
“Indeed. Such a long time,” Phineas said, twisting a curl around his index finger. “I was due for a change.”
Phineas’s gaze shifted from her to Toran, greed glistening in his eyes. “It seems I’m not the only one making a change. A good step up too. TheCrown.” He let out a low whistle. “Consider me impressed, hound.”
She bristled at the nickname. “It’s not a change,” she told him, ignoring how Toran tensed beside her. “Just a temporary agreement reliant on mutual satisfaction.”
Phineas barked out a laugh, flipping three gadots between his fingers. “Is that what you tell all your lovers?” Nes didn’t need to count the coffers to know those three were part of the ten she’d used to make a losing bet in his name. Phineas stopped flipping the coins, clamping down with his fist. But when he opened his palm, they’d vanished. “Do tell, what has brought my little hound and Orlonea’s Crown to my house during business hours?”
She didn’t miss the threat hovering over his last words. “During business hours,” also known as the only time of night when all his attack dogs were chomping at the bit. But she wasn’t afraid of his pets. Take away the magic Phineas gave them, and they were nothing more than desperate men.
From her pocket, Nes pulled a piece of paper. On it, she’d drawn the symbols from the Drowning Square and the Holy Triad. She placed the paper down on the desk in front of Phineas. “Have you ever seen these before?”
Phineas slid the paper toward her, barely glancing at the symbols on it. “That’s not why you’re here. Tell me what you’re really after.”
Nes pushed the paper back to him, the ends wrinkling from her force. “Thisiswhat we’re after. What are they? What do they mean?”
Phineas took the paper from the desk. He stared down at the symbols on the page just long enough to give her a smidgen of hope before he crumpled the page into a ball and tossed it to the floor behind him.
She wanted to claw his eyeballs out of his gleaming head. Feel the moisture pool under her fingernails. She threw a finger at the floor. “Thatis what we want,” she spat. “Thatis why we’re here.Thatis the only reason I—”
“We’re looking for someone,” Toran said. “A girl.”
Nes nearly hissed at him.
Phineas scratched his chin, the hair sprouting from it shifting under his immaculate fingernails. “A girl, huh?” He eyed both her and Toran. “Know a lot of girls. Know about a lot more.”
“She would have entered the city recently,” Toran said, his voice even and calm. “Within the last couple weeks.”
Because that was when the attacks began.
Phineas stared at Toran. “You need to rethink your definition of ‘recent.’ Do you have any idea how many people enter this city every day?”
“At least six hundred. Assume half are women—that’s 4,200 girls entering Gadore over fourteen days,” Nes rattled off. “Before they closed the gates, of course.”
Phineas smiled at her. “You remember,” he purred.
“That’s not all I remember,” she said, and that fake smile she’d held on her face morphed into something real.
Phineas tilted his head, studying her like he’d finally found something fascinating.
