King Of Fools (The Shadow Game series, Book 2)

by Amanda Foody

  “Well, as you know, the winner of the election will be announced at Vianca’s party at St. Morse Casino.” He grinned mischievously. “And the North Side is going to crash it.”

  ENNE

  Vianca Augustine poured herself a glass of bourbon, and when she sipped it, disgust evident on her face, it was clear she had no taste for the drink. But still, she poured more. She offered none to Enne, despite having a full bottle of it on her desk.

  Enne saw through the cracks in Vianca’s velvet office curtains that it was close to sunset, and therefore, close to curfew. Her heart dropped. She didn’t relish the thought of spending the night in St. Morse.

  “Did Levi tell you what we spoke about yesterday?” Vianca asked. She traced a fingertip around the edge of her drink, her nail scratching the grooves in the glass.

  Enne hadn’t spoken to Levi in weeks, but she’d heard from Tock this afternoon. All five gangs would be meeting tomorrow morning to prepare for the events Levi had planned, and after being summoned to St. Morse, Enne spent most of her drive here imagining how she’d face Levi again after what she’d done. She’d never get Lourdes back, but she might someday earn his forgiveness, even if meant abandoning her plans for revenge.

  “He didn’t,” Enne answered nervously. She didn’t like the flatness of Vianca’s tone. Though her voice could hardly ever be called lively, there was something unmistakably dead in it at this moment.

  “I suppose not. I heard about your little falling out.”

  Enne’s heart quickened. Had she forced the details out of Levi? Did she know how Enne had manipulated her? “What did you and Levi talk about?”

  “I offered him the chance to become my successor. It wasn’t an offer I made lightly.” Vianca pulled herself to her feet and swept past Enne toward the door. As Enne stood to follow her and express her surprise, Vianca chirped, “Oh, no, my dear. Keep your seat.”

  The door clicked as it locked.

  “I knew from the second I saw you,” Vianca continued. She walked in front of Enne and wrenched her face up by her chin, hard enough to hurt. Enne winced as the donna’s eyes roamed over her. Vianca hadn’t touched her like this since the first day they met. “Levi had never introduced anyone to me before, and I never really believed he owed a favor to your father, like you told me.” Vianca leaned forward, her breath hot on Enne’s face. “Where is your father, dear? Nobody who comes asking something of me ever has anyone waiting for them.”

  Enne knew Vianca well enough to understand none of her questions begged answers. Even if she could speak, her voice was buried somewhere deep inside of her. When she opened her mouth, not even air came out. She choked, her windpipe suddenly as small as a sipping straw, and panic seized in her chest.

  The entire time the omerta toyed with her, Vianca didn’t let go. She gripped Enne tighter as she squirmed. Her body was rooted to the chair.

  “You were so lost,” Vianca said, just as Enne’s eyes welled with tears. Though she was afraid, she hated giving Vianca the satisfaction of showing it. But the longer she failed to draw breath, the more her body betrayed her. When she coughed, Vianca wiped the saliva away with her thumb, smearing it across Enne’s chin with a streak of pink lipstick. “But I saw the potential in you. The potential in him.”

  She pulled Enne forward so violently that Enne needed to squeeze her armrests to keep from falling over. “How long have you known?” the donna spat.

  Enne shook her head. The omerta’s grip around her lungs squeezed tighter. There were dozens of things Vianca could’ve been referencing, and if Enne said the wrong one, she’d only make her situation worse. It didn’t matter how much she’d accomplished, how fearsome she’d become: when it came to Vianca, Enne was helpless. She was still the same schoolgirl who’d arrived in New Reynes, lost and alone, just as Vianca had described.

  “How long have you known Levi was working with my son?” she demanded.

  So of all the secrets it could’ve been, it was the worst one.

  “I...didn’t,” Enne sputtered.

  “Liar,” Vianca sneered. She pushed Enne so that her back slammed against the chair, with a surprising amount of force for an old woman. The omerta’s grip lifted, and Enne doubled over, gasping for breath.

  “At every party in the South Side, were you toasting to my downfall? Every time we met for tea, were you plotting my ruin?” Vianca slammed her fists on her desktop. “When you fucked each other, did you both laugh at my ignorance? Without me, you would be working a corner on Sweetie Street, because your finishing school education is worth nothing in this city. Without me, Levi would be dead at the hands of some better street lord, or glassy-eyed over Lullaby just like his friend. You would both be nothing!”

  Vianca reached over and finished the rest of her bourbon. Enne was absolutely frozen in her seat—from the terror or the omerta, she wasn’t sure. Her thoughts collided together like a car wreck. She needed to warn Levi. She needed to find a way to survive this.

  “I’m sorry, Madame,” Enne said quietly.

  “You’re. Not. Sorry!”

  Vianca threw her empty glass across the room, and it shattered on the portrait of the last Mizer royal family. Enne jolted at the sound and shivered down to her bones. She had seen Vianca furious, broken, and vulnerable. Now she was seeing her as all three, witnessing what she guessed very few had seen who’d also lived to tell the tale.

  “I could kill you,” Vianca swore, her voice rasping and shaking. “I could kill all of you.”

  When Enne didn’t respond, Vianca let out a devastated cry, then pressed her hand to her mouth. She was truly unraveling. “I trusted you. I never trusted them, but I trusted you. My girl. And this morning... I’ve been waiting here, expecting a phone call. A chance to rewrite my wrongs from years ago. And instead, who is it? Not Levi. It’s an attendant at the Kipling’s Hotel, informing me of the words spoken at a meeting between Levi and my son.” Her voice became shrill. “You think my son is honest? You think you can simply kill me? If I die, then so will you! To plot my destruction is to plot your own.”

  Enne’s stomach clenched in horror. No. That couldn’t be true. She didn’t want to believe it was true. If so, then Levi’s bargain had been empty from the start. Everything they’d worked and sacrificed for was meaningless.

  They would never be free.

  “No, no, that won’t be enough,” Vianca murmured to herself, as though Enne was no longer even there.

  “Madame,” Enne cut in, in the gentle voice she’d grown accustomed to using around Vianca, “I’m sorry for not—”

  “You may not speak!” Vianca shrieked, and Enne felt her jaw snap closed, so hard she bit her tongue. Her mouth filled with the taste of blood.

  Vianca leaned forward over the desk’s corner, unwittingly knocking papers and baubles aside onto the carpet. “I could slit your pale little throat, just like I did Leah Torren’s. It would be poetic, wouldn’t it? History repeating itself.”

  Enne had never stopped despising Vianca, but somewhere along the line, she’d stopped fearing her. Now that would be her downfall. Vianca was like a wounded animal, cornered and desperate, and unlike the heroine of a fairy tale, Enne had no means of escape. She was utterly at the witch’s mercy.

  This is how I die, she thought, attempting but failing to squirm out of her seat. Her wrists were tethered to her chair by invisible constraints. Her head even leaned back of its own accord, exposing her throat to Vianca. Enne’s heart beat so fiercely she felt its pulsing all over her skin.

  “I could kill you both, and Levi would still be devastated, wouldn’t he?” she mused, and Enne wondered who else Vianca was referring to. “He’d be alone. He could spend his life at my card tables. And I could find new pretty dolls and watch him try to save them. How many dolls would it take for him to break?”

  For a brief, desperate moment, Enne considered telling Vianca the truth about herself. Her true identity was the only card left up her sleeve. The Augustines were a famil
y of Mizer sympathizers, and surely, if Vianca knew, she wouldn’t kill Enne. It would buy her time.

  But then Vianca would own her. Completely. This was the only secret Enne had left.

  Before Enne could make a decision, Vianca continued. “No. I’ve been betrayed. Now I know that all this time, Levi has hated me. Anything I do would only burn his hate brighter. It won’t be enough.” Her gaze fell on Enne. “It will come from you.”

  “What?” Enne gasped.

  “You will do it.” Vianca took several steps closer to Enne so that she loomed over her. She dug her finger into Enne’s breastbone. “You will be the one to break him.”

  Dread seeped into her. “I don’t understand. We’re not... We’re not together. Not anymore.”

  Vianca laughed, high and sharp. “Leaving him—that’s all your creativity can come up with? I know there’s darkness hidden beneath that pretty face. Think. Harder.” She leaned back onto the desk and twisted her family’s ring around her finger. “Tell him what he wants to hear—anything. Repair whatever you managed to break. And then, you will do it. I don’t want the first method you think of, but the way that will hurt the most.” She purred out her last words.

  “I won’t do it,” Enne said firmly.

  “You’re just as guilty as he is. Would you like me to kill him instead? I know you don’t believe I could, but I’ve. Done. Worse,” Vianca seethed, snapping forward like something rabid. Bits of white hair slipped out of her bun, clinging to her flushed skin. She grabbed the liquor bottle and cradled it in her lap. “Apparently the most dangerous position to be in is within my affections.”

  And then the donna cried.

  Enne imagined Vianca Augustine must’ve hated to cry.

  After all, Vianca was a woman. She’d been tossed aside and ignored her entire life because of it. And she despised herself for it. Enne didn’t pretend to know her full story, or the circumstances around her family and her husband’s death, and how it must’ve felt to live the life of a mother, a wife, a crime boss, an activist, and a monster.

  But she would never disregard that last title.

  Monster.

  The world had once led Enne to believe that to cry—to be weak—was to be a woman. Vianca certainly still believed that. And maybe that was why Vianca had always surrounded herself with men, why she sought the favor of political parties ruled by men, why—until now—Levi could always fight against her and she’d still welcome him back with fondness.

  Maybe she had turned herself into a monster because the only other option was to be a woman.

  Enne swallowed down her own sob. “People betray you because you don’t love them. You own them. And you revel in it.”

  Vianca’s face twisted into something ugly, something truly monstrous. “You will stay here tonight. You won’t breathe a word of this conversation to anyone. You will pretend like nothing has happened.” Then the donna smiled so brightly it reached her eyes. “Tomorrow, you will break his heart. And then you will die.”

  J

  “A buddy of mine used to go around Olde Town robbing graves. Not a close buddy. Just someone I knew, all right? But he told me this story. He opened up a coffin—it belonged to a woman, died only a few months before. He wanted to steal jewelry. But he found two bodies inside.

  “That’s not even the spooky part. The spooky part is that both of the women had the same face. Same exact face.

  “And the woman whose grave it was?

  She didn’t have a twin sister.”

  —A legend of the North Side

  LEVI

  The Irons filled every seat in the Catacombs, dressed in the swankiest clothes they’d managed to steal. Politicians, celebrities, lobbyists, and paparazzi would fill the streets outside St. Morse tonight, and in order to crash a white-tie affair, the Irons would need to blend into the crowds. However, there was something definitively not South Sider about their outfits: heels measured an inch too high, hair combed a bit too slick, and pockets and purses bulged with the unmistakable shapes of guns.

  Beside him, Jac fiddled with an unlit cigarette. “Have you heard from her yet?”

  Fear blossomed in Levi’s stomach. “No.”

  Last night, Lola had called to tell him that Enne hadn’t returned to the finishing school before curfew. Levi had struggled to focus on his plan while he spent hours with his ear to the radio, anxious for news about whether she’d somehow been apprehended. She’d probably found somewhere to wait out the night, or so Tock had tried to assure him. But morning had arrived and, still, there’d been no call.

  “I’m sure there’s a good reason,” Jac said nervously. He reached for his Creed, his classic tell.

  “Liar,” Levi snapped. Even after what Enne had done, he still cared. Probably too much.

  Tock approached their booth wearing a glittering silver dress. She’d been speaking with Narinder upstairs, who—unsurprisingly, given his hatred of gangsters—had refused to join them.

  “Looking sharp, boys,” Tock said, even though Levi was fairly certain he looked like muck. “All of the Irons are here,” she added, her eyes falling on Jac. “Even the prodigal second.”

  Jac examined the clusters of Irons sitting around the club. “I haven’t seen the Irons looking this good in a long time.”

  Levi might’ve felt nauseous with nerves, but he still gave his friend an appreciative smile. Only four months ago, the Irons had been half-starved, squatting across abandoned places in Olde Town, scrounging for volts while Levi fed their earnings into Vianca’s investment scheme. He wasn’t sure any amount of amends would make up for what he did to Chez Phillips and the rest of his gang, but it felt good to know that, no matter what happened today, he’d done this much right.

  The front doors to the Catacombs opened, and several new faces filtered inside. Levi recognized a few of them as Spirits. He sighed with relief...until he noticed that Enne wasn’t among them.

  Lola broke away from the group and hurried over. She wore a full tux, red lipstick, and a nervous knot between her brows. “I thought Enne would be with you,” she hissed.

  “We thought she’d be with you.” Levi stood up, his heart racing. “We need to look for her.”

  “Where?” Lola snapped. “She could be anywhere.” Her voice cracked, and Levi couldn’t tell if she was scolding him or volunteering to join him.

  Tock pushed herself between them and squeezed both their shoulders. “Listen. She already knows her role today at St. Morse. She’s deadlier than you—” she looked at Lola “—and smarter than you.” She looked at Levi. “We should trust her.”

  Levi had always thought Reymond was invincible. He wasn’t about to make that mistake again with another person he cared about. “The party doesn’t start for another hour.” St. Morse was thirty minutes uptown, but that still gave him time to do something. Anything.

  Jac cleared his throat. “Tock, are you still prepared for what you need to do today?”

  “I’m always prepared to blow things up,” Tock answered smoothly.

  Several eyes around the room watched them, and Levi took a reluctant seat. Tock was right. He needed to trust in Enne—she already knew her part in the plan, and if the worst had happened, then Grace or Lola would step in.

  He’d planned for everything, even destruction.

  Within the next ten minutes, Jonas, Ivory, Bryce, and Harvey arrived, as well. Jonas brought all the Scarhands, who each looked as though they’d purchased their clothes second-and thirdhand from Scrap Market. It wasn’t until all the Scarhands were gathered in one room that Levi realized how large his gang was, maybe twice the size as when Reymond had been alive.

  Then his eyes fell on one of the Scarhands, on a face he recognized but hadn’t seen in months. Mansi. His heart gave a painful clench. Why am I surprised? he asked himself. Mansi had left him, and her oath had broken. Even if she’d given it to someone he despised, it was nothing that Levi didn’t deserve. He hoped, at least, that she saw something differe
nt when she looked at the Irons now. Something better.

  The Doves, though not as few in number as the Spirits, were still smaller than Levi expected. He counted fourteen of them, including Ivory and Scythe. Each wore a haunted look in their eyes and had hair bleached white.

  The Orphan Guild was the scrappiest lot. Their formal attire was ragged and old-fashioned, as though they’d been dug up out of graves. Bryce, with dark circles under his bloodshot eyes and wearing a dress shirt several sizes too large, looked the most ragged of them all.

  “I brought what you asked for,” Jonas told Levi. He reached into his pocket and produced a large pack of counterfeit silver Shadow Cards. He flipped several over to reveal that each face was the Fool.

  This was the brilliance of Levi’s plan: he would leverage an old legend to write a new one. Every Sinner who held that card knew it meant a death sentence, and tonight, every partygoer in St. Morse would receive one.

  “You think an ultimatum will end this street war,” Ivory sneered, “but you’re wrong.”

  Lola, Tock, and Jac gaped at Ivory as though they’d never seen her before, and Levi remembered, of course, that only the lords had seen her face.

  The entire club fell silent. They were in the presence of a legend.

  Without warning, she drew her ivory knife and pressed it against Harvey’s throat.

  Everyone around her froze, but no one made a move to stop her. Harvey looked around and paled.

  “Anything I asked you right now, Harvey—would you do it?” She spoke her words against his ear, then ran a hand through his head of curls. There was something strangely possessive about her touch. Ivory was old enough to be Harvey’s mother.

  “Obviously,” Harvey said darkly.

  “And, Bryce, what about you? Would you do anything right now?” If possible, Harvey stiffened more.

  “Obviously,” Bryce echoed, glaring at her.

  “If you did what I asked, and then I backed down,” Ivory told Harvey, “you’d come for me the second my back was turned.” Her gaze met Levi’s. “You’ll give the wigheads the Shadow Cards. You’ll fill them with fear. You’ll make them swear to end the war. But whatever promises they make in this position are worthless. And worse, it’ll only show them that we’re desperate.” She pressed the knife harder against Harvey and spoke into his ear. “Killing you is a better promise. The only promise you cannot break.”