King Of Fools. Amanda Foody
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The honest and the crooked, the naïve and the wicked had all found their ways home to sleep off whiskey hangovers and mourn empty purses, leaving backwash-filled bottles and half-smoked cigars clustered in the gutters. Despite the lack of patrons, the street’s neon signs continued to flash, the ragtime music continued to hum, and the shows continued to play. No matter who you were, what you’d done, or how little you had, Tropps Street was open for your business.
It was remarkably hot in New Reynes today, even for the mid-June afternoon. Levi’s bodyguard wiped the sweat collecting from his brow and aired out his reeking shirt.
Levi didn’t know or trust this man. But anyone who worked for Vianca Augustine—the owner of St. Morse Casino and the donna of the notorious Augustine crime Family—knew better than to cross her. Regardless of the three-thousand-volt bounty on Levi’s head, this man would follow Vianca’s orders and protect him. Greed always answered to fear.
Again, Levi checked his watch. He’d pace if he weren’t so exhausted and achy from his collection of injuries: two broken ribs, a black eye, several bruises, and a bandaged knife wound. The City of Sin hadn’t been merciful to him these past few days.
After he and Enne had escaped from the Shadow Game and returned to St. Morse, he’d managed a mere five hours of shut-eye before the bodyguard had knocked on Enne’s apartment door and informed Levi that his ride to Zula Slyk’s safe house would soon arrive. Zula owned an illegal monarchist newspaper in Olde Town and, several days prior, had been the one to coldly inform Enne that her mother was dead. If Levi had a choice, he’d never see that heartless woman again. But thanks to Vianca’s unbreakable omerta, Levi never had a choice. Zula’s was safe. What mattered right now was moving from here to there without meeting trouble along the way.
But Zula Slyk was the least of his problems.
For the past two years, Levi had been running an investment scam, which was how he’d earned the enemies who’d invited him to the Shadow Game. Once the scam started to crumble, all he’d wanted was to clean it up so he could focus on his gang, the Irons.
He still wanted that. To build his empire, just as he’d always dreamed.
But Levi was in a predicament. The lords of the other two gangs were wanted criminals as well, but Ivory and Scavenger could count on the loyalty and protection of their associates for their safety, whereas half the Irons would probably sell Levi out simply to watch him hang. If Levi was spending all his time trapped under Zula’s watch, he’d have no shot at rebuilding his gang. He’d broken out of one cage only to stumble into another.
He tore the wanted poster from the dumpster and crumpled it in his fist.
Maybe he was meant for nothing.
A swanky Amberlite motorcar appeared at the mouth of the alley, painted black and matte as if coated in gunpowder. Levi ducked closer to his bodyguard. Vianca had scheduled his ride, and Vianca didn’t do inconspicuous. The car had no metallic fixtures or studded bumpers to be seen. It could be a trap.
Once the car eased deeper into the alley, the driver’s window rolled down and a gloved hand beckoned Levi inside. Beside him, the bodyguard nodded for Levi to depart. Apparently this was his scheduled ride after all.
Wanted men don’t do flashy, Levi reminded himself oh, so tragically.
He groaned in pain as he slid onto the plush leather of the back seat and shut the door. The motorcar lurched forward, leaving the St. Morse escort behind.
Inside was utter darkness.
As his eyes adjusted, he took in a shape in the seat across from him and realized, breath catching, that his private getaway wasn’t so private.
He snapped the fingers of one hand, sparking a faint flame that offered a pinch of light—one of the few useful tricks his orb-making blood talent provided him.
His other hand instinctively felt for his pistol.
The man looked nearly forty. A patch concealed his left eye, but there was no hiding the ugly pink scar that snaked across his brow into his receding copper hairline. His skin was fair, his gray trench coat designed by Ulani Maxirello, and his teeth whiter than a tooth-polish advertisement.
“It was time we met,” the man said, as if assuming Levi already knew his identity.
Levi never forgot a face, and although he’d never seen this man before, there was something familiar about him. Perhaps in the reptilian green of his remaining eye. In the sharp slant of his nose, the narrow shape of his jawline. Even if his individual features were neither unattractive nor unsettling, collectively and without explanation, his appearance made Levi’s skin crawl.
Maybe this wasn’t his scheduled ride after all.
“Let’s not have any trouble,” Levi warned, clicking the safety off his gun loud enough for his companion to hear.
Rather than reacting to Levi’s threat, the man tossed him that day’s copy of The Crimes & The Times. Levi’s heart skipped several beats as he examined the matching wanted posters on the front page: him and Séance, whom he knew better as Enne Salta. She’d arrived in New Reynes only ten days ago, but since then, she’d managed to earn a more noteworthy reputation than Levi had in five years. In the portrait, Enne had on the same silk mask she’d worn during the Shadow Game, obscuring all but her black lips.
Her bounty is five hundred volts more than mine, he noted sourly.
Still, they made quite a handsome duo on the front page. Looking at them, that same feeling of inevitability stirred inside him. For a moment, he let himself fantasize about destiny, about how his and Enne’s were intertwined, about how badly he wished to intertwine them further. He knew he shouldn’t—couldn’t. Falling for Enne held its own dangers.
Levi eased his grip on the gun. If this man was an assailant, he wouldn’t be updating Levi on today’s current events. Still, Levi didn’t let go of the weapon. Not yet.
“We’ve never met, Pup, but I know your reputation,” the man started. Levi quietly seethed. He hated that nickname. It came from his split talent—his weaker talent—for sensing auras, but he hardly smelled auras like a dog, like everyone assumed. The nickname was just another way to belittle him. The North Side had always viewed him as a kid playing gangster. “I didn’t think you’d be the quiet type.”
“I’m still guessing at your name.” Still guessing at why a stranger had hijacked Levi’s getaway, if not to collect the reward.
“How quickly the city’s forgotten.” The man pouted, a rather strange look for someone his age. He didn’t seem to wear his years comfortably. “But I should think you, of all people, would see the family resemblance. Why do you think it was so easy for me to intercept your car?” He inspected Levi. “I’m told you’re my mother’s favorite.”
Harrison Augustine. Vianca’s estranged only child and the Augustine Family prince. It was easy now to spot the resemblance. They carried the same serious, noble features, the same paleness that revealed the green of their veins snaking across their foreheads and necks. He even spoke like his mother, purring names as if he owned them.
If he was anything like Vianca, then he couldn’t be trusted.
“I know who you are now,” Levi said. “But I still don’t know why you’re here.”
Harrison tapped the newspaper’s front page. “You and this Séance character, escaping the impossible Shadow Game and killing both the Chancellor and Sedric Torren in a single night. You’re the talk of the town. As soon as I heard what happened, I knew I had to meet you.”
Levi stared at the man and reflected on his words. Even without his inheritance or his mother’s empire, Harrison was powerful. The Augustine and Torren crime Families were notorious in New Reynes, and Harrison, in his eighteen years of absence, had graduated from prince to mystery. No one knew why he’d left or what he’d been doing since.
Yet here he sat, claiming he needed