Page 125 of Queen of Volts

Then Harrison did something she’d never seen him do. He lifted up his eye patch and rubbed both his eyes. The way nervous people did, she knew. But she couldn’t help but stare at the rippled scars across his skin, at the hollow bulge where his eye had once been. It looked like a knife had dragged through his face from forehead to cheek, had cleaved his eye out like prying a nail out of drywall.

“How did you lose your eye?” Sophia knew it wasn’t the sort of thing anyone was supposed to ask, but she did anyway.

“Veil sent it to my mother in a jewelry box,” he told her, then hastily flipped his patch back down.

Sophia’s stomach recoiled. How heinous.

“It would’ve been cleaner, but I fought back,” Harrison continued, tapping at the end point of his scar, the part visible below the patch. “My mother and Garth Torren negotiated for our releases not long after that. My mother always prized our green eyes. Reminded her of royalty, how we all shared it, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with our talent. Just runs in the...”

He cut off suddenly, as though he’d said something he shouldn’t have, when all they were doing was talking to pass the time. To distract themselves from the fact that the Bargainer would arrive here any moment, probably looking for blood.

“You don’t have to talk about her,” Sophia murmured. “I know you have mommy issues.”

He grimaced. “That’s one way to put it.”

The silence was awkward, so Sophia pulled a taffy out of her pocket and popped it in her mouth.

“You’re going to rot your teeth, you know,” he told her.

“I can’t fidget, apparently, so I need something to do,” Sophia growled. “Last time I saw the Bargainer, I sold her half of my identity, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Which meant, if Levi’s plan succeeded, if they really did manage to kill her, Sophia could get her memories back. Her split talent back.Tonight.The very thought of it made her dizzy, that the path she’d set herself on actually had a finish line.

“Can you really not guess what it will be?” Harrison asked. “You don’t remember anything that—”

“My dad told me my mom basically dumped me on him when I was a baby.” Sophia shrugged. “It suited his track record. Delia, Charles, and I were all half-siblings.”

“But that’s just what you remember. And what you remember could’ve been altered by the Bargainer.”

“I know that,” Sophia snapped. She didn’t need him to remind her that her memories were not to be trusted, that she was a girl half-pasted together, a scrapbook of candy wrappers and casino ashes and the fears her older brother gave her.

Harrison, once again, checked his pocket watch.

“Is my emotional trauma distracting you?” she asked, frowning.

“I’m just checking the time.”

“Guessing your time of death?” she joked, then shook her head. “Sorry. That was morbid. I’m trying not to be morbid.”

“It’s just late, is all,” he said gruffly.

Sophia snorted. She’d spent the past several years managing gambling dens. If the sun hadn’t risen yet, it was early.

“You have somewhere else to be?” she asked. “Your date didn’t show?”

Harrison’s lips formed a thin line. She must’ve hit some sort of nerve because he changed the subject. “I don’t see the point of waiting up here. The Bargainer isn’t going to climb through an upstairs window.”

“Levi thought it was better if we were separate,” she reminded him.

“You know that girl with the short hair? She blew up Revolution Bridge. We’re all in this same casino—not that separate.”

“You think Tock is going to blow up the building?”

“I’m just saying—we don’t know what talents the Bargainer has, or what she could be capable of. If it’s safer to split up, maybe we should’veactuallysplit up.”

The Bargainer wouldn’t risk that if there was a chance Lola could still be in the building, but Harrison’s words still wormed themselves into Sophia’s fragile composure. “If you’re going to say things that make me nervous, I should at least get to fidget.”

Unable to restrain herself any longer, Sophia tossed her pair of dice on the hideous black-and-white carpet. A four and a five.