Page 129 of Queen of Volts

“You...” Harrison breathed heavily. “You could have...shot any of the guests. By mistake.”

“Ah, but I don’t make mistakes,” Hector told him.

Harrison’s one eye widened. As far as Enne knew, Harrison and Hector had always been on good terms. It was how Harrison had been able to arrange opportunities for Levi in the past, like when Tock destroyed Revolution Bridge. If Hector had betrayed Harrison, then he must’ve been answering to someone higher, which could only have been the Chancellor.

After all, Harrison was her target.

Harrison must’ve thought the same thing because he reached into his jacket.

“Keep your hands—” Hector started, moving his gun from Roy to Harrison.

“I’m just getting it. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it?” Harrison asked. He pulled two cards from his jacket. One slipped to the floor, and though Enne couldn’t see what it was, she assumed it was Zula’s. He held his card—the Lovers—between two trembling, blood-slick fingers. “Let Fenice—”

But Hector cut him off, gesturing to his men. “Evacuate everyone other than the targets.” He never took his gun off Harrison, and Enne wondered if shooting him had not been enough. If the city’s corruption was so terminal that he would murder the politician right here, in front of everyone.

As the whiteboots filed into the cardroom, Enne turned behind her, searching for Levi. But he was hidden among the crowds, and she couldn’t bring herself to slip away to find him. She was paralyzed, her back glued to this pillar.

To her left, Hector stepped toward Harrison.

Roy lurched forward. “You can’t do this, sir.”

Hector turned his head at being called “sir.” He squinted at Roy. “Pritchard? You’re still alive?” He sounded more surprised than irritated, as though Roy had only ever amounted to a secondary thought.

“Yes, I’m still alive,” Roy growled. “Despite you trying to have me killed for doing my job.”

Grace cursed and backed closer to him, her gun still pointed at Hector. Enne should help her, she knew. If Levi could outwit a fight, then she could outmatch it. But she couldn’t hold a gun anymore, couldn’t even look at one without flinching. All she’d brought was the knife in her purse.

Hector scrutinized Roy. “If you and the girl don’t lower your weapons this moment, the team will shoot you both.”

Hector’s disinterest clearly wasn’t what Roy wanted from his old boss. His face contorted with righteous rage, but—per Grace’s swift elbow in his side—they both did as instructed. Then Grace kicked their weapons across the floor. At the foot of the stairs, Narinder and Harvey did the same.

Gathering her courage, Enne took the knife out of her pocket and held it against her chest. It felt as though her very heart beat against its metal. Ever since the Shadow Game, Harrison had been the person keeping the noose from their necks. She needed to do something, but if she revealed herself, even with her attempted makeover, Hector might figure out who she was.

Before she could concoct a plan of action, she smelled burning, and she noticed a haze beginning to thicken the air. She gasped when she looked into the cardroom and saw smoke gathering at its ceiling, black and noxious.

“Fire!”one of the guest shouted. The remaining patrons, who’d confined themselves to the cardroom, sprinted into the lobby toward the set of double doors behind the whiteboots.

Once again, Enne was swallowed up amid the masses—and this time thankful for it. With Hector and his men distracted, she dodged through the rush toward the hallway behind the grand staircase. No sooner did she get there than she spotted Delaney and Tock, urging her behind an open door.

“Did you start the fire?” Enne breathed as they yanked her into the supply closet.

Tock shook her head. “No—it wasn’t me.”

It was Levi, Enne realized, feeling a pang of anguish for him, setting fire to his own casino before it even finished its first night of business. She quickly shook the thought away. Better to grieve their dreams than grieve each other.

“We need to get out of here,” Enne said.

“What about the Bargainer?” Delaney asked.

“She hasn’t shown.”

Down the hallway, Narinder and Harvey staggered toward them, seeming to also have escaped in the rush, and Enne had no doubts that Grace and Roy had managed the same. That meant that Sophia and Harrison remained in the lobby, and only Levi was unaccounted for. Enne knew it was for the best that Levi hadn’t jumped into the already tenuous standoff, but she didn’t like being separated.

“What happened out there?” Tock asked. “We heard some shots. Hector is—”

“Hector shot Harrison,” Enne explained quickly. “And we need to move. We can’t just stay here. The whiteboots will be—”

“Harrison was shot?” Delaney rasped, her eyes widening. “Then I have to go after him.”