Page 171 of Queen of Volts

“Try not to call me during a meeting again. We’re making history here.” Harrison hung up.

Levi lowered the phone, feeling only a tiny bit sorry for himself. It would’ve been nice to travel with Enne, to places where their legends didn’t follow. But he would stay here. One day, he would die here. And despite years of working toward the same dream, he wouldn’t die a king.

That wasn’t his story, after all.

HARVEY

Harvey woke in the golden light of a stained glass window.

He’d hoped to sleep longer—after sunset, at least. But nevertheless, he got up, got dressed, and went to work.

He started with the dishes. Bar glasses and grease-coated fryers had been abandoned in the sink, piling up in the extra day the Catacombs had temporarily closed so that Narinder could finally get some sleep. Harvey washed them and wiped down the counters until the kitchen was immaculate.

He moved to the bar next, replacing the crates of glasses with fresh ones, digging the soggy napkins out from the drain on the tiled floor. It was hard work, gross work, buthonestwork. And it kept his mind quiet, so he didn’t have to think about Bryce Balfour, his closest friend in the world, locked in a jail cell and awaiting judgment. Just because he, Enne, and Levi had spared him didn’t mean the rest of the world would. But Harvey couldn’t let himself remain responsible for Bryce’s crimes.

He worked harder. He scrubbed and polished and washed until these thoughts dissipated. He picked at sauce stains on chair cushions and gum beneath the tables, as if he could clean his mind and soul the way he could clean this church.

But the thoughts never truly disappeared. Not entirely.

With no chores remaining, he grabbed his coat and left.

As evening fell, the Street of the Holy Tombs locked up for the night. The fortune-tellers, the trinket sellers—all shops Harvey recognized from his childhood—closed their doors to the tune of rattling wind chimes. The reverent quiet pleased him. Harvey would always have a complicated relationship with his faith, but it’d given him strength when he’d needed it, and that was at least one thing Harvey could look back on with more than just regret.

Regret, but not shame. He wasn’t complicit anymore.

Tropps Street, meanwhile, was coming alive, its neon signs flickering on, its performers taking to the sidewalks. An already drunken crowd wandered through a block of food stalls, and Harvey joined them.

“I don’t normally see you here at this hour,” Amara told him. “Where’s Narinder? Didn’t he come here with you?”

“I’m actually grabbing food for the both of us,” he answered.

Amara narrowed her eyes. “Tell him I’ll retire if he doesn’t visit more. That’ll teach him to start coming here and keeping me company.”

“I’ll let him know,” Harvey said, amused. A long line waited at Amara’s stall—Narinder was clearly not the only one keeping her in business.

Several minutes later, she presented him with two boxes of her noodles and seafood. She wouldn’t take his volts, but Harvey discreetly fed them to her meter, anyway.

By the time he returned to the Catacombs, it was sundown, and pleasant music wafted through the macabre hall. He found Narinder sitting at the edge of the stage, a sitar poised below his arm. He stopped playing the moment Harvey walked through the door.

“Why did you clean this whole place?” Narinder asked him. His voice was slurred as if still half-asleep. “You think that was going to be my first thought this morning when I came down here? ‘Oh, there goes Harvey, slacking off again?’”

Harvey walked toward him and cocked an eyebrow. “Have I slacked off before?”

“My point is that you didn’t have to do all this.”

He shrugged. “I wanted to clear my head.”

“I should hire more live-in employees like you. Sad, tortured gangsters who find it therapeutic to wash my dishes.” Narinder eyed the boxes in Harvey’s hands. “And bring me food.”

Harvey handed him his meal and sat beside him on the stage. “About living here... I was actually thinking I could find my own place. Stop infringing on your hospitality.”

Narinder stiffened. “Youcanstay here, you know.”

“I know,” Harvey answered, “but I’ve never had a place of my own. Next time I have nowhere else to go, I want to have—”

“Next time?” he shot back.

“Imean, I’m tired of being a guest.”