Page 2 of Queen of Volts

And now the Devil had returned home.

Even though Harvey was an accomplice in Bryce’s plans, the thought of all that had transpired—and all that was still left to unfold—filled him with dread. He tried to focus on the shovel and the dirt and the grave, on thisone good thing, but his sins weighed heavy on his soul.

“Harvey,” Bryce snapped again. He never tolerated being ignored.

Harvey sighed. “How can you be certain the Bargainerisin New Reynes now?”

“I told you. I can feel it.”

At that moment, the rain began to fall harder, shifting from a drizzle into a downpour. Harvey’s brown corkscrew curls stuck against his fair skin, and he wiped the water from his eyes.

“Why haven’t they come to me yet?” Bryce rasped, his hands trembling while he clutched his umbrella. “I’m the one who summoned them. I deserve my bargain.”

“The legends never mentioned whether the Bargainer was prompt,” Harvey pointed out. He dumped another pile of mud into the hole.

Bryce’s lips formed a thin line. He trudged over to the grave. The body was now entirely covered with earth, but the plot was only half-filled. “That’s good enough. We should go back.”

“You can go. I’ll finish,” Harvey told him.

Bryce nodded and fiddled with his card anxiously. It was moments like these, when he looked so young and vulnerable, that made Harvey weak. Because even if Bryce Balfour had lost his soul, Harvey still kindled a hope that it could be found. Thathecould be the one to find it.

“Never mind,” Harvey murmured. “I’ll go with you.”

Harvey heaved his shovel over his shoulder, said a final prayer for Jac Mardlin and his unfinished, unmarked grave, and followed his friend home.

II

THE MAGICIAN

“Call the Faith’s superstitions fear-mongering,

if that’s what you like. But don’t pretend they aren’t true.”

Shade. “Liberty, Equality, and Faith.”

The Treasonist’s Tribunal

26 Feb YOR 8

LOLA

Lola Sanguick strode down the Street of the Holy Tombs carrying a leather briefcase crammed full of newspapers. Dark circles sagged beneath her eyes, a souvenir from sleepless nights spent with her ear tethered to the radio. For the past week, everyone in her life had boarded themselves indoors. They’d chattered and drank and mourned and cried, but no one—no one—had stopped their noise to pay attention to the omens really gathering in the City of Sin.

Sometimes Lola felt she was the only one who did.

The Street of the Holy Tombs was the unsettling heart of Olde Town, a historic North Side neighborhood of spindly streets and church towers casting it in perpetual skin-creeping shadow. The superstitions of New Reynes thrived here: the haunted tinkling of Faith bells, the wrought iron gates and gothic spires reaching teeth-like toward the sky. As though this street was designed to coerce a frightened prayer from even the lips of nonbelievers.

A tinny bell chimed as Lola shook away her goosebumps and opened the door to an office.

Despite the welcome mat by the door, the place must not have received many visitors. Dust clung to every surface, and the air smelled stale, all of the windows boarded, curtains drawn. Lola would’ve thought it abandoned, if not for the woman hunched over her work.

The woman was fair and middle-aged, with a waist-length braid of brown hair and a massive wooden Creed dangling from her neck—a Faith symbol that resembled aTwith a circle at its base. When she blinked, Lola noticed black tattoos of eyes inked on the back of her eyelids, as though, even with her eyes closed, she could always see.

Lola had never met the woman before, and a shiver crept up her spine at the woman’s cold, fixed stare.

“Why are you here?” the woman asked, by way of a greeting.

Because no one else will listen, Lola thought bitterly.