Page 35 of Queen of Volts

“What? Acknowledge that you abandoned me? That I missed—”

“Making it seem like I did something wrong, but I didn’t. Inever have. You always treated me like I was weak, and it made me weak. But I’m strong now, and—”

“Imade you weak? I was your fourteen-year-old sister.” Lola wanted to grab the bedposts and shake them. She couldn’t believe that after all this time, Justin still talked like this. Like the entire world was out to get him, and all his problems were his younger sister’s fault.

“The Doves were the only ones who realized how strong I was—”

“Justin, you are handcuffed to a bed with a lavender duvet. You look like a half-exterminated human termite. You...” Lola ran out of words, suddenly overwhelmed. Her terrible, ungrateful brother was alive. Her closest friend had nearly spilled her brains into a puddle of sewer. Her right ear wasgone, which meant she was hurt in a permanent way, in a way that hadn’t even begun to sink in yet.

Enne hovered in the doorway, glaring at Justin. The blood on her clothes looked all the more gruesome in the crimson glare of the setting sun through the window.

“You lied to us,” Enne hissed at him. “You set us up.”

Justin licked his lips and smiled. “How many died? I’d like to know.”

Lola cringed hearing her brother say that, like somehow his words reflected on her. And, like she’d done countless times in the past, she was going to apologize for him.

Until Enne took out her revolver and trained it on her brother’s head.

ENNE

“What are youdoing?” Lola asked, her mouth gaped in horror.

Enne clenched her teeth as she switched off the safety. They might’ve fled the Mole station, but her mind had not left, not really. She still felt the blade of the scythe licking her cheek, still trembled from the panic of realizing she’d fired at Lola, of watching all those Scarhands die right in front of her.

“He tricked us,” Enne told Lola, her voice quivering.

Lola lunged between Enne and the Dove, and the sudden movement made Enne’s heart lurch. Made the gunmetal feel hot enough to burn. “You can’t kill him. He’s not—he’s not well.”

Voices rose from downstairs—shouts, amplified by the corridor’s lofted ceiling and linoleum floors. Grace and Roy must’ve explained what had happened to the Scarhands. That their friends weren’t coming back.

“You told us Ivory was dead!” someone accused.

“How come it’s only the Spirits who were left alive?” demanded someone else.

“Do you hear that?” Enne choked at Lola. “There’s over a hundred of them and nine of us. If someone doesn’t pay for this, there will be mutiny.” And an insidious voice inside her warned that it would be her. She was the Mizer.

“We can escape,” Lola said quickly. “We’ll go to Tock and Levi. The Irons will—”

“How are we going to escape?” Enne asked hotly.

Lola opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. No matter how clever Lola thought she was, she didn’t have an answer.

Footsteps clamored up the stairs. The Scarhands were coming for this room, coming for her.

“Give me a way out,” Enne demanded, tears welling in her eyes.

Lola’s eyes widened, and she looked nothing like the blood gazer Enne had first met in June, with a collection of knives and tangled, killer-bleached hair. She looked frazzled. She grabbed at Enne’s shoulders and dug bitten-down fingernails into Enne’s skin. Behind her, the Dove watched them with a proud, twisted smile.

“He’s my brother,” Lola begged.

“Am not,” the Dove shot back, making Lola wince. He smiled wider at Enne as her hand shook. “Kill me—I was expecting this. You’re Séance. You’re a Mizer. I knew you would.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying,” Lola snapped at him.

Several Scarhands appeared in the doorway. Enne looked for Mansi, but she didn’t recognize any of these gangsters, with hair that looked cut by a switchblade. One even had profanity tattooed over his lips.

“We’re looking for some answers, missy,” one of them sneered. If he’d called her that to purposefully make her feel small, it was working.