Page 46 of Queen of Volts

She froze, her eyes narrowed. “If you’ve come to kill me,” she seethed, “why not just shoot me, then?”

“It’s supposed to look like an accident.”

The smoke burned in the back of Harvey’s throat. The room was stiflingly hot, and fear raged in him worse than the flames. He could leave at any moment, if he wanted to. But he had decided. He would do this.

Zula took an uneasy step closer to him.

“Stop,” Harvey repeated, sharper this time.

Rather than reach for him, Zula closed her eyes. There were black tattoos inked on her eyelids, another matching pair of eyes. “I can see the shade on you—the game. But it clings to you more than it does to me.”

Goosebumps broke out across Harvey’s skin. All of Bryce’s sins clung to Harvey, as though he owned them, too.

“You will never get what you seek,” Zula told him ominously. “And you will never escape it, either.”

Harvey didn’t—couldn’t—respond. His eyes watered from her words as much as the smoke. She was wrong. Therewasa way to escape it.

He clutched the Creed around his neck. “I’m sorry.”

Zula let out a sharp laugh. “How can you be? You don’t know me. I make sure that no one does.” She turned away. “I’m going to my bed. I’d rather die there.”

And she left Harvey standing in the office alone.

He positioned himself deep into the room, far from the flames that had begun to climb up the walls. He didn’t want to burn—he only wanted to pass out from the smoke. It would be an uncomfortable but painless way to die. The pistol would be quicker, he knew, but Harvey had just buried a gunshot victim. It felt wrong to die like that, too.

He sank to the carpet and hugged his knees to his chest, taking deep gulps even as they burned their way down his throat. Each breath, no matter how unpleasant, lifted a weight off his shoulders. He was no longer complicit. He was free. He was gone.

The thought of dying distracted him from the thought of murder. Soon, he forgot Zula was upstairs at all. All he dwelled on was his own end, and for the next five minutes, as the blackness in the air began to seep into his mind, he tried not to think about Bryce at all.

He still did.

But it was all right, Harvey told himself. He would never have found a way to fix it.

He couldn’t help but think of him, but Harvey wasn’t helpless.

Not anymore.

He woke on his back, his shirt ridden up, cold cobblestones digging into his spine and bare skin. He coughed weakly, each quake sending a jolt of pain through him. Soot covered his fingers, and his vision still seemed stained with it.

Someone—a man, Harvey thought—kneeled beside him, long, dark hair damp with sweat. A bright, golden light glowed behind him, like the painting of a martyr, and it took Harvey a few delirious, dreadful moments to realize that the glow wasn’t the sunset; it was theHer Forgotten Historiesoffice burning to the ground.

Without him.

“What?” he rasped. “How—” He tried to sit up, but the man’s hands pushed him down.

“Just breathe. You nearly died. When I found you, you—”

“Yousavedme?” Harvey asked, his voice hoarse and furious. He rubbed at his eyes until he made out the young man above him. He looked about his own age. He wore an oversize black shirt that hung on his tall, slender frame, exposing the dark brown skin of his shoulder and chest. He was extremely attractive, and for a moment, Harvey wondered if he was, in fact, dying and suffering from some sort of fever dream.

The handsome young man sat back and brushed aside his hair, revealing a tattoo of a pair of dice beneath his jaw. He sighed. “I saw the smoke from the Catacombs—I-I work there. And I...I can’t believe I ran in there. I didn’t even think. I didn’t...” He paused and looked to Harvey. “Are you...are you all right?”

Harvey wanted to answerNo, I’m supposed to be dead, but his thoughts gave him nothing but shame. He should be grateful, but he was not. He should be relieved, but he was not. The moment he had tried to regain control in his life, it had been stolen from him.

Thankfully, Harvey was saved from answering honestly, as the words that came out of his mouth were not his own. “The card,” the omerta said for him. “What happened to the card?”

While Handsome gaped, Harvey shakily got to his feet and stepped toward the flames. Other residents of the Street of the Holy Tombs had gathered to gawk and gossip, coats or robes wrapped tightly around themselves in the evening chill. Harvey made for the door.

“Wait!” Handsome called after him, scrambling to his feet.