Page 47 of Queen of Volts

But Harvey was running. Smoke seeped out of the door, and the heat felt like a curtain, like being submerged.

“Is someone else inside?” Handsome asked worriedly.

“No,” the omerta lied, as Harvey bent down to pick up the gold card, undisturbed on the porch. He numbly stepped back down the steps, joining the young man on the street.

Handsome’s brown eyes widened as he stared at the card. “What is that?” he asked.

Harvey shook his head. “Thanks for...for saving me.” Even if he didn’t mean it. “But I—”

“I have one, too,” Handsome said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out another card, Judgment.

Not only did his savior have a card, but he was Harvey’s own target.

LOLA

The dread came as soon as she smelled the smoke.

Lola raced down the Street of the Holy Tombs, her heart pounding painfully, like the broken thing was killing her rather than keeping her alive.

Several fire engines clogged the street. Residents lingered, shivering and whispering to each other while wearing mismatched bathrobes and winter boots. Though the flames had died down to smoldering cinders, this block still looked brighter than those around it. The collapse of the ruined buildinghad cleaved a gaping hole in Olde Town’s towers and spires, offering an unusual glimpse into the sunset sky. Lola squinted into the smoggy light, panic eating her from inside out.

“Excuse me?” Lola asked someone standing nearby. “What happened here? The woman who lived there, is she all right?”

The person’s face softened in pity. “She died, poor thing. Never left that place, did she?”

Lola’s mouth hung agape as she treaded toward the rubble, making her tongue taste coated in smoke. Ash billowed in the wind at her shoes.

It wasn’t fair. She’d done what Zula had asked. She’d learned Lourdes Alfero’s true name. But it was too late, and now there was so much Lola would never learn. Secrets that she knew, deep within herself, were terribly important.

“Muck,” Lola muttered to herself, tears spilling from her eyes. She was losing everyone in her life in the span of days. First Jac. Then Enne, the moment she’d pulled the gun on her brother, who barely seemed like her brother anymore.

A voice inside of her told her it was her fault.

You misjudged them, it said.Just like you misjudged your brothers.

She recalled the cruel, feral look on Justin’s face when he claimed not even to know her.

Tock will go next, and you still won’t see it coming.

Lola trembled as she turned around, wiping her tears away on her coat sleeve. She jolted to find she was facing a girl.

“A blood gazer,” the girl said, cocking her head to the side. She was strange looking, her features sunken and thin, as though age had touched her bones but not her skin. Her light brown hair was bobbed and tucked beneath a wool hat, and her wide-set eyes shone a dull crimson. “Is there something you want? Someone you miss?”

Lola looked down to the cobblestones where they stood—a crossroads.

The Bargainer.

Lola staggered back and dropped her briefcase. It snapped open, and her and Jonas’s collections of papers fluttered loosely in the ashy wind. The photograph of a younger Lourdes Alfero stared up at them, then known as Clarissa Reid. Clarissa Semper Reid.

The Bargainer bent down to pick them up, and Lola shuddered at the image of the greatest legend of New Reynes kneeling at her feet.

The Bargainer handed her the papers, and Lola accepted them numbly. “There must be something you want,” she spoke again, her tone soothing.

Lola glanced back at the rubble of the building behind her, feeling a terrible sense of loss. She still heard the menacing click of Enne’s gun against her brother’s temple, the nasal sound of his voice as he goaded her to shoot. She remembered the look in Levi’s eyes when he’d told her Jac was dead. And the sight of the body falling from St. Morse’s roof, the heart-wrenching moment when she’d thought it was Tock.

But deeper, buried beneath the loss, Lola felt fury. She had been wrong about so many people, but she wasn’t wrong about herself. She didn’t want this. Enne, Jac, Levi—they all wanted to be players, but she did not.

But the card in her pocket left her no choice.