Page 6 of Queen of Volts

“But how do I...”

Before Enne could finish, someone knocked on the door. It was Charlotte, one of the other counters in Enne’s disorganized gang of financially minded girls. And behind her, Mansi Balay. Mansi had been Levi’s card-dealing protégée, until she defected to the Irons and joined the Scarhands. Her black bobbed hair looked greasy and unwashed, and the bags under her eyes made her appear many years older than fourteen.

Enne stiffened. The location of the Spirits’ hideout was a secret. “How did you find this place?” she asked Mansi, quickly purging any tremor from her voice.

“You think Jonas didn’t know where your hideout is?” Mansi asked.

Of course the Scar Lord had known. Enne recalled his office crammed with filing cabinets, each folder inside representing a different citizen in New Reynes. Jonas had prided himself on knowing everything.

Enne took a seat in one of the armchairs in the classroom’s corner and nodded for Mansi to join her. Mansi peered around the decorations with confusion—beaded pillows, discarded bottles of nail polish, and every shade of pastel. It all hardly suited a gangster headquarters, but Enne had never needed to prove herself to the Spirits, her friends. Now, wearing a petal pink leotard left over from her stint in the St. Morse acrobatics troupe, with her face blotchy and sweaty from exertion, her purple irises exposed, Enne felt like she was supposed to look like someone different. Someone she didn’t know—might never know—how to be.

A lady never betrays her emotions. So went Lourdes’s rules about etiquette—or, so Enne had also learned, the rules of the North Side’s streets. Enne forced her face into neutrality.

“I wasn’t Jonas’s second, or his third, or anyone important,” Mansi started. “But I was the only one who knew who you were.” When Enne had first arrived in New Reynes, lost except for the task Lourdes had given her to find a man named Levi Glaisyer, she’d met Mansi, and so Mansi had known pieces of Enne’s truth from the start.

“Until Jonas told the whole city,” Enne said darkly. For a brief moment, Enne had seen Jonas as something near to a friend, and even if he’d revealed her secrets in a desperate attempt to lighten his execution sentence, his betrayal still stung.

Mansi shifted nervously in her seat, seeming to realize she was a suspicious stranger surrounded by Enne’s cohorts—some of whom included a muscled grunt of a man and a nightmarish cleaver of a girl. “Before he was executed, Jonas sent a message to me that he wanted me to give to you.”

“Was it a knife in the back tied with a bow?” Grace sneered. When Enne caught her eye in warning, Grace crossed her arms. “What? He didn’t have to sell you out. His fate was already sealed.” She picked at her black nail polish. “I’m glad he hanged.”

“So compassionate,” Roy muttered.

“You’re doing it again,” Grace said, knotting her brow—but a smile played on her lips.

“What?”

“The speaking thing. Pretty boys should be seen and not heard.”

While Roy rubbed his temples, Enne cleared her throat and turned back to Mansi. “Let’s hear this message.”

The Scarhand reached into her pocket and retrieved a torn and stained piece of cloth, which Enne realized with mild disgust had likely once been a shred of Jonas’s undershirt that he’d been wearing in his cell. Enne took it and unfolded it, revealing crude words written in what resembled smeared dirt or blood.

Ivory is dead.

Grace scoffed, peering from over Enne’s shoulder. “You’re sayingPupkilled her?” Ivory was the notorious lord of New Reynes’ fourth gang: the Doves, a cloistered group of trained assassins. At St. Morse one week ago, Levi had shot Ivory in a confrontation between him, her underlings, and Jonas. But Levi had never described the wound as appearing fatal.

“The Doves are the ones who turned Jonas into the whiteboots,” Enne said. “So Jonas was with them. He could’ve witnessed Ivory die.”

“But what does this mean for us if she’s dead?” Roy asked.

Enne wanted to ask the same question. Two months ago, the four gangs and the Orphan Guild had consolidated their power to control the North Side, forcing the whiteboots and wigheads to remain south of the Brint River. But since then, the North Side had fallen. Militia patrolled the streets, automatics slung over their shoulders, demanding identification papers and enforcing curfew. There was no hope of reclaiming their stronghold now, with two of the gangs lacking lords.

She wished she could consult with Levi, who had always been a lifeline for her in New Reynes. But since Enne had been forced to shoot Jac, Levi could barely look at her. Just like she could barely look at herself.

Still, a decision needed to be made.

“I need to speak to my associates in private,” she told the Scarhand. Then Enne slipped out into the hallway, Lola, Grace, and Roy following behind her.

“It doesn’t matter about Ivory,” Lola said quickly. “You don’t need to help the Scarhands. You don’t need to doanything.”

“The world is all speculating about whether Enne wants to overthrow the government, and you suggest just letting them?” Grace shot back, shaking her head. “No. Enne needs to make a statement.”

Grace’s words left Enne dizzy. Only several months prior, Enne’s chief concern had been graduating from finishing school.

“But what kind of statement?” Enne asked numbly.

“About what kind of Mizer you are,” Grace replied matter-of-factly. “Are you one of the shatz tyrants who behead their subjects over high tea?”