Читать книгу Ace Of Shades: the gripping first novel in a new series full of magic, danger and thrilling scandal when one girl enters the City of Sin - Amanda Foody - Страница 11
ОглавлениеMuck. Of all the gambling taverns in the city, why had the whiteboot captain chosen Grady’s? Levi Glaisyer hadn’t set foot in there since he’d handed Grady his resignation four years ago. He paced back and forth in the alley outside the tavern, dropping the copy of The Crimes & the Times he’d been carrying. On the front page, a photograph of Malcolm Semper, the oh-so-respected Chancellor of the Republic, soaked up the muddy rainwater.
After a few more moments of cursing, Levi gathered his nerve, straightened his felt homburg hat and strode to the door.
The inside of the tavern hadn’t changed at all. It still reeked of tobacco and burnt food, and the patrons were loud, even now, early in the morning. A group of men seated at the main card table—what was once Levi’s card table—were dressed in clothes with more patches than original fabric. A woman in fishnet stockings giggled and toppled into one of their laps.
The dealer at the table did a double take once he noticed Levi. Most gamblers considered Levi to be the best dealer in the city, and he didn’t normally show his face in establishments as small-time as this one.
But he hadn’t come to gamble. He’d come for business.
Levi searched the room for Jamison Hector, the captain of the city’s whiteboots. The two of them were supposed to meet here at ten o’clock sharp, and Levi had been on edge about it for days. He wasn’t usually the sort to rendezvous with authority—if only on principle—but lately, Levi had done a lot of things he’d never thought he would.
He locked eyes with the captain at a table in the back corner but made it only halfway to him before Grady slapped his shoulder, hard enough for him to wince.
“Levi, never thought I’d see you again,” Grady said with a laugh. His enormous gut tremored. “How you doing?”
As if Grady didn’t know how Levi was doing, what he’d become since his stint here as an amateur card dealer. Reputation aside, he was easily recognizable with his dark brown skin, his calculating gaze and his signature coarse curls—bronze at the roots, but black at the ends, like a burnt-out match. Levi had a look like he was trying to sell you something, and a smile that made you want to buy it.
“I’ve been busy,” Levi answered. “How’s business?”
“Just hired another new dealer and had some rotten luck. He barely makes ten percent profit. Ten percent.”
Levi whistled with feigned concern.
“It was better when you were dealing for me. No, don’t bother apologizing. St. Morse must shell out three times what I paid you. At least.”
Try ten times, Levi thought. But that doesn’t come without strings attached.
“I could get you an Iron,” Levi offered, always the businessman. He made a show of adjusting his sleeves to brandish his tattoos: the ace on one arm, the spade on the other. They marked him as the Iron Lord. “I found this new kid who deals pretty well—”
“I would, but I can’t. The whiteboots keep paying me visits lately, and I don’t want any trouble.” Before Levi could point out that technically speaking, the Irons were the only gang that didn’t break the law, Grady continued, “They think I’m smuggling.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course.” He laughed again. “I’ll get you a drink, on the house. Anything for my best dealer—and youngest, I might add. A Snake Eyes—that still your favorite?”
“Sure is,” Levi said politely, though he’d never had a taste for the drink. It was also barely ten in the morning. “Thanks.”
“You should stop by more often. Teach the new fellow how it’s done.”
“Maybe I will,” Levi lied. He had no intention of revealing his tricks to anyone, especially a no-name dealer who wasn’t an Iron.
When Grady walked away, Levi approached the whiteboot captain. The captain wasn’t dressed in his usual uniform, but Levi never forgot a face—and the captain had an interesting one. His nose had been broken so many times that it was bent decidedly to the left, and an ugly scar traced across his jawline to the place where his right ear had once been.
“Not every day I have a drink with the Iron Lord,” the captain said. He had a grandfatherly voice—all condescension, but with an added hint of malice. He looked Levi over more closely. “But you must be barely old enough to drink. Isn’t that right?”
Levi tilted his head to the side and cracked his neck, a nervous habit of his. He hated the way people talked to him in this city—like he was nothing. No, like he was worse than nothing. Like he was a joke.
Levi reached into his pocket and pulled out a silk pouch filled with seven orbs. He set it on the table in front of the captain.
The man raised his eyebrows and opened it. He pulled out the first orb. It was a clear glass sphere, about the size of a billiard ball. White sparks, called volts, sizzled within the glass.
The captain held it up to the lamplight and examined it. “This is good quality.”
“Only the best for my clients,” Levi said smoothly.
“You make it?”
“No. I’m not in the orb-making business.” Not anymore.
“Yes, we’re all aware what kind of business you’re in,” the captain said drily. He pulled out a mechanical volt reader, flipped open the orb’s metal cap and slipped the antenna inside. The meter read 180 volts. He did this with the other six orbs, even though it was widely known that Levi would never cheat a client. They were all there. Every volt he owed him.
Dealing in orbs was a very official way of doing business—it made Levi look more legitimate. As a currency, volts could be traded in two ways. Glass orbs, like the ones Levi had given the captain, were the traditional method. Alternatively, you could carry volts in your skin. This was the hardest to track, the most difficult to steal and the favorite method of the city’s gangsters.
The captain slipped the last orb into the pouch. “It’s a pity. The Glaisyer orb-making talent is the best of them all.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to know how you got these.”
Levi’s eyebrows furrowed. “The investment was a success. You’re lucky you paid in when you did. The venture—”
“Was a scam, boy. Don’t lie to me.”
Levi’s sense of alarm never crossed his expression—he had too skilled a poker face for that. But what exactly was the old man suggesting? He couldn’t know. That wasn’t possible.
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,” he answered coolly.
The captain leaned forward. “I’ve got it all worked out. You promise an investment with outrageous returns. One man invests, then another, then another. Then when their deadlines roll around, you pay them back with the volts from the newest investor and pocket a bit yourself. Not a bad scam. It just keeps going and going, all until you run out of investors and have no ways of paying people back.”
No. No. No. Levi had covered every trace, tied up every loose end. After two years of running the scheme, he was nearly done with it. He had only two people left to pay back, and the captain was one of them. He was so close. He wasn’t about to go down now.
He fingered the pistol at his side, even as he tried to think of a clever way out. He always did. Levi the card dealer. Levi the con man. There was no player he couldn’t outplay. But he’d rarely been so easily backed into a corner.
Damn it, Vianca, he thought. I could hang for this. And it would be your fault.
As if his employer gave a muck about what happened to him.
“What do you want?” Levi growled.
“I don’t want anything,” the captain said. He was obviously lying. Everyone wanted something.
Grady set Levi’s Snake Eyes on the table, bubbling in its champagne glass. “Anything else I can get you, Levi?”
“Nah, thanks, Grady,” he muttered, forcing a smile. He still had one hand on his gun.
“What about you, um...sir?” Grady eyed the captain hesitantly. Grady was a good man, but he wasn’t a respectable one. Whiteboots always made him tense. “What can I get for you?”
“Nothing for me.”
Grady returned to the bar, where he yelled at an old man on a stool trying to order his fifth glass of absinthe.
“You know him?” the captain asked curiously, as if he still expected Levi to be capable of small talk at a time like this. Levi had a grim suspicion he was about to be blackmailed. Or worse.
“He’s an old friend,” Levi said curtly.
“That’s why you’re not like the others. The other lords don’t have friends,” the captain said matter-of-factly. “They have victims.”
Levi was mucking tired of hearing how he wasn’t like the other street lords. Tired of hearing each and every way they were better than him.
“How old are you?” the captain asked.
“Eighteen this October,” Levi said stiffly, even though that was four months away. Better to seem older than be treated like a child.
“If you live to October. Have you ever considered that you might be in over your head?”
Levi clenched his fist beneath the table. He thought about it every night, during the hours when he should’ve been sleeping but couldn’t. He didn’t choose to start this scam. He didn’t choose to involve the most dangerous people in the city. Ever since he started working for Vianca, he hadn’t had many choices at all.
“Who else knows?” Levi murmured, the quietness of his voice betraying his fear.
The captain rubbed the scruff on his scarred chin. “I’m not the smartest man. So tell me, if I figured it out, who else might’ve, too?”
Levi caught his breath. He was referring to Sedric Torren, the twisted, perverted don of the Torren casino Family. The kind of man who could clear a room with the snap of a finger. The kind of man who could ensnare his prey with only a smile. The kind of man Levi didn’t want as an enemy.
Sedric Torren was Levi’s final investor. Once Levi paid Sedric back, he’d be done. Clean. Safe. But it’d taken Levi weeks to scrape up the nine hundred volts for the captain, and he owed Sedric ten thousand.
If Sedric did figure out the scam, would he wait for Levi to pay him back, or would he kill him to make a point? Conning a Torren was flirting with destruction.
The captain stood. “I’d prefer not to keep hearing your name.” Then he nodded at Levi and left the tavern. No blackmail, no coercion. Just a warning.
Levi let out a breath of relief. He supposed he was lucky—he could’ve been arrested, or worse. But he didn’t feel lucky. The whiteboot captain didn’t bother arresting criminals he considered dead men walking.
I’m almost done. I’m almost safe, he reminded himself. The only person I have left to pay is Sedric, then I can finally focus on the Irons.
With all the time he’d been spending on Vianca’s scam, his gang was slowly crumbling. Their income was tight, their clients were irritated and Levi hardly recognized some of his own kids. But Levi refused to fall with this scheme. He had a destiny to forge and an empire to build.
Levi stood to leave. As he made his way out the door, he tried not to notice Grady’s face fall at the full drink he’d left behind on the table.
Levi headed to the newest abandoned house Chez and some of the other Irons had made their own. As he put more distance between himself and Grady’s tavern, his shoulders relaxed, and the tightness in his chest loosened. Walking always cleared his head.
Around him, the white stone shopfronts and gambling dens gave way to the signature black scenery of Olde Town, the most historic neighborhood of New Reynes. With the buildings so tall and the alleys so narrow, there was little light here, which was why Levi had claimed it when he founded the Irons five years ago. It was nearly abandoned—nicknamed the “stain of the city,” it was the sort of place you didn’t want to find yourself, no matter the time of day. There was an art to navigating its maze of alleys, of slipping oneself into its endless shadows. Here, it was always night. And sleights of hand were easiest in the dark.
When he reached the Irons’ hideout, Levi paused, running his hand across the wrought iron bars bolted over the windows. He knew every inch of Olde Town. Because you own it, he told himself, convinced himself. But did he really own it anymore?
Levi cracked his neck, mustered up some bravado and knocked on the door. Chez unlocked it.
“There’s a missy here to see you,” Chez said, crossing his heart, as gangsters always did for their lord. As Chez usually did for him, though his sign of respect was often forgotten lately.
“What? Who?” Levi hadn’t scheduled any meetings today.
“A real prissy one. From one of the territories.”
Before Levi could ask if he was joking, Chez skulked off to the living room. Levi followed, ripping his arms out of his jacket. He didn’t have time for this. He needed to figure out how to deliver ten thousand volts to Sedric Torren before Sedric Torren delivered him.
In the living room, Levi found Jac leaning against a quilted armchair, his aura drifting lightly in the stale air. Levi had inherited his split talent of sensing auras from the Canes, his mother’s family. He couldn’t sense everyone’s auras—his split talent wasn’t strong enough for that—but those of the people he knew well were often discernable to him.
His best friend’s aura flowed toward him in waves and smelled like linen and the color gray.
Mansi perched at the end table, practicing a card trick Levi had taught her yesterday. She crossed her heart and beamed at him, just as she always did. Mansi was one of the best up-and-coming dealers in the Irons. Some called her Levi’s protégée, though Levi hadn’t made that decision yet. Still, her unwavering loyalty held appeal—there wasn’t enough of that to go around, these days.
The missy in question sat on the couch, her back straight as a billiard rod, her legs resting to the side with one ankle tucked delicately behind the other. She was tiny, only about five feet tall, with fair skin and brown hair falling out of a tight ballerina bun. She was real pretty in a second-glance kind of way, though she looked like she was on the wrong side of the city—a strand of rose pearls caught on one of Olde Town’s serrated spires.
She stood when Levi entered, like he was some dinner guest. “You must be Mr. Glaisyer.” He cringed at the sound of his father’s name. The others snickered.
“What’s going on here, Jac?” he asked, keeping his gaze fixed on her. It wasn’t every day such pretty or strange girls showed up asking for him.
“She said you could help her contact someone. And before you say no—” Levi snapped his mouth shut, and Jac continued “—she outran two whiteboots this morning after just arriving. Not bad, eh?”
Not bad? By the looks of her, Levi would say unbelievable. What could she have done to anger the whiteboots? Curtsy the wrong way?
“Who is she?” he asked.
“I’m right here,” she said haughtily. “You might as well ask me.”
“Exactly,” Levi snapped. “But I didn’t. Which means I didn’t want to.”
That shut her up.
“She’s from Bellamy,” Jac explained. Bellamy was one of the Republic’s territories, a mostly self-regulated island that paid taxes to the wigheads. It had a reputation for being twenty years backward, which explained her conservative clothes. “Bit of a snob, really.”
She cleared her throat with a sharp ahem.
The only person Levi knew from Bellamy was Lourdes Alfero, but he hadn’t thought about her in years. She was one of those “anonymous” journalists who wrote for the monarchist papers. Though the Mizers were all dead, the monarchists kept lobbying for a reinstatement of the old kingdoms and the crowning of new families to rule them. The monarchists were the only ones in opposition to the First Party, the core political party of the Republic.
Levi owed Lourdes Alfero a big favor, but that was from four years ago. He’d always assumed she’d gotten herself killed—all the monarchists did eventually.
“Are you quite certain this is Mr. Glaisyer?” the missy asked Jac.
“Think carefully,” Levi said, winking at him. “Better be sure.”
Jac plopped on the couch, and the girl tried to subtly scoot away from him. He made a show of throwing his hands up in the air. “You meant the other Levi Glaisyer. Terribly sorry, missy. But dont’cha worry, the other Levi Glaisyer is a real nice fellow. Nothing like this guy.”
Levi tossed his jacket and hat on the coffee table. “He’s a bank teller. Three kids. Nice house on the South Side. Not even a splotch on his criminal record. Instead, you’ve got me. Best card dealer in the city. The Iron Lord.” Chez rolled his eyes. “Though I like to call myself a businessman more than, well, a con man.” He claimed the seat on her other side.
“There’s no other Levi Glaisyer,” she whispered, her lip quivering.
“Jac, you didn’t tell me she was a smart one.”
“Then...there must be some mistake,” she stammered. To her credit, she managed to keep her chin snobbishly high. Maybe Levi wasn’t the only one here with some bravado.
“Why else would such a fine Bellamy lady like yourself be looking for someone like me in the City of Sin, if not by mistake?” By her large purse, well-made clothing and leather pointed-toe heels, Levi bet she carried some decent voltage. “How about you give us your purse and we forget this ever happened? Maybe I’m not the other Levi Glaisyer, but I’m still a generous man.”
“No,” she said. Her voice cracked, and he couldn’t tell if the word was a plea or a refusal.
“Might want to repeat that,” Levi warned. “I don’t think I heard you right.” Chez walked up beside him, flipping his knife between his hands so fast the blade was a blur of silver.
She shrank away and choked a bit, like she was trying to keep from crying, holding her hand over her mouth and shaking all over. Muck. He hated when missies cried.
Unmoved, Chez ripped her purse from her hands and threw it to Mansi, who caught it as nimbly as in one of her card tricks. Half the contents fell out—a passport, a few loose buttons, several cookies and a folded piece of paper. Smirking at the mess, Levi picked up the last item. It was a letter with fancy, precise handwriting:
Dearest,
I hate to think of the worry I’ve caused you. I am well and missing you. Although I have encountered a little trouble that has delayed my return, I plan to leave in a few days. By the time this letter reaches you, I’ll be eagerly sailing home.
If a storm were to further delay my return or another unforeseen circumstance occurs, you can speak to Mr. Levi Glaisyer, a friend of mine who lives in New Reynes. He will be glad to help you.
With much love,
Lourdes
Levi’s stomach knotted. Lourdes. He knew that name.
Chez peered over Levi’s shoulder blankly. “What’s it say?”
Levi didn’t respond. The girl watched him with wide, puffy brown eyes, hugging her arms to herself.
He pointed to the letter. “By ‘Lourdes,’ I’m guessing this is...”
She shook her head indignantly and reached to snatch the letter from him. He moved it away from her reach.
“Relax, missy. It’s just a question. Do you know Lourdes Alfero or not?”
She took a deep breath to compose herself and wiped away the tearstains on her cheek. “I do. That’s why I’m here.”
Jac stiffened with recognition and met Levi’s eyes. His expression seemed to prod, This changes things, right?
Levi looked away. Of course it changed things. His best friend had a low opinion of Levi’s conscience. Levi owed a debt to Lourdes—at the very least, he’d hear the missy out.
“Would you three leave me and Miss...” He paused and looked at her.
“Miss Salta. But you may call me Enne.” Despite still tearing up, her voice remained controlled and steady. She spoke more formally than the managers at St. Morse did when addressing their rich patrons, but her jaw was locked, her fists clenched. She wouldn’t forgive him so easily for trying to cheat her—not that Levi cared what she thought of him. He wasn’t trying to be a gentleman; he was trying to pay his debts.
“Could you leave me and Enne alone for a few minutes? Leave her purse.”
Chez’s jaw dropped, but Jac put his hand on his shoulder and steered him away. Mansi tossed the purse on the table before they all left through the back door.
When Levi was certain they were alone, he asked, “How do you know Alfero?”
“Lourdes is my mother. I traveled here because I need you to find her.”
I take it, after writing this letter, Levi thought, Alfero never did make it home. He was liking this day less and less, and it was barely eleven in the morning. “You came a long way, and this place isn’t much like Bellamy.”
“No, it’s not,” she said flatly. “But the reputation of New Reynes is the least of my worries.”
That was her first mistake.
If she’d known anything about her mother, she wouldn’t have gone within a hundred feet of whiteboots, much less actually approach them.
Which meant Levi had the unfortunate job of telling her that her mother was almost certainly dead.
He studied her. If she didn’t share Alfero’s blood name, she must’ve been her split daughter, with a blood talent inherited from her father. Enne Alfero Salta. From what he remembered of Alfero—a devoted journalist, a staunch progressive and a profound political mind—Levi couldn’t picture her walking out with someone with a dancing talent. She’d seemed too serious for that. Nor did he recall her being particularly interested in men. It’d been four years ago, but Levi still remembered the determined fury in her eyes. The Republic had wronged her in a way she could never forgive.
Whatever her cause had been, Levi wondered, was it worth dying for? Worth leaving behind a daughter for?
He doubted it. Nothing was worth that price.
She cleared her throat. “Tell me, Mr. Glaisyer—”
“Call me Levi.”
“Tell me, Levi, why would the whiteboots be so interested in my mother?” She slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out a bronze coin, which she squeezed the way gamblers squeezed dice before they tossed them. Like a prayer.
Levi hesitated, not wanting to deliver the bad news so fast. She’d only just she stopped crying. Instead, he said, “You don’t look much like her.” The Lourdes Alfero he remembered was tall, nearly as tall as him, and with blond hair much lighter than Enne’s brown. She’d dressed fluidly—some days as a woman, sometimes as neither male nor female—and her angled features lent themselves easily to her identity. She preferred to be addressed as “she” and “her.”
He didn’t see any of Lourdes’s face in Enne’s.
“Lourdes is my adopted mother,” Enne explained. “But I can tell you’re stalling. Why were the whiteboots so interested in her?”
Levi sighed. She might not know much about New Reynes, but she wasn’t thick. “She’s a Mizer sympathizer. A famous one, at that.”
“What?” Her voice came out in a screech. Maybe she wasn’t as controlled as Levi had first thought.
He supposed he couldn’t blame her slip. Even if the way Chancellor Malcolm Semper governed the Republic was wildly unpopular, the Mizers had been tyrants. In New Reynes, where the Revolution began, men, women and children had cheered in Liberty Square as the royal family was beheaded. Most viewed the monarchists as radicals.
“Ever since the Revolution—especially during the Great Street War, which occurred seven or so years after—there’s been a group of journalists writing for monarchist newspapers. They use code names to expose stories the wigheads try to keep quiet, and they work in secret. They call themselves the Pseudonyms. Lourdes is one of them.” The most famous of them all, even. “The whiteboots have been searching for her for a long time.” And, sometime in the past four months, they’d probably found her.
Levi paused, gauging Enne’s reaction. “Did you really have no idea?”
She bit her lip. “I knew Lourdes had her secrets, but no, I never would’ve guessed this.”
Levi held his breath as he watched the gravity of her mother’s situation dawn on her. He didn’t need to tell her that Alfero was dead. She could probably guess it herself now.
“Do you know where Lourdes might be?” Enne asked, still using present tense. Levi sighed inwardly.
“I haven’t spoken to her in years,” he told her.
“What?” She frowned. “Then why would she recommend you?”
“I’ve got no idea. About four years ago, I got myself into a lot of trouble with a con gone wrong.” And apparently, he thought, I haven’t learned my lesson. “Lourdes paid my way out of it and got me a steady job at St. Morse.”
“St. Morse?”
“The casino. You must’ve heard of it. It’s one of the two largest in the city.”
She pulled a book out of her pocket, and Levi snorted. A tourist guide. “I think I’ve heard of it,” she said, skimming through the pages until she found the passage she was looking for. “Oh. It says not to go there.”
He glanced at the title. The City of Sin, a Guidebook: Where To Go and Where Not To. If she’d paid more attention to her guidebook, then she’d never have followed Chez into Olde Town, the heart of Iron territory. She would’ve left the harbor and gone straight to the South Side, where she clearly belonged.
Levi stood up and reached for his hat on the table.
“Where are you going?” Enne asked.
“Out. There are volts to make and people to cheat.” He flashed her a smile. She was lucky he hadn’t cheated her. He was feeling sentimental today.
“But you didn’t finish your story,” she blurted.
“That is the story. Lourdes helped me out, she got me a job and then she disappeared. I haven’t spoken to her since.”
Enne stood up, her shoulders square and her expression a challenge. He wondered if she really felt that brave, or if she was a breath away from tears again. “But you must help me. I have to find her.”
“I must help you?” he said, taking a step closer. She wasn’t very intimidating, small as she was. Not many spoke to him the way she did. “Why should I? I don’t know you. I barely know your mother.”
“Because...” Her voice wavered. “Because I’ll pay you.”
“You lost your luggage. How many volts could you possibly have on you right now?” His eyes traveled from her purse to her pockets. He doubted she had more than a few hundred.
But...that was a few hundred closer to his ten thousand. Maybe he was feeling a bit altruistic after all.
“Lourdes has a bank account,” Enne said, with the kind of seriousness that made Levi think she wasn’t lying. He searched her face for a tell—everyone always had a tell, a break in their poker face. But he found none.
“It has more volts than you could want,” she continued. “If you help me find her, I’ll pay you.”
“How much?” he asked.
“Five thousand volts,” she said unflinchingly.
He stilled. Did she really have that kind of voltage? She did look like she came from money, as Lourdes always had, too.
Maybe she had five thousand volts. Maybe she had more.
“Sorry,” he said, faking disinterest. “I don’t have time for this. I’m not the sort of guy who helps damsels in distress.”
“Ten thousand volts,” she declared.
Gotcha.
He narrowed his eyes, as if considering. He let a few moments pass, and as he waited, the boldness in her dark eyes never faded. A few minutes ago, she’d been in tears, but she wasn’t broken.
But would she be, once she realized her mother was probably dead?
Maybe Alfero is still alive, Levi thought. After all, she’d survived this long. That alone was impressive.
But unlikely. And a good player knew better than to bet against those kind of odds.
“I’m listening,” he said. “But I’m going to need some incentive up front. Who knows how long it could take to find her?”
“I’ll give you one thousand volts,” she offered, “but not until the end of the day. You said yourself that you barely know Lourdes. I want to make sure you can help me at all.”
If he pressed her for more, she’d probably relent. After all, she could play at being brave all she wanted, but Levi knew better. She’d left her belongings behind to follow Chez straight into the heart of the North Side—she was desperate.
But he didn’t haggle. He didn’t want to scare her away and lose the possibility—even if it was slim—for ten thousand volts, for a chance to save himself. After all, he was desperate, too.
If the day ended without a lead, then Levi would take his one thousand volts tonight and leave her in the dust. Even if ten thousand would cover his entire debt to Sedric, he still doubted that Lourdes Alfero was even alive. He couldn’t afford to waste time on a pointless search.
“We’ll start with a friend of mine,” Levi said. “He can answer our questions.”
Enne’s shoulders relaxed, and she let out the breath she’d been holding.
“Is your friend an...Iron?” she asked.
He smirked. “What? Don’t like my friends much?” Jac might look threatening, but he had all the aggression of a baby rabbit. Mansi was practically Levi’s younger sister. And Chez... Well, Chez and Levi weren’t on the best of terms as of late, but when Chez wanted to, he could be tolerable. Sometimes, when the stars aligned, even pleasant.
“No, my friend’s not an Iron,” he said. But Levi got the feeling Enne would be missing Olde Town’s charm within the hour.
“Good,” she huffed.
He opened the door for her. “After you, missy.”
“But what about the whiteboots?” she asked. “They could still be searching for me.”
“You think I’d go someplace with whiteboots? Please, I know better than that. You should learn to trust me.” His smile was filthy with insincerity.
“I’ll work with you because I have to, but I’m not going to trust you until I find Lourdes.”
She lifted her head and marched outside.
“One thousand volts,” Levi grumbled to himself. If he could tolerate her for a single day, then he would wake one thousand volts richer tomorrow.
Besides, Enne Salta wouldn’t last more than a night in the City of Sin.
