Page 119 of Heart of Thieves

“I’m not—”

Invisible, Enzo bolts down the stairs. He slams back into corporeality and rams into my father, knocking him backward. The pistol goes off.

“Enzo!” I scream as the bullet hits the ceiling.

“Run!” Enzo shouts, barreling up at us, grasping both our arms with voratium and drawing us into his ghostly state at the very instant my father squeezes off another shot. The bullet whizzes through the air where Nic’s heart was.

We pelt through the walls as my father raises a ruckus behind us. Soon, a siren shrieks to life, and maids and butlers and security personnel sprint down the hall in every direction.

We reach the front drive, shoving into the car still parked at the entrance. Enzo releases us and crouches under the dash; maneuvering wires like this is another one of our heists as I help Nic into the passenger side before sliding into the back seat. The engine roars to life just as several security guards spill out of the front door brandishing pistols.

“Hang on!” Enzo cries, and we blaze down the driveway, crashing through the gate and tearing back toward Waterside.

Worry spirals inside me, and I knot my clammy hands in my dress, jiggling my leg to keep from coming apart. Enzo glances back a few times, as though to assess why I’m so wound up, but anytime I meet his gaze, he averts his as a fresh wave of shame flows through him.

In the past, I might have reassured him, but not tonight.

No, he needs to feel this. To witness my grief over the loss of my relationship with my father. I don’t have the emotional fortitude to be strong for both of us right now.

Nic reaches into the back, pressing his hand to my knee. Even though he doesn’t share my heart, he knows. Even though he’s likely still upset with me, he cares.

Aethera swims past, a multicolor fever dream of streetlights and city blocks, motorcars and neon. Enzo does not speak as he drives, nor does Nic. The only sound in the car is the echo of my father’s cry of joy in my ears.

Then Enzo pulls around the corner toward the Liar’s Den, and what looks like an army of several dozen statues awaits us, silent and watching. He slams on the brakes, skidding to a stop in front of the first row. They don’t even flinch.

“Hello,” they all say in eerie unison. Then they raise their hands as one, sending goose bumps prickling down the back of my neck. “How nice of you to join us.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

ENZO

My hands tighten on the steering wheel. “What is this?” I ask Nic softly, my gaze darting from figure to figure, each illuminated by our headlights and wearing the same rictus expression. Only their eyes, wide and glassy, seem alive. They stand otherwise still and silent, watching us.

“Lola, get down,” Nic breathes next to me, his hand slipping between us into the back seat to push Lola out of sight. “Don’t let her see you.”

“Her?” I repeat, mind whirring as my own panic and Lola’s roar through me. “Her who?”

“Reverse,” Nic says. “Get us out of here. Now.”

He doesn’t have to tell me twice. My hand is already reaching for the gear shift, my foot going for the clutch. But then something ripples through me. Something cold, something other. A whisper inside my bones, trickling along the marrow, strumming the tendons in every limb.

My body freezes, my fingers barely brushing the shift.

“Enzo?” Nic says.

I try to open my mouth to respond, try to meet his eyes, but I cannot. It’s as though my body has turned to stone.

Terror slams through me, stinging like icefire.

“I think not,” my mouth says of its own accord, and then my head turns to Nic. A smile tears itself across my face.

My hands throw the car into park, kill the engine, and then wrench the gear shift out, tossing it through the open window. Pain bolts through my shoulder, but my body does not react. It’s too busy clambering out of the vehicle and crossing to join the army outside the Liar’s Den. A few of the figures near the back of the crowd twitch, breaking free of whatever spell they’re under, running away into the night.

“How kind of you to return,” my mouth says to Nic on its own, and it’s my voice, my tongue, my teeth, but not my words. “Why don’t you get out of the car?”

He dives for the steering wheel, ducking beneath it to fiddle with the wires I used to start the engine earlier.

My heart sinks. Nic, for all his experience manipulating business moguls and deceiving the city’s elite, has never hot-wired a motorcar. I want to glance into the back seat of the vehicle to make sure Lola is hidden, but even my eyes seem to be under someone else’s control, and they’re trained on my brother like I might be able to bore through his flesh with my gaze alone.