Page 8 of Heart of Thieves

His smile is feeble. “Anything for you, Louse.”

I give a mock-scowl. “I’m going to let that one slide. Just this once.”

“You do that.” He shoos me out, and the motorcar squeals away.

I shuffle to Jade, who waits in the shadows beneath an awning. I check my watch. My stomach bottoms out when I catch sight of the time.

“You’re going to be late for your gran,” I say.

But I’m not worried about her gran. It’s nearly midnight, which means I have only eight minutes to get ten blocks south to a nightclub called Luxuria for an appointment neither Jade nor any of the other Tentacles know about.

Luckily, this has become something of a regular occurrence for us—me using Jade’s visits to her ailing grandmother as a cover to search for the answers the Unbreakable Lie won’t let me get from Enzo. So, despite the fact that Enzo has instated a rule that none of us can go out on our own, Jade doesn’t bat an eye at my urgency to separate.

“Gran will get over it.” Jade grins. “Thanks for saving my ass. And good use of the poppers.”

“I want more of those. They were incredible.”

“Sure.” She shuffles away. “Meet you back here in an hour or so?”

“You got it.” I toss a wave in her direction and jog down the street. Once I’m sure she’s no longer looking, I drag in Enzo’s magic—finally available now that he’s gone—to render myself noncorporeal and plunge into a full-on sprint.

The blocks whizz by, and exactly six minutes later, I turn onto the road where casinos and nightclubs and cabarets blare music into the night, their lights dusting the clouds in gold and red. The Liar’s Den stands tall and dark and empty, as it has since the day after I won the tournament, when rumors spread like wildfire about its sudden closing and the disappearance of its violet-eyed owner. What was once a dazzling spectacle on the shore has become nothing more than a shadow. A husk. I hate the way grief curdles in my veins when I see it like that. Like it’s not the casino that died, but rather the man who ran it.

But he’s not dead. He just didn’t want me.

And now he’s gone to who knows where, and I still have no answers.

I cross to the other side of the street, picking up my pace until I cannot see the Liar’s Den anymore.

When Luxuria comes into view, my heart skips double-time. Its deep blue lights reflect on a sidewalk still damp from an afternoon rain, and music thrums from the live band performing within. Keeping a firm grip on Enzo’s magic, I slip past the bouncers, ease among writhing bodies on the dance floor, and skirt around to the exclusive rooms in the back. Then, steeling my nerves, I mist through a set of burly men and the locked black door behind them. The music cuts away to a distant murmur.

I tiptoe down the stairs and flit through a second door. A wide, empty room opens up before me. Well, empty except for one tall, broad-backed man facing away from me. The man I came here to see.

Turning my attention to my bracelet, I pull a trail of magic from Nic this time. It rushes in, lush and cold, and my heart throbs at the way it feels like his fingertips dragging through the marrow of my bones, like the taste of his breath filling my lungs, like the thrum of his laugh pumping in my blood.

But the magic isn’t distant, the way it’s been these past months. It’s present. Close. Vibrant and terrible and so achingly familiar I want to cry, and the sudden nearness of him has my whole body trembling.

Could he be upstairs, here in Luxuria somewhere? Does he sense me, too? Does he care?

Gritting my teeth, I shake my head. It doesn’t matter where Nic is or why. He made his position clear. He has no answers for me.

So I swallow the lump in my throat and focus my attention on the task at hand.

In the very instant I release Enzo’s magic to become corporeal, I weave together a disguise with Nic’s. My hair darkens into strings of rippling shadow. My face whitens like a ghost and smudges like mist. My eyes blacken, irises eating away the whites. My leathers unfurl into a silken ebony gown.

“Hello,” I say, pitching my voice deeper and glamouring an ethereal edge to it as I stride toward the man.

He turns, and the single buzzing bulb overhead illuminates the familiar lines in his hardened leather skin, the pale blue eyes that match the exact shade of my own, the iron gray hair curling around his ears.

Magnus St. James, the most feared crime boss in all the world— and my father—smiles when he catches sight of my illusionary face. “Good evening, Nocturne.”

CHAPTER THREE

NIC

I’ve been a puppet for a week.

“Please, Nic,” Laurel whispers, sweat breaking out on her brow as she forces me down an Aethera sidewalk toward a taxi-cab. “Stop fighting it.”