LEVI
Levi’s poker face didn’t waver as he studied his hand: a four-card straight and the kings of clubs and spades. Clearly luck was on his side. The player to his left eyed him warily and threw in five green chips. Two hundred and fifty volts.
From beside him, Sedric Torren also slapped five green ones in the pot.
Levi equaled their wagers on behalf of the house. Normally with the betting so high, he’d fold. But tonight was different. He hadn’t expected Sedric Torren himself to visit St. Morse. He could’ve been there for only one reason, and that was Levi.
Which meant that Levi couldn’t afford to look weak—not even for a moment.
When the hand ended, Levi had managed to earn a 27 percent profit. At this rate, he’d have thirty in the next hour, which was the highest he’d ever made in one shift. Unlike poker or blackjack, where the dealer was little more than a moderator in the game, Tropps treated the dealer like a player who represented the house. The game placed a heavy emphasis on strategy and bluffing, and it was so well-known across the city that the main street of the Casino District was named after it. Dealers like Levi were famous for their skill, and Levi was one of the best of them all.
The other players grumbled and stomped their way to the next table, their pockets significantly lighter. Levi took a break to collect the cards, as well as his bearings.
The only player who didn’t leave was Sedric Torren.
“’Lo, Pup,” he murmured. His brown hair was slicked to the side and shiny with grease, and his smile was wolf-like. He switched to the seat beside Levi.
“Sedric,” Levi gritted, concealing the ugly feeling of dread in his stomach. The Tropps Room around them was loud with jazz and the chatter of guests, all gussied up in designer gowns and carrying cigarettes in long jewel-encrusted holders. Surely Sedric wouldn’t try anything in public. Even the don of the Torren Family wouldn’t do something that reckless. “What can I do for you?”
Sedric turned to one of the waiters carrying a tray of champagne. “Two glasses.” He set one in front of Levi, who didn’t bother to reach for it. Drinking with a Torren—least of all the don—sounded like asking for trouble, and Levi needed all his concentration to survive this encounter unscathed. “Should we make a toast?” Sedric suggested.
“To what?” Levi asked, keeping his voice steady as he shuffled the Tropps decks. Sedric Torren had a reputation for playing with his prey before he killed it, and Levi needed to make it clear to Sedric that he wasn’t afraid. As far as Sedric should have been concerned, Levi had no reason to fear his family. If anything, this should be an exchange between two businessmen, a celebration of an advantageous trade.
Sedric raised his glass. “We toast to your continued good health. You’ve managed to push back the date for our investment return not just once or twice, but three times.”
Levi’s skin went clammy. This was no celebration—this was a threat.
“Cheers, Pup.” Sedric clinked Levi’s glass before taking a swig. “So where are my promised returns?”
Levi swallowed. “They’re coming.”
Sedric leaned closer. He had a sickly sweet smell to him, like toffee. “I’m not a thickhead, you know,” Sedric said. “Just tell me what you’ve really been doing this whole time.”
He suspects, Levi thought with panic. Or he knows. And he’s forcing me to lie.
The truth meant death.
“You’ll get the volts soon,” Levi rasped, shifting away from him.
Sedric laughed, then adjusted his suit jacket. A silver knife gleamed from an inside pocket, a ruby winking at Levi from its hilt. Only a Torren would carry a weapon that flashy.
Levi reminded himself that he couldn’t look vulnerable. He searched around the Tropps Room for some of Sedric’s cronies, and sure enough, he spotted several men lurking near the door in crisp suits with black-and-red-striped ties—Luckluster colors. He fought to maintain his poker face. He was surrounded.
“You gonna kill me in St. Morse?” Levi dared, mustering up the appearance of confidence. “Doesn’t seem you’d get your volts back, then. And Vianca would never forgive you.”
“I’m not here to kill you. I’m here to warn you.” But despite his words, Sedric removed the knife from his jacket. With only an arm’s length of space between them, it would take Sedric only a heartbeat to stab the knife through Levi’s neck.
Any rational man would run, but Levi was frozen. Maybe that was a good thing. It made him appear bold, even when he was terrified.
Sedric ran his finger along the blade, then inspected the red droplet on his fingertip, as if assuring Levi the knife was sharp. He licked away the blood. The sight of it made Levi shudder.
“Whatever scheme you’ve been running,” Sedric murmured, “it’s over. Maybe you will be, too.”
Sedric flipped over the top card on the deck.
“Ten of hearts. You got lucky, Pup. We’ll give you ten days. With reminders.” He stood, slid his knife back into its sheath and drained the rest of his glass. “A present from my family.” He tossed a silver card face down in front of Levi. Sedric whistled and walked to a different table.
Levi’s heart hammered, both from Sedric’s threat and the gift he left behind. He recognized the card instantly—its metallic back was signature to the Shadow Game, the rumored execution game of the Phoenix Club. It was a North Side legend, as notorious as the Great Street War or the original lords. To Levi, it was an object plucked out from a story, from a nightmare.
It can’t be real, Levi thought, hoped. But even his cynicism couldn’t rationalize away the card’s plain existence right in front of him.
The tales claimed the cards had magical properties once you touched them. Even though Levi didn’t believe in those shatz superstitions like Jac did, he flipped it over with a morbid curiosity, seeking some assurance that the legends weren’t true.
The moment he touched it, the lights of the Tropps Room faded, and silence pierced through the music.
* * *
Levi stared down a long hallway that stretched endlessly in both directions. The impressively tall doors alternated black and white, each parallel to the other. The walls and ceiling were marble, clean enough to glint off the hallway’s collection of mirrors and crystal. The floor was tiled in black and white, as well. Like a chessboard.
Vaguely, he got the sense he was dreaming. But if he was, he couldn’t seem to wake up.
He reached for a black door, but it was locked. He tried the white one next to it, and it clicked open. The air that rushed past felt like a sigh against his skin.
Once he crossed the threshold, he found himself dressed in a smart suit, far nicer than his St. Morse uniform. The mud squished beneath his oxfords, and it smelled of earth. He was in a graveyard. The sky was gray, as the sky in New Reynes tended to be. The City of Sin followed him wherever he went, even in his dreams.
Levi moved to return to the hallway—graveyards unnerved him, as cliché as that was—and tripped over one of the headstones. It was painted metallic silver.
Levi Canes Glaisyer, it read.
Levi scampered to his feet and backed around it. On its other side was a face: the Fool, one of the Shadow Cards, the invitation to the Shadow Game. The bells on the Fool’s hat chimed, high-pitched and eerie in the silent graveyard. The diamonds and triangles painted on his face spun like pinwheels, and he strutted toward the cliff in front of him. Levi reflexively took a step back, as though he could also fall.
The Fool laughed. And laughed and laughed and laughed.
It’s not real, Levi assured himself. It’s only a nightmare.
But it didn’t feel like one. The earth sticky under his shoes, the cold sweat dripping down his neck, the Fool winking from his headstone—how could this all be in his head?
He whipped around and faced a new row of fresh, unfilled graves. He peered into the first hole, above which the headstone said Jac Dorner Mardlin. Jac’s coffin was lidless. Soot coated his blond hair and cap, and his eyes were wide-open, his mouth twisted into an unnatural scream.
Levi jolted back with horror and nearly stumbled into the next grave. It was Chez’s, and beside him, Mansi’s, and dozens of other Irons from around the city. Levi bit back a wave of nausea looking at Mansi’s gray-toned skin and lifeless eyes, matching the bodies of the other kids around her. Even if the investment scheme had gotten in the way of most of Levi’s responsibilities as lord, he still cared. They were his kids. His to protect.
This was all Levi’s fault.
He ran back to the hallway. The moment he crossed the threshold, his shoulders relaxed, his guilt and fear fading along with the nightmare.
There were hundreds of doors, but none of them was the right one.
Suddenly, a white door blasted open. Fire spewed out, reaching into the hallway, reaching for him. Levi raced out of its path. His back pressed against one of the black doors, the heat licking his cheek. Ghost-like faces flickered within the flames, their eyes an eerie, glowing purple, watching him.
All at once, they screamed.
* * *
Levi gasped and woke in the Tropps Room at St. Morse. His suit and vest were wet from his spilled glass of champagne. A few people at neighboring tables pointed at him as he dried off his pants with a handkerchief, his fingers trembling.
A dream, he told himself, shaking his head to clear it. A nightmare. But he could still hear the Fool’s laugh. He could still picture Jac’s contorted scream.
On the face of the Shadow Card, a metal tower stretched toward the night sky, disappearing amid clouds and stars. Several men climbed its spiral staircase, and one fell from it to the ice below.
The Tower. In the Shadow Game, it represented chaos and ruin.
He shoved it in his pocket as nausea stormed in his stomach. The Phoenix Club’s private execution game was a myth, and Levi had always taken the North Side’s legends with a grain of salt. There was no house of horrors hidden within the city. There was no wandering devil bargaining for your soul. And there was no game you couldn’t win.
But there could be no mistake—the Game did exist. The card and the visions proved it.
Have you ever considered that you might be in over your head? the whiteboot captain had asked him this morning, and the words made Levi sick. He’d always known Vianca’s scam was dangerous, but he was the Iron Lord. He was cunning. He was clever.
If he didn’t collect Sedric’s volts in time, he was dead.
Levi’s break ended, and a new group of players sat down. Every card he drew was lousy: a single queen and the lowest of every other suit. The house’s pile of chips shrank, and his profits slumped to 20 percent.
A man in a bowler hat took his eighth pot. Levi tried to focus on his game to see if he was counting cards, but he was panicked. He was sloppy. And his mind kept straying back to Sedric Torren.
If the Torren Family wanted him dead, why would they use the Shadow Game instead of one of their own men? Sedric’s cousins—the brutal, notorious siblings, Charles and Delia—never turned down an opportunity to kill. Levi had heard rumors that Charles was experimenting to see how many times he could shoot someone before they bled out, and that Delia had a knife collection made from the bones of each of her victims.
If Sedric wanted Levi dead, he didn’t need the Shadow Game to do it.
Which meant Sedric was showing off his friendship with the Phoenix Club. Sedric had inherited his position as don less than a year ago, after his father’s death. Since then, in an effort to squash his rival, Vianca Augustine, he’d befriended the wigheads, begun a campaign for office and declared himself an honorary South Sider.
He would make a spectacle of Levi, just to show he could.
After another round, the players headed to the poker and roulette tables. Levi’s profits plummeted to a meager 18 percent, a good percentage for a mediocre player. Not for him.
Even if he played his best at St. Morse, ten days wasn’t enough time to come up with ten thousand volts.
He traced his finger along the edge of the Shadow Card in his pocket. In the stories, receiving one meant only one thing: a warning. Make the Phoenix Club happy, or go buy a cemetery plot.
Lourdes Alfero has to be alive, he thought. Because if she’s not...
Ten days.
Ten days to figure out how to beat his enemies at their own game.