Afterlife (Second Eden #1) (26 page)

Faye stepped onto the ledge. Her black coat fluttered around her as she peered into the city. “Poltergeist, wraith, and spirit. It’s reasonable to conclude she can use the phantom and doppelganger curses as well. Damn, I wish I’d gotten to that relic before this stupid girl did.”

“I can start teaching her phantom, see how good she is.”

“And give her the means to slip from our grasp? I think not. Keep your phantom tactics to yourself until she’s loyal to me. Otherwise, our little bird will fly the coop and straight into the archduke’s arms.”

“You’re the boss. Handicapping her like this, though, is it right? Keeping her stuffed in La Couronne, putting fancy hats on her instead of teaching her how to truly disguise herself—it’s not right. She might trust us more if we actually honed her more useful skills. Lying to her, hiding the truth of what she can do, it just feels dirty to me.”

“A lecture on morality from Dino Cardona?” Faye chuckled and tucked her hands in her coat pockets. “Now I’ve heard everything.”

Dino took a seat on the ledge, dangling his legs over the busy street. “Maybe I’m just tired of always being the bad guy.”

“You’re not bad, you’re a special kind of fool, and you’re Faye’s fool for as long as I say.” Faye joined him, smoothing her dress over her crossed legs. “This girl, she’s got power, and you and I both know what kind of power it’s starting to look like.”

“Bone Man.” Dino squeezed the ledge, his jaw tightening.
 

“We make this girl ours and we might finally have our own Bone Man. I’d love to see the archduke cower when Amber dusts his precious dog.”

“Look what the curse did to Bone Man, Faye. He’s not even human anymore.”

“If he ever was,” she quipped.

“And we know Amber is. She’s more human than anyone else in the city. You’d risk warping her mind, tearing it into shreds, making her some vile, vicious nightmare, just to hurt the archduke?”

“She’s just some stupid girl,” Faye said. “Who cares what happens to her? She dies, she ends up in the city just like everybody else.”

“You don’t know that!” Dino pounded his fist on the ledge. “Dammit, Faye, if her curse comes from the Deep, it carries a price and you know it. The Deep always asks for payment for the gifts it gives.”

“Why, Dino, you actually sound concerned for this girl,” Faye said, her voice dripping poison. “You’re not actually feeling for this mortal, are you?”

Dino folded his arms over his chest and glared into the city. “Of course not. She’s annoying, argumentative, and always thinks she knows what’s best. She lies to me constantly. She’d bolt the second she thought she had somewhere better to go. I think she might even turn me over to the blackjackets if she thought she could get away with it.”

“Sounds very much like Zoe,” Faye mused.
 

Dino’s chest tightened, and he shot an angry glare at Faye. “How dare you—”

And there she was, Zoe, with that same silly smile that split ear to ear, those dark, round eyes that drank the world but never ceased to shine in wonder of it. “Calm down, sweetie. You’ve always had the shortest temper!”

Dino shivered. Facing her, all the joy, the love, the laughter, the warmth that spread through him each time he saw her—it all came roaring back. He sucked in a breath and clenched his shirt. “You’re not real.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re not real!”

“My love,” Zoe said, “I’ve missed you so much.”

She started snickering, and it rolled into a full-throated laugh. Dino let go of his shirt and opened his eyes. Zoe’s form swirled and melted like wax. In the blink of an eye, the apparition became Faye LaBelle.
 

“You’re a monster,” Dino murmured.

“We both are. Never forget that.” Faye stood, backing from the edge and heading for the door. She paused there and gazed into the sky. “I will see the archduke fall, and I will make him suffer before he does. He will pay for the crimes he committed, for the balance he destroyed. You’ll get your revenge too, as long as you remember your place, and remember I could destroy you at any moment should you forget, and if you so much as try and kill me, I’ll make sure it’s Zoe you’ll be killing. Again.”

“I know my place,” he grumbled.

“Good.” Faye swung the door open and slipped inside. “We’re running out of time, and I need Amber on my side. If she doesn’t commit to me soon, I’ll destroy her. If I can’t have her, then no one will.”

The door swung shut. Dino turned to the city and closed his eyes. He needed a drink.
 

In such a huge city, finding a gaming house was never a problem. They dotted the landscape from the slums of Little Persia to the palatial townhomes and hotels of the Ruby Ring. They were a staple of Afterlife, more numerous than any other establishment, no matter which district a soul might wander through.

And each and every one of the casinos were controlled by the Scarlet Sinners. The sinners were the one faction practically untouched by the Ardent Revolution. They allied with the archduke long before the first sword was drawn or rifle fired, and through their casinos, they controlled vast sums of wealth. With it, they funded the archduke’s reign, and for that, he let them linger.
 

They also provided a unique function in that the casinos were neutral ground for all souls. No violence by any faction was tolerated in the gaming houses, and those unfortunates who broke the rule often found themselves in one of the infamous squeal rooms dug deep in the basements of the sinners’ lairs.
 

Dino licked his lips and pinched his leather hood over his brow. Ahead, the blinking neon sign of the Deep Diamond glowed against the grumbling clouds of a twilight sky. Light drizzle tickled his knuckles and kissed his cheeks as he made his way through the quiet street.
 

While the gaming houses were supposedly neutral, someone of Dino’s stature couldn’t just waltz into a grandiose palace like the Royal Opal and roll the dice. The underboss who managed the establishment would jot his name on a note and slip it to the nearest blackjacket, who would summon a good number of companions to wait patiently outside for their mark.

So instead, Dino picked the houses on the edges, the dirty dens managed by underbosses too unimportant to care who walked through their doors or otherwise easily bribed to keep quiet about their customers.
 

Of all those filthy pits of smoke and sin, Dino loved the Deep Diamond the most. Tucked at the base of a slum that piled against the brick and mortar monstrosities of factories in the Iron Neck, it was little more than an overgrown shanty for the line workers to blow their pay on dancers and rigged games.
 

Dino nodded at the twin bouncers guarding the entrance. Only one of them was a wraith, the other, cursed with spirit. It made the men effective catching cheats and tossing them out—or dusting them, as happened more often than not in a place like the Deep Diamond.
 

Inside the casino, the great room was awash in cigar smoke, laughter, and the rough, raspy melody of a woman inked neck to toe and draped in a cheap silk dress. Dino eyed the crowded card tables but passed them by. He didn’t feel like pushing his luck tonight.

Instead, he slid into a table in the corner and waved for a drink. Melanie, his regular server, met his eye and winked, swishing to the bar. He saved her husband once not long after the Revolution, and while the poor fellow was dusted in a locomotive accident a few years ago, Dino and Mel’s friendship remained intact.

She slid a whiskey onto the table, neat and in a lowball glass. He toyed with the drink, watched the amber liquor swish around the glittering rim. The candle on his table flickered within its cloudy glass hurricane, seemingly dancing to the rhythm of the singer’s song. “Thanks,” he murmured.

“Rough day?” Melanie asked, tray tucked under an arm and hand on her hip.

“Not any rougher than yours, Mel. At least I hope not?”

 
“It’s not too bad tonight. How do you like Jana? She’s got a nice voice, right?”

“Soulful.”

Melanie shifted to smoke, reforming with her back facing him. “Keep your hood up, buddy,” she whispered, strolling away.

Dino frowned. He pinched his hood over his head and slapped a hand over the hurricane, snuffing out the candle within it. He kicked his seat into the corner and leaned the back against the wall. He watched. He waited.

The cheering, rowdy crowd of gamblers quieted. While the performer continued her song, her eyes focused down the long room, and her notes warbled.

A woman wandered to a table at the edge of the stage, gripping a gold clutch in nails painted in a slick red polish. She wore a dress so red it could have been woven from threads of blood. The fabric swirled around her thin frame like a rippling wave and pooled at her feet as Melanie appeared in a rush of mist and pulled the chair out for her.

The woman’s blond hair tumbled in waves down her back and curtained one eye, leaving the other piercing hazel orb wide to the world. If she ever smiled, her skin refused to show the lines, and she gazed upon the singer onstage with the curious disdain of a queen watching peasants play in the mud.
 

Dino’s heartbeat pounded in his temples. Sweat moistened his collar as he took a swig of whiskey.

The woman slid into her seat and placed the clutch atop the table, and like that, the boisterous crowd resumed. The singer’s notes strengthened, and the hum and thrum of a busy gaming house continued.
 

Dino downed the rest of the whiskey in one smooth gulp and prayed the shadows hid him well from this woman. He had seen the Scarlet Spider before, even had some dealings with her in the early days of the Revolution, but years had passed since those days. Still, she looked as lethally radiant as ever and carried herself as confidently as any general on the Iron Council.

Why one of the most powerful souls in the city would slip into a shithole like the Deep Diamond eluded Dino, but he couldn’t leave without being noticed, and he never missed an opportunity to learn something new. So he stayed, tapping the rim of his glass as he watched her from the relative darkness.

Melanie reappeared beside Wilhelmina, placing a martini with a lemon twist onto the table. The waitress smiled and dispersed into fine grey smoke, swirling to the floor and twisting toward the bar.
 

A whooshing whirlwind formed in the chair beside Wilhelmina. It congealed into a man wearing the uniform of a high-ranking soldier in the archduke’s army. Dino counted the studs on the man’s epaulets. Four. A general, and only one general on the Iron Council was a phantom.
 

“Oscar Kelly,” Dino whispered. “Well, I’ll be damned.”

“You look like you could use another drink,” Melanie murmured, reappearing beside him.

“I could use a bottle, actually. What the hell, Mel? No warning?”

“Considering the news coming from the Black Palace I didn’t think you’d be stupid enough to go wandering around your usual haunts. Next time I’ll go toss a couple coins to a fortuneteller and ask them what I should do to make your life easier.”

“Sorry, I’m just a little, ah, nervous now that I’m a few feet from the Scarlet Spider and one-sixth of the fucking Iron Council.” He pinched her collar, pulling her ear to his lips. “What’re they doing here?”

“You think they tell me that? Rico just told me to be ready for a couple higher-ups tonight. I doubt even he knew it was going to be her and the general.”

“Please, Mel. You’ve got to know more than that,” he said.
 

“Nope. Not a thing. Another whiskey?”

Dino reached into his coat and pulled out a roll of bills, more than she would earn for a week even if the nights were busy. “Think this covers it?”

Melanie’s eyes lit up, and she slipped the cash into her pocket. “Rico might’ve told me he heard there’s some rumblings going on in the Council. Apparently not all the generals see eye to eye, and not all of them are as loyal to the archduke as you’d think. You know how the Scarlet Spider is. She’s probably plucking at the web to see where the juicy flies are. She thinks the archduke sees her like some kind of pet, when she wants to be his equal.”

“I think I’ll take that next whiskey now. Make it a double.”

She turned toward the bar, but he caught her shirt and spun her toward him. “Wait. Go over there and listen. Tell me what they say.”

“Friend, don’t be a
fool
tonight, okay?” She flashed a tight smile and transformed into a cool mist. “I’ll be right back with your drink.”

She vanished near the bar. Dino clenched his fist, pressing it onto the tabletop. He watched the Spider and the general chat as casually as lifelong friends. But the Spider had a way of doing that. She could make the stoniest soul turn to butter before her.

“What’re you two hatching?” Dino strummed the table, eyes narrowed beneath his hood.

Wilhelmina finished her martini and kissed the general’s cheeks, her long nails caressing the top of his hand as she stood. He took her hand in his and kissed her knuckles, and in the blink of an eye was nothing more than a few wisps of thinning smoke.

The Scarlet Spider smiled and rose to her feet, her dress fluttering around her hips. She meandered through the tables, and as she did, her body turned to mist and faded.
 

Melanie returned to the table, watching the spot where Wilhelmina vanished. “Here’s the second round.”
 

Dino grabbed the drink and tossed it back. He thunked the glass on the table and stood, wiping his mouth on a sleeve. “See you next time.”

“You’re not staying? Rico says he might let me sing once Jana’s done with her set.”

“Maybe next time. Let me know when.”

“That’s too bad,” Mel pouted. “Have a good night. Keep your hood up for a little while. I heard it might rain.”

“Will do. Thanks, Mel.”

Dino tightened his jacket, licking his whiskey-seasoned lips. He shoved his hood over his brow and kept his head down. Playing drunk, he wobbled from the casino and into the thunder-choked night.