But they never worked on Lourdes.
It began with a person’s air. Lourdes was tall with features full of right angles and fair colors. She dressed fluidly—a practice uncommon but not unheard of in Bellamy, where reputation depended on social circles and income and nothing else. Her Protector talents—her blood and split talents were the same, making her exceptionally powerful—made her every word sound consoling, soothing, no matter how sharp her tone. She followed each code of societal etiquette, but did so with such precision that it always seemed as if she were poking fun.
Next was what you could’ve gathered from pleasant small talk. Lourdes claimed she was thirty-seven years old, but she looked no more than thirty. Her family—now all dead, as far as Enne knew—had vacationed in Bellamy when she was young, but she hadn’t moved there until she’d adopted Enne, and no one in Bellamy knew her from her childhood.
Last were the more intimate details. Within the privacy of their home, Lourdes cursed. She read New Reynes newspapers. She sang loudly and terribly. Enne had seen strange scars shaped like perfect circles on the inside of her elbows. She’d heard her laugh too hard or yell in a way that made the beads on their chandelier quiver, but she’d never seen Lourdes shed a tear. She’d seen Lourdes walk into her office each morning with a cup of coffee and lock the door behind her, and Enne, for years, had been too nervous to follow her inside.
Enne loved her, but she didn’t understand her. No one in Bellamy did. It was why their names rarely graced the guest lists of balls and salons, why no one ever paid attention to Enne.
Now Enne wanted to understand, and she regretted, more than anything, avoiding these questions before.
“I want to hear everything,” Enne told Levi seriously. “Everything you know about the monarchists, the Mizer sympathizers, this world. Lourdes never shared any of this with me, and I need to—”
“Have you ever considered that your mother purposely kept you in the dark?” he asked—not unkindly, but not gently, either.
Yes, she thought.
Instead she answered, “Why would she do that?”
“No idea, but before we chat with Vianca Augustine about hiring you, it’s very important that we’re on the same page. If you haven’t noticed by the decor of this casino, Vianca has a fetish for all things Mizer. She certainly knows who Lourdes is, but—” he said loudly as Enne began to interrupt “—under no circumstances should you ask Vianca about Lourdes. Under no circumstances should you ask Vianca anything.”
The way Levi spat out Vianca’s name, Enne wondered what exactly he’d asked of Vianca. Or what she’d asked of him.
“Mizers created volts, that was their talent,” he began.
“I know that—”
He shushed her. “Being an orb-maker, I was taught a lot about Mizers—I’m sure I know more than you. We’re different from the metalsmiths or glassmaker families. As you might know, Mizers don’t technically make volts—they make energy. Orb-makers filter that energy into volts, sort of like a by-product. Without orb-makers, no one would’ve ever started using volts as money. Without orb-makers, holding that energy in your skin would be unbearably painful.”
Enne was tempted to interrupt and remind him that very few people stored volts in their skin. In Bellamy, it was considered too lowbrow not to use orbs—they weren’t that expensive. And in New Reynes, she imagined such a method could prove risky. With enough practice, someone could steal your volts with only a graze of your skin. Forgoing orbs was impractical.
“The Mizers were all systematically murdered during the Revolution. Adults and children alike,” Levi said gravely. “There were protests, of course, but the Phoenix Club didn’t much care. Twenty-five years ago sounds like a long time, but not for the North Side. Mizers are still a political topic, but we don’t need them anymore, now that volts can be manufactured artificially. Still, the monarchists have been slowly gaining momentum to fight against corruption.”
“Do you agree with the monarchists?” Enne asked quietly. Levi almost made it sound like the monarchists were in the right, when all Enne had ever associated them with was extremism and violence.
He smiled in a way that wasn’t much of a smile at all. “I don’t involve myself in politics.”
Seeking reassurance, Enne took her token out of her pocket. It’d always seemed like a unique trinket, something pretty Lourdes had thought Enne might like. Now Enne saw the woman in the cameo as a Mizer queen. She saw the Revolution. The queen’s execution. The murder of every Mizer and their sympathizers. She couldn’t decide which was more horrific: that Lourdes had gifted her an object with such a blood-soaked history, or that Enne had treated it as a trinket.
“I still...” She squeezed the token, and it felt warm and steady in her palm. It was her only comfort away from home, alone in this city. “I still can’t picture Lourdes being involved with monarchists.”
“She was more than involved. She was Séance, practically the face of the Mizer sympathizers’ crusade.” He gazed at Enne fiercely, the judgment clear in his dark eyes. What exactly did Levi Glaisyer think of her—that she was desperate? Foolish? Childish? She wondered why she cared. “Why did you think she came to New Reynes so often?”
“She said she was visiting friends,” Enne answered.
“She never thought to bring you to meet those friends?”
“It was more important I stay in school.”
“You never questioned that?”
She squeezed the token in her fist. Was this some kind of interrogation?
“She’s my mother. Why should I have questioned her?” Although Enne had certainly had her suspicions, she’d ignored them. Admittedly, there had once been a time when Enne resented Lourdes for her secrets, for her strange behavior, for the way she alienated Enne from any chance of society’s approval.
But now, with Lourdes’s whereabouts and even survival unknown, she hated herself for those thoughts.
“It’s easy for Protectors to keep secrets,” Levi prodded. “They never seem as if they’re lying. It never occurred to you—”
“No. It didn’t.” Enne’s voice rose, marking the dozenth time she’d broken the show no emotion rule. She didn’t appreciate what Levi was suggesting, that Lourdes would use her talents to purposefully keep Enne in the dark. If a Protector officially swore their powers to someone, they were forever bound to act in that person’s best interest, no matter the implications for themselves. Lourdes had never sworn to anyone, thank goodness. The practice was barbaric and unused since the Revolution. Levi was suggesting Lourdes was protecting someone—probably someone in New Reynes—and, by extension, that Enne hadn’t even noticed that her mother’s life was barely her own.
“I trust her,” Enne snapped. What did he want her to say? That yes, it had occurred to her that Lourdes had purposefully kept information from her? Of course it had. Enne knew Lourdes kept secrets, but he made it sound as if their entire relationship was a lie, and Enne would never believe that. “I trust her. Maybe trust is a foreign concept to you.”
She realized, once she said it, that the words had come out rather harsh. This whole time, Levi had kept a remarkably cool expression. She was the one working herself up. For a moment, she considered apologizing. Then...
“Maybe na?veté is a foreign concept to you,” he said drily.
That thought vanished.
“How dare—”
“If you’re so jumpy answering my questions, how are you going to last one night on the North Side? How are you going to face Vianca Augustine?” He shook his head, and Enne couldn’t decide if she felt ashamed or aggravated. He wasn’t being fair. “I’m just trying to keep you from getting yourself killed.”
“What do you mean?” she asked. It wasn’t as though she was in any real danger. At least, as long as she didn’t speak to any whiteboots again.