Dark Heart of Magic (12 page)

I waited five minutes, hoping that was enough time for Victor and the others to reach whatever dining room they would be eating in, then reached up and tried the patio door.

Locked.

But I could fix that.

I plucked the chopsticks out of my hair and twisted the black lacquered wood, revealing the picks inside, then went to work on the lock. Several seconds later, the tumblers
click-click-clicked
into place, and the door
snicked
open. I stuck the chopsticks back into my ponytail, slipped inside, and shut and locked the door behind me.

I'd told Mo that I was planning to break into the Draconi compound at some point during the summer. He hadn't liked the idea any more than Claudia had, but he'd realized that he couldn't talk me out of it, and he'd come through for me the way he always did. Thanks to his shady connections, Mo had gotten his hands on the castle's blueprints, so I knew which hallway to head down and which stairs to climb to get to where I wanted—Victor's office.

According to the gossip I'd heard, only a few folks had access to Victor's office, and it was the most logical place for him to keep any incriminating files on whatever he was plotting against the other Families. Maybe I'd find out something about the rope ladder too, if Blake or one of the other Draconis had sabotaged it, although my money was still on Vance for that crime.

The Sinclair mansion was richly furnished, but it looked as rundown and rickety as Oscar's pixie trailer compared to the sheer, overwhelming opulence of the Draconi compound. Everything inside the castle gleamed with some sort of gold, whether it was the threads in the couch cushions, the gilt-edged mirrors on the walls, or even the solid gold chandeliers dangling from the ceilings.

I'll admit it. I stopped and stared at one of the chandeliers, greedily dreaming about how I could put that in my pocket and sneak away with it. But that would be impossible, even for me, at least without a ladder, a cart, and some power tools, so I hurried on.

Besides the gold, the other most notable ornament was the snarling dragon crest. It was embroidered, carved, and chiseled into practically everything, from the scarlet curtains to the dark mahogany furniture to the white flagstones embedded in the floors. Victor had his symbol displayed on everything inside his castle, and I had no doubt that he wanted to stamp it on the rest of Cloudburst Falls too.

Only the Draconis themselves—Victor, Blake, and Deah—actually lived in the castle, with the rest of the Family housed in various outbuildings. So the guards only patrolled the perimeter of the structure, and I didn't see anyone, not even pixie housekeepers, as I slipped from one hallway to the next. The inside of the castle was as eerily too-quiet as the woods had been, and unease curled up in my stomach. Something was wrong here. Other than, you know, me breaking into a place where I would be tortured and killed if I were caught sneaking around.

I'd just started down another hallway that would get me closer to Victor's office when the murmur of voices sounded, along with the
clink-clank
of silverware. So I followed the noise until I spotted a set of closed double doors at the end. From the blueprints Mo had given me, I knew that the doors led into one of the mansion's dining rooms, but of course I couldn't go in there.

That didn't mean that I couldn't spy on what was going on inside, though.

I climbed a set of stairs to the second floor and another door directly above the ones on the ground level. It wasn't locked, so I turned the knob and cracked it open. Since no lights blazed on this level, I felt safe enough to ease the door open and tiptoe through to the other side.

The door led out onto a balcony that overlooked the first-floor dining room. The area was deserted, so I dropped down onto my stomach, pulled up my spidersilk coat until it covered most of my head, and slithered up to the edge of the balcony, staring down through the slats in the white marble railing.

In the dining room below, Victor sat at the head of a rectangular table, with Blake to his right and Deah to his left. Katia was next to Blake, with Carl across from her. Nikolai Volkov sat at the other end of the table. The pixies had already served the food, and everyone was digging into cheesy lasagna, buttery garlic bread, and a green salad full of colorful veggies.

“So, Katia,” Victor said, picking up his glass and swirling around the red wine inside. “Congratulations. Your performance in the obstacle course today was quite impressive. Your speed Talent served you well. I've never seen anyone move quite so fast before.”

His words were innocent enough, but he stared at her, his golden gaze sly, as if he knew some secret about her victory. But there was nothing to know. Katia had used her speed magic to win fair and square . . . right? That's how it had looked to me. Then again, I hadn't been up front with her and Deah.

For a moment, Katia chewed on her lower lip, worry filling her face, but then she smiled and nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

“Never thank someone for something you've earned by being smarter than everyone else,” Victor corrected.

Smarter than everyone else? What did
that
mean? The way Victor talked, it was almost as if he knew that Katia had somehow cheated. Even more puzzling, it seemed to make him
happy
, as if she'd done something that he heartily approved of, although I had no idea what it could be. Maybe she'd pulled the same sort of dirty tricks on Deah that Vance had on me. If so, you would think that Victor would be upset about that, instead of pleased.

“Your victory is one of the reasons I asked you and Nikolai here tonight,” Victor continued. “I always enjoy dining with winners.”

He arched his eyebrow and gave his daughter a pointed look, telling everyone that he didn't consider her to be a winner tonight.

Deah's lips twisted with misery, but she sat up straight and tried to rally. “Well, it's always nice to have some competition. But it's only the first day of the tournament. What matters is who is left standing at the end, right?”

Katia scowled at her, and Deah shot her a dirty look in return. Victor glanced back and forth between the two girls, nodding his approval. A smile curved his lips, and I realized that he was enjoying pitting them against each other. It was just another sign of his cruelty.

Deah's phone buzzed, and she picked it up off the table and read the message on the screen. But when she realized that her father was still staring at her, she set her phone aside, dropped her head, and concentrated on her lasagna.

“I'm glad that Deah enjoys the
competition
,” Nikolai drawled. “Perhaps this will be the year when that competition finally beats her.”

His voice was pleasant enough, but his brown gaze was hard and expectant when he looked at Katia. She gave him a curt nod, as if promising that she wouldn't let Deah defeat her again.

Victor's smile widened. “Care to make a friendly wager on that?”

Nikolai reached up and stroked his brown beard, giving himself time to think. “What sort of wager?”

“Oh, I'm sure I can think of something that will be to our mutual benefit,” Victor said, his voice smooth and seductive. “We are allies now, remember?”

“Mmm.” Nikolai's tone was far more noncommittal.

The two men stared each other down, the silent tension between them growing and growing.

I looked back and forth between them, but the angle was too high for me to use my soulsight to see what they were really feeling. Still, Victor's words troubled me.

Allies? Since when were the Draconis and Volkovs
allies
? The Volkovs were the third most powerful Family in town, behind the Draconis and the Sinclairs. Everyone knew that the Volkovs wanted the top two Families to destroy each other so they could step up and seize power. So what had changed to make Nikolai join Victor?

More worry rippled through me. Maybe Claudia was wrong. Maybe Victor wasn't going to wait until after the tournament to strike out against the Sinclairs.

Maybe he'd already set his plan in motion—whatever it was.

Carl broke the silence by reaching out, grabbing a bottle of wine from the middle of the table, and filling his glass all the way to the brim with the blood-red liquid. Then he raised the glass to his lips and guzzled down all the wine like it was water and he was dying of thirst.
Glug-glug-glug
. He let out a happy sigh, smacked his lips together, and refilled his glass as quickly as he had drained it. He held up the full glass and used it to gesture at the others.

“You should take Victor up on his bet, brother,” Carl proclaimed in a loud voice, slurring his words. A few drops of wine sloshed out of his glass and stained the white tablecloth. “And you should bet a lot. Because my girl will win this year. She's got a secret weapon. Don't you, Katia?”

Katia's cheeks flamed in embarrassment, and she gave her father a sharp, disapproving look, but he was too busy gulping down his wine to notice, much less care. A spurt of sympathy filled my chest. It was obvious that Katia's father drank—a lot.

Victor's eyes narrowed with interest. “Really?” he asked, his voice taking on a sly, knowing tone. “And what would this secret weapon be?”

Katia's cheeks were still red, but she shrugged, trying to deflect the question. “I've just been training extra hard. That's all. But my father's right. It's going to pay off. I
know
it will.”

She stared at Deah, waiting for the other girl to react to her challenging words, but Deah was busy checking her phone again, and she didn't even glance at Katia. Apparently, talking about the tournament wasn't nearly as important as whatever texts were on her phone.

Blake had been shoveling food into his mouth during the whole conversation, but he stopped long enough to snicker. “Looks like some folks don't care about your training.”

Katia's cheeks burned again, with anger this time, and her lips flattened out in a harsh line. She didn't like Deah ignoring her. I wondered what Katia would think when she found out that Deah was dating Felix, or whatever the two of them were doing besides stupidly sneaking around. It had been obvious at the tournament that Katia wanted to hook up with Felix again. I wondered if Felix had talked to Katia yet and told her that he was seeing someone else. Probably not, given everything that had happened with the rope ladder.

“Well,” Victor murmured. “I suppose we'll see when the tournament resumes tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” Katia muttered, stabbing her fork into the salad on her plate.

“I'll be interested in watching you compete, Katia,” Victor continued. “I always admire strong fighters who are determined to win. Perhaps if things go well, Nikolai might let me borrow you for some . . . special projects that the two of us are going to be working on together.”

Katia blushed again, and her hazel eyes lit up with pleasure, as if she would actually enjoy working for Victor.

My stomach twisted with a combination of worry, disgust, and dread.
Special projects?
That certainly had an ominous tone to it. I waited, hoping that Victor would elaborate, but of course he didn't.

Victor and Nikolai kept talking about the tournament, mainly who the other Families had entered. Blake and Katia both chimed in with their opinions. So did Carl, although his words slurred so badly that the others just ignored him. Deah kept sneaking glances at her phone.

They also chatted about the rope ladder, but everyone agreed that it was an unfortunate accident. If Victor or Blake had been behind someone cutting the ropes, they weren't going to come right out and say so. Or maybe they hadn't had anything to do with it and Vance was the guilty one, as I suspected.

I waited a few minutes, but Victor and Nikolai didn't talk about anything else interesting or sinister, so I slithered away from the edge of the balcony and left my view of the dining hall. I probably had at least forty-five minutes before dinner would end, and I needed to get to Victor's office, search it, and get out of here before then.

Still keeping to the shadows, I skulked through the mansion, moving from one hallway and staircase to the next, climbing higher and higher all the while. According to the blueprints Mo had given me, Victor's office was located close to the greenlab, the space where both common and magical plants were grown, including stitch-sting bushes, which were harvested for their healing properties. I headed in that direction, and soon, the delicious smells of dinner were replaced by the softer, floral scents of flowers.

I sidled up to and peered in through the glass doors that fronted the Draconi greenlab. Just as in the Sinclair greenlab, tables covered with beakers, burners, and other scientific equipment took up the front part of the lab, surrounded by all sorts of plants, bushes, and even a few small, potted trees. The lights were turned down low, and I didn't see any guards patrolling inside or pixies flying over the tables. Good. Cutting through here would get me to Victor's office more quickly and would be marginally safer than continuing to skulk down the hallways. The castle might be mostly deserted, but sooner or later, I was bound to round a corner and run face-first into a pixie, who would be sure to yell and sound the alarm that I was here.

I tried one of the doors, surprised that it was already open. I would have thought that Victor would have the greenlab locked up tight, given all the stitch-sting and other important, expensive supplies inside, but I wasn't about to overlook this bit of good luck. So I slipped inside and shut the door behind me.

I looked over the front part of the greenlab, but science had never been my thing, so nothing stood out to me. Still, I pulled my phone out of my coat pocket and snapped photos of the equipment and the lab setup to show Felix and Angelo later. I also took several shots of an area off to the left side of the lab—one that was filled with shelves full of bottled liquid stitch-sting.