Dark Heart of Magic (14 page)

 

 

A chill slithered down my spine. Victor had a file on me too? I snorted. Of course he did—because I was in the tournament and finally worthy of a bit of his attention. I opened the file.

Name, age, height. All of it was listed there, and there was even a photo of me that had been taken at the tournament sometime today, since I was wearing the black T-shirt and shorts I'd had on during the obstacle course. I hadn't noticed anyone taking my photo, but there had been tons of people with phones and cameras. I shivered at the thought that someone had been watching me.

I exhaled again, longer and louder than before. Victor didn't know about my soulsight and transference magic, and he hadn't realized who I really was—the daughter of his old enemy, Serena Sterling. I didn't know what he would do if he ever found out the truth, but it wouldn't be anything good.

I took photos of my file as well, thin though it was, and put it back where it belonged. My time was up, and I was about to head over to the doors and slip out of the office, when I realized that I was shivering in a way that only meant one thing.

There was magic in here—and a lot of it.

I stopped and looked around the office, scanning the fine furnishings and wondering what might be emanating enough magic for me to feel it so strongly and at such a great distance in this huge room. I moved out from behind the desk and headed toward one of the bookcases, thinking that maybe Victor had a black blade stuffed back on one of the shelves.

But the farther I moved away from the desk, the more that chill of magic lessened. So I turned around and found myself staring at the dragon carving in the wall, the ruby eye still fixed on me.

Hmm.

I had been a thief long enough and had watched enough of those old
Scooby-Doo
cartoons in the library where I used to live to realize that there might be more to the carving than I'd first thought. So I went over to the ruby and looked at it—
really
looked at it—using my sight magic to peer through the gem's many winking facets.

There was something behind the wall.

Some space, some room, some sort of open area. And that's where the magic was coming from—the entire stone carving was cool to the touch. Now, I just had to figure out how to get in there and see what Victor thought was important enough to hide—

“My office is just through here.” Victor's voice sounded beyond the closed office doors.

I froze, realizing that I'd just jinxed myself. Curses rose in my throat, but I swallowed them down.

A key scraped in the lock. Victor was here, and he'd brought someone along with him.

T
ime to leave.

Since I couldn't get back out through the main entrance, I hurried over to the only other exit—a door set in the middle of the fourth and final office wall, one made entirely out of glass.

I unlocked the door, slipped through to the other side, and rushed over to the edge of the balcony, looking for a drainpipe or a trellis I could climb down. It was full dark now, and spotlights glimmered in the lawn, highlighting the guards patrolling the area, including one right below the balcony. My sneaker kicked a loose bit of stone, which
plink-plink-plinked
across the balcony. The guard's head snapped up, and I barely managed to lurch back out of his line of sight—

My head snapped around, and I realized that I hadn't shut the patio door all the way behind me. It swung open a treacherous inch, then another one, but I didn't dare dart forward to try to close it. Not when I could see the office doors opening, and Victor striding inside.

So I scuttled over to the far side of the balcony, where the glass gave way to the stone of the mansion, and sandwiched myself in between the stone wall and a wooden trellis filled with red roses. Now, I just had to hope my hiding spot was good enough to keep me safe from Victor in his office and the guard patrolling the grounds below.

“Please,” Victor's voice drifted outside to me. “Make yourselves comfortable.”

I scooted forward just far enough so that I could peer in through the glass wall. Victor was in the office, along with Nikolai and Carl Volkov. I didn't see Katia, though. Maybe she was hanging out with Blake, while the adults talked. Poor girl, if that was the case.

Nikolai settled himself in a chair in front of Victor's desk. Carl sat down in another chair there, although he slouched to one side, obviously drunk. Carl was too out of it to look around the office, but Nikolai wasn't, and his dark eyes scanned everything, lingering on the dragon crest carved into the wall behind the desk. Eventually, his gaze turned toward the glass wall, and I was able to look into his eyes long enough for my soulsight to kick in—and let me feel his sharp, pinching jealousy.

Nikolai desperately wanted all the gold and other fine things that Victor had. Maybe that was why he'd agreed to an alliance with the Draconis. Maybe Victor was paying the Volkovs for whatever reason.

Instead of sitting down behind his desk, Victor moved off to a wet bar in one corner of the office and started pouring them all glasses of scotch.

“I hope you've been considering my proposal, Nikolai,” Victor said. “I think that merging our Families into one unit would be most beneficial to us both.”

Shock rippled through me. So that's what Victor was up to—or at least part of it.

Victor's back was to him, so he didn't see Nikolai smirk. Perhaps their alliance wasn't a done deal after all—or perhaps Nikolai was already thinking about how he could betray Victor. That would be a dangerous game to play.

“It is an interesting proposal,” Nikolai replied in a neutral tone. “One that I have given a great deal of thought. But, as you know, there are serious obstacles to any such merger. The other Families would never allow it.”

“Because our combined forces would be too big a threat to them,” Victor finished. “I'm well aware of that. But think of it this way. If we were to combine, then none of the other Families would be able to stand against us, including Claudia Sinclair.”

“True,” Nikolai murmured. “Very true.”

They didn't say anything else. Carl kept staring off into space, sliding down and then hoisting himself upright in his chair over and over again.

Victor had just poured the last glass of scotch when he stopped, frowned, and looked over at his desk. A breeze was gusting in through the open door and ruffling the papers there, something that his sharp, narrowed eyes had picked up. He would have to have a Talent for sight, or maybe one for hearing, to notice something like that, given that he was on the opposite side of the office.

Victor realized that the breeze was coming in from the balcony door, and his frown deepened as he headed in my direction.

I silently cursed and slid even farther back behind the white trellis in the corner of the balcony, trying not to rustle the roses any more than necessary. The thorns slid off my spidersilk coat, since they couldn't penetrate the smooth fabric, but several scratched my hands and neck and one particularly troublesome thorn tangled in my hair. I gritted my teeth, ripped free of the thorns, and pressed myself as flat as I could against the stone wall behind the trellis.

Victor pushed open the glass door and stepped out onto the balcony. I froze, staying absolutely, completely still, barely even daring to breathe and desperately pretending that I was just another part of the wall.

Because if Victor spotted me, then I was
dead
.

He'd yell for the guards, or worse, come after me himself. I held back a shudder. I'd seen what he'd done to my mom, how he'd carved her up like she was a slab of meat before he'd finally killed her. He hadn't cut her so many times just to murder her. He'd done it because he'd
wanted
to, which made him a special kind of cruel.

White stars flashed on and off in front of my face in warning, but I ruthlessly blinked them away. I couldn't afford to let my soulsight throw me back into the past to relive my mom's murder. Not now, when my own future was so very much in doubt.

“Something wrong?” Nikolai asked.

Victor waited several seconds before answering. “Seems I forgot to shut the door when I was admiring the view earlier.”

He went back into the office and closed and locked the door behind him.

As much as I wanted to bolt from my hiding place and get out of here as fast as possible, I made myself stand absolutely still, in case he decided to look out the door again.

Sure enough, a second later, Victor stepped in front of the glass again, peering out into the night. He knew—or at least suspected—that someone had been in his office. All I could do now was hope that he thought it was Blake or some other Draconi.

After several long, tense seconds, Victor moved away from the glass, took the drinks he'd fixed over to Nikolai and Carl, and sat down behind his desk. They started talking, but the glass muffled their words, and I couldn't hear what they were saying. Besides, I'd been here long enough, and I'd pushed my luck as much as I dared to.

So I slipped out from behind the roses, waited until the guard below the balcony had moved away, climbed down the closest drainpipe, and vanished into the night.

I made it across the grounds and back over to the woods that ringed the castle. Victor's office had been on the opposite side from where I'd gone in, so I had to circle all the way around the compound. I had almost reached the trail that would take me back to the Sinclair mansion when I came across something else interesting—the Draconi Family cemetery.

It was just like the Sinclair cemetery, a clearing ringed with a wrought iron fence, with one notable difference—almost all the tombstones said
Draconi
. Apparently, the Draconis preferred to bury only their blood relatives here, instead of all those who had been loyal to their Family like the Sinclairs did. Exactly what I would expect from Victor.

I should have kept walking, since it was getting late and I needed to get back to the mansion, but I found myself stopping, opening the gate, and moving deeper into the cemetery. It took me several minutes, but I found a single white tombstone set off all by itself at one edge of the cemetery, like a lonely kid being left out of the rest of the cool crowd. Only a few simple words flowed across it:
Luke Silver
.

My father.

My heart squeezed tight as I stared at the marker, all sorts of emotions bubbling up inside me. This was the first time I'd ever seen where he was buried. This was the first time I'd ever seen any tangible proof that he'd ever truly existed, other than a few old photos my mom had shown me.

I'd never known my father, but my mom had told me all about him. Luke Silver had been the Draconi Family bruiser—before Victor had him killed. Victor hadn't liked Luke's relationship with my mom, especially after he'd proposed to her. Victor had thought that my dad was being disloyal to the Draconis by being with her, so he'd sent my dad out to deal with a copper crusher that had invaded one of the Family businesses.

It should have been a routine assignment, but Victor hadn't told my dad that there was a whole nest of copper crushers, and Luke had been ambushed, overwhelmed, and killed by the monsters. My mom had left Cloudburst Falls shortly after his death. He'd never even known that she was pregnant with me.

I turned my star-sapphire ring around and around on my finger—my mom's engagement ring—even as my heart twisted and twisted in my chest as though a copper crusher was coiled around it and squeezing the life out of me.

I'd once told Felix that Romeo-and-Juliet relationships between the Families never worked; because if Victor could so easily betray his bruiser, his right-hand man, his supposed friend, he wouldn't hesitate to arrange some sort of similar accident for Felix.

All the stupid, senseless Family plots and politics were another reason that I wanted to leave Cloudburst Falls as soon as possible—after I made sure that Felix, Devon, and the rest of the Sinclairs were safe.

This part of the cemetery wasn't as well tended as the rest, and bunches of wildflowers had grown up along the fence. I reached down, picked another blue forget-me-not, and laid it on my father's tombstone. I opened my mouth, but I didn't know what to say, so I clamped my lips shut and settled for turning my sapphire ring around on my finger one more time.

I sighed and rubbed my head, which was aching. There was nothing
to
say. Luke had loved my mom, and he'd been killed because Victor didn't approve of their relationship. Yet another love story with a tragic, bitter end.

There was nothing in this cemetery but ghosts, hurts, and regrets. That was the way I felt about all of Cloudburst Falls sometimes—the Midway, the squares, even the sweeping views from the mountain. All of it reminded me of my mom and everything I'd lost.

And all of it made my heart keep right on aching from the deep, jagged wounds that would never, ever heal.

So I sighed again and turned around, ready to leave the cemetery and all the painful memories behind, and go back to the Sinclair mansion for the night. I looked up, my breath catching in my throat.

A woman stood at the cemetery gate.