Dark Heart of Magic

by Jennifer Estep

  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.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Time 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—

  Creak.

  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 bee
n 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.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I was so surprised that someone would be out here after dark that my brain ground to a complete halt, and I didn’t even think of doing the smart thing, like vaulting over the fence and running away. Instead, all I could do was stare at the woman, my mouth gaping open.

  Long, golden hair, dark blue eyes, pale skin that shimmered in the moonlight. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen, like a fairy-tale princess come to life, but something about her seemed strangely . . . familiar. Like I’d seen her somewhere before, although I didn’t think I had.

  For as beautiful as she was, her appearance was also a bit strange. A long, flowing white garment covered her slender body, looking more like a nightgown than an actual dress, and her feet were bare, despite the sticks, rocks, and other woodsy debris that littered the cemetery. One lock of her golden hair was braided down the right side of her face and tied off with a sapphire-blue ribbon, while a white wicker basket full of blood-red roses dangled from her hand.

  The woman stared at me, obviously seeing me despite the mist and the darkness, which meant that she had some sort of sight magic. I expected her to open her mouth and yell for the guards, but to my surprise, a soft smile curved her lips. The warm, welcoming expression made her look even more beautiful, like an ethereal ghost come to frolic in the moonlit cemetery.

  “Serena!” she said, tossing her basket aside and racing over to me. “You finally came back!”

  I couldn’t have been more shocked than if she’d started doing cartwheels. Serena? She thought I was my mom? Why? Why would she think that? Sure, I had my mom’s black hair and blue eyes, and I was even wearing her sapphire-blue coat, but I obviously wasn’t her.

  But the woman didn’t seem to realize that. Instead, she stopped in front of me, reached out, and drew me into a tight hug.

  “Oh, Serena,” she said in a choked voice. “It’s been so long. So very, very long.”

  I stood there, my mouth still gaping open, my arms hanging by my sides, wondering who this woman was and why she thought I was my dead mom. After several seconds, the woman drew back, still smiling.

  “Oh, Serena,” she said in a light, lilting, almost singsong voice. “I have so much to tell you. About Deah and Lila and everything else that’s been going on between the Families.”

  More shock jolted through me. She knew my name? But if she knew that I was Serena’s daughter, then why did she think that I was my mom?

  I looked into her eyes, and I realized that they were unnaturally bright, as though two glittering jewels had been set into her face. But the weird thing was that my soulsight didn’t automatically kick in the way it usually did whenever I locked gazes with someone.

  I waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . . but I didn’t feel any of her emotions, even though she was obviously very glad to see me. No warm happiness, no blazing conviction, nothing. Instead, this strange, almost floating sensation filled my mind as if my head were full of the light, airy mist that surrounded us, as if I were somehow drifting away from the rest of my body—

  I blinked, and the sensation vanished, although the woman’s eyes remained as bright as ever. I tried to step away from her, but she reached out and grabbed my hands, hard and tight enough to tell me that she had a strength Talent.

  “We have to warn the girls about the wolf,” the woman said in a low, urgent tone. “The wolf wants to devour them both, gobble them up until there’s nothing left but bones and blades.... No blood, just bones and blades . . . bones and blades . . . bones
and blades. . . .”

  She shuddered and let go of my hands. She wrapped her arms around her body and hugged herself tight as though something terrible had happened.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, having no idea what was going on or why.

  The woman looked at me, her face dark and troubled. Then, in the next instant, she blinked, her lips stretching up in another sunny smile. “Just fine now that you’re here, Serena.”

  And then she turned around, retrieved her basket of roses, and skipped past me. Seriously, she was skipping as though she didn’t have a care in the world. The woman headed straight to my father’s tombstone, then dropped to her knees, pulled the red roses out of her basket, and started arranging them on his grave, humming a soft tune all the while.

  All I could do was just stand there with my eyes bulging and mouth gaping open even wider than before. I felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. Things just kept getting stranger and stranger.

  “I thought that was you at the tournament today,” the woman said. “But, of course, I was up in the box, so I couldn’t be sure.”

  So she was the woman who’d been sitting in the Draconi box, the blonde wearing the white hat. That still didn’t tell me who she might be in the Family, but that didn’t matter. What did was getting out of here before someone else spotted me—

  A branch cracked behind me, and a hand touched my shoulder.

  Instinct took over. I grabbed the hand, turned my body into the one behind me, and flipped my attacker over my shoulder. The guy landed on his back with an audible thump, then let out a low groan of pain.

  Felix blinked up at me. “Ouch. That hurt.”

  “Felix!” I hissed. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’d say the better question is what are you doing here,” another voice chimed in.

  I whirled around to find Deah standing in the cemetery as well, her hand resting on the hilt of the sword strapped to her black leather belt. My hand curled around the hilt of my sword as well, and the two of us stood there, staring at each other, daring the other to make the first move.