Dark Heart of Magic

by Jennifer Estep

  “What are you doing here?” Deah demanded again. “You’re trespassing.”

  I couldn’t exactly tell her that I’d been sneaking around her house and spying on her dad, so I went with the first lie that popped into my head. “I was looking for Felix.”

  Deah crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him. Felix sighed, then held out a hand. I reached down and helped him to his feet.

  “Is this another one of your girlfriends?” she snapped.

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be an idiot. I came over here to make sure that no one spotted your Romeo—like, say, Blake or your dad.”

  “How did you even know I was coming over here?” Felix asked.

  I snorted. “Please. You’re crazy about her. As soon as she stomped off at the tournament today, I knew you’d probably sneak over here tonight and make some grand romantic gesture to win her back. Am I wrong?”

  Felix winced, but he didn’t deny my accusation.

  “Don’t be so cross, darling,” another voice piped up. “It’s always nice to have visitors.”

  The blond woman had finished arranging the roses on my father’s grave. She got to her feet, skipped back over, and stopped next to me.

  “What are you doing out here?” Deah asked, concern creasing her face. “You know you’re not supposed to leave the house after dark. It’s not safe.”

  The woman beamed at me. “Talking to Serena. What does it look like I’m doing, silly? And it’s perfectly safe. Serena knows all about the monsters and the best ways to handle them.”

  Deah sighed. “Mom. . . .”

  My eyebrows shot up in my face. “This is your mom?”

  “Yes,” she snapped. “This is my mom. Seleste Draconi. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Her eyes glittered with anger, and her hand dropped to her sword again in a clear challenge.

  “Now, don’t be mad at Serena,” Seleste said. “We were just catching up. It’s been so terribly long since I’ve seen her. We’re family, you see.”

  Seleste patted my shoulder, her touch light and soft. Us? Family? Why would she think that?

  Deah frowned. “What’s she talking about? Why does she keep calling you Serena? Did you do something to her?”

  I held up my hands. “I didn’t do anything to your mom. I was out here looking for Felix when she came skipping into the cemetery.”

  “What did she say to you?”

  I shrugged. “Nothing really. Just some weird, random stuff.”

  Deah tensed, her jaw clenching. “She talked to you? Tell me what she said. Tell me the exact words.”

  “Why? It was all just gibberish about bones and blades and stuff.”

  She opened her mouth, probably to demand that I tell her what her mom had said, but another voice boomed through the night.

  “Deah!” Blake shouted. “Where are you? Your crazy-ass mom got out of her room again!”

  She sighed and closed her eyes for a moment. Then she turned and yelled back to him. “I’m over here, Blake! I found her! We’ll be there in a minute!”

  Blake didn’t respond, although a door slammed somewhere in the distance as though he’d gone back inside the castle.

  “You two need to leave,” Deah hissed. “Now.”

  Felix held out his hand. “But—”

  “No buts. Just go.” Her face softened. “I’ll text you later. Okay?”

  He nodded. Deah stepped up, put her arm around her mom’s shoulder, and gently steered her away from me. Still smiling, Seleste looked back over her shoulder and gave me a cheery wave.

  “So nice to finally meet you, Lila. I’ll be seeing you again soon,” she called out in that eerie, singsong voice.

  Deah tightened her grip on her mom, opened the cemetery gate, and hurried toward the castle. She never looked back.

  I waited until they were out of earshot before I looked at Felix. “What was that about? Why does Deah’s mom act like that?”

  He sighed and kicked at a tuft of overgrown grass. “Because she has a Talent for sight, specifically for seeing the future. She’s always been like that, for as long as I can remember.”

  “Deah’s mom can see the future?” I’d heard of folks having that power, but it was a rare Talent, and I’d never met anyone before with it.

  He nodded. “Yeah. She’s always saying strange stuff, calling people by other names, seeing monsters that aren’t there, things like that. And she’s always wandering off. Deah has to watch her all the time to make sure she doesn’t get too far from the house and accidentally hurt herself or get eaten by a monster. Once, Seleste managed to get all the way down to the lochness bridge in town before Deah and the guards caught up with her.”

  I winced. That sounded like a rough life for Deah and her mom. “Is Seleste always so . . . out of it?”

  Felix shrugged. “It comes and goes. Apparently, she’s pretty clear during the day, but the sight or visions or whatever get worse at night.” He looked at me. “What did she say to you? According to Deah, she’s pretty accurate. The rumor is that’s why Victor married her—for her visions.”

  We have to warn the girls about the wolf.... 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....

  Seleste’s urgent, singsong voice whispered in my mind. This time, I was the one who shuddered. I didn’t know if she could actually see the future or not, but those files and notes in Victor’s office had me worried enough already, without thinking about bones and blades, or whatever her warning really meant.

  “Nothing that made sense,” I said, answering Felix’s question. “Deah’s right. We need to leave before one of the guards decides to patrol through here. Let’s go.”

  Felix and I left the cemetery and headed through the woods toward the Sinclair mansion. Well, I walked and Felix trudged, banging into more trees and crashing through more bushes than he maneuvered around, since the white mist had now fully engulfed the forest.

  “Slow down,” he muttered, after bouncing off yet another tree. “Some of us don’t have magical night vision, remember?”

  “Well, then, it’s a good thing you can use your healing Talent to stitch up all those cuts and scrapes you’re getting.”

  “You are so not funny,” he groused.

  I grinned, even though he couldn’t see me. “I’m a laugh riot and you know it.”

  Felix grumbled something under his breath that I was probably better off not hearing.

  “Actually, I don’t think that trespassing on Draconi property is really a laughing matter,” a low voice drawled.

  My hand dropped to the hilt of my sword, ready to pull it free, while Felix stepped up beside me. But instead of a Draconi guard, Devon stepped out of the trees right in front of us.

  “Busted,” Felix muttered.

  Devon crossed his arms over his chest, his mouth fixed in a flat line. A black cloak covered his shoulders to help him better blend in with the shadows, and a sword was belted to his waist. Devon rarely carried a weapon, and the sword told me how worried he’d been about us. He was also holding a flashlight, the circular beam shooting off into the trees.

  Devon raised his eyebrows. “Care to tell me what the two of you are doing way out here where you shouldn’t be?”

  Felix opened his mouth, but for once, words escaped him. He clamped his lips shut and looked at me for help. I shrugged. I didn’t have any lies ready either. There was really no good reason for either one of us to be out here, and all three of us knew it, especially Devon.

  “Let me see if I can explain things,” Devon said. “Felix went over to the Draconi compound to see Deah, apologize, and explain to her why Katia was flirting with him at the tournament.”

  “Dude!” Felix said. “How do you know about me and Deah?”

  Devon gave him a look. “It’s kind of obvious. I’ve known for a couple of weeks now, ever since that dinner f
or all the Families, when the two of you were staring at each other all night. Besides, every time we run into her on the Midway, you suddenly, mysteriously disappear for a while.”

  Devon was smart, able to pick up on subtle things like that, piece them together, and figure out what was really going on. That’s how he’d realized who I really was and that I had transference magic. Just by watching and listening and putting together all the small, inadvertent clues that I hadn’t even realized I’d let slip about my past and my power.

  “I was hoping that you would come clean with me, but you didn’t,” Devon continued. “I went to your room, but you weren’t there, so I figured you must have hiked over here. And when Lila wasn’t in her room either, I decided to come look for you both.”

  Felix chewed on his lip. “And what do you think about me and Deah? Are you going to tell your mom?”

  Claudia wouldn’t like the idea of Felix dating Deah, especially not now, when the Draconis seemed poised to strike out at the other Families. She would order him to break things off with Deah, and he would have to do it. Claudia’s word was law with the Sinclairs, and you either followed it, or you left the Family—for good.

  Devon sighed and ran a hand through his hair, the mist turning his dark locks more black than brown. “I don’t have a problem with Deah. She’s always been nice enough to me, given that she’s a Draconi. But she is a Draconi—and not just someone who works for the Family. She’s Victor’s daughter and Blake’s sister. You couldn’t have picked a worse person to sneak around with.”

  Felix’s shoulders sagged. “I know that, all of that. But I love her, Dev. I have for a while now.”

  Devon looked at his best friend. “I know you do, and I think Deah cares about you too. That’s why I’m not going to say anything to my mom . . . for now. But something’s gotta give, man. You need to figure out if she’s really worth all the trouble that being with her will bring down on both of you.”

  Felix momentarily brightened; then his face sobered. He wasn’t just talking to his best friend right now, and he gave Devon a curt, respectful nod, realizing that the Family bruiser was giving him a chance to make things right—for everyone.

  Devon turned to me, his gaze lingering on my long coat. “And you came over here to spy on Victor.”

  I smoothed down my coat, making drops of mist slide off the spidersilk. “And why would you think that? Maybe I saw Felix leave and was following him instead.”

  “Three reasons. You stayed behind in the library to talk to my mom earlier today, you only wear that coat when you’re up to something sneaky, and we’re still standing on Draconi property.” Devon ticked the points off on his fingers. “Victor’s up to something, isn’t he?”

  There was no use lying to him. “Yeah. Although I still have no idea what it is.”

  I told him and Felix everything I’d seen and overheard at the Draconi castle. When I finished, they were both frowning.

  “What do you think those notes in the Draconi files mean?” Devon asked. “What sort of things was Victor going to give his people to increase their magic? Or whatever he’s doing?”

  “Not a clue. I took photos of the files, though. Maybe Claudia or Mo will be able to make sense out of them.”

  “And Victor has a file on Deah?” Felix asked. “You don’t think he would actually . . . hurt her, do you?”

  He chewed on his lip again and started pacing back and forth.

  “Of course not,” I said in a smooth voice. “His notes were all about how proud he was of her mimic magic. Nothing else.”

  Devon could tell I was lying, and he nodded his approval at me. There was no need for Felix to worry any more than he already was.

  Felix opened his mouth to ask me another question, but Devon cut him off.

  “We can talk more back at the mansion,” he said. “I don’t think that the Draconi guards patrol this far out, but I don’t like waving this flashlight around where they might see it either. Let’s go home.”

  Devon turned around, the flashlight swinging in a wide arc. I was just about to fall in step behind him when the beam swiped across something that was a bright, glossy red.

  Blood.

  “Wait,” I said. “I see something. Shine your light back over here.”

  I pointed as I walked toward the spot where I’d seen the splash of crimson.

  “Lila?” Devon asked, peering into the trees and mist around us. “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know yet. But something was wrong because it was once again quiet in the forest—too quiet.

  No owls hooted in the trees, no rockmunks scuttled through the underbrush, no monsters peered out at us from the bushes. I glanced around and realized that this was the same place where I had noticed the eerie silence before, on my way over to the Draconi estate.

  I skirted around a couple of dead, fallen trees, with Devon and Felix trailing along behind me. I hopped over the last fallen tree and stopped, since the ground dropped away into a sharp, rocky ravine that was about ten feet wide.

  My friends stood on either side of me, with Devon shining his flashlight back and forth, straight out in front of us, highlighting the dense thicket of trees on the far side of the ravine.

  “I don’t see anything,” he murmured.

  Me neither. So I looked around, searching for the blood I’d seen before. A second later, I spotted it, splattered on a tree to my right, with smears on the ground as well. A horrible thought occurred to me.

  “Shine your light down,” I whispered. “Into the ravine.”

  Devon did as I asked, the beam of his flashlight sinking lower . . . and lower . . . and lower....

  Until it hit the first body.

  A tree troll was lying on the ground about ten feet down in the ravine, its furry gray arms and legs splayed out at awkward angles. Deep, vicious cuts crisscrossed the creature’s chest and belly, and a few small pools of blood surrounded its body, although not nearly as much as I would have expected, given the horrible wounds.

  And it wasn’t the only one.

  Devon moved the light back and forth, from one side of the ravine to the other, revealing more than a dozen dead trolls. All of them were in various states of decomposition, and many had been reduced to nothing but bones, although none of them had been killed as recently as the one closest to us.

  “What do you think did this?” Felix whispered. “A bear? A copper crusher? Another monster?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I doubt a bear would be this close to the Family compounds, not with all the people, lights, and noise. Of course, monsters are everywhere, but they usually like to stay hidden. But if it was a copper crusher or some other monster, why wouldn’t it have eaten the tree trolls, bones and all? There are so many of them—”

  “Too many for one monster to eat.” Devon finished my horrible thought. “Way too many.”

  “But why kill a tree troll if you aren’t going to eat it?” Felix asked. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”

  I thought of the murdered troll we’d found behind the dumpster yesterday. Once again, that soft, evil laughter echoed in my mind, making me shiver.

  “Maybe . . .” my voice trailed off. “Maybe it was just about the killing. Maybe whoever did this didn’t care about eating the trolls at all.”

  Felix gave me a horrified look. “You think someone did this for fun? That they caught and killed a bunch of tree trolls? How would they even do that?”

  “They’d have to have some sort of trap,” Devon said.

  He lifted the flashlight, shining it up into the trees around us and moving the beam back and forth.

  I sucked in a breath when I spotted the cage.

  It hung about ten feet up in a blood persimmon tree off to our right. A cage. Someone had actually put a cage out here so they could trap, torture, and murder monsters. Anger roared through my body, and I ran over, took hold of the trunk, and started scrambling up the tree.

  “Lila,�
�� Devon said. “Be careful.”

  I nodded and kept climbing. A few seconds later, I was at eye level with the cage. It was a small, metal contraption, about the size of a pet carrier, with bars all around it. The door on the cage was open, and something flat and gold gleamed inside. I reached through the opening—careful not to trip the lever that would send the door shooting down—snagged the object, and dragged it out where I could see it.

  A dark chocolate candy bar.

  My stomach twisted, and bile rose in my throat. Someone had deliberately put the chocolate here to lure a new troll into the cage since they’d already killed the monster who’d been trapped earlier tonight—and all those other poor trolls before it.

  “Lila?” Devon called out. “What is it?”

  I tucked the chocolate bar into one of my coat pockets, then took hold of the metal cage.

  “Use your compulsion magic and tell me to destroy something,” I snarled. “Now.”

  Devon drew in a breath. When he spoke again, his voice held a cold crack of magic. “Lila, destroy.”

  Devon’s voice wrapped around me like the mist cloaking the trees. The second I heard his command, invisible hands took hold of my arms, moving them this way and that. Devon’s power soaked into my body and quickly melted into a familiar, icy wave of magic flowing through my veins, so cold that it was almost painful. Suddenly, I was stronger than before—and I used that strength to rip the metal cage apart with my bare hands.

  Bit by bit, bar by bar, I tore the trap apart, the pieces ping-ping-pinging off the tree branches and disappearing into the darkness. I had just snapped off the final bar when the last of Devon’s magic burned out of my body. I exhaled and took a moment to get my emotions under control before I threw away the remains of the cage and climbed down the tree.

  “The trap?” Devon said, shining his flashlight at the broken pieces of metal that had fallen to the ground.

  “Yeah.”

  “But who would do such a thing?” Felix asked. “And why? Who would deliberately be that cruel to a bunch of harmless monsters?”