“We have to get out of here before she comes back.”
Deah snorted. “Way to state the obvious, Lila. But it’s not going to happen. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
She cursed and rattled her chain again, but it didn’t jerk free of the wall.
Thump-thump-thump.
Thump-thump-thump.
Thump-thump-thump.
Footsteps sounded outside, getting louder and louder as they headed in our direction. Deah scrambled to her feet, and I did the same, the links in our chains clank-clank-clanking together in a dark, ominous chorus.
The door to the boathouse slammed open, and Katia strolled inside. She gave me and Deah a thin smile, then went over and set down the gold winner’s cup on top of the table. She also threw down two black leather scabbards next to it. Our swords. I tensed and so did Deah. If we could just get our hands on the weapons, we might have a chance.
Katia noticed us staring longingly at the swords and unsheathed first one, then the other, staring at the scrollwork carved into the hilts and black blades.
“Funny how they both have stars carved into them,” she said. “Almost like you two were from the same family or something.”
“That’s because we are,” I said. “We’re cousins. Our moms, Seleste and Serena Sterling, were sisters.”
Deah gasped, her eyes bulging in shock. She’d never expected me to say something like that. Even I wasn’t quite sure why I’d revealed that particular secret right now. Maybe because I was tired of people keeping things from me and didn’t want to do the same thing to her.
Deah kept staring at me. I shrugged back at her.
“Seleste might get confused, but she doesn’t get that confused,” I said. “I do look quite a bit like my mom.”
“Whatever. I didn’t bring you two here to listen to your family drama.” Katia held up my sword, admiring it. “But I have been wanting a new blade. Maybe I’ll use yours, Lila. You won’t be needing it anymore.”
My hands curled into fists. “The only way you’re getting my mom’s sword is over my dead body.”
She smirked at me. “Why do you think we’re all here at the boathouse? So no one will hear the two of you scream when I take your magic.”
Deah’s hands also clenched into fists, and she surged forward, but the chain on her arm pulled her up short.
Katia grinned and clucked her tongue. “What’s the matter, Deah? Feeling a little . . . tied up?” She laughed. “Or maybe you just don’t know what to do now that you’re not the center of attention. When there’s no one around to make sure that I fight fair.”
Deah didn’t say anything, but if looks could kill, Katia would have been feeding the fishes by now.
“Now, you two just hang tight,” Katia said. “I want to check my traps before we get started.”
“What traps?” I asked.
She laid my sword down on the table. “Oh, the ones I stole from Uncle Nikolai last summer. He had several of them rusting away in a shed at the Volkov compound. I doubt he even noticed they were gone.”
I remembered what Mo had told me about murdered monsters being found on the edge of the Volkov property last year. So Katia had been killing creatures last summer as well. I wondered how many monsters she’d tortured just to get their magic.
“This summer, I set some traps along the lake in hopes of catching more trolls than I did last year,” Katia said. “There was a copper crusher in one of them when I looked earlier. I’m going to go take care of it right now.”
I shuddered, thinking of the cage I’d found on the Draconi property—and how Katia would carve up the crusher to take its strength magic.
“Anyway, I’ll be back in a few minutes, and then we’ll see just how loud the two of you can scream.”
Katia smirked at us again, then turned and left the boathouse, slamming the door shut behind her. Deah started pulling on her chain again, even harder than before.
I sighed. “Maybe we should talk about being cousins—”
“Shut it,” Deah snapped, still pulling and pulling on her chain. “The only thing I’m concerned about right now is getting out of here. And you should be too.”
She was right. Escape first, talk later. Still, her tone annoyed me.
“Well, that’s not going to work, unless you have some strength magic that I don’t know about,” I said.
“Well, do you have a better idea?” she snapped.
“Maybe.”
I held up my arm and looked at the shackle on my wrist. The shackle was old and thick, too thick for me to have any chance of breaking it, but Katia had snapped a tiny metal padlock through the loops to secure the two halves of the shackle together. A nice, new, shiny padlock that wasn’t nearly as sturdy as it appeared to be. The sort of padlock that I’d picked open a hundred times before. I grinned. We were as good as out of here.
I reached up into my ponytail—but my chopstick lock picks were gone.
No picks meant no opening the padlock and no chance of escape. Panic welled up in me, but I forced it down and looked around the boathouse, hoping that the chopsticks had just fallen out of my hair and were somewhere in here.
A few seconds later, I spotted the two shiny black sticks lying on the floor—on the far side of Deah, well beyond my reach.
I cursed, and Deah stopped pulling on her chain to see what I was staring at.
“You want your hair sticks?” she sniped. “Really?”
“They’re not just for my hair,” I sniped back. “They’re lock picks. You know, something that might actually help us get out of these.” I held up my shackled arm. “Unless you have a better idea?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t think so. So can you grab them and hand them over to me . . . please?” I had to choke out the last word, but there was no way I could reach the chopsticks, so I decided to be nice.
“And why would I want to do that?” She crossed her arms over her chest at the snarky tone in my voice.
I rolled my eyes. “Oh, I don’t know. So we can get out of here and away from the evil girl who wants to cut us up and take our magic.”
Deah kept glaring at me. I sighed.
“Look, I don’t like it any more than you do, us being related and everything that means, but working together is the only way we’re getting out of here alive. Unless you want to be gutted like a fish and have your magic torn out of you just so Katia can win some tournaments?”
Deah sighed. “Fine. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Or you. Or especially that secret you just dropped on me, cousin.”
“I wouldn’t dream that you ever would, cousin,” I sniped back.
She glanced at the closed door, then slid to her left, moving slowly so as not to make her chain clank-clank-clank any more than necessary.
“Hurry up!” I hissed.
She gave me a withering look, but she increased her pace. Deah reached the end of her chain, then dropped to her knees and stretched her hand out as far as she could.
Short—she was three feet too short.
Deah stretched and stretched, but no matter how hard or far she clawed, she just couldn’t reach the chopsticks. After about two minutes of heaving, she gave up, panting hard and trying to get her breath back.
“It’s no use,” she said. “I can’t reach them. Now what?”
Instead of answering, I looked around the boathouse again, searching for anything that would let her bridge those final three feet and reach the chopsticks. But there was nothing. Our swords were out of reach on the table, and the only things Katia had left on us were our clothes and shoes. Even if they were closer to us, the splintered oars and busted boat were useless. The one thing that might have helped us was a fishing pole, but I didn’t see any sort of fishing gear—
Wait a second. Fishing poles. I didn’t have one of those, but maybe I didn’t need one. Maybe I could just make my own.
I thought about things, working out the problem in my mind, then bent down,
yanked off my sneakers, and stripped the laces out of them.
“What are you doing?” Deah asked. “How is taking off your shoes going to help anything?”
I tied the laces together, then threaded one of the ends through the eyelets on my right sneaker, tying it off into a tight knot. Now I had a sneaker with more than three feet of string dangling from it.
“Here,” I said, passing the shoe over to her. “Think of it as a fishing pole.”
Deah stared at the shoe, then me. “You are either the craziest person I’ve ever met or the smartest.”
“Let’s hope it’s the smartest. Now, come on. Katia could come back any second.”
Deah nodded and turned toward the chopsticks. She let out a breath, then threw out the shoe, careful to hold on to the lace on the end, so she wouldn’t lose it.
Thump.
She hadn’t thrown it hard enough, and it landed short of the chopsticks. We both froze at the loud noise it made, but five seconds passed, then ten, then fifteen, and no footsteps sounded. Katia either hadn’t heard the noise or wasn’t worried enough to leave her traps and come investigate it.
“Again,” I said. “Again.”
Deah yanked the sneaker back and tried again.
Thump.
This time, the sneaker bridged the distance but landed too far to the right of the chopsticks for Deah to snag them.
“Again!” I hissed. “Quick!”
“Be quiet!” she snapped back. “You’re ruining my concentration!”
I really wanted to snap at her again, but I forced myself to grind my teeth together and keep quiet.
Eyes narrowed, Deah looked at the chopsticks lying on the floor—really looked at them, the same way I would have with my sight magic. She hefted the sneaker in her hand, judging its weight and the distance. Then she let it fly.
Thump.
The sneaker landed just beyond the chopsticks. Deah and I both sucked in breaths, and she pulled the sneaker toward her, one slow, careful inch at a time. The shoe bounced across the floor and Deah stopped. She fiddled with the laces for a few seconds and managed to flip the sneaker right side up. Then, she slowly drew it toward her again.
The sneaker bumped up against the edge of the chopsticks—and sent them rolling straight toward Deah.
She snatched them up the second they were in range, turned, and handed them over to me. “Here. Work your magic, Merriweather.”
I grinned. “All you had to do was ask.”
She rolled her eyes, but she was grinning back at me.
I twisted open the chopsticks, revealing the lock picks hidden inside. I gestured at Deah, and she stepped forward and held out her wrist. I inserted the picks into the padlock.
“Come on, baby,” I crooned. “Open sesame.”
A few seconds later, the lock snapped open, and I slid it through the shackle and stuffed it into one of my pockets. Deah unhooked the shackle from around her wrist and carefully lowered it and the attached chain to the floor, making as little noise as possible.
The second she was free, she went over to the table, grabbed our swords, and hurried back with them. She strapped on her own weapon, and I did the same, both of us moving as quickly and quietly as we could.
“Now what?” Deah whispered. “Do we storm outside and try to take her by surprise?”
“First things first.” I passed the picks over to Deah. “Here. Open my lock.”
“What? Why can’t you do it?” she asked.
I held up my shackled hand. “Because the angle’s all wrong, and I can’t pick it one-handed. So you’re going to have to do it for me. Have you ever picked a lock before?”
She shook her head, making her blond ponytail slap back and forth.
“Then good thing for you and me, it’s not that hard.”
Deah took the lock picks from me, bent over my shackle, and got to work. I tried to talk her through it, but the picks kept slipping out of the padlock, and she just wasn’t getting the hang of it.
“It’s no use,” she growled. “I can’t do it.”
“You have to, or we’re both dead.”
Deah sighed and went back to work with the lock picks, but she gave up a minute later, when the picks slipped out of the lock again. “I’m sorry. I can’t do it. You stay here. I’ll go get help.”
“And I’ll be dead by the time you get back with it.”
“But I can’t do it. I don’t know how, and like you said, I don’t have any strength magic that would let me break the shackle.”
I tilted my head to the side, thinking about her words—and the magic that she did have. “What about your mimic power?”
She frowned. “What about it?”
“Well, you can do more than just fight with it, right? I mean, you can mimic the way someone moves, walks, talks, everything.”
“Yeah, so what?” Deah asked.
“Then you could mimic me picking a lock, right?”
“I suppose so,” she said in a doubtful voice. “I’ve never tried to do anything like that with my power before, though.”
“Well, it’s always good to learn new things,” I snarked. “Now watch me and do exactly what I do.”
I imagined that I was bending over an invisible padlock, holding the lock picks in my hands. Then I drew in a breath, slid my imaginary picks into my imaginary padlock, and went to work. I pretended as though I were moving the picks around and around, feeling for the tumblers, and trying to get them to slip into place so the padlock would pop open.
I felt stupider than I ever had in my entire life, but I kept right on working. Deah watched me the whole time, her dark blue eyes narrowed, her lips pressed tight in thought. After several seconds of concentration, she slid the picks into the real lock on my shackle again. It was awkward, with her standing right next to me, trying to work on my shackle while I was moving my hand around, but she managed it. Slowly, Deah began to mimic my movements, holding the lock picks just so and sliding them around and around inside the padlock in the patterns that I was showing her.
Seconds ticked by, then turned into a minute, then two. But we kept working together the whole time. The air was hot and stuffy. Sweat dripped down my face, hers too, given how hard the two of us were concentrating, and the only sounds were our ragged breaths mixing together in the absolute stillness of the boathouse—
Click.
And just like that, my padlock popped open.
Deah stared down at the lock, still holding the picks inside it, as though she couldn’t believe what had just happened. “I did it. I actually did it!”
“And you can be very proud about that later. Now help me get it off,” I said. “Hurry!”
She passed me the lock picks, which I closed and slid into one of my pockets, while she unhooked the padlock from my shackle. The second it was off my wrist, I grabbed the chain and lowered it to the floor.
“Come on,” I whispered. “Let’s get out of here before she comes back—”
The door to the boathouse slammed open again, and Katia strolled inside, this time holding a dagger in either hand.
“I’m back,” Katia called out in a singsong voice.
She stopped short, realizing that we were free. For a second, the three of us looked at each other.
Then Katia laughed. She just laughed and laughed, as though our being halfway to escaping was the funniest thing ever.
Deah and I looked at each other. We both drew our swords and stepped together, forming a united front.
“Oh, how adorable,” Katia sneered. “Two enemies teaming up together to try to save themselves from a fate worse than death. Too bad you’re both still going to lose—everything.”
“I doubt that,” Deah snapped back at her. “I’ve beaten you before. I can do it again. And so can Lila.”
“You’d better believe it,” I chimed in.
Katia took a step forward. Deah and I both snapped up our swords, but Katia didn’t attack us. Instead, she raised the two daggers in h
er hands—both of which were glowing a familiar, sickening, midnight black.
“Oh, I doubt that,” she purred. “Considering that I have more magic in these two black blades than the two of you have in your entire bodies.”
I eyed the gleaming weapons. “What kind of magic?”
“Strength from the copper crusher and speed, courtesy of another tree troll in one of my traps,” Katia said, admiring first one blade, then the other. “I hate to use it all up killing the two of you, but easy come, easy go. That’s the only problem with monster magic. It gives you a boost for a little while, but then it burns out of your system. It’s not like human magic, like Vance’s magic. His speed and strength are mine now forever. And soon, your powers will be too.”
Katia grinned and twirled the daggers around in her hands. Deah and I both tensed, ready to throw ourselves out of the way should she decide to hurl the weapons at us, but that wasn’t her plan at all.
Instead, Katia raised the daggers high, then stabbed herself in the heart with them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
I gasped in shock, and so did Deah.
Katia stabbed herself with both daggers. For a moment, a midnight pulse of blackness flashed, casting the entire boathouse in darkness, despite the bulbs burning overhead. Then the blackness faded and the light returned, but what it revealed was equally terrible.
Blood spurted out of the wounds, coating Katia’s hands and the blades still stuck in her chest a dark, glossy crimson. But as soon as her blood touched the daggers, the blades soaked it right back up again, still glowing that eerie, midnight black.
Katia screamed in pain, and the midnight glow on the blades went out. In an instant, the weapons were their usual dull, ashy gray again. Katia gasped and gasped for breath, then doubled over.
Silence.
Then she started laughing again.
Katia laughed and laughed, the loud, wild, crazy sound bouncing around like a rockmunk trapped inside the boathouse.
Katia straightened up to her full height, and Deah and I both gasped again—because her eyes burned with magic.
Dark Heart of Magic Page 26
