Bright Blaze of Magic (Black Blade, #3)(10)
Claudia stopped tapping her glasses on the desk and set them aside. Then she raised her hands to her face and massaged her temples, as though they were suddenly aching. “You did your job, Lila. There’s nothing else we can do now but try to figure out when Victor is going to attack and which Family he might target first.”
Instead of answering her, I wandered over to the shelves along the wall and started looking at the photos, figurines, and other knickknacks perched there. My gaze locked on to a photo of my mom, Serena Sterling, with her sister, my aunt Seleste. The two of them could have been twins, except for my mom’s black hair and Seleste’s golden locks, just like me and Deah and our own hair coloring. I only hoped that Deah and I would stay together through the coming fight with Victor, and not let him tear us apart the way he had our moms years ago.
“Now that he’s brought Blake in on his plan, when do you think Victor will attack?” Mo asked.
Claudia dropped her hands from her temples and started drumming her fingers on top of the desk. “If I had to guess, I would say after the dinner for all the Families tomorrow night. No doubt Victor will come to the dinner, talk about how he wants peace, and do his best to soothe everyone’s fears. Then he’ll wait a couple days or maybe even weeks until our guard is down and stab us all in the back the second he has the chance. That’s what I would expect him to do. Either way, we’ve taken away most of his weapons, so we’ve at least weakened him.”
She was right. By switching out the black blades for fakes, we had taken away some of Victor’s power and thwarted part of his plan to attack the other Families. But her words didn’t make me feel any better, and worry still pinched her face, along with Mo’s and my own.
Because we all knew how much magic Victor had himself and just how determined he was to destroy all of us.
CHAPTER FOUR
Now that my first thieving mission of the night was finished, I left the library and went up to my bedroom to get ready for the second one.
The Sinclair mansion wasn’t quite as richly furnished as the Draconi castle, but plenty of fine things still adorned the rooms, including antique furniture, silver bookends, and crystal chandeliers that had been turned down low for the night. It was after ten now and the mansion was quiet, except for a few pixies fluttering through the hallways, doing their last chores before going to bed. I nodded to the pixies that I passed and headed up to my bedroom.
When I opened the door, the twangy sounds of country music assaulted my ears. I sighed. I’d hoped that Oscar, the pixie who took care of me, would have already gone to bed by now, but it looked like he’d waited up for me. So I shut the door behind me, walked past the black leather couch and matching recliners in front of the TV mounted to the wall, and went over to a long table that was near the French patio doors. A rundown, ramshackle ebony trailer sat on the table, along with a carpet of real grass that led over to a corral and a rickety barn, also made out of ebony.
A six-inch-tall man with translucent wings attached to his back was perched on top of one of the corral fence posts, chewing on a long blade of grass. He wore black cowboy boots with shiny silver tips, along with faded black jeans with holes in the knees and a pale blue T-shirt that had seen better, cleaner days. A black cowboy hat was tipped back on his head, and he was clutching a tiny can of honeybeer in his right hand. Out in the grassy corral, a small green tortoise was slowly lumbering over to a pile of shredded lettuce.
“I thought you’d be back sooner,” Oscar said, his voice even twangier than his country playlist.
“It took us a little longer than usual to get out of the Draconi mansion, but we made it back with the weapons, so it’s all good.”
Out in the grass, Tiny, the tortoise, turned his head and studied me with his black eyes. When he realized that I didn’t have any strawberries to add to his pile of lettuce, he let out a reproachful snort, stuck his beak into the long, green strips, and started chowing down on them like a cow eating hay in a field. The whole scene made me feel like I was staring down at a doll-size, Western dude ranch, instead of a table in my bedroom.
Oscar stood up on the fence post, twitched his wings, and rose into the air in front of me, hovering there like an oversize bee. He tipped back his cowboy hat a little more, revealing his sandy hair, and gave me a critical once-over with his violet eyes. Some of the tension leaked out of his face when he realized that I really was okay.
Technically, pixies were monsters, just like the tree trolls and copper crushers that lurked in the forests, but I always thought of them as miniature humans. They were the housekeepers of the world, offering their cooking, cleaning, and other skills in exchange for a safe place to stay and protection from larger mortals, magicks, and monsters. I hadn’t been here all that long, but I already considered Oscar and Tiny to be two of my best friends, and I was going to protect them just like I was going to look out for the rest of the Sinclairs.
That sobering thought reminded me that I needed to get on with my second thieving mission of the night. So I scratched Tiny’s head and gently tipped Oscar’s cowboy hat back down low on his forehead.
“You two boys have fun,” I drawled. “I’m going to go hang out with Devon for a while. Don’t wait up for me.”
Oscar snorted and pushed his hat back up to where it was supposed to be. “Ah, young love. Enjoy it, cupcake.”