Bright Blaze of Magic (Black Blade, #3)(19)

I felt . . . cold.

I froze, my gaze flicking around the room. It might be a hot July night outside, but the air conditioning was going full blast, cooling the inside of the restaurant to a pleasant temperature. But I felt colder than that, cold enough to shiver, despite my long-sleeved pantsuit. And I realized that it wasn’t just the air-conditioning—there was a frigid chill in the air that only meant one thing.

Someone here was using magic.

My gaze flicked around the room again, trying to figure out who was using magic and what they were doing with it. Normally, someone had to actually use their magic on me in some physical way—hit me, punch me, trip me, whatever—before my own transference power flared to life and let me absorb their magic. But if someone’s magic was strong enough, I could feel that familiar chill of power all by itself.

Just like I was right now.

So who here had that much magic? I looked over all the folks in the restaurant, but everyone was laughing, talking, eating, and drinking, and I didn’t see anyone doing anything suspicious, much less something that involved actual magic.

Oh, sure, a Salazar guard in the corner was juggling bottles of water, using his speed magic to make the bottles spin impossibly fast, but he was just showing off. So was the Ito guard in another corner who was bench-pressing another guard up over his head. Since the Draconis weren’t here, it seemed everyone was determined to relax and have a good time.

So I turned around in a slow circle, scanning everyone again, still searching for the source of the magic. If I could just pinpoint which person it was coming from, then I could reassure myself that someone was just goofing around and there was no serious threat here.

But I couldn’t do that.

Because the magic wasn’t coming from one person—it was moving all around the restaurant, getting closer and closer all the while, like a net slowly tightening over a bunch of trapped tree trolls. And I suddenly realized exactly why the Draconis were late, why there had been so few guards on the Midway tonight, where they were right now, and what they were doing.

I whipped around toward the front of the restaurant and opened my mouth to shout a warning, even though I knew I was going to be too slow to stop what was about to happen. Sure enough, a second later, the front doors burst open and men and women wearing blood-red cloaks stormed inside the restaurant.

And each one of them was carrying a black blade.





CHAPTER SEVEN


The Draconi guards ran into the room, quickly spreading out into a solid line, a barricade at the front of the restaurant to keep anyone from leaving.

People let out shocked gasps and scrambled back. More than one person dropped his hand to his side, reaching for the sword that wasn’t there. But the Draconi guards raised their weapons and everyone else froze, realizing they couldn’t take on the Draconis and win without weapons of their own.

I cursed. I should have known that Victor would do something like this. That he would wait until the heads of the Families, including Claudia, were all gathered together in one place so that he could take them all out at the same time. He’d had to do things this way. Devon had told me as much, when he’d said that Claudia was only in the same room with Victor during the Family dinners. He’d want to kill her first, and this was his best chance to do that.

I looked at Claudia, who was standing on the opposite side of the restaurant with Mo, Angelo, and Reginald flanking her. She narrowed her eyes at me, then deliberately flicked her gaze to the right, where Devon was standing about thirty feet away from her. I nodded back, knowing what she wanted. I would do whatever it took to protect Devon and make sure he lived through this. Claudia nodded back at me, some of the tension in her face easing.

The Draconi guards moved deeper into the restaurant, with one stopping every few feet, until they had everyone surrounded. Once the room was completely under their control, the guards by the front doors stepped aside so that three more people could enter the restaurant—Victor, Blake, and Deah.

Victor and Blake swept into the restaurant as if they owned it, with Blake in particular swaggering like everything had already gone his way.

Deah crept in behind her father and brother, her head down, her shoulders slumped. She shot Felix a quick glance that was full of sorrow, worry, and misery. Felix glanced down at his phone, then back at her, his eyebrows knitting together in confusion. She must not have texted or called him about what was happening. I wondered why she hadn’t tried to warn him and the rest of us.

Victor and Blake strode out into the middle of the restaurant, but Deah stayed back against the wall, her hand curled around the hilt of the sword belted to her waist, staring at the Draconi guards instead of the other folks in the restaurant, as if she knew that her own Family members were the greatest danger to her.

When she realized that the guards were ignoring her, Deah glanced around the restaurant, and her eyes finally met mine. Her worry, fear, guilt, and dread punched me in the chest one after another, but I pushed her tense emotions aside and tipped my head at the guard closest to me, discreetly pointing at the sword in his hand.

Deah frowned, but then she realized what I was asking and gave me a short, sharp nod. So our plan had worked, and the guards were carrying the weapons that had been stored in Victor’s secret room. That meant that some of the guards were clutching real, magic-filled black blades, the source of the cold power that I’d sensed earlier and could still feel. But most of them were just holding regular old swords and daggers, which meant we still had a chance to fight back and get out of here alive.