Cold Burn of Magic(18)

I glared at the phone. Trust Mo to be totally blasé about my getting into a car with three strangers. I waited but he didn’t respond, so I slid my phone into my pocket again.

“Which one of you is Reginald?” I muttered.

The older man gave me a very deep, very formal bow. “I am, miss. William Reginald, with the Sinclair Family.” He gestured at golden boy. “And this is Grant Sanderson. I believe you know Felix Morales already.”

I had to work very hard to keep from showing any sort of surprise. William Reginald looked and sounded like a glorified butler because that’s exactly what he was. As the Sinclair Family butler, he ran the mansion, overseeing the day-to-day operations of everything from the kitchen staff to the gardeners to who got admitted inside to have an audience with the higher-ups. I’d heard Mo complain more than once that getting past Reginald without an appointment was harder than selling life insurance to a dead man. And Grant and Felix were obviously more than just regular guards.

This was turning way more serious than I’d thought.

“As I said before, we are with the Sinclair Family,” Reginald repeated, taking my silence for worry, which he was spot-on about. “We mean you no harm.”

Yeah. Right. Because getting into a black SUV with Family goons always worked out so well for folks like me.

Reginald tipped his head, his lined face neutral, while Grant flashed me a brief, but wary smile.

But Felix did a most surprising thing—he winked, then gave me a slow, knowing grin, flirting with me just like he had in the pawnshop. I rolled my eyes, but that only seemed to amuse him more. I had a feeling that Felix Morales knew exactly how pretty he was and used it to get whatever girl caught his eye. Cute, cocky, and arrogant. A bad-boy combination if ever there was one.

They didn’t ask me my name, I assumed because they knew it already. They wouldn’t have been here otherwise. Obviously, this had something to do with the attack at the Razzle Dazzle, although I couldn’t imagine what they wanted with me. I’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time and had been stupid enough to get involved. That’s all, and that’s all that I wanted it to be.

Especially where the Sinclair Family was concerned.

“And now, if you will be so kind, miss.” Reginald gestured at the SUV. “We have a schedule to keep.”

Grant stepped even closer to me, and his hand drifted down to the hilt of his sword, as though he thought he was going to have to draw his weapon to not-so-gently persuade me to go with them. Yeah, I might have put up a fight, if I thought I had a chance of getting away—but I didn’t.

Not from them. Not from this. I’d never had a chance.

Not since my mom had been murdered.

So I stomped over to the car. Reginald scooted ahead of me and opened the back passenger door, and I had no choice but to step inside.

Reginald shut the door, then climbed into the front passenger’s seat. Felix went around the SUV and got in on the other side, next to me, while Grant slid behind the wheel. The three of them shut their doors almost in unison. The sharp crack-crack-crack sounded like the lids on coffins banging shut.

My coffin.





CHAPTER SIX


Grant cranked the engine and away we went.

He left the high school behind, steered the car onto one of the main streets, and circled around the Midway. Nobody in the SUV spoke, and the radio was turned off.

Felix kept staring at me, his dark brown gaze steady and level as though he thought I was going to start babbling to fill the silence. Please. I knew better than to do that. I thought about returning his stare and using my soulsight to get a clue as to what was going on, but I decided not to bother. He wasn’t in charge here. Grant and Reginald were. Too bad Grant was busy driving, and Reginald was staring out the windshield, so I couldn’t use my magic on either one of them. Whatever was happening, they were going to make me wait to find out what it was.

I trusted Mo, well, as much as I trusted anyone? and he wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. But I still clutched my belt, my fingers resting on top of one of the throwing stars, knowing that I could get to the weapon if things went bad. But that was a bridge I’d cross when I got to it.

Speaking of bridges, Grant left the highway behind, turned onto a side street, and steered the SUV over the lochness bridge I’d crossed the night I stole the ruby necklace. But instead of slowing down and tossing a few coins out the window and into the river, Grant accelerated over the cobblestones. Thirty seconds later, the SUV was on the other side.

“You didn’t pay the toll,” I murmured.

“Toll? What toll?” Felix asked.

“For the lochness.”


I twisted around in my seat and peered out the back window. Perhaps it was my imagination, but the surface of the river seemed to ripple a little more than usual, like something wanted to rise up out of the water and take what it was due. Yeah, I was betting the lochness was pissed. I would have been. Territory was everything in this town.

Grant laughed. “You don’t actually believe in that old fairy tale, do you?”

“We all should,” Reginald said.

Grant frowned at the older man’s stiff tone, but Reginald turned around in his seat and gave me a sharp look, as if he were surprised that I even knew to do such a thing.

But my mom had taught me all about the old traditions. I knew which monsters lived where in town, in the forests, and on the mountain, and what small tributes you paid them for safe passage through their territories. In fact, I’d always thought of the monsters as my own sort of standoffish pets. If, you know, you thought pets that could eat you were cool. Which I totally did.