Cold Burn of Magic(22)

A soft snicker sounded, and I realized that Devon was laughing at me, his eyes crinkling with the first bit of warmth I’d seen him show. My hands curled into fists in my lap. He had no right to laugh at me. None at all. Not after all the hurt he’d caused me.

Reginald didn’t like the snicker, either. He gave Devon an icy look, and Devon’s laugh turned into more of a choking cough.

“As you wish, miss,” Reginald said in a stiff voice, setting down the tray. “I will go see if I can round up . . . a sub.”

He made it sound like I’d asked him to serve dog food to the Queen of England. But he bowed to Claudia and strode out of the library, closing the door behind him.

That left me alone with Devon, Claudia, and Mo. Everything was quiet except for the faint tick-tick-tick of a crystal clock on the fireplace mantel. It sounded eerily similar to the grandfather clocks I’d heard in the pawnshop after the attack. Only this time, the seconds were counting down to whatever decision Claudia Sinclair might make about me.

“So,” Claudia said, her voice seeming to float out of the shadowy depths of her chair. “You are the girl who saved my son. Lila Merriweather.”

Mo dug his elbow into my side, his not-so-subtle way of telling me to answer her.

“Yeah, that’s me. The one and only.”

“And tell me, exactly how did you manage to do that?” she asked.

“I took out two guys.”

“You really expect me to believe that you killed two grown men, all by yourself? A seventeen-year-old girl with only a Talent for sight?”

I glanced at Mo. Looked as if he’d told her more than I thought, if he’d mentioned my magic. But he hadn’t told her everything; otherwise, this conversation would be going in a very different direction. Still, the last of my panic vanished. My most important secrets were still safe.

Mo dug his elbow into my side again, encouraging me to keep talking.

I shrugged. “They’re not the first ones I’ve killed. I doubt they’ll be the last. Cloudburst Falls might be the most magical place in America, but it’s also one of the most dangerous. Especially after dark. Unlike you and your son, I don’t have the luxury of hiding behind Family money and mansion walls, or of having other people do my dirty work for me.”

Mo sucked in a breath at my rude, snarky tone, but I didn’t care. I’d been approached by strange men, driven up the mountain, and dragged in front of the head of a Family, and I still had no idea what was going on and what the Sinclairs wanted with me.

All I wanted was to get out of here, get away from this place and these people who reminded me so much of what I’d lost—my mom.

And what I could still lose—my freedom.

But Claudia kept staring at me, expecting an answer, so I decided to play nice . . . for now.

“You don’t believe me, ask Mo. He can vouch for me.”

Her eyes cut to him, her green gaze even frostier than before. “Oh, I am quite familiar with Mr. Kaminsky. More familiar than I care to be, actually.”

“Yes, indeedy. Claud and I are old friends.” Mo’s smile widened at her obvious displeasure, as if he enjoyed needling her.

“I watched the security footage from the pawnshop,” she continued. “And Mo has told me all about your . . . skills.”

Mo gave me a guilty grin, and I tried to figure out exactly how much he had revealed. Obviously, he’d mentioned my sight magic, but I wondered if he’d told her about my other Talent as well. Mo was the only person who knew about my transference power, that magic made me stronger. My mom had always warned me to keep that particular skill to myself, for fear that someone might try to rip the Talent out of me. There was a booming black market for stolen magic, just like there was for everything else in Cloudburst Falls. Some creatures simply wanted to eat you, but there were worse things, like someone tearing your magic out of your body and taking it for himself—before he killed you.

“Lila is a scrapper, that’s for sure,” Mo chimed in. “A real good fighter. You saw the footage.”

Mo was so paranoid about being robbed that he had more hidden cameras in the pawnshop than he did digital ones for sale. I bit back a curse. I should have known that Claudia had studied the footage. She would have wanted to see the attack on her son for herself.

“And where were you when Devon, Felix, and Ashley were being attacked?” Her tone was as sharp as a sword’s edge.

“Unfortunately, I was in the back of the shop, or I would have jumped to their rescue myself,” Mo countered, his voice even smarmier than his smile. “You know that.”

Her gaze grew even colder.

“But luckily, Lila was there,” he hurried on. “You’d better snap her up before somebody else does.”

Snap me up?

“Word’s already gotten out about Lila’s skills,” Mo continued, spreading his hands wide. “Why, today alone, I’ve had inquiries about her availability from three other Families.”

My availability? That sounded suspiciously like bodyguard talk, the sort of thing I’d heard him say on the phone when he was lining up my mom’s next job and trying to weasel a few more bucks out of her potential employer by pretending he had someone else competing for her services. I was starting to get a bad, bad feeling about what Mo was up to.

Claudia ignored him and focused on me again. “Why would you even get involved in such a fight? What were you hoping for? Some sort of reward from my Family?”