Cold Burn of Magic(26)

“Oh, my heart bleeds for y’all,” I sniped. “Did you ever think that maybe things might be better if you guys, the Draconis, and all the other Families tried to, oh, I don’t know, just get along?”

She laughed at the absurdity of my suggestion. Yeah. I would have laughed, too.

Claudia put her hands behind her back and started pacing back and forth. “My son went on and on about how you saved his life. But even more than that, he seems to have taken an odd liking to you. He was the one who pushed me to find you.”

Devon had wanted to find me? Why?

“You have my thanks for saving my son and Felix,” Claudia said. “Never doubt that.”

She stopped pacing and peered at me, taking in my well-worn clothes and the sword I was still clutching. Her sharp gaze dropped to the star-shaped sapphire glinting on my finger, and her mouth pinched into a hard, thin line. She probably thought I’d stolen the ring. Let her think what she wanted. It didn’t matter to me in the slightest.

“I was rather skeptical when Devon told me that you killed the men. Ashley was an experienced fighter with years of training. If anyone was going to save them, it should have been her. So you can understand why I was suspicious and puzzled that it was you instead.”

“So what changed your mind?”

“Watching you fight today . . .” Claudia’s eyes grew distant and dreamy with memories before she blinked them away. “Your skills are quite impressive. You’re just the sort of soldier this Family needs, just the sort of bodyguard my son needs.”

Me? A Family bodyguard? It boggled the mind. I was a thief, plain and simple. I lied, cheated, and stole to get by, to get what I wanted, and protect and further my own interests—not anyone else’s. Definitely not a Family’s interests and especially not the interests of this particular Family.

Still, I couldn’t help thinking of my mom. She would have considered it an honor to be Devon’s guard, just as Claudia had said. But more than that, Mom would have thought of it as her duty to protect Devon, someone who was already so wounded inside. Someone so unlike the rich snobs and dangerous Families that she usually ended up working for, with all their sinister ambitions, blood feuds, and treacherous plots.

“I’ve already lost too much to the other Families. I will not lose my son as well,” Claudia said. “Your friend Mo suggested it, and now I am formally offering you a proposition, Miss Merriweather. Agree to become my son’s personal guard, keep him safe, protect him from all who would do him harm, and you will be richly rewarded.”

Now she was speaking my language, although I still eyed her warily. “How richly rewarded?”

She named a figure that was much higher than I expected. Even Mo would have been pleased with the amount. Actually, he would have been over the moon about it. With that kind of money, I could do whatever I wanted. No more squatting in the library basement. No more doing odd jobs for Mo. No more counting every penny and dime just to make sure I had enough food to eat, clothes to wear, and change to pay the lochness tolls. With that sort of money, life would be . . . easy. The way it had never, ever been easy before. Not even when my mom was alive.

For a moment, I let myself daydream about what I could do with that kind of money. The house I could live in, the clothes I could wear, the cars and jewelry and other pretty things I could buy. With that much money, I could have the sort of things I always stole from other people.

But then reality hit me, the way it always did. Because first, I had to live long enough to spend the money.

But it was tempting—so very, very tempting. Then again, it was supposed to be tempting, so tempting that I wouldn’t realize what I’d agreed to until it was too late—for me.

That’s how the Families worked. They lured you in with shiny dreams and pie-in-the-sky promises that all too often burned to ash and crumbled into dust right before your eyes.

“And what if I say no?”

Claudia shrugged. “Then I’ll find someone else. You will be free to leave . . .”

“But?”

“But I’m sure there are some folks who will be very interested in a girl killing two men so close to the Midway, especially the Draconis, since they consider that square to be on the edge of their territory,” Claudia said. “I’m sure there would also be some people who would like to speak to you about why you aren’t in the foster care system and where you’ve been living. There’s also the small matter of you enrolling in high school with the help of fake documents. The mortal police will no doubt be curious about that as well.”

Mo had forged the documents for me, along with everything else I’d needed. He had even signed school forms when necessary. All those documents and Mo’s occasional help were what had kept me off the grid, which was exactly how I had wanted it.

But now Claudia was threatening to shove me into the spotlight in the worst way possible. The cops would be extremely interested in me, given all the tourist rubes who were missing their wallets, cameras, and phones because of yours truly. At the very least, all of this would mean a quick trip to foster care—if not a stint in juvie. And the mortals could always decide to try me as an adult, which could mean more serious jail time.

But Claudia alerting the Draconis was the real threat. Just like she said, that square was close to their territory, so they’d be extremely interested in the attack and my part in it. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the mystery man and his goons had been working for Victor Draconi, and now Victor would want payback on whoever had messed up his plan to kill Devon. Either way, I had no desire to get anywhere near any of the Draconis, especially Victor.