Cold Burn of Magic(29)

He shrugged. “Devon is safe in the mansion. It’s when he leaves that there are . . . problems.”

I wondered if those problems included his trip to the Razzle Dazzle, but I didn’t ask. There was no point. Not with Claudia’s threats hanging over my head. For better or worse, I was stuck here, and I’d be protecting her son until either my year of service was up or one or both of us was dead.

Me? I was betting on the dead part.

“Until tomorrow.” Reginald bowed his head to me, ignored Mo completely, then walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

Mo grinned. “See, kid? I told you that this would work out for the best.”

“The best? The best? Yeah, if you think the best is me being a walking target as Devon Sinclair’s bodyguard.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I don’t know what you were thinking, Mo. How did you even arrange this? I had no idea that you had these kinds of Family connections, especially ones to this Family.”

Over the years, Mo and I had developed our own sort of code, so he knew exactly what I was talking about. He waved his hand, causing the diamond in his signet ring to wink. “I have connections everywhere, kid. You should know that by now.”

True. Somebody was always searching for something on the sly in Cloudburst Falls, and Mo was the person who could get you whatever you wanted—in a hurry.

“What happened after the fight at the Razzle Dazzle?” I asked, wanting to know how my life had so drastically changed in the space of a few days.

“Devon called his mom, and Claudia came to the store, along with Grant, Reginald, and some Sinclair guards,” Mo said. “They showed up about fifteen minutes after you left. Apparently, some of the tourist rubes out in the square had called nine-one-one, talking about a girl with blood all over her. I told them what had happened and how you had saved Devon and Felix.”

“But why shove me out the door? Why not just let me stay and explain things?”

Mo sighed. “Because I didn’t want them to think that you had anything to do with the attack.”

“Why would they think that?”

“Because, according to what Grant told me, that day was the first time Devon had been out of the mansion in a week. And he just happens to get attacked then? Can you spell suspicious? So I wanted a chance to smooth things over with Claudia.”

“But I still don’t understand why—why put the idea into her head to make me Devon’s bodyguard? I thought we had a good thing going, Mo, with me working for you. Just like my mom did.”

Mo sighed, sat down on the black leather couch in front of the TV, and patted the cushion beside him. I grumbled, but I moved over and sat down. He drew in a breath and let it out, as if he wasn’t sure what to say. That would be a first. Finally, he looked at me, his black eyes somber, his face serious.

“We did have a good thing going, kid. A great thing, actually. But I promised your mom I’d look out for you, if anything ever happened to her, and we both know that I haven’t exactly done a bang-up job of that.”

“But—”

Mo held up his hand, cutting me off. “No, let me finish. After she died, I thought that you’d be okay in foster care, but we both know how that worked out.”

Not well.

“After that was a bust, you struck out on your own, and you seemed happy enough. So I let it slide, even though you were only thirteen. I let a lot of things slide that I shouldn’t have. But what do I know about teenage girls? A big fat lot of nothing. That’s what.”

“I was happy enough,” I muttered.

He shook his head. “But happy enough isn’t good enough for you, Lila. It’s not what your mom would have wanted for you, and it’s not what I want for you, either. Face it, kid. Your skills are wasted on my penny-ante jobs. You can do every single one of them in your sleep. There’s no lock you can’t pick, no building you can’t sneak into, nothing you can’t figure out some way to steal. But your mom trained you to do better, to be better, to be more than just some thief who skulks in the shadows and barely gets by. She wanted more than that for you—so much more. So when you saved Devon, I knew that this was my chance to finally do right by you.”

“By offering me up as Devon’s latest disposable guard?”

Mo ignored my snide comment. “This is your chance, kid.” He gestured out at the room. “Look around. You’ve gone from squatting in a basement to scoring a primo room in the mansion of one of the most powerful Families in town. Not only that, but you’re going to be treated the same as Devon, Felix, and all the other Family kids. Go to their classes, go to their parties, mix and mingle with the most powerful folks in Cloudburst Falls. And the best part is that you’re getting paid to do it. I already worked it out with Claudia. You’ll get a generous allowance every week as part of your service.”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “And all I have to do is make it through a whole year without getting killed.”

“You’ve made it through four years living on the streets,” Mo countered. “So just think of what you can do here, with all the magic, money, power, and resources of the Sinclair Family at your disposal—”

A blast of twangy country music drowned him out. It took me a few seconds to realize that the song was coming from Oscar’s trailer. Seemed like the pixie would rather burst his eardrums than listen to our conversation.