Cold Burn of Magic(48)

This time, I was the one who hesitated, but I didn’t have anything better to do. At least, that’s what I told myself as I went over to him. It wasn’t because some strange part of me wanted to know more about him. No way. Not at all.

The chair squeaked when I sat down, but it held my weight. Devon propped one foot up on the railing. I did the same, and we sat there in silence, drinking our water and staring down at the flashing lights of the Midway.

“So,” I finally said. “This is your hideout? Your super-secret clubhouse?”

“Something like that.”

“I like it.”

He grunted.

We kept drinking our water. The view from the roof was even more impressive than the one from my balcony, especially since the fireflies had come out for the night, their quick yellow flares adding to the rainbow glow from the Midway.

I was happy to sit and enjoy the view, but Devon kept glancing my way.

“What?” I asked. “Do I have a bug in my teeth?”

“No. It’s just that Felix is the only other person who ever comes up here. You’re much quieter than he is.”

“You mean I’m not running my mouth like I’m driving a racecar. That boy never shuts up.” I rolled my eyes. “I bet he even talks in his sleep.”

Devon’s lips curved into a smile, and he let out a low laugh—the first deep genuine laugh I’d heard from him. Such a simple sound, but it completely transformed him. In an instant, he went from scowling at the stars to that hot spark flaring in his eyes. The one I found much too interesting for my own good. And I realized that I liked making him laugh, I liked seeing that spark. Devon took life way too seriously. He needed to lighten up. If nothing else, that would make the next year I was stuck here far more pleasant.

But his laughter faded away, and he eyed me again. “Why did you come up here?”

“I was out on my balcony, and I heard you murdering the bag. So I decided to investigate.”

He glanced at the wall. “But how did you get up here? I locked the door behind me.”

“Drainpipe.”

His eyebrows furrowed together. “Drainpipe? You climbed up the drainpipe? From your balcony? But that’s, like, four stories.”

I not-so-modestly shrugged. “It’s a thing I do.”

“And why are you staying?” His voice dropped to a low whisper.

“Because of the quiet.”

He frowned. “The quiet?”

“I’m not . . . used to being around a lot of people. The mansion, everyone here, the noise in the dining hall, it’s taking some getting used to.”

The faint bit of claustrophobia I’d been feeling was as much of a weakness as I was going to admit. Even then, I didn’t like showing that part of myself to him. I was here to do a job, nothing else. But for some reason, I had a hard time remembering that.

“Grant says he can’t find any record of where you’ve been living,” Devon said. “No apartments, no hotels, nothing.”

So Claudia hadn’t just taken Mo at his word; she’d had Grant investigate me. Well, that was smart of her. I wondered what Grant had managed to uncover, and what he and Claudia had thought about it, but I had no way of knowing. Apparently, it hadn’t been bad enough to make her reconsider her plan to strong-arm me into protecting Devon.

“Grant says that you’re not in the foster care system, either. What happened to your parents?” Devon asked, seeming genuinely curious.

I shrugged again. “My dad was never in the picture. He died before I was born.”

Which was one of the reasons my mom had left town, not that I was going to tell Devon that or any more about myself than absolutely necessary.

“And your mom?”

“She died, too.”

He must have heard the cold chill in my voice that told him to drop it because he changed the subject. “You should leave. Get out of here. While you still can.”

“What do you mean by that?”

He sighed. “You should take off, Lila. Forget about staying here. Forget about the Family. Forget about me.”

And I realized what he was really saying. “You don’t like me being your bodyguard.”

“I don’t need a bodyguard. I can take care of myself,” he said in a stiff voice.

“But you don’t have a Talent,” I pointed out, not trying to be cruel, but just stating the obvious. “You don’t have any magic. And most everyone else in all the other Families does. Surely, you can understand why your mom would want you to be protected.”

“I can take care of myself,” he snapped. “I don’t need magic to knock the sneer off Blake Draconi’s face.”

No, he didn’t. Not with the way he’d been waling on the punching bag earlier.

My eyes narrowed. “Is it because I’m a girl? Is being protected by a chick some threat to your precious manhood ? Because if that’s the case, then you need to get over yourself, dude.”

“It’s not because you’re a girl,” he snapped again. “I’m not some sexist pig. Not like Blake.”

I wouldn’t call Blake a pig so much as a monster, but I got his point.

“So what is it then? Are you pissed because I got Blake to back off and you didn’t? Because there was nothing you could have done. If you had tried, one of the Draconis would have skewered Felix with his sword. Grant, too. The only reason they didn’t come after me was because they didn’t know me. Because Blake is a sexist pig, and they didn’t realize that I was a threat.”