Cold Burn of Magic(5)

Home, sweet home.

I unbuckled the black leather belt and scabbard from around my waist and propped them and my sword next to the cot, then shrugged out of my coat and tossed it on top of the sheets. I pulled out my phone and texted Mo.





Got it. Home now.





The phone beeped less than a minute later, as if he’d been waiting up for me. I snorted. Waiting up to make sure I got what he wanted was more like it. He’d probably been using that stupid app of his to track my phone, making sure I was back at the library.





Good. See you tomorrow. After school!





I rolled my eyes. For some reason, Mo thought that the simple act of my going to school would somehow counteract my nightly life of looting and larceny. As if.

I plugged in my phone to let it charge. Then I plucked the black velvet box out of my coat pocket, cracked open the top, and fished out the necklace.

“Eat your heart out, Robin Hood,” I murmured. “Lila Merriweather strikes again.”

I admired the fiery flash of the rubies before holding the necklace up to a framed photo sitting on a table next to my cot. A woman with my same black hair and dark blue eyes stared back at me. My mom, Serena.

“It went just like I planned. You should have seen the looks on their faces. Those guards couldn’t believe that I got away from them.”

I paused, as if I were waiting for her to chime in, but my mom didn’t say anything. She died when I was thirteen, but I still talked to her photo sometimes. Yeah, I knew that it was stupid, but it made me feel a little better. Like she was watching over me from wherever she was. Like she wasn’t completely gone.

Like she hadn’t been brutally murdered.

I draped the necklace over the frame, making it look as if Mom was wearing the rubies, then moved around the basement, putting away my gear. I left all of my supplies in my coat, although I fished out the candy bar and finished eating it. I also grabbed some more quarters from a glass jar and slid them into one of the coat pockets, before folding the garment and the gloves and placing them in a suitcase by themselves.

Like me, the garments were more than they appeared to be. The gloves were made from ironmesh, a thin, flexible metal. The coat was unique, too, comprised of spidersilk that had been stitched together, making it strong, durable, and lightweight. Best of all, spidersilk turned away all sorts of stains—dirt, grease, blood, grime—so it never needed to be washed.

And then there was the sword, the most valuable object I owned. It, too, was made out of a special metal—bloodiron. But instead of being the expected rusty red, the sword was a dull, flat black, bordering on gray, looking more like ashy wood than actual metal. Black blades, most folks called them, because of the color—and the terrible things they could do, especially to magicks and monsters.

Bloodiron was rare, and most weapons made out of the metal were carved with family crests and symbols, almost like cattle brands, to make the blades easily identifiable. Naturally, this made it harder to steal and sell the heirlooms on the black market. A five-pointed star had been cut into the center of the hilt of my sword, with other, smaller stars running down the hilt and then etched into the blade itself.

The sword, coat, and gloves were my most prized possessions, but not because of their magical properties or monetary value. I loved them because they’d belonged to my mom.

They had been the three tools she’d used the most. When I was a kid, we traveled from town to town, and Mom went from one job and one side of the country to the other and back again. Most of the time, she worked as a bodyguard, protecting rich folks from other rich folks who wanted them dead. Along the way, Mom taught me everything she knew about fighting, thieving, lock picking, and all the other skills I needed in order to survive. I’d wanted to be just like her as a kid.

Part of me still did.

My right hand trailed down the front of the coat, the spidersilk feeling as cool and smooth as a sheet of raindrops. The motion made a ring wink on my hand—a small sapphire shaped like a five-pointed star embedded in a thin silver band.

Something else that had belonged to my mom, one of the few things I had left of her. Most everything else was gone, either destroyed, stolen by looters, or pawned to pay for food, clothes, and other necessities.

I looked at the ring a moment longer, staring into the dark blue depths of the flashing sapphire, before dropping my hand and getting on with my chores.

It took me thirty minutes to haul enough water from the women’s restroom on the first floor down to the basement to fill an old metal washtub for a cold bath. The basement wasn’t exactly the warmest part of the library, and my teeth were chattering by the time I got out, dried off, and put on my pajamas.

Most nights, I would have gone back upstairs, grabbed an action movie out of the media center, and popped it into the TV in the children’s section. The Princess Bride, the entire James Bond series, the original Star Wars trilogy. I’d watched them all dozens of times and could quote them by heart. Silly, I know. But the free movies were one of my favorite parts about living in the library. I liked how everything always worked out okay in the movies, especially since I knew that I wasn’t likely to get my own happy ending.

But it was late, and I was tired, so I crawled into bed. I started to turn out the light, but I glanced over at the photo of my mom, her smile even brighter than the rubies draped around the silver frame.