Cold Burn of Magic(51)

“Just be careful, okay?” Grant said. “I wouldn’t want to see a nice girl like you get hurt.”

Nice girl? That was the last thing I was.

Or maybe I didn’t want to admit that he was right. That I had way more than just a casual interest in Devon Sinclair.

One that was probably going to get me killed.





Grant dropped me off in front of the square near the Razzle Dazzle. He offered to come back for me after he finished at the bank, but I told him I could take one of the tourist trolleys back up the mountain, so he drove off.

I stepped inside the store, rattling the lochness bones. The pawnshop was empty except for Mo, who was sitting at the back counter, his white straw hat tipped back on his head, flipping through another decorating magazine. He wore his usual Hawaiian shirt, this one a bright green patterned with pink flamingos. My heart squeezed, and I realized how much I missed him.

Mo raised his head, and his face split into a wide smile. I thought about running around the counter and hugging him, but I resisted the urge. Mo wasn’t a hugger any more than I was.

“Why, hello, stranger,” he rumbled. “Welcome to my humble little corner of the world.”

“Nice digs,” I said, playing along. “A girl leaves you alone for a few days, and you go and repaint the whole store again.”

Instead of robin’s egg blue, the walls were now a light green.

Mo held up his magazine. “It’s called seafoam. I read this article about it. The color is supposed to put people in a good mood. And people in a good mood . . .”

“Spend more money,” I said, laughing and finishing the saying he’d quoted to me many, many times.

He shrugged and gave me a good-natured grin. “Something like that. How are you, kid? How’s life with the Sinclairs?”

I propped my elbows on the counter and told Mo everything that had happened. He nodded, absorbing my words, but he was also on the lookout for anyone passing by outside who stopped long enough to peer in the windows. Every time he made eye contact with someone, he grinned a little wider, trying to get them to come into the shop. But everyone ignored Mo’s attempts at charm.

Eventually, he gave up and focused on me again. “You know what, kid? I’m starting to think you’re bad for business.”

“Nah. You just need to up your game. So you can compete with the big boys out on the Midway.”

Mo grumbled at my teasing. “Speaking of the big boys, how are you getting along with the folks in the Family?”

“Fine. There’s one guy, Felix Morales, that I hang out with. He’s okay, for someone who never shuts up.”

“And what about Devon?” Mo asked in a sly voice.

I tensed up the same way I had with Grant in the car. “What about Devon?”

“You’ve been texting me about him a lot.”

“No more so than anyone else.”

“True. But you never really say anything about him,” Mo countered. “Just that he’s there.”

“What am I supposed to say? I follow the guy around all day long. Trust me. He’s not that interesting.”

Yeah, I was totally lying, but I didn’t know how I felt about Devon. I didn’t childishly hate or automatically blame him for causing my mom’s murder. Not anymore. Not since that night on the rooftop when I’d seen how much her death and the murders of Ashley and all his other bodyguards weighed on him.

“Have you heard anything else about the attack here?” I asked, changing the subject. “Who was behind it and why?”

Mo shook his head. “Nope. Not a peep from anyone. And you would think by now that someone would have spilled their guts about something. It’s hard to keep a secret in this town, especially where the Families are concerned.”

“But what about the dead guys? I recognized them. They worked for the accountant I swiped that ruby necklace from, the one you said was mobbed up.”

“Nothing on them, either,” Mo replied. “Besides, they’re dead, so what does it matter?”

I told him my theory that maybe the dead guys had been working for the same Family the accountant did. Mo didn’t know who the accountant worked for, but he promised to find out.

I started to ask him some more questions, but Mo distracted me by talking about some of the items that people had brought into the pawnshop over the past few days, everything from an oversize rubber bath duck to a fountain pen that only wrote with invisible ink to a superhero action figure that was in mint condition.

His quick, excited words washed over me, and I found myself relaxing. Mo was like Felix—once he got wound up, it was hard to get a word in edgewise. It made me smile because it was a typical day at the Razzle Dazzle. But it made me a little melancholy, too. Because it wasn’t a typical day, not really, not with me having to report back to the Sinclair mansion tonight or risk Claudia sending the guards out to hunt me down. No, things weren’t the same, and they never would be again.

I was surprised by how sad that made me.

Mo ran out of steam about the new items in the shop, although he gave me a thoughtful look. “Now that you’re all moved in at the mansion, what are you going to do with the rest of your stuff?”

“You mean what’s left in the library?”

He nodded.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ll go get it at some point, I guess.”