Bright Blaze of Magic
Page 9

Out in the grass, Tiny, the tortoise, turned his head and studied me with his black eyes. When he realized that I didn’t have any strawberries to add to his pile of lettuce, he let out a reproachful snort, stuck his beak into the long, green strips, and started chowing down on them like a cow eating hay in a field. The whole scene made me feel like I was staring down at a doll-size, Western dude ranch, instead of a table in my bedroom.
Oscar stood up on the fence post, twitched his wings, and rose into the air in front of me, hovering there like an oversize bee. He tipped back his cowboy hat a little more, revealing his sandy hair, and gave me a critical once-over with his violet eyes. Some of the tension leaked out of his face when he realized that I really was okay.
Technically, pixies were monsters, just like the tree trolls and copper crushers that lurked in the forests, but I always thought of them as miniature humans. They were the housekeepers of the world, offering their cooking, cleaning, and other skills in exchange for a safe place to stay and protection from larger mortals, magicks, and monsters. I hadn’t been here all that long, but I already considered Oscar and Tiny to be two of my best friends, and I was going to protect them just like I was going to look out for the rest of the Sinclairs.
That sobering thought reminded me that I needed to get on with my second thieving mission of the night. So I scratched Tiny’s head and gently tipped Oscar’s cowboy hat back down low on his forehead.
“You two boys have fun,” I drawled. “I’m going to go hang out with Devon for a while. Don’t wait up for me.”
Oscar snorted and pushed his hat back up to where it was supposed to be. “Ah, young love. Enjoy it, cupcake.”
He saluted me with his can of honeybeer, then flew over and landed on the front porch of his trailer. Oscar finished off his honeybeer, burped, and tossed the can down onto the grass, where it clink-clink-clinked against several others that were already there. Then he disappeared inside his trailer, shutting the screen and front doors behind him.
I waited a few seconds until Oscar had cranked up his country music even louder and I was sure that he wasn’t going to come back out and check on me again. Tiny was completely focused on his lettuce, and he ignored me too. So I went over, opened one of the glass doors, and slipped out onto the stone balcony.
I breathed in, enjoying the cool, mist-filled air, and took a moment to admire the scenery. The Sinclair mansion was near the top of the mountain, offering a spectacular view of the rocky ridges and lush forests that ran all the way down to the valley far, far below. The sharp, sticky tang of the pines and other evergreen trees mixed with the clouds of mist from the waterfalls, creating a pleasant, woodsy perfume. The moon and stars were as full and bright as before, giving everything a soft, silvery tint, and the fireflies had come out for the night, flashing their yellow lights and signaling back and forth to each other.
But the fireflies’ quick glows were nothing compared to the dazzling neon lights of the Midway. Nestled in the center of the valley, the Midway—the commercial heart of Cloudburst Falls—looked like a giant Ferris wheel that had been laid flat on its side in the middle of the mountains. Every part of the Midway pulsed, sparked, and shimmered with blue, red, green, white, and other dazzling lights, as did the various shopping squares that branched off the main circular area, as though they were the Ferris wheel’s carts.
I could have put my elbows down, leaned against the stone ledge, and kept right on watching the flashing lights and the fireflies, but I still had work to do tonight, so I turned away from the view and peered up at the part of the mansion looming above me.
I tilted my head to the side, listening. Sure enough, several steady thwack-thwack-thwacks sounded, telling me that Devon had finished putting away the weapons in the training room and was on one of the roofs, working out with the boxing bags attached to the scaffolding up there. Normally, I would have taken hold of the closest drainpipe, climbed up to the roof, and joined him, but I had a different destination in mind right now.
So I reached into one of my coat pockets and pulled out a pair of gloves made out of ironmesh, a thin, but protective metal. I tugged the gloves onto my hands, still listening all the while, but Devon kept up his steady assault on the boxing bags, and I felt safe enough to get on with the rest of my mission for the night.
Instead of climbing up, I took hold of the drainpipe and stepped out into the night air, plummeting down, down, down like a shooting star streaking out of the sky. I always enjoyed the sensation of free-falling, of the air rushing over my face and tangling my hair, the wind whistling in my ears, my long coat flapping against my legs. Although tonight I resisted the urge to laugh for fear that Devon might hear me and come investigate.
Just before my gray sneakers hit the ground, I gripped the drainpipe much tighter, slowing my descent and making a bit of silvery smoke waft up from my gloves. The black stone drainpipe was as smooth and slick as glass from years of being exposed to the elements, and it would have bruised and bloodied my hands if I hadn’t been wearing my ironmesh gloves to protect my palms.
The second my sneakers touched the grass, I crouched down in the shadows, looking left and right, but none of the guards had spotted me and they continued with their normal patrols.
I waited until the guards were all turned away from me, then left the shadows behind and sidled along the perimeter of the mansion, stopping when I came to a wide window that was set just above ground level. I tried the window, which pushed inward, since it, too, was unlocked. I sighed. I was getting tired of people making this so easy for me, but I slid through the window, dropping down into a room inside the mansion. Sure, I could have just used the stairs and snuck down here from my bedroom, but where was the fun in that?
I straightened up, staring out over the thick mats that covered most of the floor and a glass partition that separated the sparring area from several rows of seats. This was the training room where the guards came to hone their skills, although the doors were locked and the lights were off, given how late it was. But the moon and starlight streaming in through the window was more than enough to let me see the sturdy metal grates that covered one of the walls—and the weapons hanging behind them.
The training room also doubled as the Sinclair armory, and this was where Devon and Felix had brought all the black blades that we’d stolen from Victor tonight, putting them behind the grates for safekeeping.
But the weapons weren’t going to be locked up for long, since I was going to steal them again right now.