Dark Heart of Magic
Page 15

And in that moment, I desperately wanted to do it, if only so he would keep on looking at me the way he was right now.
 
 
Everyone left their tables and streamed forward, wanting to congratulate all the folks who’d been chosen to compete. I shook hand after hand and endured back slaps from Mo, Felix, and countless others. Oscar buzzed around my head, whooping, hollering, and throwing his tiny cowboy hat up into the air, then darting forward to catch it.
“I still don’t understand why Claudia picked me,” I muttered.
“Relax, Lila,” Felix said. “It’s not like no one’s never heard of you before. All the other Families have seen you with Devon and me in the Midway. And all the Sinclairs know what you did for Devon at the lochness bridge. They know you’ve earned this.”
Maybe that’s what was making me so uncomfortable. I didn’t earn things. I was a bloody thief. I took what I wanted whenever I wanted it. So this was a whole new experience for me.
“You should be happy that Claudia picked you,” Oscar piped up.
“Why is that?”
“Because the tournament winner gets a gold cup and a check for twenty-five thousand dollars.”
“Oh.” My eyes widened. “Oh.”
The pixie laughed. “I thought that might interest you.”
“Lila is sure to win.” Mo clapped me on the back again. “You know what, kid? I should be your trainer. Keep you focused on the tournament.”
I gave him a suspicious look. “Why do I think you’re mentally playing the Rocky theme music in your head right now?”
Mo grinned. “I’m sure I can find you some steps to run up somewhere around here.”
I groaned, wondering how much more this was going to complicate my life.
Felix and Mo went over to talk to Devon, with Oscar flitting along behind them. I headed in the other direction, hoping that I could escape from the dining hall, but Vance blocked my retreat.
“Well, I see it pays to date the boss’s son,” he sneered. “That’s the only reason you’re in the tournament.”
“And I see that they must need a rodeo clown for the tournament,” I shot right back. “Guess the organizers are lucky you volunteered, huh?”
“I’ll see you on the field tomorrow, Merriweather,” Vance snarled.
“Looking forward to it, Groves.”
He stormed off, his black cloak flapping around his shoulders.
I glanced around, but no one had noticed our confrontation, and I was finally able to slip out of the dining hall.
Instead of going back to my bedroom, I headed to the mansion’s library, which took up three levels, all of which featured balconies bristling with bookshelves. The square area sloped up to form a tower, with the ceiling made out of alternating panes of black-and-white stained glass. With the sun setting, the glass cast more shadows than light.
Claudia had left the celebration as well and was sitting behind an ebony desk on the first floor of the library. Behind her, a series of glass doors led out to a balcony that offered more sweeping views of the grounds. A pair of silver reading glasses perched on her nose, but she didn’t glance up from the papers she was poring over as I stalked toward her.
“I was wondering how long it would take you to charge in here,” Claudia murmured. “You’re late. I expected you five minutes ago.”
“Sorry,” I sniped. “I got waylaid by well-wishers.”
Claudia arched an eyebrow, but she kept right on reading.
“What’s so fascinating?” I sniped again. “Are you jotting down all your secret desires there in your diary?”
That finally got her to snort, pull off her glasses, and raise her gaze to mine. “Hardly. I was reviewing Devon’s report about the tree troll incident in the square. What did you bribe the troll with to get it to stop throwing fruit at people?”
“How do you know that I bribed it with anything?”
“Because that’s what your mother would have done.” Claudia leaned back in her chair. “Serena always preferred trying to reason with the monsters to killing them. It was one of the things I admired most about her.”
I stared at her, wondering at her soft, sad tone, but Claudia knew better than to look into my eyes and let me see what she was really feeling. Annoyance spurted through me. That was the problem with letting people in on your secrets, especially your magic and what you could do with it. They started figuring out ways to get around your Talents. I liked knowing what other people were feeling—it had helped me stay alive this long.
Talking about my mom was another one of those things that made me uncomfortable, so I wandered over to a bookcase that took up one wall of the library. All sorts of pretty knickknacks gleamed on the shelves—porcelain keepsake boxes, sterling silver letter openers, crystal picture frames. I scanned the items, wondering if I might pocket one or two while Claudia wasn’t watching and use them for my game with Mo. I might ostensibly be going straight these days, but it was good to keep in practice. You never knew when a pair of light fingers might help you out of a sticky situation.
So I bent down, pretending to admire a photo of my mom with a blond woman I didn’t recognize. There were lots of shots of my mom in here, since she’d been a member of the Family for years before she’d left Cloudburst Falls. But she seemed especially happy in this photo, grinning at the blond woman as if the two of them were good friends.
“See anything you like?” Claudia called out.
As I turned to face her, I dropped my hand down by my side and palmed a small jet statue shaped like a lochness, complete with sapphire eyes and several small tentacles, off one of the shelves.
I shrugged and slid the statue into my pants pocket. “Nothing that would interest Mo.”
Claudia scowled. As part of my agreeing to work for the Sinclairs, I’d forced Claudia to appoint Mo as the Family broker, the person responsible for, well, brokering all the Family’s business deals. Claudia and Mo had some history I didn’t know about, but she seemed to almost openly loathe him at times, while he enjoyed needling her like it was his new favorite sport.
I leaned my elbow on one of the bookcase shelves, knocking a few pictures out of alignment. Claudia’s nose wrinkled. She was almost as fussy about things being in place in her library as Reginald was about the rest of the mansion looking up to snuff. I grinned. I liked annoying her. It wasn’t smart, but it was the only bit of rebellion I could get away with, since I was stuck here for the next year.