Dark Heart of Magic

Page 41

 
 
There was nothing else for us to report, so Devon, Felix, and I said our goodnights. Mo shooed us out of the library, claiming that we needed to get as much sleep as possible, since the Tournament of Blades would start bright and early again in the morning.
Yippee-skippee.
I went back to my bedroom, where Oscar was sitting on the front porch steps of his trailer. Tiny was on his back, snoozing in the corral, not looking like he had moved an inch in all the hours I’d been gone, although the tortoise’s feet were twitching in time to the twangy country music drifting out of the pixie’s trailer.
Oscar drained the rest of his honeybeer, then crumpled the miniature can in his hand and tossed it out onto the lawn, where it clattered against the ones already littering the grass. His violet gaze locked onto my coat. “I see you’ve been out.”
I shrugged out of the sapphire-blue spidersilk and hung it up on one of the posters on the bed. “It’s what I do.”
“And where did you go skulking off to tonight?”
“Nowhere special,” I said. “Just the Draconi compound.”
“What!” Oscar’s voice rose to a shriek that was loud enough to drown out the music.
Tiny grumbled and cracked one of his black eyes open, giving the pixie a reproachful look for disturbing his nap. Oscar ignored him and hopped to his feet, yanking his black cowboy hat off his head and whipping it back and forth in agitation.
“Why in the world would you go over there?” Oscar demanded, his voice climbing up another octave. “Don’t you know how dangerous that is?”
I winced at his screech. “Of course I do. But it wasn’t any more dangerous than living on the streets for four years. First Devon, now you. It seems like all anyone ever does around here is tell me what I shouldn’t do.”
“Well, maybe you should listen to us,” Oscar sniped back. “Because we’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have, cupcake. Call me crazy, but I’m not in a hurry for you to get yourself killed, especially not over a piece of scum like Victor Draconi.”
I winced, this time at my own stupid thoughtlessness. Oscar had lost a lot of friends to the Draconis over the years, so he was a bit sensitive about my putting myself in danger. In a way, the pixie and I were just alike. We didn’t want to care too much about people because we knew how easily they could be taken away from us—and how much it hurt when your heart was broken over and over again.
“Oscar, I’m sorry. I didn’t meant to worry you—”
“Forget it,” he spat out. “I don’t care to hear your lame-ass apology right now.”
The pixie glared at me, then slapped his cowboy hat back onto his head, stormed into his trailer, and used one of his boots to kick the door shut behind him. The resulting bang was hard enough to rattle the trailer windows and make a few more loose shingles slip off the roof and drop down onto the lawn. A few seconds later, Oscar turned his music up as loud as it would go, assaulting my ears with the twangy tunes.
I sighed. So far tonight, I’d fought with Deah, Felix, and Devon, and now Oscar was upset too. Plus, I still had no idea what Victor was really up to, I’d gotten some creepy, cryptic warning from Seleste Draconi, who might or might not be able to see the future, and I’d stumbled upon a mass grave full of tortured, murdered monsters.
Perfect end to a perfectly miserable day.
 
 
I took a shower, but I was too restless and frustrated to go to bed, so I threw on a T-shirt, a pair of shorts, and some sneakers. Country music still blared from Oscar’s trailer, so I went out onto the balcony and climbed up the drainpipe until I reached one of the mansion roofs that formed a wide terrace.
The terrace was open on three sides, and three lawn chairs were perched close to the iron railing to take advantage of the spectacular view of the Midway and all its flashing lights down in the valley below. But I wasn’t here to admire the view. No, tonight I wanted to hit something—repeatedly.
So I headed over to a series of metal pipes that jutted out of the mansion wall, snaking up and down like an elaborate jungle gym. Several punching bags dangled from the posts. An open footlocker full of boxing gloves and other sporting gear sat close to the pipes, with a cooler full of ice and drinks over by the railing.
I didn’t bother taping up my hands or grabbing a pair of gloves from the footlocker. Instead, I marched over to the closest bag, raised my fists, and just started hitting it. I slammed my fists into the heavy bag over and over again, all the while imagining that it was Victor’s smug face I was pummeling. He’d gotten rid of my father and had murdered my mother, and now he was threatening to hurt everyone else I cared about. And I had no idea how to stop him.
Whack-whack-whack.
And the ironic thing was that Victor didn’t even know I existed. Oh sure, he knew that Lila Merriweather was a new guard for the Sinclairs and was competing in the Tournament of Blades, but he didn’t know that I was really Lila Sterling, the daughter of the woman he’d tortured and killed.
And he especially didn’t know how much I hated him.
Whack-whack-whack.
Then again, it wasn’t like I’d shouted my true identity from the rooftops. Just the opposite. I’d worked hard to keep who I really was on the down-low. Even among the Sinclairs, only a few folks knew the truth about who I was, what Victor had done to my mom, and why.
That had never bothered me before tonight, but going over to the Draconi mansion, seeing Victor so smug in his own home, so secure and confident in his own power, and reading through that file he had on me had flipped a switch inside me. Suddenly, I wanted him to know exactly who I was—and that I wasn’t going to let him hurt another person I cared about. Not a single one.
Whack-whack-whack.
I whaled on the heavy bag until my knuckles bruised, my arms ached, and my legs trembled, but I kept right on hitting it. I drew back my fists for another strike when a voice sounded behind me.
“You keep that up and you won’t have anything left for the tournament tomorrow.”
I looked over my shoulder at Devon, who’d stepped through the door and out onto the terrace. “I don’t care about the stupid tournament.”
He let the door swing shut behind him. “You should. You could win it. Wouldn’t that make you happy?”
I smashed my fist into the bag again. Whack. “Not as happy as hitting Victor would make me.”