“Be careful,” he whispered. “I couldn’t stand to lose you too.”

“I’m always careful,” I whispered back.

His arms tightened around me for a moment, as if he didn’t ever want to let me go. But we both knew that this was the only way to find out where Mo, Claudia, and the others were. Devon sighed, pressed a kiss to my forehead, and dropped his arms.

Felix finished hugging Deah and she moved to stand beside me. I took one last look at Devon, while Deah did the same thing to Felix.

Then together, the two of us left the guys behind and stepped out of the alley and into the hot summer sunshine.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The alley led out to a street that was on the very edge of the tourist area, and we crossed it and entered one of the shopping squares. It was after two o’clock now, and people moved from one side of the square to the other, despite the sweltering July heat. No one gave Deah and me a second look, and we moved from that square over to the next one and the next one until we had reached one of the many entrances to the Midway.

I looked at Deah. “No matter what happens, we need to stick together. Okay?”

“Okay.” Her fingers twitched. “I still wish I had a sword, though.”

“I know. Me too.” I drew in a breath. “Here we go.”

Deah nodded at me, and together we walked out into the Midway.

At first, everything looked normal. People moving in and out of the shops, stopping at the food carts to get sweet and salty snacks, taking pictures of the stuffed monsters and other displays in the museum windows. The scents of popcorn and caramel apples filled the air, while kids shrieked, laughed, and ran circles around their parents.

But the deeper we headed into the Midway, the more I realized that something was seriously wrong.

Oh, the restaurants, shops, hotels, and other businesses were still open, but I only spotted a few guards from the Ito, Salazar, and Volkov Families patrolling through their designated areas. And the guards that I did see were in teams of three or more, all of them with their hands on their weapons, ready to draw their swords at the slightest hint of danger. My soulsight let me see and feel every bit of their worry, fear, and tension. The emotions punched me in the chest over and over again, with every guard I looked at.

We lingered by a few of the food carts, as though we were thinking about buying some funnel cakes and deep-fried fudge, and spied on a group of Ito guards, but they didn’t talk to each other, and we didn’t overhear anything that might tell us what was going on with the other Families.

Once again, I wondered what had happened to Poppy and her dad after the attack at the White Orchid last night, but it wasn’t like I could go up to the Ito guards and ask. Not without raising their suspicions. I just had to hope that Poppy had made it to safety too.

Eventually, Deah and I wandered over to the Sinclair section of the Midway. It was far less crowded here than anywhere else, mainly because none of the businesses were actually open. All the carts, shops, and shacks were shuttered, dark, and locked up tight, and I didn’t see any Sinclair guards patrolling through our section of the Midway—not a single one.

My heart sank. So it was as bad as I’d feared, and Victor had captured everyone but us. That made it even more important that we find out where he was holding the other Sinclairs before it was too late.

We stopped beside one of the closed Sinclair ice cream carts and I looked at Deah.

“Are you ready for this?” I asked.

She nodded. “Yeah. Let’s get it over with.”

I nodded back at her, and we slowly headed toward the Draconi section of the Midway.

The guards from all the other Families might have been nervous and on the lookout for trouble, but the Draconis were totally relaxed, strolling around in pairs, smiling, talking, and laughing with each other. They thought that they’d won, that they’d finally beaten all the other Families, and they were happy about it. Their wide grins and hearty chuckles made more white-hot rage burn in my heart. They weren’t going to be happy for long. Not after everything they’d done. Not if I had anything to say about it.

Deah reached out and gripped my hand tightly, silently warning me not to let any of my true feelings show. I squeezed her hand back, telling her that I understood, and we moved even deeper into Draconi territory.

Deah flinched at every single guard we passed, but our matching T-shirts and baseball hats worked like the proverbial charm, and none of the guards gave us a second look, except to snicker at the outrageous, neon-blue color of our shirts and our apparently over-the-top love for barbecue.

We rounded a cart selling popcorn and candy apples. A few feet away, in the shade of a large blood persimmon tree, five Draconi guards were eating the snacks they’d just bought and laughing and talking to each other. Deah nodded, telling me that she recognized the guards and that they were high enough up in the Draconi Family to know something about where our friends were. She pretended to look at some sunglasses on another cart, keeping an eye out for more guards, while I crept closer and closer to the group in the shade.

“We finally taught the Sinclairs and everyone else a lesson,” one of the guards crowed. “Victor has big plans for this town, and they were standing in our way.”

All the other guards nodded their agreement.

“What are they going to do with all the Sinclairs?” another guard asked. “Victor can’t keep them locked up forever.”

My ears perked up, and I sidled a little closer, trying to hear every word he said.

The first guard shook his head. “I don’t know. Right now, they’re all in those cages at the warehouse. Maybe Victor will eventually let the Sinclair guards swear their loyalty to him. But you know he’ll take care of Claudia Sinclair and all the other senior members of the Family first. He won’t risk letting any of them go so they can try to regroup and rebuild their Family.”

My fingers curled into fists, my knuckles cracking from the pressure. What the guard really meant was that Victor was planning to kill Claudia, something he’d been wanting to do for a long time. And now, he finally had her, Mo, and the others at his mercy. Dread rose up in my chest at the thought of losing Claudia and Mo the same way that I had my mom, but I forced the feeling aside. That wasn’t going to happen. I wasn’t going to let that happen. Never again.

“Well, I’m surprised he didn’t just go ahead and do it last night, when we first brought her into the warehouse,” another guard said.