Panic shot through my body, and my head snapped from left to right and back again, wondering if the copper crushers were already creeping up on me. For a moment, I didn’t see anything, but slowly, glowing, ruby-red eyes began to appear, like lights winking on, one after another, in the darkest, blackest shadows of the warehouse. A second later, a faint rasp-rasp-rasp sounded, as though something large and heavy were sliding across the floor.

Victor laughed, the sound soft and sinister, chilling me to the bone. He was going to leave me tied up here in the middle of the warehouse. Once he and Blake were gone, the copper crushers would slither across the floor and make a meal out of me, just like he’d said. The oversize snakes would wrap their coils around me and slowly crush me to death—and that’s if they didn’t bite and poison me with their venom first.

Either way, I was dead. I’d thought that nothing could be worse than Victor cutting me up and ripping my magic out of me, but this . . . this was horrifying.

He smiled at me again, pleased by the fear filling my shocked face. Blake curled his hand around his sword and glanced around, as if he was afraid that the crushers would shoot out of the shadows and eat him too.

Victor held up my mom’s Sinclair cuff. “This didn’t do your mother any good. Despite all her friends, her precious Family, even her sight magic, she still died in the end, just like you’re going to.”

He threw the cuff down onto the floor, and it rolled end over end before spinning to a stop a few feet in front of me. Victor stared at me, his golden eyes as bright as any monster’s.

“Enjoy your life, Lila Sterling—what little is left of it.”

Then he turned and strode out of the warehouse, leaving me to the copper crushers.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Instead of following his dad out of the warehouse, Blake stayed frozen in place, peering into the shadows, his eyes wide, his hand still on the sword belted to his hip. As cruel as he was, even Blake was shocked by what his dad was going to do to me.

“Blake!” I hissed. “Help me!”

He stared at me, and for the first time, a bit of fear flickered in his eyes. I didn’t know if it was because of the copper crushers lurking in the shadows or if Blake had finally realized that if his dad could do this to me, he wouldn’t hesitate to do it to Blake if he ever displeased Victor. He stared at me and opened his mouth to say something, maybe even that he was sorry, but he never got the chance.

“Blake!” Victor called out in a loud, commanding voice. “Let’s go! Now!”

Blake kept staring at me, and for a moment, I almost thought that he was wavering, that he was actually going to step forward and do something to help me.

“Blake!” I hissed again. “Please!”

“Son!” Victor called out again. “Move it! Right now!”

And just like that, the moment passed. Blake shook his head, then turned and ran out of the warehouse. The door banged shut behind him. A few seconds later, a car cranked to life on the street outside, then drove off.

As soon as the last rumbles had faded away, things began moving and stirring in the shadows in earnest. More and more ruby-red eyes winked open, all staring steadily at me. Dark shapes moved on the floor, and a series of low, ominous clack-clack-clacks sounded as the crushers swayed back and forth, making the rattles on the end of their tails chime together in a dark, deadly chorus.

And slowly, the monsters slithered out into the light.

I’d always thought of copper crushers as a cross between copperheads, rattlesnakes, and pythons—only much, much deadlier—and the first snake I saw only confirmed my opinion. Its eyes were that rich, jewel-toned, ruby red I’d noticed before and burned even brighter than the overhead light, as though two hot coals had been set into its eye sockets. Its skin featured a large diamond pattern and gleamed like polished copper, giving the monster its name.

But the creature’s size and strength were what made it truly dangerous. The first copper crusher I spotted was at least twenty feet long and three feet thick, which made it easily capable of squeezing me to death. Two others were sliding across the floor toward me as well, their long, black tongues flicking out. They could smell my fear and knew that I was going to be an easy dinner for them, unless I found some way to escape. And still more crushers were waiting in the shadows behind these three.

Once again, I strained and strained against the heavy ropes that tied me down to the chair. I’d managed to get a little slack in them when Victor had been talking to me, but not nearly enough. I was stuck, like a fly trapped in a sticky web, waiting for the spider to come and gobble me up—or snakes, in this case.

Sweat beaded on my forehead, trickling down my face and neck and spattering onto my long coat. If a pack of tree trolls, rockmunks, or some other monsters had been coming at me, I would have patted down my coat pockets, looking for dark chocolate, white pebbles, or some other small tribute to give them so they would leave me alone.

But copper crushers were one of the few monsters that you couldn’t reason or bargain with. It wasn’t because they were inherently vicious or evil or anything like that. They just didn’t care about anything other than sleeping, eating, and stalking their prey. I hadn’t realized it before now, but the creatures reminded me of Victor’s snarling dragon crest. Maybe that’s why he liked them so much—or at least let them do his dirty work for him.

I forced my gaze away from the slow, slithering snakes and glanced around the warehouse, searching for something, anything, that would help me get out of here. But there was nothing. Just the chair I was sitting in, the snakes creeping toward me, and my Sinclair Family cuff glinting on the floor—

My cuff.

My gaze locked on the silver cuff, zeroing in on the small sapphire glinting in the middle of the metal. I’d run my fingers over that cuff a hundred times since Claudia had given it to me earlier this summer, and each and every time, I’d felt the points of the star-shaped sapphire dig into my skin. I didn’t know if the points were sharp enough to saw through the ropes, but it was worth a shot. Without any magic around to steal, I just wasn’t strong enough to break through the ropes binding me to the chair. So this was my best—and only—option.

My wrists and ankles were both tied to the chair, so there was no way I could stretch out my feet and slide the cuff closer. Even if I had been able to do that, it would have still been down on the floor and utterly useless to me. So I’d just have to go down to it instead.