That was something that none of us wanted to do. We didn’t know how we might react to the monster magic—or how addicted to the power we might become. Like Katia Volkov, a girl who’d also trapped and killed monsters in order to take their magic and use it for her own twisted ends. Given all the risks, Claudia had decided that locking away the weapons in the training room was the safest option right now.

Devon nodded back at his mom. Felix grabbed the second bag, and the two of them headed toward the library doors.

“I’ll catch up with you guys later,” I called out.

The guys waved back at me and left the library. I waited until the double doors had swung shut behind them before I turned back to Claudia and Mo.

Claudia sighed for a third time, realizing that I had some bad news. “What is it now?”

“When Blake came into Victor’s office tonight, he looked right at the wall where the secret room is.”

Mo frowned. “You think Blake knows about the black blades and what Victor wants to do with them.”

I nodded. “Blake barely glanced at the rest of the office, but he kept staring and staring at that dragon carving like it was the most important thing in the entire mansion. He was making sure that Deah hadn’t messed with the carving and opened up the secret room. Blake has to know what Victor’s planning. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He wouldn’t have even looked at the wall otherwise.”

Claudia picked up her reading glasses and started tapping them on top of her desk. “If Blake knows about the weapons, then Victor is probably going to strike soon. You’re sure you left enough black blades behind to fool him into thinking that they’re all still there and full of magic?”

I shrugged. “I think so, but I don’t know for sure. I just don’t know if Victor can sense magic like I can, if it feels cold to him the same way it does to me. Hopefully, he’ll be too busy thinking about how he’s going to use the black blades to focus on how they actually look and feel.”

The weapons we’d left behind at the Draconi mansion weren’t black blades, so they weren’t made out of bloodiron and they couldn’t absorb, store, or transfer magic from one person or monster to the next. Not even close. They were just plain old swords and daggers, junk weapons mostly, that mortals and magicks had hocked at Mo’s pawnshop, the Razzle Dazzle. Devon, Felix, and I had spray-painted all of the fake weapons a dull, ashy gray to hide the nicks and scratches on them and make them look like black blades. The swords and daggers might not be the real things, but they were still weapons that Victor could give to his guards, weapons that could be used against us and the other Families. After all, a regular sword could kill you as easily as a magic-filled one.

Claudia stopped tapping her glasses on the desk and set them aside. Then she raised her hands to her face and massaged her temples, as though they were suddenly aching. “You did your job, Lila. There’s nothing else we can do now but try to figure out when Victor is going to attack and which Family he might target first.”

Instead of answering her, I wandered over to the shelves along the wall and started looking at the photos, figurines, and other knickknacks perched there. My gaze locked on to a photo of my mom, Serena Sterling, with her sister, my aunt Seleste. The two of them could have been twins, except for my mom’s black hair and Seleste’s golden locks, just like me and Deah and our own hair coloring. I only hoped that Deah and I would stay together through the coming fight with Victor, and not let him tear us apart the way he had our moms years ago.

“Now that he’s brought Blake in on his plan, when do you think Victor will attack?” Mo asked.

Claudia dropped her hands from her temples and started drumming her fingers on top of the desk. “If I had to guess, I would say after the dinner for all the Families tomorrow night. No doubt Victor will come to the dinner, talk about how he wants peace, and do his best to soothe everyone’s fears. Then he’ll wait a couple days or maybe even weeks until our guard is down and stab us all in the back the second he has the chance. That’s what I would expect him to do. Either way, we’ve taken away most of his weapons, so we’ve at least weakened him.”

She was right. By switching out the black blades for fakes, we had taken away some of Victor’s power and thwarted part of his plan to attack the other Families. But her words didn’t make me feel any better, and worry still pinched her face, along with Mo’s and my own.

Because we all knew how much magic Victor had himself and just how determined he was to destroy all of us.

CHAPTER FOUR

Now that my first thieving mission of the night was finished, I left the library and went up to my bedroom to get ready for the second one.

The Sinclair mansion wasn’t quite as richly furnished as the Draconi castle, but plenty of fine things still adorned the rooms, including antique furniture, silver bookends, and crystal chandeliers that had been turned down low for the night. It was after ten now and the mansion was quiet, except for a few pixies fluttering through the hallways, doing their last chores before going to bed. I nodded to the pixies that I passed and headed up to my bedroom.

When I opened the door, the twangy sounds of country music assaulted my ears. I sighed. I’d hoped that Oscar, the pixie who took care of me, would have already gone to bed by now, but it looked like he’d waited up for me. So I shut the door behind me, walked past the black leather couch and matching recliners in front of the TV mounted to the wall, and went over to a long table that was near the French patio doors. A rundown, ramshackle ebony trailer sat on the table, along with a carpet of real grass that led over to a corral and a rickety barn, also made out of ebony.

A six-inch-tall man with translucent wings attached to his back was perched on top of one of the corral fence posts, chewing on a long blade of grass. He wore black cowboy boots with shiny silver tips, along with faded black jeans with holes in the knees and a pale blue T-shirt that had seen better, cleaner days. A black cowboy hat was tipped back on his head, and he was clutching a tiny can of honeybeer in his right hand. Out in the grassy corral, a small green tortoise was slowly lumbering over to a pile of shredded lettuce.

“I thought you’d be back sooner,” Oscar said, his voice even twangier than his country playlist.

“It took us a little longer than usual to get out of the Draconi mansion, but we made it back with the weapons, so it’s all good.”