Seleste stared at me, then Deah, who’d come up to stand beside me. “I don’t want that for the two of you. You can’t fight each other the way Serena and I did. You have to work together. Otherwise, Victor will win, and he’ll destroy all the other Families.”

Deah’s eyes widened. “Mom, you don’t mean that. Sure, Dad has his problems with the other Families, but he would never try to destroy everyone else.”

Seleste stepped forward, reached up, and cradled Deah’s face in her hands. “My darling girl, always wanting to believe the best of people, even when they don’t deserve it. You are the most wonderful thing that ever happened to me. Always remember that.”

Seleste leaned forward and kissed Deah’s forehead. Then her blue eyes glazed over, and she skipped away, humming and lost in her own world again. Deah watched her, a stricken expression on her pretty face.

I shook my head. “Open your eyes, Deah. Your dad has been plotting something against the other Families for a long time now. And I finally figured out what it is.”

I pointed to the secret room, which was still open behind me. “Remember what Katia wanted to do to us? Well, your dad has already done the exact same thing to a whole bunch of monsters. He and Blake set out traps in the woods to catch monsters so they can rip their magic out of the creatures with black blades.”

I stalked over to the desk and picked up one of the files there. “And he has files on all the Draconis, notes about how he can use those black blades to augment their magic, make them faster, stronger, better fighters. He even has a file on you, if you care to look.”

Deah’s face paled, and her mouth twisted as though she was going to be sick. “He wouldn’t do that. Not to everyone in the Family, not to me. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and I could tell that she didn’t even believe her own words.

“Go in there and look for yourself. Just be sure to close the door behind you when you leave.”

I’d seen and heard everything I needed to, but instead of leaving the office like I should have, I stood still and kept staring at Deah.

“There’s a war coming,” I said. “Between the Sinclairs and the Draconis. And you’re going to have to choose a side. I hope you choose ours, cousin.”

Deah stared back at me, her blue eyes full of worry. All the while, Seleste kept humming and skipping around and around us.

I nodded at Deah, then left Victor’s office.

I met up with Devon in the woods, and we hiked back to the Sinclair mansion. We went straight to the library, where Claudia and Mo were waiting. I e-mailed the photos I’d taken to their phones and told them everything I’d seen in Victor’s secret room, including all the black blades hidden there and what I thought he wanted to do with them.

Claudia put her phone down, took off her glasses, and rubbed her head as though it was aching again. “So Victor has enough black blades to give the majority of his guards more magic.”

“Just a boost,” I said. “Katia said that monster magic burns out of your veins quickly, that it’s not permanent, like human magic is.”

“How quickly?” Mo asked.

I shrugged. “She didn’t say. But she’d set traps along the lake, and it sounded like she’d had to kill a lot of monsters just to advance through the tournament.”

“It doesn’t matter how long monster magic lasts,” Devon said. “All Victor needs is an hour, maybe two, and he could wipe out an entire Family, including ours.”

Silence descended over the library as we all took in that not-so-cheery thought. Claudia and Mo picked up their phones again, staring at the photos, but I wandered over to the bookshelf where that picture of my mom was. Now that I knew the blond woman with her was Seleste, I picked up the picture and looked at it again.

They both seemed so young in the photo, although they must have been about the same age as I was now. And they seemed so happy, smiling at each other, their arms slung around each other’s shoulders. Whatever happened from here on out, I was going to take Seleste’s advice—I wasn’t going to fight with my friends, and I especially wasn’t going to fight with Deah. She was my cousin, my family, my blood, and we would need all the help we could get to defeat Victor.

“So what do we do now that we know Victor’s plan?” Devon asked, breaking the silence. “Do we tell the other Families and try to form some sort of alliance?”

“No,” Claudia said. “That would just cause a panic. The fewer people who know about Victor’s secret room and what’s in it, the better.”

“But we have to do something,” Devon protested. “We just can’t sit around and wait for Victor to decide to use those weapons against us.”

I set the picture of my mom and Seleste back down on the shelf, making sure it was straight, then turned to face the others. “Don’t worry about the black blades. I know exactly what to do about them.”

Claudia arched her eyebrows. “And what is this brilliant plan of yours?”

“It’s not a plan. It’s what I do best.”

I looked at Mo, and he grinned, picking up on my train of thought.

“Just like the Parker job?” he asked.

“Exactly.”

Claudia frowned. “What’s the Parker job? Or do I even want to know?”

“It’s an assignment I sent Lila out on last year,” Mo said. “This guy named Parker had bought a very nice diamond necklace for his wife, one that I had a buyer for. But Parker was mobbed up with the Draconis, so we couldn’t steal the necklace without some serious consequences.”

“So what did you do?” Devon asked.

Mo pointed at me, still grinning. “Lila had the bright idea to, shall we say, replace Parker’s necklace with one that I ordered from a jeweler in Cypress Mountain.”

Claudia tilted her head to the side. “Lila stole the real necklace and replaced it with a fake.”

Mo nodded. “And Parker and his wife still don’t know the difference. She wears that necklace all the time to Family events. And I laugh to myself every single time I see all those fake diamonds flashing around her neck.”

Claudia and Devon looked at me, questions in their eyes.

“We’re going to do the same exact thing to Victor.” I grinned. “We’re going to steal all of those black blades and replace them with fakes. By the time he realizes the difference, it will be too late—for him.”