Cold Burn of Magic (14 page)

I
didn't say anything to Felix about my suspicions concerning him and Deah, and we walked back to the car.

Grant and Devon were waiting in the SUV with the engine running. Grant gave me another angry look when I climbed into the backseat, still pissed about what I'd done and all the problems it would cause, but I didn't care.

It had been worth it to see the pain in Blake's eyes.

For once, even Felix was quiet, and we rode back to the mansion in silence. Felix mumbled an excuse about needing to check on something in the greenlab, then hurried away. Devon disappeared as well, and Grant said that he needed to talk to Claudia about what had happened.

I went back to my room and plopped down on the bed. I pulled out my phone and texted Mo, asking him to call me so I could tell him about my run-in with Blake, but he didn't respond. He was probably busy in the shop, trying to sell tourists tacky yard art they didn't need and couldn't afford. A pang of longing shot through me. A week ago, I would have been in the Razzle Dazzle with him, discussing the latest job he had lined up for me. But things were different now, for better or worse.

I was surprised how sad that made me.

Since I didn't have anything better to do, I took a long, hot shower, using up some more of the fancy soaps and lotions in the bathroom. I put on a fresh pair of cargo pants and a T-shirt and came back into the bedroom. I headed over to the vanity table so I could pull my hair back into a ponytail—

“So you're the new girl,” a soft, twangy voice called out. “Woo.”

Startled, I grabbed my sword from where I'd propped it against the vanity table and whipped around, wondering who had gotten in here and what they wanted.

But no one was there.

My eyes scanned the entire room, from front to back and wall to wall, but it was empty. So was the balcony outside.

“Over here, cupcake,” that twangy voice drawled again.

A movement off to the left caught my eye, and that's when I remembered the pixie. Looked like he'd finally decided to come out and be sociable.

I put the sword down on the bed, walked over to the table to his house, and bent down so we were eye level. Tiny the tortoise was snoozing in a sunspot, so I focused on the pixie.

He was wearing black cowboy boots with pointed, silver tips, a threadbare white tank top, and blue-striped boxers, both of which seemed to be spattered with mustard, ketchup, and other stains. For a guy who was only six inches tall, he was handsome, with sandy blond hair and eyes that were a vivid violet. A bit of stubble clung like golden fuzz to his cheeks, as though he hadn't shaved in several days.

He slouched down in a tiny, rickety lawn chair on the front porch of his wooden trailer, his legs stretched out in front of him, a can of honeybeer in his hand. At least, I thought it was honeybeer, since it looked the same as all the other cans littering the yard. My nose twitched at the sour stench wafting up from him. It certainly smelled like honeybeer, and he looked like he was in the middle of a bender.

“You must be Oscar.”

The pixie drained the rest of his honeybeer, crushed the can in his hand, and tossed it away. The can clattered against the others in the yard, sending them all flying apart like bowling pins and making them
tink-tink-tink
across the grass. “Yep. Lucky me.”

“My name is Lila—”

He held up his hand, cutting me off. “Let me stop you right there, cupcake. We need to get a few things straight.”

“Like what?”

He glared at me, his violet eyes practically glowing in his face. “First of all, you will wipe that indulgent smirk off your face. I am
not
your pet, and I am
certainly
not a toy to be trifled with.”

“I never said you were—”

“I wasn't finished yet,” he snapped. “I am a pixie and proud of it. But just because I happen to have been assigned as
your
pixie doesn't mean I have to like it.”

“Okay . . .”

His hot glare intensified. “Ashley Vargas was a friend of mine. A nice, sweet, polite girl who didn't deserve to die in some crummy pawnshop.”

“No, she didn't,” I said in a quiet voice.

His gaze sharpened, as if he wasn't sure whether or not I was mocking him. But I wasn't. I wouldn't. Not about something like this. Even I had limits.

“I heard you and your buddy Mo talking last night,” Oscar said. “About what a great
opportunity
this was for you. You didn't actually believe any of his pretty speech, did you?”

I didn't answer. Part of me had believed Mo—or at least wanted to—when he said this was my chance to make something of myself. To finally do what my mom would have wanted me to all along.

Oscar heard the confirmation in my silence. “Oh, you did. You
really
did. Well, don't that beat all.”

The pixie slapped his hand against his knee and started chuckling, although his laugh was a bit slurred. I eyed the honeybeer cans and wondered how much he'd had to drink. Given their small size, pixies weren't known for being able to hold their liquor, which is why they drank honeybeer, which was mostly sugar and barely had any alcohol in it at all. I wondered how long and how often Oscar drowned his sorrows—and why he was taking his anger out on me. I had never even laid eyes on him until two minutes ago, but he already hated me.

His mirthless chuckles finally died down.

“Don't worry. I will do my
duty
.” He ground out the last word. “I will wash and clean and make sure you have everything you need. But that's it. That's as far as it goes.”

“What else is there?”

His mouth gaped open in surprise, and he gave me another suspicious look. More anger burned in his violet eyes.

“Let's get something straight, cupcake,” he snapped. “We are not friends. We will
never
be friends, so let's not go through the whole
getting-to-know-you
rigmarole, all right? It'll save us both a lot of trouble.”

“Really? Why is that?”

The look he gave me was far more haunted than I was expecting. “Because you'll be dead soon enough, and there will be somebody new in here to take your place just as soon as it happens. And when it does, I'll be packing up your things, just like I did Ashley's.”

His eyes locked with mine. Pain and anguish shimmered in his bloodshot gaze, the twin emotions like red-hot needles twisting deeper and deeper into my own heart.

“I'm sorry about Ashley. You're right. She didn't deserve to die like that. I wish I could have saved her, too.”

Oscar snorted. “Yeah, but you didn't, did you? You saved Devon instead. How very
practical
of you, saving such an important member of the Family, instead of just his bodyguard.”

“It wasn't like that,” I protested. “Devon was closer to me than Ashley was—”

“Open up that disgrace you call a suitcase and leave it on the bed, and I'll unpack your things,” he interrupted me again. “
After
I have another honeybeer. Or two. Or six. Or however many are left in the fridge.”

Oscar got up, wrenched open the screen door that fronted his trailer, and stomped inside. The door banged shut behind him, with the interior wooden door slamming shut as well. Five seconds later, country music started blasting. The pixie had cranked up his twangy playlist again. Oh, goody.

The music roused Tiny from his nap. The tortoise cracked a black eye open at me for about half a second before going back to sleep. Seemed he was used to Oscar's temper tantrums—and ignoring them. I wondered how many years that had taken. Because that was one very angry pixie.

I started to lean down so that I could peer in through one of the trailer windows, but I remembered what Reginald had said about Oscar not liking people spying on him—and trying to poke their eyes out with his sword.

So I stood up, walked over and grabbed my suitcase, and put it on the bed, just like he'd ordered. I left everything in the suitcase, except for my mom's photo, which I slid in between the folds of her sapphire coat in one of the vanity table drawers so the pixie wouldn't see it. As I glanced over at the trailer again, it occurred to me that Oscar had given me the same speech, more or less, that I'd given to Devon at breakfast.

But the surprising thing was that Oscar's words had wounded me as much as mine had hurt Devon.

 

Oscar stayed inside his trailer, probably drinking and brooding, so I left my room, mostly to get away from his too-loud music. I asked a pixie flitting through the air where I could find Felix, and she told me to check the greenlab on the third floor. I followed her directions to the west wing of the mansion and walked through a pair of glass double doors.

The area before me was part greenhouse, part chemistry lab. To my right, roses, orchids, lilies, hydrangeas, and other, more exotic flowers perched in neat rows, while brown clay pots held herbs like dill, sage, rosemary, and thyme. The savory smells of the herbs, mixed with the soft scents of the flowers, created a heady perfume.

Directly in front of me were several rows of dense hedges, each one featuring sharp, dark green needles that were longer than my fingers. Stitch-sting bushes.

To my left, burners, beakers, and other scientific equipment squatted on long metal tables. Shelves built into the stone wall behind the tables were filled with bottles of dark green, liquid stitch-sting. A heavy metal grate covered each shelf, locking the bottles away in the same way as the black blades in the training room.

Dealing with monsters was hard, dirty, dangerous work. Yeah, most of the monsters stayed where they were supposed to, either in their sanctuaries or in the shadows. But sometimes, they would wander through the squares or even the Midway, making the tourists shriek and scream, before the Family guards managed to capture and return the creatures to their intended habitat. And while some of the monsters, like the lochness, would let you pass through their territories by paying them tribute, others might attack you just for the fun of it, whether they were hungry or not.

Given all that, every Family kept a stockpile of stitch-sting on hand to deal with all the injuries sustained from monster wrangling. The Families also made nice piles of cash selling stitch-sting creams, ointments, and more to pharmacies and other shops, like the Razzle Dazzle. Pour enough stitch-sting on and in a wound, and your injury would heal—although not before the potion caused almost unbearable pain. Like needles stitching your skin, muscles, and bones together, hence the name.

A tall, thin man walked out from behind the stitch-sting bushes, wearing a white beekeeper suit, his arms full of fresh cuttings. The bushes weren't exactly monsters, but they required tribute before allowing anyone to harvest their limbs. And you had to drizzle the ground around their roots with honey before they let harvesters close enough to prune them. Even then, the bushes were still likely to stab you at least a few times, just for fun, which was the reason for the man's protective suit.

The man laid down his cuttings on one of the tables and removed his beekeeper hat, revealing his wavy black hair and brown eyes. He stopped when he noticed me lurking near the doors.

“Oh,” he said, smiling. “Hello. You must be Lila. I'm Angelo Morales, Felix's dad. He's told me all about you.”

I thought of Felix's nonstop chatter. “I bet he has.”

“I would shake your hand, but . . .” Angelo held up his glove-covered hands.

“It's okay.”

He tipped his head. “Felix is in the back if you're looking for him.”

I nodded and stepped onto one of the black flagstone paths that curved deeper into the greenlab. A glass roof covered the entire space, the sunlight streaming inside adding even more warmth to the already humid air. I wandered through the rows of flowers, herbs, and bushes, enjoying the quiet.

I'd almost reached the back of the greenlab when a series of soft
scrape-scrape-scrapes
interrupted the silence. I headed toward the sound.

I rounded another row of stitch-sting bushes and found Felix perched on a stool. Several clay pots crouched on the table in front of him, along with bunches of herbs laid out on damp paper towels, as though he'd just picked them. But his attention was fixed on the blood-red rose in his hand, and he didn't hear me walk up behind him.

“Picking another rose for Deah Draconi?” I asked in a snide tone.

Felix yelped in surprise, crushed the rose in his hand, and then yelped again as its thorns stabbed his skin. He winced and dropped the mangled flower onto the table.

“Geez! Give a guy a heart attack, why don't you?” he muttered. “And I don't know what you're talking about.”

“Sure you do. Because you gave Deah a rose just like that one at the arcade.”

“No, I didn't.”

“Yes, you did,” I said. “You brought that white rose for Devon to give to Poppy, as part of their fake date, but that red one was for Deah all along, wasn't it? That's why you were carrying that gift bag around. Because you had two flowers in there and you didn't want anyone to see the second rose or know who it was for.”

Felix opened his mouth, but for once, no words came out. He bit his lip, and a guilty flush stained his cheeks.

“You can't tell anyone, okay? Please?” he asked, desperation creeping into his voice. “The Sinclairs and Draconis don't exactly get along.”

“Don't worry. I'm good at keeping my mouth shut . . .”