Dark Heart of Magic

  I left the picnic area behind and stepped into the woods. It wasn’t quite eight o’clock yet, but shadows already filled in the spaces between the trees, giving everything a gloomy atmosphere. It matched my mood perfectly. Because not only had Deah been hurt, but now I would always be known as the girl who had almost won the Tournament of Blades, the runner-up and the first loser, just like Blake had said. Even if everyone remembered all about Deah’s proclamation, her name was still the one on the gold cup—not mine. I kicked at a rock and sent it skittering off through the underbrush.

  I didn’t think Deah had been walking all that fast, but she’d already gone far deeper into the woods than I’d expected. For the first time, I realized just how isolated I was and how far away the noise from the picnic area was.

  I wondered if Vance had noticed these same things before he’d been murdered out here.

  The image of Vance’s body and all the hideous cuts that had been inflicted on him filled my mind. I’d never been afraid of being alone before, not even in the bad parts of town where there were more monsters than shadows in the alleys, but a shiver went up my spine, and I found myself lowering my hand to the sword strapped to my waist.

  And that’s when I realized that the woods were quiet—too quiet.

  It wasn’t all that late, but here in the gloom, monsters should have already been stirring, waking up to hunt their dinner. But no brightly colored eyes flashed from the bushes or high up in the trees, and I didn’t hear so much as a rockmunk rustling around in the underbrush, searching for nuts and berries. I shivered again. The silence was creepier than anything else—

  A low moan sounded.

  I froze, wondering if I had imagined the sound. But the moan came again, and then again. Someone was out here, and they were hurt, from the sound of things. Normally, I would have rushed forward to help the injured person, but so many bad things had happened over the past few days that I decided to be extra cautious. So I drew my sword and slowly approached. Besides, just because those moans sounded human, didn’t mean that they actually were. Many a monster had suckered in an unwary tourist or guard that way.

  I crept deeper and deeper into the woods, searching for the source of the sound. Even though the shadows grew darker by the minute, I was still able to see everything around me clearly, thanks to my sight magic.

  Including the body.

  A crumpled form was sprawled in the middle of the trail up ahead, and the red shirt and golden ponytail told me exactly who it was—Deah.

  I quickened my pace, scanning the woods around her, but I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just trees, trees, and more trees.

  I reached her a few seconds later. Deah was lying on the ground, bleeding from an ugly gash in her forehead. Her sword was clutched in her hand, as though she’d tried to defend herself against whoever or whatever had attacked her. Worry shot through me. Deah was an excellent fighter, something she’d proved during the tournament. If something could get the drop on her, that meant it could do the same to me—or worse.

  My head whipped left and right, but I still didn’t see or hear anything moving in the trees around us. I’d have to take the chance that I could get her out of here before whatever—or whoever—had done this came back.

  I dropped to my knees beside her, the gold cup tumbling from my hand and rolling away. “Deah! Deah! What happened? Are you okay? Who did this to you?”

  She looked at me, her eyes hazy and unfocused, but she managed to croak out a single word. “Run. . . .”

  She moaned, and her head lolled to the side.

  “Deah! Deah!”

  I shook her, but she was out cold. More worry filled me. I didn’t have any strength magic, and she was too heavy for me to carry back to the picnic area. I’d have to call Devon and tell him what was happening. I reached for the phone in my pocket—

  A branch cracked behind me.

  “I did it to her,” a familiar voice called out.

  I froze, then got to my feet and slowly turned around.

  Katia Volkov stood behind me, her arms crossed over her chest. A bit of sunlight streaming down through the trees highlighted the wolf stamped into the cuff on her wrist. Seleste’s voice whispered in my mind.

  We have to warn the girls about the wolf.... The wolf wants to devour them both, gobble them up until there’s nothing left but bones and blades. . . . No blood, just bones and blades . . . bones and blades . . . bones and blades....

  I’d been so focused on bones and blades that I’d forgotten about the first part of Seleste’s warning. Suddenly, I knew that the wolf was Katia, although I had no idea why she would want to hurt Deah or me.

  Katia strolled toward me, and my hand tightened around the hilt of my sword. She wasn’t going to take me by surprise like she had Deah.

  But Katia walked right on past as if she didn’t care about me at all, instead leaning down to pick up the gold winner’s cup I’d dropped. Katia held up the cup in a fading patch of sunlight, admiring her reflection in it. Somehow, the glint of the gold made her green eyes seem even bigger and brighter than ever before.

  I frowned. Wait a second. Why were her eyes green? They were hazel . . . weren’t they?

  I thought back to all the times I’d seen Katia over the past few days. Her eyes had been hazel the very first time I’d met her in the Midway. I was sure of that. And they’d been hazel some of the other times I’d seen her around the tournament too. But they’d also been green at times, just like they were right now. Why would her eyes change color so often?

  But even weirder than that, there was something so . . . familiar about the bright, emerald-green glaze to her eyes. I’d seen that exact same color somewhere before, sometime recently, and I knew it was desperately important for me to remember, just as I knew how important it was to keep myself between Katia and Deah.

  Katia admired the gold cup a moment longer, then set it down on the forest floor and faced me again.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “Why did you hurt Deah?”

  She shrugged. “Because I wanted to. I’ve been wanting to blindside her for days now. I tried to knock her out in the first round of the tournament when I cut the rope ladder, but she got on the platform before the ropes came loose. I was so disappointed. But when I saw her run into the woods, I knew it was too good an opportunity to pass up—that I could finally finish things with her.”

  I sucked in a breath at her casual confession. I’d been right when I thought that someone had been trying to knock people out of the tournament by cutting the ropes. But I’d blamed Vance, when Katia had been targeting Deah the whole time. I’d just been collateral damage that day—and I might be again tonight, if I didn’t figure out a way to stop her.

  Katia glared at Deah’s still form, then looked at me again. “Did you know that she’s the other girl Felix has been seeing?”

  “How did you find that out?” I asked, trying to keep her talking, even as I slid my hand into my shorts pocket again, reaching for my phone.

  She snorted. “I saw them making out behind the Draconi tent before one of the matches. They were so busy sucking face they didn’t even notice me.”

  I’d always thought all that sneaking around was going to end badly, and it looked like I’d been proven right, just not in the way I’d expected.

  Katia shook her head, making her dark red hair swish around her shoulders. “I can’t imagine what Felix sees in her. Not that it matters. If he can’t see how special I am, then he doesn’t deserve me.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to speed-dial Devon. Kind of hard when I couldn’t see the screen. “I know you’re upset that you and Felix aren’t together, but that’s no reason to take it out on Deah.”

  Katia laughed. “You think I’m doing all this for a boy? Please. I thought you were smarter than that, Lila. I do things for me—nobody else.”

  I tapped my phone screen, hoping I was calling someone who would pick up, hear our conversation, and realize tha
t something was wrong. “Okay. So what exactly are you doing then?”

  She shrugged. “Deah beat me in the tournament. But it’s the last time she’ll ever beat me at anything.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  She looked at me like I’d just asked the stupidest question ever. “Because I’m going to take her magic and make it my own the way I should have all along. I took Vance’s power, thinking that would be enough to beat her, but obviously, I was wrong and he wasn’t nearly as strong as he bragged he was.”

  I froze, my blood turning to ice in my veins. “You killed Vance? You took his magic?”

  Too late, I remembered running into Katia the night Vance was murdered. I hadn’t thought anything of her being in the woods at the time, just thinking she’d been hiding out there from Felix the same way I had been from Devon.

  “Of course I took his magic,” Katia said, her voice cold and hard. “Why else would I ask him out here last night? It certainly wasn’t to make out with him like he wanted. He thought he was going to get lucky. Heh. You should have seen the look on his face when I zip-tied his hands and slapped that duct tape on his mouth and he finally realized what I was up to. It was priceless.”

  She laughed, but the sound made goose bumps crawl across my skin because it was the same sound I’d heard when I’d looked into Vance’s dead eyes last night. And it was the same evil laugh that had echoed in my mind when I’d found that dead tree troll beside the dumpster.

  “The tree troll. . . .” I said. “You killed Vance for his magic, but what about the tree troll in the Midway? Why did you murder it?”

  “Yeah, that was one of mine too. I also whacked one of them up at the Draconi estate a couple of nights ago. I wanted to get more than one, but Blake and Victor had already killed all the others they’d trapped.”

  My mind whirled and whirled, trying to put everything together. “But why? I still don’t understand why.”

  Katia gave me another of those you’re-the-biggest-idiot-ever looks. “For its magic, of course.” Her face turned sly. “You wanna know a secret?”

  I didn’t respond, but I didn’t have to.

  “I don’t actually have all that much magic of my own,” she said. “I have a very minor Talent for speed, but I found a way to increase it, to have all the magic I want, whenever I want it.”

  My stomach twisted. “By killing monsters and people and taking their power.”

  She shot her thumb and forefinger at me. “Bingo.”

  Suddenly, I realized why Katia’s eyes kept going from hazel to green and back again—because of all the stolen tree troll magic pumping through her veins. Devon had said there was no way to cheat in the tournament, but he’d been wrong.

  So very, very wrong.

  “The trolls’ magic . . . Vance’s magic . . . you wanted it for the tournament. You took their power and used it to try to help you win.”

  “Bingo again,” Katia said. “Look at you, on a roll and everything. And now I’m going to do the same thing to Deah. Come to think of it, I should have done this last year, when I had the chance.”

  “You want her magic? You want her mimic power?”

  “Of course I want it,” Katia snarled. “With Deah’s power, I can beat anybody and win any tournament I enter, and I can finally scrape together enough money to leave my father behind forever. And forget working for the Volkovs too. With Deah’s magic, I can do things the way I’ve always wanted to.”

  She noticed my horrified expression. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. You know what a loser my dad is. You see how he drinks.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “And I know how much that must hurt. But that’s no excuse for doing horrible things. Lots of kids have crappy parents, and they don’t go around murdering monsters and people. Killing Deah isn’t the answer to your problems.”

  “Sure it is,” she replied. “And yours too. With her out of the way, they’ll have to declare you the winner of the tournament like they should have all along. I saw your last fight with her, and I heard what she said to you at the picnic tables. You had her beat, so why did you let her win?”

  “Because Deah’s dad would have hurt her if she didn’t win.”

  She snorted. “Please. Deah should protect herself from Victor. She’s strong enough to do it. She just doesn’t have the spine for it.” Katia paused. “At least, she would have been strong enough, but now, all that lovely, lovely magic is going to be mine.”

  I shook my head and stepped forward. “No way. I won’t let you hurt her. It’s sick and wrong and twisted, and you know it.”

  Katia laughed, the sound cold enough to chill my bones. “Sure, I know it. But I don’t care. The only thing I do care about is myself and finally winning. You don’t have any say in it. Don’t try to stop me, Lila. You won’t like what happens.”

  I raised my sword. “I’m not going to let you murder her.”

  She grinned. “You don’t have a choice. And since you’re taking her side, well, I guess I’ll be getting two powers for the price of one today. More strength magic for me. Goody.”

  Katia drew out a dagger from the belt on her waist. I recognized it—it was the same dagger she’d used to kill Vance and the tree troll at the Midway.

  I snapped my sword up into an attack position, but then she moved, almost too fast for me to follow. Of course, she was fast now. Her eyes were as bright and green as a troll’s, which meant she had some monster magic running through her body.

  I barely got my sword up in time to avoid her first blow and all the others she rained down on me. I’d fought people with speed Talents before, even during the tournament, but Katia was something else. She was just too quick for me, and it was all I could do to parry her lightning-fast attacks. A few more moves, and she would be able to disarm me. Still, I fought on, trying to figure some way out of this mess.

  Clang!

  Katia finally got the advantage and knocked my sword out of my hand. Desperate, I charged at her, but she easily sidestepped me. But that was okay because it gave me enough time to yank my phone out of my pocket. I hadn’t managed to connect with my earlier swipes, but I hit the screen and speed-dialed Devon. I could hear the call going through.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Katia hissed. “Who are you calling?”

  She lashed out with her dagger, and I ducked out of the way. She made another move for my phone, but I threw it into the bushes before she could get her hands on it.

  Katia rushed at me again, and I sucked in a breath to yell, hoping that Devon would hear the noise through my phone. But she was so quick that I didn’t even get a chance to do that.

  Even as I opened my mouth to scream, her fist zoomed toward my face. I tried to turn away, but she was faster than I was, and I couldn’t avoid the hard, sharp blow.

  Everything went black.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The pounding in my head woke me.

  I groaned and realized that my neck was twisted at an awkward angle and that I was slumped up against a hard, wooden wall like a sack of potatoes. My eyes fluttered open, and a couple of overhead lights burned into my brain. I closed my eyes against the harsh glare and sat upright, even though it increased the pounding in my skull. For some reason, my arm was wrenched up above my head, making my shoulder ache as well. I tried to lower it, only to find that I couldn’t.

  Clank-clank-clank.

  I peered up, squinting against the glare of the bare bulbs dangling from the ceiling. A thick shackle circled my right wrist, above my silver Sinclair cuff, with a chain leading from the shackle to a metal loop that had been driven deep into the wall. I sucked down a breath and yanked and yanked on the chain, but it was made out of hard, heavy metal, and all I could do was make the links rattle-rattle together like bones.

  I forced down my panic and looked around, trying to figure out where I was and how I could get out of here. There was only one door, directly opposite from where I was shackled, and the entire structure was mad
e out of old, weathered boards, including the wall I was chained to. The wood might have been painted a cheery red at one time, but the color was now a dull, rusty brown. The wide open area and high A-frame ceiling reminded me of the picnic shelters by the lake. An old, dusty table and a couple of cobweb-coated chairs squatted off to one side of the room, along with two splintered oars and a wooden canoe with a gaping hole in its hull. The air smelled of fish, and I could hear the steady rush-rush-rush of the lake slapping against the shore.

  The old boathouse. I was in the old boathouse that Katia had mentioned. Her special spot with Felix. I shuddered.

  “You really should have stayed at the picnic tables,” a voice muttered. “We both should have.”

  I looked to my left to see Deah sitting on the floor a few feet away. One of her arms was chained to the wall as well, and she’d been struggling against the shackle and chain for quite a while, judging by the red marks that circled her wrist.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, trying to focus despite the pounding in my brain. “Who did this to us?”

  “You really don’t remember?”

  I shook my head and bit back another groan as that small motion made the ache intensify in my skull. I cradled my head in my free hand and took some deep breaths, trying to get the pounding pain under control.

  Finally, I managed it and raised my head again. Deah sat slumped up against the wall, a miserable expression on her face. She kept glancing at the door across from us.

  “She’ll be back soon,” Deah said in a flat voice. “I imagine that she’ll get started then.”

  Suddenly, everything came rushing back to me. Finding Deah in the woods, hearing Katia brag about all the horrible things she’d done, fighting Katia, losing when she’d used her stolen speed magic to punch me out.

  “How did we get here?” I asked.

  Deah shrugged. “I was knocked out for most of it. All I remember is Katia throwing me over her shoulder and carrying me through the woods. She must have done the same thing to you, and now, here we are.”