“Mom!” This time, Deah was the one who hissed at her. “Mom!”

“Don’t worry, darling!” Seleste called out over her shoulder. “I’m going to bed right now! Promise! Have fun with your friends!”

A second later, she rounded the far end of the hallway and disappeared from sight.

I walked back to where the others were, all of us staring in the direction that Seleste had gone.

“Well,” Devon said, breaking the silence. “She certainly was . . . cheerful.”

“How has she been?” I asked.

Deah looked at me. “She’s actually been doing a lot better these past two weeks. It’s like seeing you at the tournament and then us working together has quieted her mind and made her sharper, clearer, more focused.”

I nodded, still wondering about Seleste’s strange warning. Lightning and monsters. Worry rippled through me. Whatever vision she’d seen of my future, it didn’t seem to be a good one.

“Um, I hate to be whiny, but can we get on with things?” Felix asked, shifting on his feet and hoisting his duffel bag a little higher on his shoulder. “These things are heavy.”

Deah stared at him, her eyes softening. “You know, I really like seeing you every night. Even if it is because of my dad and what he’s planning to do.”

Felix’s face lit up. “I like seeing you too.”

Then he grinned, stepped forward, and slung his free arm around her shoulders. “Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight—”

He started whispering to her as they walked down the hallway in front of us. Devon grinned and nudged me with his elbow. I rolled my eyes, but I was grinning too. I was glad that Felix and Deah had found happiness with each other, despite how dangerous it was for them to be together.

The four of us reached Victor’s office, and Deah gestured at the double doors, which had two gold dragons for knobs. The snarling creatures looked like they were ready to come to life and bite off the fingers of anyone who tried to open them.

“Locked,” she said. “Sorry, but I haven’t been able to get a key yet. I tried to open it earlier with those lock picks you gave me, but I’m still not as good with them as you are.”

“No worries,” I said, smiling. “Finally, something fun for me to do.”

Deah shook her head. “You are seriously strange, Merriweather.”

My smile widened. “You have no idea, Draconi.”

While the others kept watch, I reached up and removed two thin chopsticks that were stuck through my ponytail. The sticks were the same black as my hair, but a twist of the lacquered wood revealed the lock picks hidden inside. The tools felt as familiar to me as my own fingers, and I started humming a soft, happy tune as I bent over the lock and inserted the picks.

Over the past two weeks, I’d had a lot of practice on this particular lock, and it snicked open less than thirty seconds later. Still, we all tensed, knowing that we were stepping into the dragon’s den—and that he could come and catch us at any moment.

I stuck the chopstick lock picks back into my ponytail, then took hold of the knobs. “Here we go,” I whispered and opened the doors.

The four of us crept inside, and I shut and locked the doors behind us. Victor’s office was as richly furnished as the rest of the mansion, but I ignored the glimmers of gold and went over to the wall behind his desk. An enormous dragon was carved into the white stone there, with flames curled all around it, as though it was continuously setting itself on fire.

I stopped a moment, staring at the fist-sized ruby that was the dragon’s evil eye. I shivered. No matter how many times I snuck in here, I never got used to looking at this particular dragon—or having it stare right back at me. Or perhaps it was what was behind the carving that worried me so much.

But I forced my unease aside, stepped forward, and pressed on the ruby, which sank into the stone. A second later, the wall slid back, revealing a large, secret room—one that was filled with weapons.

An overhead light clicked on in the room, revealing the black blade swords, daggers, and other weapons that lined the shelves covering three walls. Each weapon was on a peg by itself and carefully labeled, with codes like TT29, CC2, and RM55—for all the tree trolls, copper crushers, and rockmunks that Victor had trapped and killed over the years.

Black blades were made out of bloodiron, a special metal that could absorb, store, and transfer magic from one person or monster to another. Victor had used these weapons to rip the monsters’ magic out of them, so that he could harness it for his own evil plan to destroy all the other Families. I could feel the creatures’ power pulsing through the blades, each one proof of Victor’s cruelty and his delight in sickening slaughter. The cold burn of magic made me sick to my stomach.

“Let’s move,” I whispered. “I don’t want to be in here one second longer than necessary.”

Devon and Felix put their duffel bags down on the floor and unzipped them, revealing the swords, daggers, and other weapons inside. They grabbed the weapons and handed them to Deah and me, and the two of us switched out the real black blades with the fakes. We also labeled each weapon with a small sticker with Victor’s code written on it.

We’d been breaking in here and doing this same thing every night for the last two weeks, slowly exchanging the magic-filled weapons with empty ones. We’d removed most of the black blades, but not all of them. I hated leaving a single sword behind for Victor to use, but he had a lot of Talents, and it was possible that he could sense magic the same way that I could. So we had to leave some of the real weapons here or he would realize what we’d done. Still, I made sure that we only left the blades that pulsed weakly with magic.

We worked quickly, and it only took us ten minutes to switch out the last of the weapons, although it seemed much longer than that. By the time we were done, Devon and Felix were both sweating beneath their long, black cloaks. Deah was too, despite her T-shirt and shorts. I wasn’t sweating, but my stomach churned and churned at the cold chill of all the magic in the air and what Victor had done to get so much of it.

Devon and Felix zipped up the duffel bags with the real black blades and slung them over their shoulders. I pressed on the dragon’s ruby eye again, and the wall slid back into place, hiding the secret room from sight.

“Well, I guess this is it,” I said, trying to make my voice light. “No more late-night trips to raid Victor’s secret weapons stash.”