“There,” I said, pointing the room out to Felix. “Mo is over there, and I’m willing to bet that Claudia is in there with him.”

He nodded, then checked his phone again. “Ten minutes until Devon is supposed to meet Victor.”

“Let’s go,” I whispered. “We need to get into position before then.”

He nodded and we eased away from the railing, crawled back over to the wall, and got up on our feet again. I pointed to a set of stairs leading downward, and Felix nodded and fell in step behind me.

We tiptoed down the stairs. Luckily for us, the stairs led down to the back of the warehouse, well away from the cages and guards near the front. I slid into a pool of shadow behind a row of crates, with Felix beside me.

“Now what?” he muttered.

“Now, we wait for Devon and his distraction and hope that none of the guards come back here in the meantime,” I whispered.

He nodded, and we both tightened our grips on our weapons. Felix kept checking his phone, counting down the minutes, while I peered around the edge of the crates, staring at the cages in the distance, using my sight magic to focus in on the locks. They were all relatively simple, so it wouldn’t take me long to pick them open. Good.

But the cages were spaced apart from each other, and I would lose precious seconds moving from one to another, not to mention trying to get over to the office to rescue Mo, Claudia, and whoever else might be in there with them.

The minutes crawled by and everything remained the same. Felix and me hiding, the guards patrolling, the Sinclairs staying quiet in their cages. Felix held up his fingers, telling me that there were three minutes until Devon was supposed to meet Victor.

And that’s when one of the guards broke away from the others and headed toward the back of the warehouse—right where Felix and I were hiding.

We both tensed, but the guard was checking his phone so he didn’t spot us. I gestured for Felix to slip farther back behind the crates, out of the guard’s line of sight. I did the same, moving so that I could just look around the corner of the end crate and track the man’s movements. The guard was walking fast and he’d be right beside us in less than a minute. There was nowhere else to hide or run to and absolutely no way that he wouldn’t see us.

The guard drew closer . . . and closer . . . and closer.

Beside me, Felix sucked in a breath, getting ready to move just like I was. The guard would attack the second he saw us, and I’d have to come out swinging, take him out, and hope that I didn’t make too much noise doing it. Not likely, but maybe if I was really lucky, I could sprint over to the cages and get at least one of them open before the other Draconis spotted me and realized what I was doing. If I could free some of the Sinclairs, that would improve the odds and give us all a chance to get out of here. If I couldn’t free the others, well, I’d fight for as long as I could, even if I was horribly outnumbered by the Draconis.

The guard kept closing in on our position. Ten more seconds and he’d spot us and sound the alarm. I tensed and raised my sword, preparing to leap out and attack him—

“Hey!” one of the guards at the front of the warehouse called out. “The Sinclair kid is here!”

That made the guard in front of us stop, spin around, and sprint back in that direction.

Felix and I both breathed sighs of relief, but it was short-lived. More guards came pouring out from the side of the warehouse where the office was located, all of them lining up in a row along the front wall. Somewhere deeper in the warehouse, a door banged open, loud enough to make Felix and me jump, and steady footsteps rang out on the concrete floor.

A moment later, Victor Draconi stepped into view. Blake was with him, along with a couple of guards.

But the worst part was that Victor was holding a dagger in his hand, and it was glowing midnight black.

Felix spotted the dagger at the same time I did, and he hissed out a worried breath. “What is that?”

I shook my head. “I have no idea, but it can’t be anything good.”

Victor gestured for Blake to step forward. Blake was holding two dull, ash-colored swords that looked identical, and Victor waved his dagger over first one sword, then the other. Victor’s weapon didn’t do anything as it passed over the first sword. But as soon as it got within a couple of inches of the second sword, the midnight glow on the dagger intensified, pulsing darker than ever before, as if it were a magnet that was reacting to another magnet.

Victor nodded at Blake, who tossed the fake sword over to one of the guards and kept the real black blade for himself.

“That dagger must be some sort of tester,” I whispered. “Some way for Victor to check and make sure that Devon is giving him the real, magic-filled black blades this time.”

Felix gave me a worried look. “Well, let’s hope there’s enough magic in Devon’s weapons to pass the test.”

Earlier today in the library basement, we’d filled a duffel bag full of black blades—the ones with the weakest magic. We weren’t stupid enough to give Victor any more power than we absolutely had to, so we’d left the stronger weapons hidden in the basement. And Devon hadn’t brought all of the weapons with him either. For one thing, he couldn’t carry them all by himself. Besides, we all knew that Victor would try to double-cross him, so we’d decided to hold on to as many of the weapons as we could.

But I hadn’t expected Victor to have a way to actually test the weapons for magic. Worry twisted my stomach, but there was nothing I could do to help Devon right now.

Felix and I watched while Victor slid the dagger into a holster on his belt, hiding its midnight glow from sight, then strode over to the door at the front of the warehouse. One of the guards rushed to open it for him, and Victor stepped through it and out into the night, with Blake right behind him.

The guards hurried to fall in line and follow them, until there was only one man left behind in the warehouse. But even he stayed near the front, staring out the windows, watching what was happening on the street outside. In their cages, the Sinclairs turned so that most of them were facing in that direction as well, trying to figure out what was going on.

I looked at Felix and he nodded back. We wouldn’t get a better chance than this. Together, we eased out from behind the crates and tiptoed toward the front of the warehouse, hugging the wall and keeping to the shadows as much as we could.

I motioned to Felix and we both crept toward the guard, who was still staring out the windows. We had almost reached him when one of the pixies spotted us.