Oscar watched me stuff my face for ten minutes before he broke the silence. “So is it true? Did you save Devon and Felix from an ambush? And take out a couple of Volkov guards?”

I stopped chewing long enough to answer him. “Yep.”

He almost seemed impressed, before his face scrunched back into its usual scowl. “Well, I wouldn’t make a habit of taking on guards from other Families,” he snapped. “Next time, you may not be so lucky.”

“No,” I agreed. “I may not be so lucky next time. Maybe next time, there won’t be anyone there to help me. Maybe next time, I’ll get in the middle of a fight I can’t win.”

His eyes narrowed. “Are you mocking me?”

“No,” I replied. “That’s what happened to my mom. Sort of. She got involved in something that wasn’t her problem, and she got killed as a result.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too.”

Suddenly, I didn’t feel like eating anything else, so I put the rest of the BLT down and pushed away my plate. Oscar drained his root beer. Then he twitched his wings, flew across the room, and landed on the table next to the food platters.

“Why did you agree to stay and work for the Sinclairs ?” he asked. “If you’re as good a thief as you claim, you could have left any time you wanted to. Claudia wouldn’t have come after you, no matter what she said. Not after you saved Devon’s life in the pawnshop.”

I shrugged. “It seemed like it would be better than living day-to-day and job-to-job like I had been. Cloudburst Falls is a dangerous place. I might as well get paid for facing down those dangers every day.”

Oscar raised an eyebrow. “Like the silverware you stole from downstairs? I found it in the vanity table when I was putting away some of your clothes.”

I picked up one of the forks off my plate. “I thought this looked familiar.”

Oscar snorted, as though he were trying to hold back a laugh.

The pixie cocked his head to the side and stared at me. Uncomfortable with his scrutiny, I grabbed a couple of strawberries, then stood, walked over, and dropped them into Tiny’s corral. The tortoise cracked an eye open. Once he saw the berries, he heaved himself to his feet and slowly plodded in that direction.

Oscar fluttered over and landed on one of the fence posts that ringed the corral. We watched Tiny start munching on his berries.

“Why do you stay?” I asked. “Being part of a Family is dangerous, even for a pixie. So why not find another job down in the city with some rich mortal businessman and his wife and kids? With some folks that you know will most likely live to ripe old ages? Because people around here are still in danger. At least until someone figures out who’s behind the attacks.”

I didn’t say anything about Devon, with his compulsion magic, being the target of the attacks, even though Oscar already knew about his Talent. I bet most of the other pixies did, too. They’d watched Devon grow up. Some of them would have seen him use his Talent at some point, especially when he was first figuring out how his magic worked. And other people in the Family had to know as well, even beyond the ones Claudia mentioned. I hadn’t said any more words than necessary to the kids at the rube public high school, but they’d still known not to mess with me. A Talent, something that was so much a part of you, would be even more difficult to hide, especially from the folks who lived under the same roof as you.

“I’ve thought about that,” Oscar said, answering my question. “I’ve worked for the Sinclair Family for more than a hundred years. You wouldn’t believe how many people have come and gone during that time.”

What he really meant was died, but I didn’t interrupt him. Now was not the time for a snarky comment.

“It’s always hard when a Family member dies,” he continued. “Even if it’s from old age. But things have been tense ever since Lawrence was murdered on New Year’s Eve. Everyone thinks that the Itos were behind the attack, but I’d put my money on the Draconis. We’ve always had more problems with them than any other Family.”

He spat out the name as if it were some sort of vile thing. I thought about telling him that I felt the exact same way about the Draconis, but I kept quiet. If I interrupted Oscar, he might storm back into his trailer. I had enough problems already. I wanted to solve at least one of them. Or, at the very least, make peace between myself and the pixie.

“So why do I stay?” Oscar sighed. “I don’t really know. I guess I’m just a dang fool.”

He scuffed the heels of his cowboy boots against the fence post, then stared off into space. Tiny continued to munch on his strawberries.

“It must be hard. Getting to know people, and then seeing them die, one after another.”

He let out a hoarse, bitter laugh. “You have no idea. It would be bad enough to go through it once or twice, but over and over again, for decades on end? It’s torture. And every time—every single time—I tell myself that I’m not going to get involved. That I’m not going to care about the next person who walks through that door. But I end up doing it anyway, and then they always get killed.”

He scowled, but tears shimmered in his violet eyes. It had been bad enough seeing the aftermath of my mom’s murder, but Oscar had lost dozens of friends, if not more.

“Well, you don’t have to care about me. Not one little bit. And you don’t have to worry about me getting killed, either. If there is one thing I’m good at, it’s surviving.”