“I’m always that worried about Victor,” Claudia snapped. “And with good reason. You know he’s plotting something against the other Families, against us.”

“And you sent Lila to try to find out what it was?” Devon shook his head. “You should have sent someone else. You should have sent me.”

“And you need to set your feelings aside and trust Lila to do her job,” she snapped again. “Just like you trust the guards to do theirs. Just like I trust you.”

Devon opened his mouth to keep arguing with her, but I stepped up beside him.

“She didn’t send me anywhere,” I said. “The whole thing was my idea—hiking over to the Draconi property, sneaking into the castle, searching Victor’s office. I wanted to do it.”

He threw his hands up in the air. “Why would you want to do something like that? Something so dangerous? Do you know what the Draconis would have done if they’d caught you, Lila? Victor would have executed you on the spot.”

Frustration blazed in his eyes, along with more than a little stomach-churning fear. He’d been worried about me. That was why he’d come looking for me. His obvious concern touched me, but it also annoyed me. Because Claudia was right—I was a good thief, a good fighter, and Devon needed to trust me to do the job I was here to do.

“It was a risk I was willing to take.”

“Why?”

“You know exactly why—because Victor murdered my mom.” I ground out the words, my hands clenching into fists, my whole body trembling with fury. “And I will do everything in my power to make sure that he pays for what he did to her. I don’t care what I have to do or how dangerous it is. I would go right back over there this very second if I thought it would help us and hurt him.”

Everyone stared at me. They could all hear the rage and need for vengeance in my voice.

“So what did you find out?” Claudia asked in a neutral tone, trying to diffuse the tension that blanketed the room.

“Lots of things. For starters, Victor, Blake, and Deah were having dinner with Nikolai Volkov. Carl and Katia were there too.”

“What did they talk about?” she asked, leaning forward in her chair. “Tell me everything. I want to hear every single detail.”

So I told her, Mo, Felix, and Devon everything that had happened while I’d been skulking around the Draconi castle, except for Felix and Deah hooking up in the greenlab.

“So Victor wants to combine the Draconis and Volkovs into one Family,” Claudia murmured. “Interesting. That’s a bold move.”

“But Victor has to know the other Families would never allow that,” Mo said. “It sounds to me like it’s just a distraction. Victor gets everyone stirred up about a possible merger, while he’s really planning something else.”

Claudia picked up her glasses and tap-tap-tapped them on her desk. “For once, I agree with Mo. But if the merger isn’t his main goal, then what is?”

“Maybe it has something to do with all those creepy files in his office,” I said.

I filled them in on the files and e-mailed the photos I’d taken to everyone. Claudia, Mo, Felix, and Devon all pulled out their phones and scrolled through the pictures.

“All the files had these weird notes in them?” Claudia asked. “With all these CC2 and other codes?”

“All the files have notes about the person’s magic, but the Draconi files were the only ones that also had the codes. At least, from what I could tell.”

Her green eyes glinted with interest. “How many Draconi files were there total? If you had to guess?”

I thought back, picturing the tall stack of files on Victor’s desk. “Probably around twenty or thirty. However many people he has competing in the tournament. But that was just on his desk. He could have had more files in his office, maybe one on every single person in the Draconi Family. I didn’t have time to search everywhere.”

I thought of that secret space I’d discovered behind the stone dragon carving. Victor had something hidden back there, and I was going to find out what it was. But I didn’t say anything to the others. Claudia might have risked my going over to the Draconi castle once, but I didn’t know if she would approve a second trip. Then again, I didn’t plan on telling her about it—until after I was back.

“Files on people, notes about their magic, talk of increasing their powers.” Mo let out a low whistle. “It sounds like Victor is trying to build an army.”

Claudia didn’t say anything, but her mouth pinched with worry. This was not what she’d wanted to hear. But at least she knew that Victor was trying to ally with the Volkovs now, even if we had no clue what his files or notes were really about.

She looked at Mo. “This is more serious than we thought.”

He nodded. “I’ll reach out to my sources. See if anyone else knows that Victor is trying to merge with the Volkovs or why he has detailed records on everyone in the tournament, including his own people.”

Mo pulled out his phone and started texting.

“There’s one more thing,” I said.

I told them about the dead tree trolls we’d found in the ravine close to the Draconi compound. I also pulled out the candy bar I’d taken from the trap and showed it to everyone, but it was just chocolate, the sort of thing you could buy at any store.

“That just sounds like Victor being Victor,” Claudia said. “He’s always been the sort to pull the wings off a butterfly just because he can. Trapping and killing tree trolls is right up his alley.”

“Blake’s too,” Devon agreed. “Either one of them could have put that cage in the woods.”

“But what about the troll we found next to that dumpster yesterday?” I asked. “That wasn’t anywhere near the Draconi section of the Midway.”

Devon shrugged. “Blake could have done that too. We ran into him and Deah a few minutes before we found the troll, remember?”

I nodded. He was probably right, but I still couldn’t help but feel there was something more to the monsters’ deaths. Sure, Victor and Blake delighted in their cruelty, but they also didn’t waste their time on things that wouldn’t help them. What could they possibly hope to gain from murdering a bunch of monsters?

I didn’t know, but I had a bad, bad feeling that it was the key to Victor’s plot against Claudia and all the other Families.