“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.”
Oscar snorted, as though he didn’t believe me, but the briefest, faintest of smiles flickered across his tiny face. Suddenly, I wanted to make him smile—really smile—the same way I had Devon.
“Just do me one favor.”
He eyed me with suspicion. “What?”
“Don’t put itching powder in my bed,” I drawled. “At least not tonight. I’m too tired to sleep on the couch.”
He barked out a laugh before he could stop himself. Oscar’s lips pinched together, and he gave me another suspicious look. I winked at him, scratched Tiny’s head, and got into bed.
My body was already starting to tighten up from the fight, and I let out a low groan as I reached for the sheets, trying to pull them up.
“Let me,” Oscar said, grabbing the sheets.
He lifted them up and over my body before tucking them in under my chin, just the way I liked them. He stood there on the bed, shifting back and forth on his feet, his wings twitching, not quite looking at me.
“Good night,” Oscar said.
“Good night.”
The pixie twitched his wings a final time, fluttered over to his house on the table, and went inside for the night. But for once, he didn’t slam the door shut behind him. He gently closed it instead.
I smiled and snuggled down a little farther under the sheets.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The next few days were quiet, if tense.
I stuck to my routine of getting up, stuffing myself with breakfast, and going wherever the day took me. Mostly, I hung out with Felix in the greenlab, helping him and Angelo prune the stitch-sting bushes so they could make more healing liquid. I also went down to the Razzle Dazzle every chance I got, but Mo hadn’t found out anything about either one of the attacks, although he said that one of his contacts might have something for him soon.
I also did everything I could think of to find the mystery man. I kept chatting up folks about Devon, trying to figure out who might know about his compulsion magic and want it for himself. I also wandered through the Midway, eavesdropping on the guards from the other Families and picking up what gossip I could.
I even broke back into the brownstone of the accountant where I’d swiped the ruby necklace, since his guards had attacked Devon the first time in the pawnshop. But there were no incriminating papers or other clues in the accountant’s office that told me anything I didn’t already know.
All that effort, and I didn’t learn anything new. The mystery man was still, well, a mystery.
The one person I didn’t see much of was Devon. I didn’t have to guard him at the mansion, and he stayed put on the grounds. Supposedly, he was busy with Family obligations, including some new training for the guards, but he was avoiding me, and I did the same to him. Every time I saw him walking through the mansion, I made sure I was going in the opposite direction, and I absolutely did not look into his eyes. I didn’t want my soulsight to show me how much he regretted almost kissing me. Especially since part of me wanted to pick right back up where we’d left off.
But the night of the dinner for all the Families finally arrived, and Devon came over to me long enough in the dining hall at breakfast to tell me that Claudia wanted me to go.
“Why?” I asked. “There will be plenty of guards. She doesn’t need me there, too. Besides, your mom has made it pretty clear that she hates me.”
“She doesn’t hate you,” he said. “No one here does.”
“Well, at the very least, she doesn’t trust me.”
Devon shrugged. “Well, she still wants you to go. She didn’t tell me why.”
He walked away before I could ask him anything else. Maybe that was for the best.
Oscar had come into my bedroom an hour earlier, carrying a garment bag. I’d unzipped it to find a black pantsuit and a matching shirt, similar to the ones Claudia always wore, along with a pair of low-heeled black pumps and a small black purse. I’d grumbled at the clothes, but I supposed I couldn’t show up to a Family dinner wearing my usual T-shirt, cargo pants, and sneakers.
So I’d taken a shower, slicked my hair back into a high ponytail, and even went through the drudgery of putting on a little makeup. But I also made sure that I had all of my usual tools with me. My belt with its hidden slots and three throwing stars, my chopstick lock picks stuck in my hair, my phone and several quarters that I dropped into the bottom of the purse. As a final touch, I slipped my mom’s star-shaped sapphire ring onto my finger.
The only thing missing was the black blade belted around my waist, but no one was allowed to have weapons at a Family dinner. At least, not any obvious ones.
Now I was standing in front of my vanity table, peering at my reflection in the mirror. And I realized something. Black suit, black shirt, black heels. I looked like a mobster—and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
“Nice,” Oscar called out from the front porch of his trailer. “You clean up real good, Lila.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, pulling down the suit jacket a little more.
He cleared his throat. “Just . . . be careful tonight, okay? These dang Family dinners can be brutal, especially on the nerves.”