Devon looked at me. “Do you think you can use your soulsight to see what he’s so upset about?”
“Yeah,” Felix chimed in. “Let the great Lila Merriweather do her magic mojo. She is the monster whisperer, after all.”
I reached over and punched him in the shoulder.
“Hey!” Felix said, rubbing his arm. “What was that for?”
“I am not a monster whisperer.”
He rolled his eyes. “Did you or did you not feed three guys to a lochness a few weeks ago?”
I winced. That was exactly what I’d done. I didn’t even feel bad about it, since the guys had been trying to kill Devon and me at the time. But I’d always been secretive about my magic, my Talents, and all the things that my mom had taught me about how to deal with monsters. I’d had to be, since I wanted to keep my magic firmly inside my own body and not have someone rip it out of me and take it for himself. So I wasn’t used to Felix joking about it so openly. Every time he or Devon made a comment about my magic, I always looked around, wondering who might have overheard and what they might do to me in order to get my Talents.
Devon noticed my worried expression, and he put his hand on my shoulder. The warmth of his fingers soaked through my T-shirt and burned into my skin. That was something else I liked a lot more than I should have. I shrugged out from under his touch, trying not to notice the flash of hurt in his eyes.
“Please, Lila,” Devon said. “Try to talk to the troll.”
I sighed. “Sure. Why not?”
Most magic fell into three categories—strength, speed, and senses, such as sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch. So lots of magicks had a Talent for sight, whether it was the ability to see great distances, in microscopic detail, or even in the dark. But I had the more unusual Talent of also being able to see into people and feel their emotions as though they were my own, whether it was love, anger, jealousy, or something else. Soulsight, it was called. I’d never used it on a monster before, though, but I supposed there was a first time for everything.
So I stepped forward, tipped my head back, and peered up at the creature. Maybe it sensed what I was trying to do because it stopped jumping up and down and focused on me as intently as I was staring at it. My eyes locked with the monster’s, and my soulsight kicked in.
The tree troll’s red-hot anger slammed into my chest like a flaming fist, but that emotion, that feeling, was quickly smothered by another, stronger one—stomach-churning fear.
I frowned. What could the troll have to be so worried about? Sure, Devon, Felix, and I were all wearing swords belted to our waists, but so did most everyone in the Families. It wasn’t like we were actually going to hurt the creature. Or maybe that’s what the other mobs did. I wouldn’t put it past the Draconi Family to slaughter the monsters that dared to wander into their territory, either down here in the city or up on Cloudburst Mountain, where the Draconi mansion was located.
But whatever the troll was so worried about, it wasn’t going to leave or even calm down until it had been taken care of. As if the troll could sense my thoughts, it cheeped again, then skittered up a branch, moving higher and higher into the tree, and disappearing into the green clusters of leaves.
“What did you do to it?” Felix asked.
“I didn’t do anything to it,” I said. “Here. Hold this.”
I unbuckled the black leather belt from around my waist and passed it over to Felix. He clutched the belt and the attached sword and scabbard in his hands.
“What are you doing, Lila?” Devon asked.
“It’s worried about something. I’m going to find out what that is.”
I went over and circled around the tree, my dark blue gaze going from one branch to the next as I mentally calculated how I could best get up to where the troll was.
Felix looked at me, then at the tree. “You’re going to climb up there? With the troll?” He shook his head. “Sometimes, I forget how totally cray-cray you are.”
I scoffed. “The only one here who is cray-cray is you, Romeo.”
Felix’s face scrunched up with worry at my not-so-veiled reference to his love life. On the surface, Felix might seem like a terrible flirt, but it was all an act to hide how crazy he was about Deah Draconi, daughter of Victor Draconi, the most powerful man in town. Naturally, Victor hated all the other Families, especially the Sinclairs, because that’s how these kinds of doomed love stories always went. My mom and dad were proof of that.
Devon glanced back and forth between Felix and me, but he didn’t say anything. If he knew what I was talking about, he didn’t pipe up and say so.