Lights burned in the office, which was easily twice the size of the Sinclair library. And just like with the rest of the castle, gold glimmered everywhere I looked, from the pillows on the couches to the trim on the furniture to the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Shelves took up two of the walls, filled with books, photos, and trophies. I spotted two gold cups with Deah’s name engraved on them, proclaiming her as the winner of the Tournament of Blades. I wondered why they were in here, instead of her bedroom, since she was the one who’d earned them, not Victor. I snorted. Then again, he probably considered them his trophies, since she was his daughter and a member of his Family. Sometimes, I didn’t know which I hated more—Victor’s cruelty or his ego.
I scanned the rest of the shelves, my greedy little heart wondering how many precious things I could stuff into my pockets and how much cold, hard cash Mo would give me for them. I particularly admired a set of diamond-crusted dragon bookends. But I forced myself to keep my sticky fingers in my coat pockets where they belonged. I didn’t dare steal so much as the smallest knickknack. Not from Victor and especially not from his office. Swiping those bookends would tip him off that someone had been in here, and that was the last thing I wanted.
So I hurried over to Victor’s desk, which was close to another wall. It was three separate sections joined together in a U shape and featured your usual office setup—laptop, mouse, keyboard, phone, a couple of reading lamps. I’d just reached for the laptop to wake it up when a spark of red caught my eye.
I looked up into the face of a dragon.
I staggered back against a corner of the desk, making a cup full of pens rattle-rattle, and I had to clamp my lips together to keep from shrieking. After a few sweaty, heart-pounding seconds, I realized that it wasn’t an actual dragon staring at me, just one that had been carved into the white stone wall behind Victor’s desk.
It was the same snarling dragon crest that was on everything else, the biggest I’d seen in the entire castle, but this dragon’s head was turned to the side, with a fist-size ruby for an eye embedded in the stone. Flames curled all around the dragon, and its head and the ruby eye were particularly prominent, as if the creature continuously peered over the shoulder of whoever sat at the desk. I shivered and dropped my gaze from it.
I focused on the desk again, starting with the left section since that’s where Victor’s laptop was. I jiggled the mouse and made the screen flare to life, but the laptop was password protected. I tried a few combinations, like Blake’s and Deah’s names, but nothing worked, so I moved on, scanning through all the papers on top of the middle section of the desk: invoices, contracts, shipping orders. The same sort of stuff that Claudia had on her desk—all the things that dealt with the Families’ business interests. Stuff that would tell me nothing about what Victor was planning.
Still concentrating on the left and middle sections, I opened and closed all the drawers, scanning through the items inside. There were more papers, along with pens, staplers, and rolls of tape. Nothing interesting, but I still made sure to put everything back exactly where I had found it. I didn’t want Victor to even think that someone had been in his office, much less rifled through his desk.
When I finished with the drawers, I turned to the right and final section of the desk, the one that was the closest to the dragon carving’s eerie ruby eye. And I finally found something interesting.
Files—on everyone in the Tournament of Blades.
There were five stacks of files, one for each major Family—the Draconis, Sinclairs, Volkovs, Itos, and Salazars. I flipped through the top file in each stack. Name, age, height, weight, hair and eye color. It was all detailed, from first-time competitors to folks who had been in the tournament for years. A photo of the person was also clipped to every file. But what was really interesting—and totally creepy—was that the information was so specific and so detailed, especially when it came to a person’s magic.
Victor had chronicled every person’s Talents, cataloging them as minor, moderate, and major, and listing all the things that person could do with his or her magic. The more powerful a person was, the thicker the file and the more notes crowded into the margins, ones that I was betting Victor himself had written in blood-red ink.
Devon’s file was on top of the Sinclair stack, and I held my breath as I opened it and read through the notes.
No strength or speed Talents, and no obvious magic at all. Although I still believe that he has to have some sort of power. More careful study is needed.
I exhaled. Victor didn’t know about Devon’s compulsion magic. Good. That was good. Compulsion was the sort of rare, special Talent Victor would do anything to have for himself, including kidnapping and killing Devon—just as he’d tried to do when Devon was younger. Victor would have succeeded back then, too, if my mom hadn’t intervened.
I put Devon’s file back and scanned through some others. The longer I looked, the more I realized that Victor’s notes were different when it came to the various competitors. For the folks in other Families, he’d just jotted down observations about their magic. But for the Draconis, he had gone a step further, almost as if he were planning how to best use their magic for something.
Moderate Talent for speed. Would benefit from TT29.
Major Talent for strength. Augment even more with CC2.
Minor Talent for sight. Possibly use RM55?