She snorted. “I saw them making out behind the Draconi tent before one of the matches. They were so busy sucking face they didn’t even notice me.”
I’d always thought all that sneaking around was going to end badly, and it looked like I’d been proven right, just not in the way I’d expected.
Katia shook her head, making her dark red hair swish around her shoulders. “I can’t imagine what Felix sees in her. Not that it matters. If he can’t see how special I am, then he doesn’t deserve me.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to speed-dial Devon. Kind of hard when I couldn’t see the screen. “I know you’re upset that you and Felix aren’t together, but that’s no reason to take it out on Deah.”
Katia laughed. “You think I’m doing all this for a boy? Please. I thought you were smarter than that, Lila. I do things for me—nobody else.”
I tapped my phone screen, hoping I was calling someone who would pick up, hear our conversation, and realize that something was wrong. “Okay. So what exactly are you doing then?”
She shrugged. “Deah beat me in the tournament. But it’s the last time she’ll ever beat me at anything.”
“Why do you say that?”
She looked at me like I’d just asked the stupidest question ever. “Because I’m going to take her magic and make it my own the way I should have all along. I took Vance’s power, thinking that would be enough to beat her, but obviously, I was wrong and he wasn’t nearly as strong as he bragged he was.”
I froze, my blood turning to ice in my veins. “You killed Vance? You took his magic?”
Too late, I remembered running into Katia the night Vance was murdered. I hadn’t thought anything of her being in the woods at the time, just thinking she’d been hiding out there from Felix the same way I had been from Devon.
“Of course I took his magic,” Katia said, her voice cold and hard. “Why else would I ask him out here last night? It certainly wasn’t to make out with him like he wanted. He thought he was going to get lucky. Heh. You should have seen the look on his face when I zip-tied his hands and slapped that duct tape on his mouth and he finally realized what I was up to. It was priceless.”
She laughed, but the sound made goose bumps crawl across my skin because it was the same sound I’d heard when I’d looked into Vance’s dead eyes last night. And it was the same evil laugh that had echoed in my mind when I’d found that dead tree troll beside the dumpster.
“The tree troll. . . .” I said. “You killed Vance for his magic, but what about the tree troll in the Midway? Why did you murder it?”
“Yeah, that was one of mine too. I also whacked one of them up at the Draconi estate a couple of nights ago. I wanted to get more than one, but Blake and Victor had already killed all the others they’d trapped.”
My mind whirled and whirled, trying to put everything together. “But why? I still don’t understand why.”
Katia gave me another of those you’re-the-biggest-idiot-ever looks. “For its magic, of course.” Her face turned sly. “You wanna know a secret?”
I didn’t respond, but I didn’t have to.
“I don’t actually have all that much magic of my own,” she said. “I have a very minor Talent for speed, but I found a way to increase it, to have all the magic I want, whenever I want it.”
My stomach twisted. “By killing monsters and people and taking their power.”
She shot her thumb and forefinger at me. “Bingo.”
Suddenly, I realized why Katia’s eyes kept going from hazel to green and back again—because of all the stolen tree troll magic pumping through her veins. Devon had said there was no way to cheat in the tournament, but he’d been wrong.
So very, very wrong.
“The trolls’ magic . . . Vance’s magic . . . you wanted it for the tournament. You took their power and used it to try to help you win.”
“Bingo again,” Katia said. “Look at you, on a roll and everything. And now I’m going to do the same thing to Deah. Come to think of it, I should have done this last year, when I had the chance.”
“You want her magic? You want her mimic power?”
“Of course I want it,” Katia snarled. “With Deah’s power, I can beat anybody and win any tournament I enter, and I can finally scrape together enough money to leave my father behind forever. And forget working for the Volkovs too. With Deah’s magic, I can do things the way I’ve always wanted to.”
She noticed my horrified expression. “Oh, don’t look so shocked. You know what a loser my dad is. You see how he drinks.”
“Yeah,” I said. “And I know how much that must hurt. But that’s no excuse for doing horrible things. Lots of kids have crappy parents, and they don’t go around murdering monsters and people. Killing Deah isn’t the answer to your problems.”