Devon carefully steered up the curvy roads, his hands tensing around the wheel every time we passed another car. But none of the other vehicles had the Draconi crest painted on the doors, so he was able to drive all the way up the mountain with no problems.
Thirty minutes later, he pulled the car into a parking lot that led to a scenic overlook of a waterfall that was about a mile away from the Sinclair mansion. The area was deserted, since it was after ten now, but we all knew that it was risky to just drive up to the mansion, expecting everything to be fine. Blake might think that the lochness had drowned us, but if I were him, I would still have posted guards at the mansion just in case we weren’t dead and decided to go back there.
Devon parked the SUV underneath a couple of weeping willows, trying to hide it in the trees’ long green tendrils and the shadows they cast. Then the four of us got out of the car.
Devon, Deah, and I drew our weapons, but I frowned at the stolen sword in my hand. I hadn’t noticed it until right now, but the black blade didn’t feel cold to the touch anymore. In fact, I couldn’t feel any magic pulsing through the bloodiron at all. Weird. And all the stolen magic had burned out of my body as well.
“What’s wrong?” Devon asked.
“This sword was one of the real black blades,” I said, swinging it back and forth. “But it doesn’t have any magic in it anymore.”
“But how is that possible?” Felix asked. “You didn’t stab yourself with it. Isn’t that the only way to get magic out of a black blade?”
Deah tilted her head to the side, studying me and the sword. “Maybe not. Maybe Lila used up all the magic without having to stab herself.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your transference Talent lets you absorb and use any magic that you come into contact with, right?”
“Yeah . . .”
She shrugged. “So you’ve been holding on to that sword for more than an hour now. Maybe that’s all you needed to do to tap into the magic that was stored inside it.”
Even though I’d had a similar thought back at the restaurant, I still looked at the sword, unease slithering down my spine. Up until a couple of weeks ago, I’d thought that my transference Talent and the magic I stole with it only made me stronger. But when Katia Volkov had stabbed me, I’d discovered that I could also use the power I absorbed from others to heal myself. And now, I’d somehow sucked all the magic out of a black blade without even trying.
I’d always thought I understood exactly how my power worked and everything I could do with it, but now I was wondering if there was more to my transference Talent than I’d realized, the same way I’d wondered about paying the lochness toll at the bridge and what it might really mean to the creature. But I pushed my thoughts aside. Right now, I needed to focus on getting to the mansion and finding out what had happened there. Not this strange new ability I might or might not have.
I looked at the others. “We all know that things at the mansion are probably going to be bad. So just follow me, and stay as quiet as possible. Okay?”
My friends nodded back. I took the lead, and we left the parking lot behind and plunged into the forest.
The moon and stars were still shining in the night sky, but the thick canopy of leaves blocked out most of their light, and the way the branches arched up and merged together overhead made it seem like we were trudging through a dark cave instead of the middle of the woods. The clouds of mist from the waterfalls were particularly thick tonight, obscuring the landscape even further, but I welcomed the white blanket that cloaked everything, including us. If there were any Draconi guards in the woods tonight, they’d have a hard time spotting us.
We moved through the trees as quickly as possible, but we hadn’t gone far before I realized how absolutely quiet it was. No rockmunks scuttled through the underbrush, no tree trolls hopped from one branch to another, no bugs or birds of any sort darted through the air. Nothing moved or stirred, not even the wind.
It was quiet—too quiet.
The sort of too quiet that usually meant death.
My heart clenched, dreading what we were going to find at the mansion.
But we hadn’t even reached the grounds before we came across the first body.
It was a Sinclair guard, wearing a black cloak and matching cavalier hat. He was sprawled across the ground, clutching at an ugly stab wound in his stomach with one hand, his sword hanging slack in his other hand. I didn’t have to use my sight magic to see the blood that coated his body and blackened the leaves all around him.