I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the cot. Deah sighed, threw back her blanket, and did the same. Oscar and Tiny kept right on snoring, though.
“Listen,” I said. “I want to find the others just as badly as you guys do, but we have to be careful. That’s the only way we’re all going to get through this in one piece. Victor. . . he’s been planning this for a long, long time. He’s sure to have thought about how things might go wrong and have contingency plans in place. He might not have expected us to switch out the black blades for fakes, but he’s probably already regrouped and has a plan to find us, get the weapons back, and finish what he started. And he’s got the guards to help him do it. All we have is each other and what’s in this basement, so we have to be smarter about things, sneakier, and cleverer than he is.”
Devon’s hands tightened into fists, and he started pacing back and forth across the basement. “We can’t just stay down here and do nothing,” he repeated.
“I didn’t say that.”
“My mom and the others could already be dead,” he said in a harsh voice. “Victor could have killed them last night while we were running all over town.”
Devon stared at me, the red-hot needles of his pain and anguish stabbing me in the chest, while his aching desperation and helpless rage boiled in my veins. I felt the same way, but I pushed the sensations aside and focused on him.
“You saw Victor at the restaurant last night. You saw the look on his face when he realized that Claudia had stolen all of his precious black blades right out from under him,” I said. “He won’t kill her. Not until she tells him what she did with the weapons.”
“He’ll torture her to get the information. You know he will,” Devon snapped, more anguish filling his eyes. “No doubt he’s already started.”
I got up and went over to him, taking his hands in my own, and making him stop pacing. “I know,” I said in a low voice. “I know what Victor is capable of better than anyone else, and I wish I could have saved your mom from that. But Claudia is strong, and every second that she holds out gives us more time to save her. Okay?”
Devon stared back at me, pain and worry still shimmering in his eyes, but he finally nodded and squeezed my hands. “Okay.”
I nodded back at him, then dropped his hands and looked over at Deah. “Can you think of any place where your dad might be holding Claudia and the others? Do you think they’re up at the Draconi mansion?”
Deah shook her head. “No. If my dad—” She stopped and cleared her throat. “If Victor took all the other Sinclairs prisoner, then there’s no place at the Draconi mansion big enough to hold them all. He’ll have to keep them down here in town, probably at one of the Family warehouses.”
“Which one?” Devon demanded, his hands clenching into fists again.
She gave him a helpless look. “I don’t know. He has dozens of warehouses all over town. It could be any one of them, or someplace else that I don’t even know about. I’m sorry, but Victor and Blake never talked to me much about the Family businesses. I guess my dad always knew that I wouldn’t like what he was planning and didn’t want to risk me messing things up. And I was always so busy training for the Tournament of Blades or watching out for my mom that I didn’t pay much attention to anything else. I’m sorry. I wish I could be more help.”
Felix walked over, sat down on the cot next to her, and slung his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close. “It’s okay. I understand, and so does Devon. Don’t you, Dev?”
Devon’s lips pressed together for a second, but then his shoulders slumped and he nodded.
“So now what?” he asked, pacing back and forth again. “How can we figure out where the others are without getting captured ourselves?”
“Simple,” I said. “Deah and I will go out to the Midway, snoop around, and see what we can find out.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Felix asked. “Because the Draconis will come after you the second they spot you guys, just like they would Devon and me.”
I went over to one of the suitcases full of extra clothes and dug through the piles of fabric inside until I found exactly what I wanted. I held up the T-shirt so that the others could see it. All three of them winced, especially Deah.
“Please tell me that you don’t expect me to wear that,” she said.
“Oh, you’re going to wear it all right,” I said. “And once you put it on, you’re going to become practically invisible to the Draconis.”
Deah groaned and flopped back down onto her cot. I just grinned.
“Are you sure this is going to work?” Deah asked. “I feel like I’m wearing a flashing sign that says, Here I am! Come and get me!”