Charles strode toward me. “Sky, you can’t steal from a wizard!”
I avoided looking at Gabriela. If she was smart, she’d sneak out the door before my brothers even noticed she was here. “I wasn’t stealing—”
“Look, we know that you hate we sold Mom’s jewelry,” Liam said.
Tuck shot a look at Maximus that redefined the word “hostile.” If our eyes could shoot fire, the wizard would have been a lump of char. “Trust me, not the way to get your first hoard.”
Gabriela slipped out the door. Smart girl. Now I just had to hope she was also smart enough not to talk to anyone until I had a chance to explain. And by “explain,” I meant “lie to her.”
Maximus placed a hand on my shoulder. “Gentlemen, she wasn’t attempting to rob me. She came here to ask me for a job.”
I did?
Right. Yes. Of course I did. “I…spent my allowance, and I didn’t want to ask Dad for more, given, you know, current events. So I thought if I got a job after school…”
All three of them gaped at me.
“But Maximus said I don’t have any experience, so he—”
“Hired her,” Maximus interrupted. “How can she get experience if no one gives her a break? She’ll work here after school for…two hours a day? Does that work? I’d hate to interfere with your homework.”
“Two hours is fine.”
“Great.” He clapped my shoulder again, and I realized he’d given me an excellent alibi. I’d have at least a two-hour chunk every afternoon to work on preparing for the heist without worrying about my brothers breathing down my neck. All I had to do was go along with it. “Then you accept my proposal?”
Only flaw was that it was no longer just Ryan and me. Now it was me, my ex-boyfriend, and a wizard I barely knew with unspecified motives. I wasn’t sure Maximus would be a welcome addition.
Still…this wasn’t about being able to spend one-on-one time with Ryan. If this worked, we’d be able to be together permanently. And my brothers would be thanking me, instead of literally breaking in on my conversations. Our family would be able to heal. “I accept,” I said.
AFTER MY BROTHERS FINISHEDapologizing to me, I had them drop me off at Gabriela’s house. Ducking under a wind chime, I knocked on her front door and tried to think of what lie would cover the words “wizard,” “spell,” “crew,” and “rob.” Also, “murder.”
I hoped she’d at least let me tell her my lies. If I were her, I’d hide under my bed and wait for me to go away.So much for making a new friend,I thought.
The door banged open, and Gabriela grabbed my wrist and pulled me inside. “Come in.” She dragged me through the living room, nimbly skipping over the piles of laundry, and up the stairs to her room. Then inside, and shut the door. “It was a magic amulet, wasn’t it?” Without waiting for me to answer, she pulled me to her computer.
“What?” I saw her screen, covered with images of golden talons. “You researched it.” She’d said she researched everything. “But…there’s no such thing as magic.” I winced—that was a ridiculous sentence, coming from a wyvern. But there really was no such thing as a magic talon. It was like saying there was a magic fingernail.
“Look!” She tapped a picture. It brought up a sketch of a similar talon, zoomed in on the markings. “It’s called a dragon amulet. Supposed to have all kinds of powers. First one was seen being worn as a necklace by a dragon during the Middle Ages.” She switched to a print of a woodcarving that depicted a stylized dragon wearing a chain with the talon around its scaly neck. “It was stolen by Saint George as a trophy when he slew the dragon. Excuse me, wyvern.”
“Huh.” She was wrong, of course. Not about Saint George—he was a brutal exterminator who still haunted our legends—but about a magic dragon amulet with “all kinds of powers.” She went back to the sketch of the talon and zoomed in again. The markings really did look very similar. “What kind of website is this?” I asked.
“Fan art.” Sitting at her desk, she began rapidly bringing up more web pages. “Actually been researching your family for a while. Um, does that sound creepy? That sounds a little bit creepy. You’re just so interesting! You know there are three hundred fifty-four fan sites devoted to your family, and of those, sixty-four think you’re not actually wyverns and that there are no real wyverns. But they’re the kind of conspiracy theorists who don’t believe in science or fact. Probably don’t believe in gravity either.”
I shuddered a little. All those fan sites…It was unnerving to have so much human attention focused on us. Humans significantly outnumber wyverns on Earth. If there hadn’t been so many rich wyverns willing to use their wealth over the years to convince people that wyverns are harmless and friendly…Let’s just say we’ve never forgotten Saint George.
Peering over Gabriela’s shoulder, I saw a photo of me from the night of the last Reckoning. My mascara was streaked down my cheeks and my hair had pulled out of its twist. But that was nothing compared to how my insides had felt, as if they’d been twisted by a mixer. I felt sick looking at it. “Not my best moment.”
In fact, it had been the worst day of my life.
It was the day when Ryan had turned his back on me, the day when I’d first let myself believe that Mom might never come back, the day when all the wyverns in the West had decreed as one that our family was lesser, that our mother had tarnished and abandoned us, that we weren’t worthy of all that our ancestors had achieved. That photo was taken just after the Reckoning, the formal gathering when all the wyverns come together to determine the ranking of everyone in our society—what wealth we have, what wealth we deserve, what wealth we lose if we break wyvern rules.
Humans were not allowed at the Reckoning itself, unless they were married to a wyvern. But we couldn’t stop them from stalking us outside. Some jerk had snapped that shot and sold it to the tabloids. Our kind weren’t as popular with the paparazzi as movie stars, but we were considered unusual enough and wealthy enough to be fascinating, as all those fan sites proved.
My family’s drop in wealth, for instance.
Newsworthy.
My mom’s disappearance.
