Gabriela hesitated.
“Now.” There was steel in his voice.
Reaching under her face mask, she dug out the earpiece and handed it to him.
It popped as he ground it into the floor.
Gabriela whimpered. “What are you going to do withus?”
He smiled, a little sadly. “I won’t harm you. Have no fear of that. In fact, you will find you have a bright future ahead of you, if you cooperate.”
I didn’t trust him, primarily because of how ominous this whole conversation had been but also because of the way he was smiling, as if he pitied us. “Is this what you said to my mother, before you killed her?”
It was a shot in the dark, a hope that I’d surprise him into revealing something.
“Sky, I am shocked you’d think that of me. Our ancestors may have lacked morals, but we have a clear code we all follow. Wyverns do not kill wyverns.”
Gabriela gulped. “You did not mention what you do with humans.”
“We bribe them,” I told her. As threatening as he looked and sounded, he wasn’t going to hurt her, right? He’d offer her a large sum of money to never speak of this again, and as for me…more shunning? Stripping us of the rest of our fortune? Drop us to the lowest of the low? Take our house, our pride, our everything and declare us outcast? He was right: Dad was going to be heartbroken. I’d made things worse.
“Indeed we do, my dear. Sky, how very clever of you to use a human to evade the spell,” Mr. Keene said. “Such great potential, wasted. But I do understand family loyalty. That is why I do all that I do: to protect my family. In a way, Sky, we have much in common.”
This was beginning to sound like an evil-villain monologue.
I’m wrong,I thought.Heisgoing to kill us.I hadn’t expected it of Ryan’s father. He’d always seemed intimidating but sane. I calculated the distance between us and the stairs. If I threw the “jewel” at him to distract him…It was too far. We’d never make it. Not both of us. “This is my first heist,” I told him. “All I’m doing is following tradition.”
Mr. Keene did not look as if he intended to let us go. Smoke was tendriling out of the corners of his mouth. “But you did not target gold. You tookthat.” He pointed at my bag.
Now!I thought. “Then let me give it back!” Throwing the bag at him, I tackled him and screamed at Gabriela, “Run! Go!”
She ran.
I heard her pound up the stairs, and then Mr. Keene threw me backward into the vault. I skidded across the vault floor and crashed against a wall of shelves. Necklaces and coins fell around me like rain. On his feet, he advanced and then shut the vault door behind him. It sealed with a solidwhoosh.
“Foolish,” he said. “She’s a danger to us all.”
“She’s not! She knows nothing.”
“I very much hope that’s true.”
“I barely know anything.” On my feet, I backed away. Gold goblets shook on a nearby shelf. One toppled over and landed on the floor with a clink. “I only targeted it because my mother wanted it. Why did she? What is it?”
“Oh, my poor foolish child. You don’t even know…Well, you will understand soon enough. You have attempted to steal the Door.” With a flourish, he opened the bag—and then frowned and peered into it. “Clever girl. I admire your gumption.”
“A door?” I repeated. That made no sense. What did that mean? A door? To where? Also, it was round and smallish. Not door shaped.
I heard a voice, faint, through the vault door, and then a pounding on it. “Sky?” Ryan! He was here! “Sky, are you okay? Father, are you in there? Don’t hurt her!”
Mr. Keene held his finger to his lips. “Say nothing, and I will spare him. No punishment. No consequences. You can keep him safe.”
“Sky!” Ryan called. “I know you’re in there!”
Gabriela must have run straight to him. I hoped she’d fled after that. I didn’t know how I was going to protect her if she saw and heard too much.
Ryan kept knocking on the vault door. He must have been pounding with both fists.
Mr. Keene looked at me. “If you call to him, I will have to send him too. If you don’t, I can protect him. He will never know.”
