If my brothers were right…If the council had seriously considered…Maybe I was risking too much to find someone who might not want to be found. Mom had made her choices, Dad had said—did I really want to follow her bad choices with the same bad choices?
Exceptwhywas her choice so bad? Wyverns stole from other wyverns all the time. It was tradition. Granted, you weren’t supposed to fail, hence the shunning, but to know they’d been contemplating an even more extreme reaction…it didn’t make sense. AndStar Warswasn’t going to give me any answers.
I squashed down the bit of guilt that squirmed in my stomach. Ihadto complete this heist. Lives don’t just fix themselves. Lies don’t unravel on their own. And thanks to my brothers, I now had an all-new reason to proceed: Mr.Keene, Ryan’s father, had pushed for the most severe punishment. And Mom had gone missing after a botched mission in his house. Coincidence? Ha! Clearly, there was more going on than any of us knew.If I can just get my hands on that jewel, I can get answers.
Or I can get closure. Or revenge.
Or maybe, if I’m quick enough, smart enough, and lucky enough…I can get everything back the way it was.
“Promise us, Sky, and we’ll let you go out with Gabriela,” Charles said. “We’ll even cover for you with Dad.”
“Of course,” I lied.
He held out his hand. I shook it. He’d forgive my lie when I came back with the jewel, when the council reinstated us, when Mom came home, I told myself.
“Cover for me?” I asked them.
“We will,” Charles said. Tuck and Liam nodded solemnly.
“Thank you. You’re the best brothers I could ever have.” Quickly, before they could change their minds, I tossed my bag of climbing gear out the window. Using my grappling hook, I climbed out, scrambled down the rope, and landed in the flower bed.
Up in the room, I heard one of them say, “Did she say how she’s getting to Gabriela’s? You don’t think she’ll try to drive herself?”
“Nah,” another said. “She has more sense than that.”
Scooping up my bag, I ran for the garage and stole Liam’scar.
IDROVE WITHIN THEspeed limit, barely. Really tacky to be late to your own heist. Overhead, the sky was thick with clouds, grays and blues and purples and blacks overlapping like a bruise. Between the mountains up ahead, the clouds were streaks, the rain visible as sheets of thin diagonal lines. The sun had already set. As soon as I hit the outskirts of downtown Aspen, I sped up—the Ferrari shot forward, feeling as if it were skimming the surface of the road. I felt as if I were flying. Droplets spattered on the windshield.
Ryan was waiting for me outside, by the warehouse. He swung the doors open so I could zoom straight inside, and then he shut the doors behind me. “Sorry, sorry,” I repeated, parking diagonally and then jumping out. I beamed at all of them.
It was really happening! Tonight!
Gabriela rushed over to me. “Are you okay? What happened? Wow, nice car. When did you get your license?”
“Fine. Family. And I didn’t.” I wasn’t about to explain the conversation with my brothers—if we succeeded tonight, it wouldn’t matter. If we didn’t…Well, I wasn’t going to think about that. Briefly, I wondered if this was how Mom had felt, that the reward was worth the risks. I wondered if she knew how much she was risking.
I knew, and it was making me mildly nauseous.
My eyes swept over the warehouse. Ryan’s computers were already back at his house, and all the laser beam equipment had been dismantled. Every trace of Maximus’s work with potions and powders had been swept away.
“Maximus, you have both spells? Fire beast and fire protection?” He held up two vials—one sparkly purple and one that looked like liquid gold—to show me, then sealed them away in a pouch at his belt. “Gabriela, did you pack my climbing gear and suction cups? Rope? My music?” Gabriela nodded and pointed to a black duffel bag. Turning to Ryan, I asked, “Do you have the mics and earpieces?”
He held out one set on the palm of his hand. “Everyone else is already wearing theirs.” The earpiece was a nub of plastic that looked like a clear popcorn kernel, and the mic was a tiny clip for inside my shirt—they would connect us.
“It itches,” Gabriela warned. “Wish we could just use cell phones.”
“We don’t use cell phones,” Ryan said.
“No offense meant,” she said, “but that’s weirder than breathing fire.”
“Paranoia, my dear,” Maximus said. “No wyvern wants to carry around a GPS recording his or her every illicit movement.” He was wearing all black too, but his outfit included a trench coat that swirled around his ankles as he walked. Very stylish. I grinned at him. I felt giddy, as if I could do twelve backflips in a row.
Crossing to Ryan, I clipped on the mic, then fit the kernel snugly into my ear. These were top-of-the-line, designed to be discreet. With my finger, I teased a curl over my ear, but short of anyone kissing my ear, no one would detect it.
Ryan lingered beside me, watching me, and I wished I hadn’t thought about kissing. I didn’t need any distractions tonight. If this worked, we’d be able to kiss anytime we wanted, wherever we wanted, except not in the middle of class, because rules. But other times.Sky, you’re distracted again,I scolded myself.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked.
