Dark Heart of Magic by Jennifer Estep Read Free Book Online

River. With its dilapidated buildings, abandoned warehouses, and shadow-filled alleys, this definitely wasn’t the nice part of town, and no other vehicles were on the bridge or the surrounding streets. Mortals and magicks alike avoided this area and the others like it in town. Not because there were any obvious dangers, but because the lizard parts of their brains whispered a warning to them.
    Here be monsters.
    Devon eased the SUV onto the cobblestones and stopped in the middle of the span. I fished three quarters out of my pants pocket to pay the toll, just like I had when I gave that chocolate bar to the tree troll earlier. Except the consequences of not giving the lochness that lived under the bridge the tribute it required would be much, much worse than getting pelted with fruit.
    So I rolled down my window, stretched my hand out, and laid the coins on a worn, smooth stone marked with three Xs in the center of the bridge.
    Clink-clink-clink .
    The quarters clattered onto the Xs, the sounds soft, no more than rasps of metal scraping against the stone, but I felt like I was banging a drum, drawing the attention of everyone—and everything—around us. I stared at the three coins, wondering if the lochness would scoop up the quarters with one of its long, black tentacles.
    Nothing happened.
    I waited ten seconds, twenty, thirty, before sitting back in the SUV and rolling up the window. I looked at Devon and shrugged. He hissed out a breath between his teeth, took his foot off the brake, and drove on, but I stared in the rearview mirror, watching the coins glimmer in the afternoon sun.
    The second the vehicle’s tires rolled off the bridge, a black tentacle shot up out of the water and swiped the quarters from the center stone.
    I blinked, and the tentacle was gone, although the surface of the river rippled from far more than just the current.
    â€œDid you see it?” I asked.
    Devon’s gaze was focused on the rearview mirror. “Yeah. Just for a second.”
    Felix had been staring out the back of the SUV, and he shivered and faced the front again. “Have I told you guys how creepy it is that we always drive over the lochness bridge now? And that you always stop and pay the toll?”
    â€œWell, when a monster saves your life, it’s only fair to give it what it wants,” I murmured. “Unless you want to end up like Grant.”
    Grant Sanderson had been the Sinclair broker, but what he’d really coveted had been Devon’s compulsion magic— the power to make people do whatever Devon said, even if they didn’t want to. Grant had kidnapped Devon and me and tried to take our magic for his own. But we’d escaped, and I’d tricked Grant and two other men into crossing the bridge on foot without paying the toll.
    The lochness had dragged all three of them into the river—and eaten them.
    I didn’t have any regrets about what I’d done to Grant, since he’d been trying to kill us, but Devon winced, his face creasing with guilt. He still thought he should have seen Grant for the cruel, jealous person that Grant really was and tried to help him somehow. It was just another way in which Devon was a good guy, and I wasn’t.
    I wasn’t going to lose a wink of sleep over Grant, but the same couldn’t be said for the murdered tree troll we’d found. Even now, I kept picturing its lifeless body, dull, empty gaze, and the vicious slash through its throat. Even worse, that soft, heartless laughter echoed in my head all the while, sending a chill down my spine. It all just reinforced a cold, hard truth that I’d learned the day Victor Draconi murdered my mom.
    Sometimes, humans were more monstrous than anything else.

CHAPTER FIVE
    D evon left town behind and headed for the mountain, steering the SUV up the curvy, narrow roads.
    We passed house after house, each one bigger and more impressive than the last. Lots of mortals and magicks had