Cold Burn of Magic Read Online Free

always worked out okay in the movies, especially since I knew that I wasn’t likely to get my own happy ending.
    But it was late, and I was tired, so I crawled into bed. I started to turn out the light, but I glanced over at the photo of my mom, her smile even brighter than the rubies draped around the silver frame.
    â€œGood night, Mom,” I whispered.
    Once again, I waited, but there was no response. And there never would be.
    Sighing, I hit the lamp with my fingers, casting the basement into darkness. Then I curled into a tight ball on my cot, drew the sheets up to my chin, and tried to go to sleep, instead of thinking about how much I still missed her.
    Â 
    Unfortunately, rubies or not, thief or not, magick or not, I still had to get up and schlep to school the next morning.
    I attended one of the regular rube public high schools, where no one knew who I was or anything about my illegal late-night errands. I doubted that anyone except the teachers even knew I existed. They, at least, had to grade my papers and put a face with the name. But the students ignored me, and I did the same to them. I didn’t need them. I didn’t need friends .
    Even if I had bothered to make a couple, it wasn’t like I could bring them to my squatter’s home in the library to hang out, watch a TV that wasn’t even mine, and talk about cute guys. That would be a good way to get shipped back to foster care—or worse, put in juvie for trespassing, breaking and entering, stealing, and all the other bad things I’d done.
    So I went to my classes, ate lunch by myself in the school library, and waited for the day to pass so I could get on with more important things—like taking the necklace to Mo and getting paid.
    Finally, the three o’clock bell rang, signaling the end of the school day. At three-oh-one, I was out the front door. Since I didn’t feel like walking, I hopped onto one of the trolleys that crisscrossed town at all hours of the day and night. Not only was Cloudburst Falls “the most magical place in America,” but it was also a total tourist trap. Think a Southern version of Vegas, but with real magic and mobsters who wielded their Talents with brutal efficiency and deadly consequences. Folks came from all across the country, and the world, to buy cheap trinkets and cheaper T-shirts, eat fatty foods—like deep-fried fudge—and throw their money away inside the themed shops, restaurants, and casinos that lined the Midway.
    Mostly, though, the tourists loved to dawdle on the sidewalks, lick their disgusting ice cream cones, and gawk at everything, even though they could see the exact same stuff back home if only they looked hard enough. Talented magicks were everywhere. Monsters, too.
    But legend had it that Cloudburst Mountain itself was particularly magical, especially since so much bloodiron had been discovered and mined there. Some folks even claimed that the mountain emanated power, sort of like a giant magnet, which was why so many magicks and monsters made their homes in, near, on, and around it. Either way, the town officials had decided to play up the magic angle. Well, they and the Families. The Families got a cut of everything in this town, including all the cash the tourists left behind.
    I plopped down in an aisle seat on the trolley. The lady sitting by the window didn’t even glance at me. Instead, she raised her camera and snapped a photo of a food cart shaped like a miniature metal castle, as if she’d never seen a guy wearing a black cloak and matching cavalier hat, holding metal skewers full of hot dogs and roasting them with the flames shooting out of his fingertips.
    I rolled my eyes. Tourist rubes were the worst . I thought about stealing her wallet, just on principle, but I decided against it. The twenty bucks that was probably inside wasn’t worth the hassle.
    Thirty minutes later, the trolley stopped in front of one of the many squares