The Silent Deal (The Card Game #1)

Ch 15 - New Year's Eve

CHAPTER 15

NEW YEAR’S EVE

Viktor spent the next five days doing whatever work he could around the house—anything to keep his mind off the fight he’d witnessed. Nothing helped. He was sleeping worse than ever. His eyes could neither stay open nor closed.

At first, he wished he had listened to his mother … and his father … and Grandpap. Yet the more angles he studied, the more he thought he was in the right. After all, his parents were hiding something; the entire town was hiding something! And it was those secrets that had driven Viktor and Romulus into their cat-and-mouse card game. Find the Silent Deal, or die.

On the morning of New Year’s Eve, Viktor sat in the Den with Romulus, tired of talking and thinking about the Leopard’s boxing match.

“How do you block everything out? You know, pain … fear …”

Romulus shrugged. “I just don’t wear emotions on my sleeve.”

“Who was that man at the fight?” Viktor asked.

“What?”

“Don’t play dumb—the one with the greenish hair. He was staring right at you.”

“I don’t know. I was just as confused as you.”

Perhaps it was the increasingly strange things he’d seen lately, but for the first time in a long time, Viktor began to wonder if Romulus was being honest with him. Everyone else was lying, so why not his best friend, too?

“It looked like he’d just walked out of the forest. You know the creature he looked like, don’t you?” Viktor said.

“If you think that was the Leshy, then you’re as crazy as Mikhail. He still thinks I was raised in these woods.”

“Let’s go visit your grandmother,” Viktor dared.

“I told you no!”

“Who taught you so much about the forest? Why do you have the one object our should-be-fictional enemy wants? And how—when my fingers snapped like twigs—did you get twice the amount of raps from Dimovna and not flinch?”

Viktor meant the attack to have force, but Romulus was unruffled. “Come along, Doubting Thomas. I’ll answer your one question that isn’t stupid.”

Romulus and Blizzard led the way deep into the woods. Viktor fumed most of the way there, but he was too curious to turn back. He was also embarrassed. Hadn’t Romulus done enough to gain his trust? Now what would he make his friend reveal—more sad stories about his past … or something more sinister?

In the winter, the bare trees and the blanket of snow caused much of the forest to appear the same, yet Viktor had a feeling he had never been in this area before. The trees were too perfectly straight. The fog made the forest too still. Then Viktor saw something much more terrifying. He spoke, in a harsh whisper:

“Romulus, something was here before us.”

Romulus looked to where Viktor pointed. A patch of trees on the right had deep V-shaped cuts in the bark, like a beast had sharpened its claws on the trees.

“Someone was here before us,” Romulus corrected.

“The Leopard?”

“No … me. This is the spot.”

Viktor felt suddenly uneasy.

“Relax,” Romulus said. “They’re Norway maple trees. You cut their bark to get sap for syrup.”