The Blood Legacy (The Lost Heir Book III)

The Foxworthy Hotel

Isabella sat in a squat on the front step of the Foxworthy Hotel, frowning at a crack in her family insignia. The emblem bronzed into a marble plate had been there for fifty years. Now, a jagged rift split the "Fox" from "worthy" and left each half of the family crest on opposite sides of what looked like a dried-up river. The "earthquake" induced by Jack Heel last Christmas had caused it. Jack. The frightening mad man was gone now, thank goodness. According to the Midnight Brotherhood and the Light Council, Jack fled the Violet City but was still underground somewhere in Europe.

"Watch out, Miss Foxworthy," a man in a yellow hard hat and an orange vest called out to the sixteen-year-old as he slid out of the hotel lobby with another construction worker. They carried a long plank for what Isabella had no idea, the renovations were almost finished. She looked down at the emblem again. Well, almost finished. She couldn't wait for them to fix the crest. She'd hardly paid attention to it growing up, taken it for granted in a way, but in the back of her mind, she'd felt pride at its existence. After her parents died, it came to mean something more to her. It was a reminder of the family she didn't have any more.

"Sorry!" She leapt to her feet to give the workers room.

"Just taking this around to the theater at the side entrance," the man announced to her as if it were very important for her to know.

"Sounds good," she said, turning to find her friend Cleo, standing in the lobby door, plump arms folded over her curvy frame.

"We've been summoned," said Cleo, sounding bored.

"By Elyse?" Isabella asked, brows lifting as the hot dry winds of the day kicked up and slapped across her face.

"She's letting this power thing go to her head," said Cleo, referring to the former waitress turned assistant manager to the hotel.

Isabella drew in a breath. The air was nasty. Hot and dry and turning her constitution a bit dizzy. The Santa Ana Winds. She followed Cleo inside quickly, reveling in the air conditioning swirling around the paint-smelly lobby. "She just wants to do a good job," said Isabella, noticing that Cleo's twin brother, Xander, moving away from a small group of teenagers clustered near the thickening epicenter of the crowd gathering to hear Elyse's announcements.

"Hey!" Xander called out. "We saved you a spot up front," the pudgy blond fifteen-year-old said, growing closer, nodding toward the people he'd just left.

Isabella stiffened, taking in the tall muscular but lithe form of one of the other boys Xander had been standing by. Seth Logan. He'd grown at least an inch since she'd met him, and his shoulders had broadened. He was fully a man now at eighteen. Not that it mattered; he wasn't hers to admire. "I'm okay, Cleo," she told her friend before Xander got to them. "I'm going to just wait right here. You go stand closer to the others."

Cleo's right eyebrow shot up. "Why are you still avoiding Seth? That stupid book again?" she asked, referring to the book Isabella's half-brother, Colin, had taken from their family vault and given to her. It was a book written by a man named Joseph Gaut filled with all sorts of postcards, pictures, old clippings and hand-written notes about their world. It was very well organized and very old. She considered it a link to the truth about who they all were.

Isabella pressed her lips together. "I don't think that's any of your business."

"He wants to be with you, Izzy," she said.

Isabella snorted. "Because he's bound to me as my 'guardian.' That's the only reason. He even said it himself. And—"

"The book confirms it. Ya-da-ya-da."

"It's my choice, okay?" Isabella said before chewing on her bottom lip.

"Whatever you say," said Cleo, moving ahead swiftly and snatching Xander's arm to pull him back toward the main crowd and away from a grouchy Isabella, who found a spot behind a tall plant in a comfortable leather chair to listen but not participate in Elyse's meeting. The hotel was crowded with staff, mostly old, some new, but still bare because there were no guests to be found.