His questions ran the gamut of predictability: Who was I? Why had I lied to Bethany and Thornton? What was my mission? Who was Underwood, what was my connection to him, and what did he want with the box? Easy enough questions to answer—most of them, anyway—if I were at all interested in cooperating, but I wasn’t about to tell him anything. Someone had sent the shadowborn to the safe house to kill us and steal the box, and the more I thought about it, the more Isaac became my prime suspect.Bethany said mages like him were powerful enough to carry magic inside them without becoming infected, but what if she was wrong about that? I’d seen proof that Isaac carried magic inside him. What if it had infected him after all, made him decide he wanted the box for himself and the rest of us out of the way? The clues were as clear as day in my head. Isaac had sent us to the safe house. He knew where we would be, and with his knowledge of the safe house he could tell the shadowborn exactly where to go so the ward couldn’t hide it from them.
