Magic Kingdom (Dragon Born Alexandria Book 3) by Ella Summers Page B

Alex protested. “Not people.”
    “Can you honestly say that it’s any different when you fight people?”
    “I…” She stopped. She’d killed the Sultan and Shadowstalker, burned each of them to ashes with dragon fire. And she hadn’t hesitated, not even for a second.
    “You are a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Stan told her. “A funny, snarky, pretty woman on the outside. But on the inside, you are a cold-blooded killer.”
    Alex’s chest tightened.
    “That’s why people are scared of you. They know at any moment, even in the middle of a joke, that switch inside of you might flip and you’d kill everyone—”
    “Enough.” Logan’s voice cracked like a whip. “You will keep your ridiculous notions to yourself.”
    Stan’s mouth clamped shut.
    “Alex and I believe the mayhem tonight was merely a distraction for some greater plan. The escaped monsters, the possessed plants, the supernaturals going berserk—that was all to keep us busy, to keep us from seeing what was really going on.”
    “Which is?” Stan asked.
    “A thief is after something. A number of somethings, actually.”
    “The thief has more power than any supernatural I’ve ever faced—or heard of,” Alex told Stan, trying to keep her voice steady. She wasn’t the monster he’d described. She repeated that to herself a few more times, but it didn’t help. “Do you know what kind of supernatural can melt buildings with green fire, disappear into thin air, and control ghosts?”
    “Something I’d not want to meet.”
    “Seriously.”
    “Seriously, Alex, I don’t know. Are you sure all the thefts were perpetrated by the same person?”
    “I felt the same magic at all scenes. Or lack of magic.”
    “It sounds like someone straight out of hell.”
    “You’re not helping,” she told him.
    “I don’t know anyone or anything that can do all of that.” He swiped his finger across his tablet. “I see four reported thefts for tonight along the lines of what you described. You were at two of the scenes. There was one earlier this evening. It happened around the time you two were fighting the bees. Let me see.” His finger danced across his tablet’s screen. “The safe was pillaged. Everything was taken, so we don’t know which of the objects the thief was really after.”
    “Melted walls?” Alex asked.
    “No, the building is made of wood, not concrete. The door was ripped from its hinges.”
    “Like in the new town hall,” Alex said to Logan.
    “Witnesses saw a cloaked figure enter the building, but no one ever came out,” Stan told them.
    “What about the second incident?” Logan asked.
    “A storage building near the airport. The team arrived at a quarter to nine. There was no one at the scene. The door had been torn clear off. The whole safe was gone.”
    Alex turned to Logan. “Quarter to nine. That’s when we were at the town hall. The scene was fresh. We couldn’t have missed the thief by more than a few minutes. How did he travel so quickly from there all the way to the airport?”
    “Have you considered that your thief is multiple people?” Stan asked. “Like a team of evil super villains.”
    “The witnesses from Magic Bean only saw one person,” Alex said.
    “If this is a team of thieves, they could have sent a different person to each place,” Logan replied.
    “That still doesn’t explain how the thief or thieves keep disappearing into thin air.”
    “We’ve seen that before,” he reminded her. “On Lake Zurich. The Convictionites used glyphs to teleport off the boat.”
    “We didn’t find any glyphs at any of the scenes,” she said. “They would have lingered on for at least a while before fading out.”
    “Unless they were burned out like all the rest of the magic in those buildings.” Logan looked at Stan. “Any other ideas?”
    “No, and to be perfectly blunt, I’m far too busy right now cleaning up a city that’s gone to hell to waste time on a ghost hunt with you two. If I