Almost as though they could sense they were among predators (which, on some deep, instinctual level, they probably could), all the humans, including Marci, had drifted to the far side of the cement platform, as far from the dragons as possible. They were all talking seriously as he approached, their heads together, and then Marci turned to point Julius out to the large man who seemed to be the leader.
As humans went, Julius supposed he was handsome in a rough, rugged way. Tall and imposing with dark black skin and thick, tight curled hair that ran down his face to form an equally impressive beard, he looked more like an angry river god than the sort of person you’d find running a mage commune. His clothes were even stranger, a perfectly cut outfit of a long duster, vest, pants, and tall boots all made out of deep green alligator leather. It wasn’t until the man stuck out his hand and introduced himself, though, that Julius understood why anyone would voluntarily dress like that. This was the human Katya had supposedly left the party with. Ross Vedder, the alligator shaman.
“So,” he said as Julius took his hand. “You’re the one leading the group that took out the lampreys. On behalf of all of us, thank you. We’ve been trying to get rid of that menace for months.”
“You’re welcome,” Julius replied, savoring the rare words. “But we can’t take too much credit. We got lost and ran into the lampreys by accident. Anything else that happened was self defense.”
The man laughed. “Lost, huh? You got guts getting lost down here. So what brings you to our neck of the pipes? You three hunting bounties?”
“No,” Julius said, pausing for a steadying breath. Here went nothing. “We’re actually looking for a woman named Katya. Is she here?”
Ross’s smile vanished the second Julius said the dragoness’s name. “Why do you want to know?” he growled, standing taller. “Did her family send you?”
Julius took a moment to consider his answer. Keeping clan secrets was a habit as deeply ingrained as breathing, but whatever this human was to Katya, he clearly wanted to protect her. Julius respected that, so he settled for a half truth. “Yes,” he admitted. “But I don’t mean her any harm. I just want to talk to her.”
The shaman looked deeply skeptical, but when he answered, Julius felt certain he was telling the truth, and he wasn’t happy about it. “She’s not here anymore. Lark called right after we left his party to let us know that a friend of Katya’s was looking for her.” He eyed Julius up and down. “I suppose that was you?”
When Julius nodded, he continued. “I was suspicious ‘cause we weren’t expecting anyone, but I didn’t think too much of it until I went into the bedroom and discovered Katya had packed up her stuff and left. That was about an hour ago. I don’t know where she is now.”
Julius sighed. Of course. “Do you have any way of getting in touch with her?”
Ross’s eyes narrowed in a cold, steady glare that fit well with his chosen animal. “Nothing I’d give to you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”
Julius was scrambling to think of some way, any way, to keep the man from leaving when Marci suddenly said, “What kind of work do you do down here?”
Her incredulous, borderline insulting tone sent Julius into panic mode. This man was their only lead; antagonizing him was not an option. To his surprise, though, Ross didn’t seem to mind the question at all.
“Service for the spiritual and magical benefit of our community,” he said, puffing out his chest with pride. “Algonquin cares nothing for the lives of the people in her city. We do. We stay down here to keep the monsters from preying on folks who can’t afford to move up to the skyways for safety. Take the lampreys, for instance. During the spring rains when the drains are full, they swim up to the streets of the Underground to hunt. Eight foot lamprey will strike right out of the storm drains, grabbing people and pulling them back down to their nest.”
Julius shuddered. What a horrible thought. “Don’t the hunters kill them?”
“When they can get ‘em, sure,” Ross said. “But the bounty jockeys never come down here to eliminate the problem at the source. That’s where we come in.” He jerked his head at the lake. “We were only a few weeks away from having the power necessary for the ritual to cleanse this place. Now, thanks to you, we can use that magic for other things. Lampreys aren’t the only monsters that nest down here, and we make it our business to clean them out. That’s our work—making this city safer for the people who don’t have the money or pull to buy Algonquin’s protection.”
“Right, right, very noble,” Marci said, angling in front of Julius. “How much is the bounty on those lampreys again?”
“Marci!” Julius hissed.
“What?” she whispered back. “We’re broke.”
The alligator shaman watched this exchange with a wary eye. “Ten dollars a head, last I saw,” he answered slowly. “Hardly worth dying for, but never let it be said Algonquin overspent on something as trivial as preventing her people from being snatched off the street by wild animals.” He shook his head and turned back to Julius. “Again, thank you for what you did here. Even if it was an accident, our city’s a safer place now, and that’s always a good thing. We’ll clean up the water and put down wards to keep this area clear, and to make sure we don’t draw any death spirits. In the meantime, I’ll be happy to assign someone to escort you back to the surface so you don’t get ‘lost’ again.”
He finished with a pointed look that made it clear he knew perfectly well they’d been trying to sneak up on his stronghold from behind. If the alligator shaman hadn’t been the leader of a seemingly selfless band of eco-mage crusaders, Julius would have almost suspected him of leaving the lamprey nest on purpose to guard his back. But all the other humans looked too genuinely relieved as they gathered the slimy lamprey bodies into piles for disposal for him to suspect Ross on that angle at least. The destroyed nest was clearly a true and loathsome menace, and everyone seemed glad to be rid of it.
Well, Julius thought with a sigh, at least something good had come out of this. For his part, he was ready to call it a night. He was filthy and exhausted and his head was throbbing. Add in his behavior toward his mother and his brother and it was clearly time to throw in the towel. He needed time to make a new plan anyway now that he’d decided to stop doing things that didn’t feel right, which definitely included hunting down and chaining runaway dragons. He wasn’t sure if there was a solution to this mess that would sit well with him, but at the moment, Julius was too relieved by the idea that he wouldn’t have to put his boot on Katya’s neck to care.
“An escort would be great,” he said, pulling out his phone. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to give you my number in case Katya comes back. As I said, I just want to talk to her, so if you could pass on the message, I’d really appreciate it.”
Ross glowered suspiciously for a moment, then he shrugged and pulled out a brand new, top-of-the-line AR smartphone, the kind that kept the augmented reality field running around you at all times even when you weren’t directly touching it. Devices like that were worth more than most cars, and Julius had to act fast to hide his surprise that Ross owned one. Clearly, something down here paid very well, a fact that did not escape Marci.
“Hold on a sec,” she said. “If we’re wrapping this up, then you need to tell your people to stop stealing our lampreys.”
Ross blinked. “Excuse me?”
Marci pointed at the bloody water. “You said it yourself. Those lampreys have a bounty of ten bucks a head, and since we killed them under the direction of my employer”—she pointed back at Julius—“they belong to him. Not you.”
Ross’s face turned scarlet. “We’re not stealing anything!” he shouted. “This is an eco-magical disaster area! A reflection of Algonquin’s completely irresponsible attitude toward the safety of her citizens and the magical health of any land that isn’t under her lakes! The whole reason we’re down here is to clean up this sort of thing. These bodies need to be properly disposed of to prevent any further contamination of the natural magic. You can’t just haul them up and hawk them to Algonquin’s corporate stooges for a paltry ten dollars! What kind of sell-out are you?”
“The kind who likes to be paid for her work,” Marci said, lifting her chin. “And ten bucks each isn’t paltry when you’re working with this sort of volume.”
As much as Julius agreed with the alligator shaman’s moral high ground, Marci did have a point. They were desperately short on money, and there were a lot of dead lampreys lying around. Hundreds easily, and that wasn’t even counting the big one. At ten dollars a head, that added up.
“This isn’t about money,” Ross said, his voice underlined by a distinctly reptilian growl. “We’re doing what’s right for the good of everyone. I know as a Thaumaturge you have no connection to the land, but some of us—”
“What?” Marci shrieked, and Julius winced. He could practically see the storm of righteous indignation building around her, and Ross wasn’t much better. Alligators were apparently much less laid-back spirit guides than albatrosses. If Julius didn’t do something fast to defuse the situation, this was going to turn into a full-scale duel.
“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he said, stepping between the two mages. “Mr. Vedder, we understand and respect what you’re trying to do here, but my partner”—he grabbed Marci and pulled her to his side, partially to show solidarity, but mostly to keep her from throwing any spells—“also had a valid point. That said, I see no reason we can’t find an arrangement that will make us all happy. I understand your movement down here is well-funded, correct?”
That was a wild guess, but phones like Ross’s didn’t come cheap. Neither did a full suit of what was certainly humanely sourced alligator leather. There had to be money coming in from somewhere to keep this crusade rolling, and sure enough, Ross shut his mouth, reaching up to rub the back of his head in a way that looked almost embarrassed.
“I fund it,” he said quietly. “My dad’s the CEO of a mana-tech integration company. He set me up with a few million back when I was a teenager to keep me out of his hair, but that doesn’t mean I’m just a trust fund kid playing around down here.”
“You sure?” Marci said before Julius elbowed her.
“I got into this work precisely to fight back against the damage corporate raiders like my dad do to our communities,” Ross growled. “Algonquin guards the lakes and the spirits who obey her, but she couldn’t care less about what happens to the rest of us. Guys like my dad make a living taking advantage of that, abusing whomever they can to make a buck. I wouldn’t touch his money if I could help it, but do you know how much it costs to keep wards running down here?”
“I’m guessing more than comes in through donations,” Julius said.
“By a factor of ten,” Ross replied. “We need money for our work, and if I’ve got it, then why not spend it doing good?”
“I completely agree,” Julius said quickly before Marci could open her mouth. “It’s clear to me that you and your people are providing a vital and critically underappreciated service down here. I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you’re not in financial danger.”
The alligator shaman seemed caught off guard by this sudden and effusive praise. “Well, thank you. I’m glad you’re on our side.”
“I absolutely am,” Julius said. “Of course, knowing all that, I’m sure you’ll understand why I can’t just give you this job pro bono. My partner and I aren’t fully funded, and we need the money. That said, I’d much rather deal with you than Algonquin’s people, so how about a compromise?”
That was his best shot at making this work, and he held his breath while Ross scratched his beard thoughtfully. Then, at last, the shaman said, “What did you have in mind?”
“I was thinking rather than turn the lampreys in for the bounty, we’d sell them all to you as-is for a flat rate,” Julius explained. “That way, we’ll still get paid fairly for our work, and you’ll get to clean your lake exactly as you like. Everyone wins, what do you say?”
Ross glanced at the bloody water. “That sounds fair to me, assuming we can agree on a price.” He thought about it a second longer, and then his head dipped in a sharp nod. “I don’t see why we couldn’t make it work. Let me talk to my co-chair. Hold on a moment.”
Grinning wide, Julius motioned for him to do as he liked. The moment the shaman was out of earshot, Marci grabbed Julius’s arm.
“What are you doing?” she whispered fiercely. “Don’t cut a deal with these lunatics! Especially not for a flat fee! We don’t even know how many lampreys we’re talking about yet. You could be giving away thousands of dollars!”
“I’m not giving away anything,” he said, gently prying her fingers loose before he lost all feeling in his hand. “Look around. Do you know how long it would take us haul these bodies through the sewers to the Animal Control office to collect our payout? Even if we carried them up two at a time, it would take us days of non-stop hard labor to empty this place. If you calculate that out to an hourly rate, we’d make better money painting houses, and that’s assuming half the lampreys didn’t rot before we could get to them. If we sell to Ross, we get paid for the work we already did, and we don’t have to do any more, which is actually the best part of the deal. I don’t know about you, but I’m exhausted. Right now, I’d gladly pay several thousand dollars just to get out of here, take a shower, and never worry about touching another lamprey for as long as I live.”
Marci’s face pulled into into a scowl. “Okay,” she grumbled. “I’ll admit taking the money and running does have its appeal, but that doesn’t mean we should let them rip us off. I say we hold out for forty thousand.”
“Marci,” Julius said with a sigh. “There are not four thousand lampreys here.”
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “The point is that we killed something they couldn’t, and now we own the bodies, which they want. That puts them over a barrel, and when you’ve got someone over a barrel, you have to shake them until their pockets are empty. It’s the freelancer’s code.”
“I’m not shaking anyone,” he said firmly. “I said we were going to agree on a mutually fair price, and that’s what I mean to do.”
“Juliuuuuuus,” she moaned. “The guy’s a trust fund kid! He won’t even miss forty grand. Don’t be such a goody-two-shoes.”
“Refusing to take advantage of people doesn’t make me a goody-two-shoes,” Julius said sharply, making Marci flinch. Normally, that would have made him feel guilty. Right now, though, he had a point to make. “I know you don’t have much respect for shamans, but these people seem to be doing legitimate good work. They’re also Katya’s allies. We still need their help to find her, and I’m not going to torpedo our chances there by ripping them off for a one time gain.”
“Are you nuts?” Marci said. “This isn’t a kid’s show, Julius. It’s not like these people are going to suddenly change their minds and give you all the info on this Katya person just because you were square with them. They live in a sewer. We’ll probably never even see them again. If we don’t go for broke now, we’ll be SOL forever.”
“You never know,” Julius said. “I’m not saying it isn’t a gamble, but if I’m going to be taking risks, I’d rather take them doing what I think is right. That way, even if I do get ripped off, at least I’ll know I wasn’t the one being a jerk.”
Marci stared at him a moment, and then she threw up her hands. “Fine,” she said. “It’s your money. You want to pay the good karma fee, that’s your choice.”
The fact that she thought it was an idiotic one was clear from her voice, but Julius appreciated the gesture all the same. “Thank you, Marci.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, looking away. “Just never try and take that good nature to Vegas. You’ll get swindled down to your underwear before you can blink.”
That was a risk he was willing to take. For the first time Julius could remember, he actually felt good about something. Not just okay or not bad, but really, honestly good about his decision not to use his unexpected superior position to squeeze Katya’s alligator shaman for all he was worth. And when Ross returned with his co-chair—a stern, middle-aged Indian woman with shed snake skins woven into her hair—Julius greeted them with such a smile that the lady actually looked taken aback. This only made Julius grin wider as he settled his shoulder against the wall and dug in for some good, honest, old-fashioned haggling.
An hour later, all parties were satisfied, and Julius was no longer an impoverished dragon. That wasn’t as good as being an unsealed dragon, but he was ready to call it a win.
The shamans had started out wary, but once it became clear that Julius honestly wasn’t trying to rip them off, the pace picked up enormously. In the end, Ross’s circle kept all the lampreys, and Julius received an immediate cash transfer of twenty-five thousand dollars, ten of which was actually for the big one, which Ross explained was full of magical components his circle needed for their wards.
“It’s not enough, really,” Ross admitted with a sigh. “Large, unique creatures like that are almost priceless. You could probably sell it for thirty thousand easy if you called in one of the big magical component suppliers from the Upper City. We can’t afford to pay that, of course, but you’ve been very upfront with us, and I wanted to make sure you knew the creature’s real value before you signed it over, just in case you wanted to pull out.”
“Thank you, but ten thousand will be fine,” Julius said, keeping his voice low so Marci wouldn’t overhear and fly to his rescue. “I meant it before when I said I thought you were doing good work down here. Also, have you seen that thing?” He jerked his thumb over at the bus-sized corpse of the giant lamprey that five mages were currently weaving a spell around in an attempt to finally lift it all the way out of the water. “Not exactly something I can put in my pocket. If you count that in, I think ten thousand for a monster I don’t have to pay to move is a very fair deal.”
“Fair indeed,” Ross said, sticking out his hand with a genuine smile. “Thank you, Julius.”
“Thank you,” Julius said, shaking his hand firmly.
As soon as he’d settled everything with the mages, Julius hurried back to Justin. He’d fully expected his brother to get bored and leave once it became clear Julius was serious about not attacking the humans. When he hadn’t, Julius had started getting nervous, but his brother had actually been remarkably patient, sitting against the wall and snarling at people who got too close. From anyone else, such behavior would have been surly. From Justin, it was practically an audition for sainthood, and Julius wanted to thank him before the miracle ended.
Justin didn’t look up when Julius approached, just gave his sword a final swipe with the cleaning cloth before sliding the blade back in its sheath. “Well?”
“All done,” Julius said. “They’re paying us—”
“Screw the money,” his brother said. “What about Katya?”
Julius shook his head, and Justin lifted his eyes at last to give him a look of such deep disappointment it actually hurt.
“I don’t understand you,” he said, rolling to his feet in one smooth motion. “You’re not stupid and you’re not a coward. You can even be bold if someone pushes you. You’ll never be a really good dragon, but that’s enough to be an okay one if you’d just stop dicking around. But you won’t.”
“I—” Julius began, but he stopped when Justin held up his hand.
“I don’t want Mother to eat you,” he went on, belting his sword back onto his hip. “We’ve been together our whole lives, and while you can be a total buzzkill, you’re also the brother I dislike the least.”
Julius’s eyes widened. That was the nicest thing anyone in his family had ever said about him. “Thank you.”
“Save it,” Justin growled. “I’m only telling you all this so you’ll understand why I took Bob’s ticket to the DFZ. I thought if I came myself to keep an eye on you, I could make sure you didn’t screw this up too badly. But after sitting here for a hour listening to you being so, so…”
“Reasonable?” Julius suggested.
“Nice,” his brother spat. “Roll over, play along, suck-up nice. Seriously, you were practically submissive to that human. I almost threw up.” He shook his head with a sigh. “I just don’t know what else I can do for you. It’s like you’ve got a faulty connection in your brain that makes you buddy up to humans instead of dominating them.”
Julius shrugged. “Is that really so bad?”
“Yes,” Justin growled, stabbing his finger at the mages fishing lamprey bodies out of the water. “If these people knew what you actually were, they wouldn’t be your friends. They’d be terrified, as they should be. Because if they weren’t scared, they’d be trying to kill you and sell you for parts.”
Julius shook his head. “It’s not like that.”
“Isn’t it?” Justin asked, stepping closer until he was looming over his brother. “You might be a sheep in wolf’s clothing, but never forget that, to the humans, you’re just another monster with a bounty on its head. We’re all monsters to them, and they will punish us for it every chance they get if we don’t give them a reason to run away. In this whole world, your clan is the only thing you can trust, so if I were you, I’d worry less about pleasing a bunch of short-lived mortals who will never accept you, and more about pleasing us.”
Julius longed to point out that he’d been trying and failing to please his family his whole life, but it wouldn’t do any good. Justin was already turning away.
“Thank you very much for your help tonight,” he said to his brother’s back. “I owe you.”
Those were heavy words between dragons, but Justin just shrugged. “I’ll add it to your tab.”
Julius had no doubt of that. From the moment he’d learned how to talk, Justin had been able to recite every debt he was owed and why. He could still do it, too, though it took him over an hour to get through the list these days. Every dragon in the Heartstriker clan seemed to owe Justin for something, but while he collected favors with a vengeance, Julius had never heard of him cashing any in. Some Heartstrikers, the ones who didn’t know Justin very well, though he was storing them up for some kind of massive power play in the future. Julius, however, was far more inclined to believe that his brother had simply never encountered a problem he didn’t think he could take all by himself with one arm tied behind his back.
He watched Justin haul himself up the now-dried metal ladder without a word. Since his brother didn’t even seem to be pretending at humanity anymore, it took him ten seconds to climb the thirty-foot wall and vanish into the pipe at the top. Fortunately, all of the mages were too busy cleaning up lampreys to notice. All of them, that was, except for the one who mattered.
“How did he do that?”
Julius looked over to see Marci standing a few feet behind him, staring up at the now-empty metal ladder with a look of pure wonder. It was the sort of thing that would take a very clever explanation to cover up. Unfortunately, the best his tired brain could do right now was, “Justin is special.”
Marci gave him an odd look, and for a moment, Julius could almost feel her adding up all the impossible things Justin had done. But as he braced for what seemed like inevitable disaster, Marci just turned away, shifting her wet bag higher on her shoulder. “Let’s get out of here.”
Julius nodded dumbly, following her over to the water where the shaman who’d been tasked with escorting them back to the surface was waiting. But as they were climbing into the repurposed canoe that would take them across the lake, Ross ran over and stopped them.
“Wait!” he called. “I wanted to give you this before you left.”
Before Julius could ask what, the alligator shaman pulled out his phone and gestured in the air. A second later, Julius’s own phone buzzed, and he pulled it out to see a new entry had been added to his contacts, fronted by a picture of a smiling Katya standing in the arms of an equally happy-looking Ross.
“That’s everything I’ve got,” the shaman said quietly. “Her most recent number and all her old ones, just in case. My info’s in there, too, so please call me if you find her or if there’s anything else I can do.”
The shaman’s change of heart was so surprising, even after such a long, strange night, Julius couldn’t stop himself from asking, “Why?”
Ross sighed, running a hand through his thick curling hair. “Because I’m really worried about her, and because you seem like a decent guy. She’s only been my girlfriend for a week, but she’s amazing, and if she’s in trouble, I want to help her. I told her as much all the time, but she just kept saying she didn’t want me to get involved. Now she’s gone, and I can’t help, so if you can, I don’t want to be the one who messed it up.” He blew out a worried breath. “Just promise you’ll let me know when you find her, okay?”
“I will,” Julius said, and he meant it. Because whatever his brother said, it wasn’t as simple as dragon versus human, clan versus the world. Whether Ross knew what Katya actually was or not, his concern for her was real, as was the trust he’d just shown, and Julius was determined to make good on it. Because when Katya’s shaman clapped him on the arm and waved goodbye, that warm, happy feeling from before had come back in spades. For the first time in years, maybe ever, Julius felt like he’d actually done something right, and greedy dragon that he was, he wanted more.
Once they’d crossed the underground lake, it was a short trip through the mage’s compound up to the surface. As Lark had described, Ross’s people did indeed have an amazing setup. In addition to the bomb shelter, they’d sealed up and converted almost a mile of old electrical tunnels, turning the dreary cement corridors into a lively warren of homes, casting rooms, and observation cages for an enormous variety of magical animals, most of which Julius couldn’t begin to name. He fully expected Marci to try and wheedle a more thorough tour out of their guide, but she didn’t say a word.
She’d been oddly silent for a while now, actually, but it wasn’t until they got into the brightly lit elevator that would take them back up to the street level that Julius saw why. Marci was exhausted. Her dark brown eyes had huge shadows beneath them, and her normally olive skin was an unhealthy grayish color. The combined effect made her look terrifyingly mortal, and Julius suddenly felt like a heel for pushing her so hard.
Her car was right where they’d left it, parked on the curb across from the warded “storm drain” that was actually the shaman’s front door. Since Marci was clearly in no shape to handle even an automated system, Julius volunteered to drive. She agreed after a token resistance, flopping into the passenger seat with an enormous yawn. By the time Julius had said goodbye to their guide and gotten in himself, she was asleep, curled up with her head tucked against the window.
The sight filled him with tenderness and surprise. Nothing, not even animals, fell asleep next to a dragon. If Justin had been here, he would have claimed this was just more proof that Julius was officially the saddest excuse for a predator to ever live. For Julius, though, it was a precious sign of trust, and the more he thought about that, the more determined he became to make sure it was not misplaced.
Moving slowly so as not to wake her, he keyed in their destination, sending the old car up the curving ramp to the brightly lit skyways. It was nearly three in the morning, but the Upper City was still hopping, and the elevated roads were crowded with sleek, driverless cars, some of which didn’t even have passengers. Since Marci’s ancient autodrive wasn’t as quick on the pick up as the newer models, Julius ordered them to the far right. When the rusty sedan was safely locked into the slow lane, he pulled out his phone to do a little business with his newfound wealth, starting with a message to an old acquaintance.
He had plenty of time. Traffic was moving at a decent pace, but unlike the grid roads of old Detroit, the upper city skyways looped and circled in on themselves in ways Julius, and apparently Marci’s GPS, didn’t really understand. As a result, it took them almost forty minutes to reach their destination. Marci woke up when they turned in, blinking sleepily as the car pulled to a gentle stop in front of an absolutely massive superscraper right on the bank of Lake St. Clare.
“The Royal Hotel?” she asked, craning her head back to look up the building’s cliff-like side. “Are you trying to spend all your money at once or something?”
“It’s not that expensive,” Julius said, getting out of the car.
Marci got out too, yawning as she walked around to the driver’s side. “Thanks for letting me nap,” she said, holding out her hand for the keys. “I guess I’ll get in touch with you later, then?”
“What are you talking about? You’re staying here, too.”
He paused, waiting for her to be excited, but Marci was staring at him like he’d just told her she was going to Mars. “You want me to go to a hotel with you?”
“Not like that,” he said quickly, face going hot. “I’m getting you your own room. My treat.”
Marci’s expression of frank disbelief morphed into one of cautious skepticism. “Why?”
“Because you’ve been invaluable to me tonight,” Julius said honestly. “And because the idea of sleeping in a bed while you go back to that cat graveyard you call a house is more than my conscience can stand. Just leave the car to the valet system and let’s go check in.”
Marci narrowed her eyes, clearly waiting for the trap. When it didn’t appear, Julius finally got the look he’d been waiting for: the beaming smile of pure delight. The sight warmed him right to his toes before Marci dashed away, tossing her trunk open and grabbing a fraying gym bag in a frantic explosion of energy. This plus her overpacked shoulder bag left her pathetically weighed down, so Julius, who had no bags, offered to carry something. After a short protest, she let him, handing him the gym bag with another smile that made him feel like the best thing on the planet.
This being a waterfront hotel, there was a real, old-fashioned check-in desk staffed by actual human clerks even at this hour of the morning. It was such an anachronistic sight, Julius was half tempted to ask them for a room just for the novelty factor. But despite her renewed energy, Marci looked worse than ever under the lobby’s elegant lights. Also, their filthy clothes were already drawing the hairy eyeball from the clerks, so Julius resigned himself to checking in the normal way: through the kiosk system via his phone’s AR.
By the time they walked across the marble floor to the elevators, he’d bought them two connecting rooms overlooking the water. He grabbed their key cards from the dispenser in the elevator on their way up. When the doors opened, he gently guided Marci down the hall. “I’m going to order some food,” he said as he handed her the key card to her suite. “What do you want?”
“Anything,” she said dreamily, opening the door and staring at the huge room with its sweeping view of the lake like she’d just opened the gate to fairy land.
He smiled and put her bag down beside her before walking one door down to his own room. As soon as he was inside, he pulled up the room service menu and ordered them breakfast. He also ordered himself a few things through the hotel’s automated concierge service, including a full set of new clothes. His had been on their last legs when his mother had burst into his room yesterday, but while they’d survived the fight with Bixby’s men and his dust-up with Chelsie, the trip through the sewers had completely done them in.
Fortunately, waterside hotels were famous for their ability to get anything in a hurry. The porter brought up a bag containing new jeans, underwear, and a fancy shirt made from a fabric Julius didn’t even recognize before their food could even arrive from the kitchen. The moment Julius was sure everything fit, his old clothes went straight into the trash, never to be spoken of again.
Thirty minutes later—showered, shaved, dressed in new clothes, and bearing the breakfast tray that had just arrived, as well as a special package that had come up with his other purchases—Julius knocked on the door that connected his room to Marci’s, opening it when she answered only to find an empty room. After a quick look around, he found her in the bathroom, cutting her hair in front of the huge mirror with the trimming scissors from the complementary shaving kit.
The gym bag she’d grabbed from her car must have been full of clothes, because she’d changed into a loose UNLV t-shirt and pajama bottoms so faded, Julius couldn’t make out the original design. He could, however, clearly make out the shape of her legs underneath, and he quickly looked away before she caught him staring.
“I’ll be done in a sec,” she said, wrenching her neck around to get at the hair on the back of her head. “I’ve been dying to straighten this mess out for days.”
Julius cleared his throat and walked over to put the tray down on the table by the window. “I hope you didn’t pay whoever gave you that haircut.”
“Trust me, this wasn’t my first choice,” Marci grumbled, carefully trimming the wispy trails of hair above her eyes into something like bangs. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to grow my hair out? But Bixby’s mage was using it as a material link to track me, so I had no choice. I chopped my ponytail off and used it as bait to lure his goons into my house. Then, when they went inside after me, bam!”
Julius arched an eyebrow. “Bam?”
“Blew them up,” she said fiercely, glowering into the mirror as she put down the scissors. “Trust me, it was better than they deserved for killing my dad.” She grabbed a brush next, running the stiff bristles through her now mostly even short-cropped hair. This went on for almost ten seconds before she realized what she’d just said.
“Oh, wow,” she whispered, going still. “I guess that counts as confessing to murder, doesn’t it?”
Julius put up his hands. “I’m not judging. If someone killed my parent, I’d do the same.” If anyone actually managed to take out Bethesda, getting blown up would look like a holiday compared to what the Heartstrikers would do.
Marci dropped the brush on the marble counter with a loud clatter and leaned forward, resting her head dejectedly against the mirror. “You know,” she said softly, “believe it or not, I was a nice girl before all this. Never blew up anything bigger than a car, never killed anyone or went spelunking in the sewers or got in alley fights. They say people come to the DFZ to reinvent themselves, but I think I’ve taken the idea a bit further than intended.”
“I think you’re doing great,” Julius said, grabbing the package he’d ordered for her off the breakfast tray. “Come over here, I got you something.”
She gave herself a final shake and pushed off the sink, padding over to the table by the window. When she came around the bed, he noticed that her feet were bare. They were also adorable, her toes painted with the same glitter polish that was chipping off her fingernails, creating little flashes of sparkle as she walked.
“What is it?”
Julius blinked, startled. “Sorry,” he said, quickly looking away. “Here.”
He handed her the cardboard box, which she ripped open with focused curiosity. But instead of being excited as he’d hoped, her face fell into a confused frown. “But Julius,” she said. “This is a…”
“A phone,” he finished for her, plucking the slim, purple rectangle out of her hand and turning it on. “Here, let me show you the best part.”
He flipped through the phone’s small AR, fumbling a bit with the unfamiliar interface. He’d already set this part up through his own phone, though, so even with the fumbling, it only took a few seconds to find and pull up her account and put it on the screen. When he handed the phone back, he was rewarded with the sight of Marci rendered completely speechless.
“You can change the security settings to whatever you want,” he said. “But as you see, it’s all there. That’s your half of this morning’s earnings plus your fee for the hours you’ve worked so far, full rate.”
Marci didn’t say a word. She just stood there, staring at the five-digit number that was her new bank account balance. “But,” she whispered at last, “How? This account’s in my name. You need a DFZ Residency ID to have a phone in the city. I never got one since Bixby could use it to track me, and it wasn’t like I had any money to put in it anyway, but this…How did you do this?”
“I used to play some pretty popular full-immersion MMOs,” Julius explained. “You meet a lot of people in games, some of whom make their living doing less than legal work. It just so happens one of my old guildmates works as a data merchant, and he was happy to sell me a fake Residency ID for you at a discount.”
Marci stared down at her phone again. “So this is fake?”
“The number is fake,” Julius said. “The money is real. As for the ID, my guy assures me it’ll pass any sort of routine check, though we probably shouldn’t do anything that might earn you a full background scan.”
He’d meant that last part as a joke, but Marci looked stricken. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“You earned the money,” he said with a shrug. “And I needed you to have a phone. Besides, I had to talk to this guy anyway since I’ve hired him to help us find Katya.”
He’d debated that move a lot, actually. Now that he had Katya’s number, he’d been tempted to just call her and try to work something out. After much back and forth, though, he’d concluded that contacting her would be a waste of time. She probably wouldn’t answer, and even if she did, a call out of the blue on a number she’d only trusted to a few people might cause her to bolt for good. But a good hacker like his guildmate could take a phone number and work backward to find the Residency ID and bank account it was attached to. And since phone enabled electronic transfers were used for everything from restaurants to car rentals, tracking Katya’s movements had just become no problem.
“He’s got a search going to for her ID right now,” Julius explained. “The moment she uses her phone to pay for anything, the tracking program will message us with the location, and then all we have to do is drive over and say hello.” And hope that Katya wasn’t so spooked she ran even from a sealed dragon. Still, Julius thought it was a pretty clever plan, and he was a little let down when Marci’s face remained frighteningly blank.
“So your friend did all of this for you just off a phone call?”
“Well, he’s not really my friend,” Julius admitted. “I don’t even know his real name, actually, but I was his healer in the game, and the bond between healer and tank runs deep. And it’s not like he’s working for free. I’m paying him like any other client would. He just did me a favor by moving me to the front of the line.”
Marci nodded, but Julius got the impression she wasn’t really listening. The whole time they’d been talking, she’d been staring at her phone with a closed-off expression he didn’t like at all. Clearly, it was time to break out the big guns.
“Here,” he said, sitting down at the table where he’d set the breakfast tray. “Come eat. I got you waffles.”
He lifted the silver tray covers with a flourish, revealing the beautifully arranged piles of sugar dusted Belgian waffles and fresh cut fruit. But when he looked up to see if he’d gotten a smile at last, Marci was still just staring at him, and then her bottom lip started to tremble. She turned away a second later, raising her hand to her face, but it wasn’t until her shoulders started to shake that Julius realized she was crying.
“What?” he cried, jumping up. “I’m sorry, what did I do? Do you not like waffles?”
“No, no,” Marci said. “Waffles are perfect, it’s…” She stopped and scrubbed furiously at her face. “I’m sorry, I’m not normally this emotional. It’s just, it’s been a really hard week for me, and you’re being really, really nice.”
Julius flinched instinctively at the word nice. Before he could hide it, though, Marci whirled back around to face him.
“I can’t accept this,” she said, holding out the phone. “The payment for my work is one thing, but the lamprey money and the phone and getting me an ID and the room and, and…” She trailed off, swiping at the tears that were still rolling down her cheeks. “Sorry,” she whispered in a shamed voice. “I don’t mean to be such a fountain, but I can’t tell you how nice it is to be clean and safe and not surrounded by cats or afraid the house is going to fall on my head. And I know you saved my life back in the sewer when you bounced that blue fireball. No one’s ever done that for me before—saved my life, I mean—but now you’ve done it twice in one night, and I don’t know how I can ever pay you back. I will, though, I swear, but I owe you so much already, and if I take this, I’ll—”
Julius’s hand landed on her shoulder, grabbing her so hard she jumped. He felt guilty immediately, but he couldn’t let her say another word. “Stop,” he said. “Please, just stop and listen. You don’t owe me anything. There is no debt between us.”
She blinked at him. “But…”
“I did this because I wanted to,” he said firmly. “Because we’re a team, and how are we supposed to work together if I can’t call you? As for the money, you earned it fair and square. You were the one who found the nest, and it was you who pointed out the lampreys had value. We wouldn’t have any money at all if you hadn’t been there, so I’m not accepting it back. If you don’t want it, you can throw it away, but you need to understand that we are even.”
Even as he said it, he knew he was being ridiculous. A human would never make such a big deal out of this, but Julius had spent his entire life watching dragons use debts as leverage to gain power over others. He’d been there numerous times himself, but always as the one on the bottom, the one being squeezed. Now, when he was finally in a position to be the indebted instead of the debtor, he wanted nothing to do with it. He’d told Justin he was through and he meant it. He didn’t even want to pretend to be a good dragon anymore, especially not if it meant holding money over Marci.
“You are my ally,” he said earnestly, filling the word with all the conviction he had so she would know just how rare such a thing was for him, and how much it meant. “Everything I do, I do because of that. Because I value your help and your company and because it makes me happy to see you happy. So please don’t ever think that you have to pay me back, because you don’t, and you never will.”
He could have said more. He could have gone on forever until he was positive she understood. But instead of being relieved by his reassurances, Marci looked like she was going to start crying again.
The sight sent Julius into a panic. His mind whirled frantically, searching for the right thing to say that would undo whatever he’d done to cause this. In the end, though, it didn’t matter, because Marci didn’t cry. She did something different, something completely unexpected.
She kissed him.