Nice Dragons Finish Last

Chapter 11

The bullet passed so close, Julius felt the heat of it on his back as he tackled Marci to the ground. They landed together in the overgrown grass hard enough to knock Marci’s breath out. He was moving again before she caught it, yanking her back toward the car. But just as he grabbed the edge of the driver’s seat to haul them both inside, a second gun barrel poked through the tangled wall of vines and bushes on the other side of the car.

The moment Julius saw it, instinct took over completely. He rolled without thinking, whirling with obviously inhuman speed as he dropped them back to the ground. Just in time, too. They’d barely hit the dirt before the next shot shattered the passenger window, cutting through the stuffing of the driver’s seat to lodge in the steel frame of the front wheel well not a half inch from Julius’s shoulder.

By this point, Marci had recovered from her shock enough to realize what was happening. The stifled whiff of the second silenced shot was still fading when she grabbed Julius’s hand and took off for the house, dragging him behind her as a third shot whizzed over their heads to blast a chunk off the sagging mansion’s brick foundation.

Marci jumped down the basement stairs and hit the ward on the rickety old door with both hands. The magic flashed, and then the basement door flew open as they both ran inside. As soon as they were over the threshold, the ward snapped back into place, covering the doorway in a glowing barrier while the door itself hung open, listing on its rusty hinges. Since the wood was half rotted anyway, Julius didn’t even bother kicking it shut. He simply spun to the side and slammed his back against the bare stretch of wall between the open door and the wardrobe in the corner. Marci followed suit, plastering herself against the house’s foundation as she gasped for breath.

“What is going on?” she panted.

“Not sure,” Julius said, arching his neck back in an attempt to look through one of the little ground-level windows that pierced the wall above them. “I think—”

What he thought was cut off by an explosion of gunfire. Apparently, whoever was attacking had completely given up on subtlety. Bullets began hitting the house like hail, shattering the window above their heads and shredding the basement door to splinters.

“I thought this place was warded!” Julius cried, pressing himself even tighter against the brick wall as bullets flew through the empty doorway to land in the piles of trash that filled the far end of the basement.

“Against living things!” Marci yelled back, covering her head with her arms. “Not bullets! Why would I ward against bullets?”

As though in answer, a second rain of shots came in from the side of the house, shattering the single ground-level window on their left. But while the bullets were quickly making powder of Marci’s couch and mini-fridge, nothing hit them, and Julius realized that they’d taken refuge in the one spot that wasn’t in line of sight for any of the basement windows. Before he could celebrate this fantastic stroke of good luck, though, someone outside yelled an order, and the gunfire stopped.

In the sudden silence, Julius could hear heavy shoes rustling through the undergrowth as their attackers checked the windows. One man even walked down to the door to push on the ward and got zapped for his trouble. Marci looked a little smug about that, but it didn’t last long, because while the ward kept the enemy out, it also kept the two of them in.

“Is there another exit?”

Marci nodded and pointed at the sea of trash that filled the non-warded half of the basement. “There’s a stairway up to the main house somewhere over there.”

Julius grimaced. Even if they could battle their way through all the debris, they’d expose their backs to the open door. Not a valid option. “What did you do to Bixby, anyway?” he grumbled, leaning out as far as he dared in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the driveway.

“Oh, no, this can’t be Bixby,” she said, shaking her head frantically. “I mean, yeah, he wants me dead, but there’s no way he’d send an army like this all the way to Det—”

“Novalli!”

Marci froze, her eyes going wider with stark, naked terror as the deep, booming voice bellowed her name. “Come on out, sweetheart,” the man continued. “We’ve got you surrounded, and this time we know you’re in there. Don’t make us torch the place.”

Marci threw her head back, squeezing her eyes shut as she mouthed a string of silent curses.

“Do you know that guy?”

“It’s Oslo. He’s Bixby’s freaking second. What is he doing up here?”

Julius had no idea, but at least that answered the Bixby question. “See if you can stall them,” he whispered, pulling out his phone.

“Why?” Marci whispered back. “What are you doing?”

“Calling the cops. They’ll run when they hear sirens.” And so would he and Marci, but she was already shaking her head.

“That won’t do any good. This is the DFZ, remember? The police are all contractors. Even if we paid their fees in advance, it would take a riot to get them to take a job this close to the Reclamation Zone.”

Julius rolled his eyes. Of course. Why should he expect anything else from this capitalist dystopia of a city? He supposed he could call Justin, but his brother would have to fly to get out here fast enough to save them, and there was no way anyone could miss a dragon flying over the DFZ during the day. With his brother out of the picture, though, Julius was rapidly running out of ideas, and Oslo seemed to be running out of patience.

“Last chance, Novalli!” Bixby’s second yelled. “The boss gave orders that you weren’t to be killed, but he didn’t say anything about you not being shot. We even brought along a medic, just in case. Of course, that means we can be as rough as we want and you’ll still pull through, and my boys and I are mighty pissed about having to come all this way on short notice. So if you want to keep your limbs intact, you should stop wasting my time and get out here now.”

The color had completely drained from Marci’s face by the time he finished, but her jaw was set as stubbornly as ever. “You’re pissed?” she shouted at the open door. “I’m pissed you idiots can’t take a hint and shove off! But feel free to keep yelling at my ward. I’ve already called the cops. We should be hearing helicopters any second!”

Julius stared questioningly at her, and Marci shrugged. “What? If you didn’t know, they might not either.”

Oslo, however, did not seem to take the threat the way it was intended, because his reply was, “Break it down.”

The order had barely finished when the glowing wall of Marci’s ward flashed bright as the sun. Marci gasped at the same time, doubling over like someone had just punched her in the gut. “They have a mage,” she whispered through clenched teeth when Julius reached out to steady her. “They’re going to brute force the ward.”

He grimaced. “How long have we got?”

“Don’t know,” she said, her face pained. “Whoever they hired has some serious weight behind him. Bastard must be pulling off a small fortune in magical materials.” Another blow landed, making Marci’s whole body clench so hard it took her several seconds before she could speak again. “If I keep holding it up like this, I’d say two, maybe three minutes?”

Julius shook his head. Even if he’d had a plan, three minutes wouldn’t be enough to pull it off. His eyes darted over the trash, looking for something he could use when the time came—a gun, a shovel, even a baseball bat would be better than nothing. He was debating the weapon potential of the rusty rake in the corner when he felt something soft and freezing cold brush against his leg.

He looked down with a start to see Ghost sitting beside him, twitching his semi-transparent tail back and forth across the glass-strewn cement floor. Considering their situation, the sight of a death spirit, even one for cats, was enough to thoroughly creep Julius out. Marci, however, looked delighted.

“Ghost!” she cried. “Perfect! Get out there and do your thing. Jump on them! Eat their souls!”

The transparent cat gave her a look of absolute disgust and started bathing its paw.

“Oh, come on,” she pleaded as another hit landed on her ward. “You’re my death spirit. Go be scary!” Ghost started washing his other paw, and Marci slumped against the wall, defeated. “I don’t get it. I thought bound spirits had to obey their masters.”

“Well, he is still a cat,” Julius pointed out. “‘Obey’ isn’t exactly in his vocabulary.” Still, Ghost’s appearance had given him an idea. He actually liked it less than the attack-gunmen-with-a-rake plan, but at least this one had a chance of actually working. “Marci,” he said quietly. “If you had a strong source of magic to pull off, could you beat these guys?”

“If you mean Ghost, it won’t work. Bound spirits are at equilibrium with their masters. He can pull on my magic just as hard as I pull on his, so the net return—”

“I’m not talking about Ghost,” Julius interrupted. When she gave him a funny look, he took a deep breath. “What if you used me?”

Marci’s face went blank in surprise. “You?”

Julius nodded grimly. This wasn’t how he’d wanted her to find out the truth, but he didn’t have much choice. If they didn’t do something, they were going to die in a hoarded cat house to a bunch of human thugs, and after everything he’d survived since being dumped in this city, that end was too pathetic to stomach. “Do it,” he said, putting out his hand just as Bixby’s mage hit her ward again, sending sparks flying. “Quickly.”

“No!” she cried, horrified. “I can’t do that!”

Now it was his turn to be surprised. “Why not? You pulled on those lampreys last night just fine.”

“Those were animals,” Marci said, her voice frantic. “Drawing off another human’s soul is blood magic! It’s the mage equivalent of cannibalism, and it’s illegal even in the DFZ. Also, that stuff taints you for life. My magic would be ruined forever!”

Considering they were in a life-or-death situation, Julius thought that sounded like an acceptable price. Since he wasn’t human, though, it was also an irrelevant one. “Marci,” he said gently. “It won’t be blood magic. Trust me.”

Her panic faded as she stared at his face, and then her expression shifted to something he couldn’t quite put a name on. Cracks were already appearing in her ward above them, but Julius didn’t try to rush her. It wasn’t like he could force her to take his magic, anyway. All he could do was sit and hope that the trust that had allowed her to fall asleep beside him was still there.

Finally, she raised her own hand until her fingers were hovering right above his outstretched palm, but she didn’t touch him yet. Instead, she looked at him again. Really looked at him, like she was searching his face for the final bit of evidence that would convince her this was the right decision. She must have found it, because a second later, her hand slammed into his, fingers wrapping around his palm like a clamp.

Julius relaxed his guard at once, opening his magic wide to let her in, and Marci jumped like she’d been electrocuted. Seconds later, her shock faded, and then her face broke into the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen. “I knew you weren’t human,” she whispered, her voice humming through him like it was his own.

“We’ll talk when we get out of this alive,” he replied, breathing deep as he adjusted to incredibly strange feeling of having someone else inside his magic.

Marci nodded, squeezing his hand even tighter. “Ready?”

He nodded, and then nearly fell over as Marci yanked his magic so hard he saw stars. Julius almost broke the connection after that, but stopped himself at the last moment, clutching her tighter instead. This had been his idea. He’d asked her to take a chance and trust him, and she had. Whatever happened, he couldn’t pull the rug out from under her now, so he breathed through the pain, keeping his magic steady as Marci pulled and pulled and pulled until she was shining bright as a spotlight.

That was all the warning he got before Marci’s ward exploded.

Aside from the time he’d spent with Marci, Julius hadn’t seen a lot of human mages at work. He had, however, seen enough magic to know when he was witnessing something amazing.

The dust from her exploding ward had barely settled when Marci walked away from the shelter of the basement wall and into the open doorway, pulling Julius behind her. She grew brighter with every step, her body saturated in a golden haze of magic so thick, she looked like she’d been dipped in sunlight. Even for a dragon, it was an awesome sight, though Julius would have appreciated it more if she hadn’t been sucking him dry in the process.

Her hand was still clamped around his like a vise, drinking his magic down with impossible strength. He hadn’t realized a human could take so much, though he should have known better than to underestimate Marci. But though he was quickly going lightheaded, he refused to cut off the power he’d offered her, especially since it seemed to be working.

Now that she’d pulled him to the open door, he was able to get his first real look at their attackers. From the amount of gunfire, he’d expected ten guys, maybe fifteen. What he saw was a small army.

Thirty men were crowded in the overgrown driveway behind the house. Still more had fanned out to the sides of the property. Their weapons were a mix of assault rifles and automatic pistols, and most of them were clearly muscle augmented, their dark suits straining over their technologically enhanced physiques. All of them had the hardened, seen-everything look of professional criminals. Or, they would have, if they weren’t all currently gaping like fish at Marci’s sudden and spectacular appearance.

Their shock lasted only a second, but for Bixby’s men, it was a second too long. As soon as she cleared the door, Marci’s arm flew up, her plastic bracelets vibrating wildly on her wrist as she pushed Julius’s power through. Attached to her as he was, he could actually feel his magic flowing through her spellwork, the raw power twisting and folding like paper into a new shape. It was wondrous and terrible, and he was still trying to make sense of it when a shimmering wall of super-heated air exploded from Marci’s fingertips and slammed into the men in front of them.

Her spell hit the thugs like a freight train, the modified microwave spell cooking their skin even as the explosively expanding hot air knocked them through the bushes and into the neighboring yard. The thunderous boom of her first attack was still echoing when Marci sent out the next, this time blasting the goons off her car. The old sedan was too heavy to be thrown by air pressure, but the heat of her attack blistered the fading paint on the driver’s side and cracked the half of the windshield that hadn’t been shot.

Marci didn’t seem to notice the damage. Even when the men on the side of the house recovered from their shock enough to start shooting again, she didn’t flinch, not even when a bullet grazed her cheek. She just kept going like a one-woman army, yanking power out of Julius as she launched wave after wave after wave, scorching the grass black and blasting everyone she saw until, at last, there was only one person left.

The moment Julius saw him, he understood why this human alone hadn’t been burned or thrown back. The young man standing in the middle of the cracked driveway was so covered in magic, Julius could smell it even over Marci’s. With so much blatant power, he didn’t need the blood trickling down the man’s face from Marci’s backlashed ward to know he was looking at Bixby’s mage. Marci knew it, too, and she yanked her hand back, muttering under her breath as a different bracelet began to vibrate.

The other mage responded by raising his own hands, which were encased in very expensive looking gloves worked all over with sparkling silver spellwork, and Julius felt a stab of panic. He would bet on Marci any day, but mage duels were famously deadly, often in horrific ways. He was trying to catch enough breath to suggest that Marci stand down before the situation got out of hand when she bared her teeth like an animal and pulled on Julius’s magic so hard he nearly blacked out.

If he hadn’t been fighting to stay conscious, the sight of the enemy mage’s cocky expression collapsing as he realized just how much power he was up against would have been comical. Marci was shining like a supernova now. The heat of the trapped power was so intense, smoke was starting to curl up from her bracelets, filling the air with the smell of burning plastic. But though she was holding enough magic to blow the whole place sky high, she didn’t release it. She just kept turning the power over on itself, folding and sharpening and honing the pressure until Julius’s ears were popping and the air itself felt tight.

The other mage was building something, too, but they never got to see what. He’d barely started pulling on the various magical sources Julius could feel in the pockets of his long vest when Marci threw her fist out like a punch, sending the ball of power she’d built through the pink bracelet containing the telekinetic choke she’d used back in the alley. But there was no choking now. Instead, Marci’s magic bit down like a bear trap, and the whole world seemed to shudder as the mage’s building power snapped.

The scream that split the air made Julius’s blood run cold, but with her choke spell going, the mage couldn’t fall until Marci let him. When she released him at last, he collapsed onto the driveway, clutching his silver gloved hands to his chest like they’d been broken. It was such a pathetic sight, Julius would have felt sorry for him, but that was impossible with Marci’s satisfaction coursing through him.

There was so much of her in him now, it was hard to tell where she ended and he began. He could actually feel the rush of joy and vengeance as she wrote the mage off and started looking for her next target. Considering what she’d been through, he didn’t actually begrudge her that, but when he felt her make the decision to pull more power off him in preparation to go hunt down the survivors, Julius knew it was time to end this.

Fast as he’d opened to let her in, he snapped his magic shut. If he’d ever bothered to train his power, he probably could have done it more elegantly, or kept Marci from taking so much in the first place. He hadn’t, though, so he had no choice but to cut her off cold.

She jerked when the connection collapsed, snatching her hand out of his as though she’d been burned. Without her support, Julius dropped like a stone, landing hard on his back in the grassy embankment beside the basement’s dug-out stairs.

“Julius!”

Marci was beside him in an instant, but though he could see her clearly, she sounded a million miles away. He didn’t have the presence of mind to listen in any case. He was too busy trying to breathe.

Now that he’d cut the connection, the emptiness she’d created when she’d sucked out his magic felt like a yawning cavern, and his whole body seemed to be collapsing into it, starting with his lungs. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get them to expand. But then, just when he thought he was going to black out for good, his lungs thundered back to life.

Breath exploded into his body so hard, he arched off the grass. He’d never tasted anything so sweet in his life as that first gulp of air, but the next burned like fire, sending him into a full body coughing fit.

He curled over in the grass, his body folding into itself as he tried to breathe through the coughing spasms. Finally, after what felt like ages, the attack passed, and he slumped into ground with a groan, twitching as he tried to find some part of his body that didn’t hurt to rest his weight on.

It was a hopeless quest. Between the magic and the coughing, he felt like he’d been run through an industrial crusher. It was all he could do to just lie still and keep breathing. But this was one of those times when being a dragon was actually a blessing. A human would have been motionless for hours after something like that, but Julius was able to roll over after just a few more deep breaths, grimacing through the pounding in his head as he looked around for Marci.

He found her a few feet away, staring down him with a look of absolute, horrified guilt. “Julius,” she whispered when he met her eyes. “I am so sorry. I am so, so, so sorry. I didn’t mean to take that much, I swear. I—”

She cut off when Julius raised his hand. After a second’s hesitation, she took it, helping him sit up. Now that his body had realized it wasn’t going to die, he was finally calming down enough to actually take in their surroundings. Or what was left of them.

Marci couldn’t have been pulling on him for more than a few minutes, but the area around the house was now completely empty. The only exception was the mage, who was still lying in a whimpering ball in front of Marci’s car. Julius could vaguely hear the moans of the other men from beyond the disaster area of broken bushes and shattered yard statues where Marci’s blasts had thrown them, but those who were still alive seemed more concerned with pulling themselves to safety than retaliating. By all accounts, it looked like Marci had just beaten Bixby’s force hands down, which was why Julius was so surprised when he heard the sound of a pistol cocking just a few feet away.

“Don’t move.”

Marci’s head snapped up at once, but it took Julius a few seconds to turn far enough to see a large, heavily augmented man with a bald head and a very nice, though now very dirty, gray suit step out from behind the trunk of Marci’s car. He must have used the vehicle for cover during the fight, Julius realized, which made him the only one of Bixby’s hirelings with the presence of mind to do something clever. But while that was unexpected and unlucky, what really caught Julius’s attention wasn’t the man’s unexpected survival or his gun; it was the golden ball he was clutching like a trophy in his left hand.

If Julius had had any lingering doubts, Marci’s horrified gasp would have ended them. The big man was holding the Kosmolabe, the priceless magical tool Marci carried in her bag at all times… the bag she’d left in the car when they’d run for the house.

“Put it down gently, Oslo,” Marci ordered, holding out her hands, though her fingers didn’t glow this time. A fact that didn’t escape Bixby’s second.

“You shouldn’t leave such valuable things lying around,” he said casually, tossing the Kosmolabe and catching it one-handed. “Anyone could just pick them up.”

He tossed it again, and Marci made a strangled sound. “You’re messing with things you don’t understand,” she warned. “That Kosmolabe is irreplaceable.”

“So I’ve been told,” Oslo said, tossing it again. “But I’m not in the antiquities business, and I’m getting mighty tired of chasing a ball like a dog.” He snatched the Kosmolabe out of the air as he finished, fingers curling menacingly over the thin glass as he leveled his gun at Marci with his other hand. “The only reason you’re not dead right now is because Bixby wants to do it himself, but just because I can’t kill you doesn’t mean you’re safe.” Before Julius could even wonder what that meant, Oslo turned the gun on him, aiming the barrel straight between his eyes. “Hands up, or pretty boy here says goodbye to his head.”

Marci’s hands shot up at once.

Julius followed more slowly and with far less obedience. He might be drained, beaten, and unable to stand, but that didn’t mean he was ready to roll over. He’d spent his whole life cowering before real monsters. This human didn’t even come close.

“I’m sorry you’ve had a bad day, Mr. Oslo,” he said calmly, resting his hands on top his head. “But if you’d asked nicely instead of opening fire, maybe we could have found an arrangement that didn’t end with your men getting toasted and scattered all over the block. I’m sure we can still come to a compromise, however, if you’d just explain what this is all about.”

“It’s about you about to get shot,” Oslo snarled. “I don’t know what kind of line she fed you, buddy, but your lady friend there is a thief. Mr. Bixby doesn’t take kindly to thieves. Novalli here is about to discover exactly what happens to bad girls who steal from us, but there’s no reason you have to suffer, too.”

Julius snorted. “You don’t think I’ll just abandon her.”

“That wasn’t what I had in mind,” Oslo said, tightening his finger on the trigger.

The soft click of metal made Julius go still. He hadn’t been taking Oslo’s threat seriously up to this point. He was only a human, and Julius had been shot before as part of his training. It hurt like all get out, but a single shot was almost never fatal for a dragon. As the concept of a bullet ripping through his skull shifted from threat to incoming reality, though, Julius suddenly realized he had nothing to defend with. He couldn’t change shape, and his magic was drained dry. He was a shadow of his true self, practically human, and humans got killed by bullets all the time. But just as it occurred to him that he should probably try to dodge, or at least keep the man talking until he could come up with a better plan, Oslo let out a blood-curdling scream.

The gun and the Kosmolabe both fell to the grass as Oslo’s hands flew up to grab at his neck where Ghost was hanging with his claws latched in the soft flesh beneath the large man’s jaw. Unfortunately for Oslo, there was nothing to grab. His hands passed right through the cat’s transparent body as Ghost’s talons sunk in deeper, cutting deep into his flesh without wound or blood. And then, with a silent hiss, Ghost’s head snapped forward, biting deep into the big man’s neck with his small, sharp, vividly white teeth.

As the bite landed, Oslo’s scream faded to an echo, like he’d fallen down a well. Seconds later, the sound vanished completely, and Bixby’s second pitched forward, landing face-first in the trampled grass. Ghost released him before they hit, nimbly climbing over the big man’s shoulder as he collapsed on the ground. When Oslo’s body relaxed into its final rest, Ghost was sitting on his back between his shoulder blades, lashing his tail and looking very pleased with himself. He also looked slightly bigger, Julius noticed with shiver. Bigger and more solid, his body shimmering brighter than ever under the hazy sunlight.

“I don’t think that was a good thing.”

“What are you talking about?” Marci cried, jumping up to grab the Kosmolabe. “That was a great thing.” She grabbed Ghost next, hugging his glowing body to her chest. “Who’s my good kitty?”

Ghost gave her a nonplussed look and dropped out of her hold, passing through her arms like his namesake to land again on the dead man’s back. He opened his mouth when he hit, showing his teeth in a silent yowl, and Julius heard a rustle behind them as the cats began to appear.

They poured out of the hoarded house like a furry tide, hopping down from the collapsing roof and running up the basement stairs and wiggling through the shot-up windows. They came out of the garden as well, appearing from the underbrush like they’d popped out of thin air. Within seconds, the driveway was carpeted with hundreds of sickly, bony cats of every color, all riveted on the dead body Ghost was lording over like an emperor. They covered the downed mage as well. The broken man barely had a chance to cry out before he was buried under the hungry, meowing wave.

The sight was horrific enough to push Julius to his feet. But when he tried to take a shaky step toward where Marci was still standing next to her spirit cat in the middle of the mass, Ghost’s head snapped, his pale, glowing eyes locking on Julius’s as a soft, purring voice whispered in his mind.

Ours.

Julius jerked liked he’d been punched.

Ghost sat up a little straighter, swishing his fluffy white tail back and forth over Oslo’s enormous body. Our kill, the voice whispered again. Our feast. Leave.

“Marci,” Julius said, slightly frantic. “I think we’d better go.”

“What?” She looked up from the Kosmolabe she’d been cuddling and wrinkled her nose at the cats. “Oh, right. Just let me get my stuff.”

Julius glanced at the shot up house. “I don’t think there’s anything left to get,” he said, hobbling forward to grab her arm. “And I think we need to leave now.”

He couldn’t even see the bodies anymore. The part of the backyard where the men had fallen was now a solid mass of cats with Ghost looming over them like a specter. Just the sound of their eating was enough to make Julius want to gag, and the revulsion gave him the strength he needed to pull Marci away, skirting the edge of the cat feeding frenzy until they reached her car.

The old sedan now sported several new bullet holes and a killer burn mark from bumper to bumper on the driver’s side. The heat spell had actually melted through the headlight’s plastic cover in places, and the seats were full of glass from where the windows had either cracked or been shot out. But while the windshield had a huge crack running across it and a perfect bullet hole in the upper right corner, it was still mostly intact. Even more miraculous, the engine started when Julius hit the ignition, and he let out a breath of relief.

“Drive,” he said, brushing the glass out of the driver’s seat before plopping Marci down.

“Come on, Julius,” she said as he circled around to the passenger side. “They’re just cats.”

“That was not just cats,” he snapped, barely pausing to sweep the broken glass out of his own seat before jumping in. “Go.”

She glanced back at the house. “But my—”

“Go, Marci.”

She heaved an enormous sigh, but she obeyed, gunning the engine manually and pulling them out onto the street past the waves of cats that were still arriving.

“Gone?”

Mr. Bixby stood in the corner of his office, hunched over his phone like a boy hiding contraband. “What do you mean they’re gone?”

“I mean your team got trashed!” the young man on the other end of the phone cried. “But boss, you never saw anything like this. She was tossing guys around like they were nothing. Everyone she hit’s got third degree burns or worse, and we’re the lucky ones who got away. Oslo’s just dead. I don’t know what happened to the mage, but—”

“Stop.”

The kid shut up at once, and Bixby used the opportunity to take a calming breath and reminded himself that young guns could be as hysterical as teenage girls when they got spooked, and hysterical kids tended to exaggerate. “Let me make sure I have this right,” he said, calmly now. “You’re telling me that Oslo, my mage, and all the men I sent up to Detroit were beaten by one girl? Is this really the story you want me to believe?”

“I swear it’s the truth,” the kid said. “But the girl ain’t alone anymore. She’s got some kind of other weird mage with her, and they were doing all kinds of I don’t know what. And then a bunch of cats appeared, and it was super creepy, so the rest of us turned tail and—”

“Enough,” Bixby growled, rubbing his hand over his face. “So Oslo’s dead, my mage is unaccounted for, and everyone else just ran?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said.

“And I suppose you want a medal for being the only one to report in?”

“Maybe not a medal, sir. But I wouldn’t be opposed to—”

Since the young man clearly had nothing else of value to add, Bixby hung up and called Oslo. When he got no response, he called his mage. Nothing. None of his field lieutenants were answering either, or his old hands. When he’d gone through his entire contact list without a single pick-up, he hurled his phone across the room with a curse, shattering the blown glass vase he’d won from his ex-wife in the divorce.

That made him curse louder still. He didn’t even like the ugly thing, but she had, and so he’d taken it as a trophy, a monument to the fact that he always won in the end. Now it was broken, and the symbolism was so fitting it made him want to punch someone.

Instead, Bixby glanced at the clock as he walked over to retrieve his phone from the glass-strewn carpet. As much as he didn’t want to, there was nothing else to do now but accept that the boy had been telling the truth. Still, Bixby wasn’t screwed yet. It was just after eleven in the morning in Vegas, which meant it was only one in Detroit and seven hours before his buyer was supposed to check in. Since Bixby’s seer always called two hours late, that gave him nine hours total to figure out a new battle plan for catching a girl with the devil’s own luck in a city that was two thousand miles away. It wasn’t impossible, just expensive and obnoxious, but at this point Bixby didn’t care about money. So long as got the Kosmolabe and the Novalli girl under his control before midnight tonight, and everything would be—

His phone buzzed in his hand, and Bixby looked down at once, praying to the god he only remembered at times like this that it was one of his men reporting in. When the AR popped up, though, it wasn’t a call at all. It was a message from the Unknown Caller.

Looks like you lose.

The words made Bixby want to throw his phone again, but he didn’t. He couldn’t. He wasn’t about to accept that his life was over because of something that happened on the other side of the country, and he wasn’t going to let this punk of a glorified fortune teller make him sweat.

“So fix it,” he snarled, typing the words so fast they would have been gibberish if his phone’s autocorrect hadn’t fixed them for him. “You see the future. Tell me what to do.”

I did, came the reply. You had a ninety-two percent chance of capturing the girl and my Kosmolabe this afternoon, but you couldn’t even manage that. I’m afraid your number’s up, Bixby.

No, he thought frantically. He was supposed to live. The whole reason he was doing this was because the damn seer had promised he would live.

He hadn’t even finished typing that when the seer’s reply flashed in the air.

I didn’t tell you you would live, it read. I told you you would die, and then I told you how to prevent it. That was the service I rendered in exchange for the Kosmolabe, which you have yet to deliver. Since I remain unpaid, I don’t see why I shouldn’t just leave you to your death.

“You were the one who told me to capture her,” he typed back. “If we’d done things my way and had her shot, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

There is no future I can see where you kill Marci Novalli and I get my Kosmolabe.

Bixby’s eyes went wide. “I thought you said there was no future where Novalli died and I lived!”

Whatever, the seer typed. You’re dead now, or good as. I don’t even know why I’m bothering to reply, really.

Bixby’s breaths began coming in short pants. Part of him, the skeptical businessman who survived by never taking anything at face value, was sure the seer was bluffing. Vegas was his town. There was no way he could die here, safe in his stronghold surrounded by security, because some idiot girl was alive and running around loose in Detroit. It was impossible.

But the rest of him, the man who wanted to live at all costs, refused to accept that logic. Everything the seer had predicted had seemed impossible, and yet it had all come true. He’d been doubling his empire for months now on impossible long shots. Did he really want to count on dodging the one that was aimed right at his head?

He was still going back and forth when the phone in his hand buzzed again, and a new message appeared in his AR, the letters glowing like cinders in the air.

I should just let you die. It would be a fitting end to your arrogance to let you kill yourself ignoring my advice, and I always did enjoy seeing mortals done in by their own pride. But I have seen my own future, and the only way I get my Kosmolabe is through you, so I have no choice but to keep helping you.

There was a short pause, and then the seer’s messages began arriving rapid fire. I have made arrangements that open up one last chance for you to save your life, it read. The odds for success are not as favorable as I usually prefer, but if you do nothing, it is absolutely certain you will die tonight. Therefore, if you ever want to see another sunrise, you will follow my instructions to the letter. No questions, no backtalk, and no deviations. Do we have an understanding?

Bixby took a long breath, fingers hovering over the virtual keyboard. He actually typed the word “No” before he erased it with a defeated sigh. “What do I have to do?”

The answer arrived almost before he hit reply. Give me unfettered access to all your accounts, contacts, and operatives. I’ll be running the show from here out, and if you want to survive, you’ll run along behind me like a good little dog.

Bixby’s eyes went wide. Oh, hell no. He didn’t care what was going to happen, he didn’t care if the Novalli girl was destined to draw and quarter him on the floor of his own office, there was no way he was going to give a stranger unfettered access to anything involving his businesses. Not a dime, not a contact, nothing. But when he went to tell the bastard exactly that, another message was already waiting.

Breaking our agreement so soon? I just said no backtalk. You must really want to die. Now send me everything you’ve got. Time is already ticking away, and you have very little left to waste.

Bixby closed his eyes with a string of curses that would have made his mother roll over in her grave if she’d been dead, the old bat. In the end, though, Bixby was a practical man. He knew when he was beaten. It took a while for his sense to beat back his pride, but eventually, he sent the seer everything. Two minutes after that, he received his reply.

I’ve secured you a place on the next low-orbit flight to Detroit, it read. Check in at Gate 5 in precisely eighteen minutes. Bring no luggage. When you find your seat, trade places with your neighbor on the left. Do not let him know your name and do not fall asleep. Further instructions will be waiting upon your arrival.

The list of instructions sent him into a rage all over again, but he didn’t bother trying to argue. He just grabbed his coat and marched out the door, cursing seers and phones and planes and mages and Kosmolabes and everything else he could think of as he made his way down to the garage where his car was already waiting to take him to the airport.