Nice Dragons Finish Last

Chapter 14

All he saw was smoke.

Huge, billowing clouds of black smoke poured off the front end of the enormous van currently stuck catty-corner through the back of Marci’s car. He couldn’t even see the driver between the smoke and the dark and the van’s heavily tinted windows, so he stopped trying, running instead toward Katya’s car. Or, rather, the place where her car was supposed to be.

Julius skidded to a stop, staring at the empty street in utter confusion. She’d been right there, right behind them, but now there was nothing. Just Marci’s sedan and the giant, smoking van, which was already roaring back to life.

The smoke pouring out from under its hood must have been from something non-vital, because a second after the engine gunned, the van rushed straight at him. If Julius had been human, he would’ve been run down. As it was, he managed to jump out of the way just in time, dodging the van by inches as it shoved Marci’s car out of the way like the old sedan was made of cardboard and surged down the empty street.

By the time it occurred to Julius that he should do something to stop it, or at least look for identifying marks, the armored van was already flying through the abandoned intersection ahead of them, tires squealing as it took the turn on two wheels and vanished around the corner.

He didn’t even try to chase it. Even with his speed, there was no way he could run down a van over a long chase. He had more important things to do at the moment in any case, so he put the van he couldn’t possibly catch out of his mind and shifted his focus to finding Katya.

This proved more difficult than he’d expected. They were only a few blocks away from the diner, which meant they were directly under the heavy shadow of the towering monolith of the support beam that had cut this area off from the rest of the city. Still, it wasn’t so dark he shouldn’t be able to find a car. But everywhere he looked, the road was deserted. He was almost ready to believe she’d vanished into thin air when he spotted the huge hole in the condemned building across the street.

Now that he’d seen it, Julius didn’t know how he could have missed it. The old storefront on the ground floor was smashed in like it had taken a direct hit from a wrecking ball. Smoke and dust were still pouring out of the breach, but through the thick clouds, he could just make out a pair of dimly flickering headlights.

Julius didn’t waste another second. He ran for the wrecked building, vaulting through one of the broken windows to land inside what must have once been a retail sales floor. Now that he was inside, he spotted Katya’s car at once. He also realized why he hadn’t been able to find it earlier. The impact had thrown the little blue coupe clear through the building, taking out a line of old sales counters and at least one support beam in the process. It was now lying against the far wall of the building, but it wasn’t until he got past the wreckage of the old registers that Julius realized the blue sports car was actually lying upside down.

The sight was enough to turn what was left of his stomach into an icy ball. Just as he was starting to fear the worst, though, he saw movement in the wreckage, and relief hit him like a punch in the gut.

“Katya!” he yelled, tripping over his feet in his rush to run forward.

No answer.

Panic returned immediately, and not just because of the silence. Julius was halfway through the building now, close enough to see that the movement he’d spotted was not actually in the car, but beside it. Three large, man-shaped shadows were running down the back wall of the building toward the old emergency exit where an armored van—a second armored van that looked exactly like the one that had just crashed into Marci’s car—was waiting for them in the back alley.

By this point, Julius was running full tilt through the debris, but he still wasn’t fast enough. By the time he reached the emergency door, the men had tossed themselves and Katya’s unconscious body into the back of the van. It lurched forward the moment their feet left the ground, roaring down the alley and around the corner into the street beyond. He ran after them on principle, but the van was already gone, vanished into the dark, decaying grid of old Detroit.

“Julius!”

He glanced over his shoulder to see Marci running up behind him. Or, rather, he assumed it was Marci. The alley was so dark, he wouldn’t actually have been able to tell it was her if she hadn’t called his name.

“I heard another car,” she panted when she reached him. “Did they get away?”

He nodded before he remembered she couldn’t see him. “Yes. They got Katya, too.”

“What?”

“It was a trap,” Julius said, hands shaking. “A setup. They were waiting for us.”

He could almost hear Marci staring at him, and then she let out her breath in a huff.

“Oh come on,” she said. “I mean, that doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way someone could have known we’d be driving this direction in time to set something like this up. I didn’t even know we’d be driving through here until a few minutes ago. And even if they did somehow psychically know where we’d be before we did, there’s no way they could have set up a situation this specific. I mean, lining up a van to hit a car at just the right angle to throw it through a building on the other side of the street where another team is waiting to grab the driver and make a getaway? I don’t care if you had a year to plan, there’s not enough luck in the world to pull off a stunt that. It’s a miracle they didn’t kill her.” She stopped short, breath hitching, “Um, they didn’t kill her, right?”

“No.” Katya hadn’t been moving, but she’d clearly been all in one piece, and it took more than a car wreck to kill a dragon her age. Julius was far more worried about the rest of what Marci had said, because she was absolutely right. There wasn’t enough luck in the world, because it wasn’t luck at all. This was the work of a seer.

The moment that thought crossed his mind, everything else fell into place: Bob’s sudden interest in his life, the perfectly timed text with Katya’s location, his appearance to Marci just minutes earlier. This was his eldest brother’s doing. It had to be. The only way anyone could make something like this work was if they had knowledge of the future, but when you added a seer into the mix, everything became perfectly clear. Everything, that was, except why.

Julius closed his eyes. It was so dark in the alley this hardly made a difference, but it still helped him think, and he’d never needed to think faster than he did right now. Katya was the youngest daughter of their clan’s greatest enemy. What had just happened wasn’t technically his fault, but if he didn’t find Katya before Svena discovered she’d been taken, the White Witch of the Three Sisters wasn’t going to sit patiently and listen to explanations. She was going to blame him, and then probably kill him, which would start a clan war for sure. It didn’t matter that his mother considered Julius the least of her hatchlings—no one killed a Heartstriker except Bethesda and Chelsie. Bob knew that, so why would he put Julius in this position? Surely even he wasn’t crazy enough to involve a clan as powerful as the Three Sisters in his schemes, right?

Julius scrubbed his hands through his hair, sending a rain of dust spattering across his shoulders. Trying to figure out seer logic was a quick route to madness. For all he knew, Bob was having tea with Katya in the back of that van right now. But while he had no idea what was really going on, or why, one truth was crystal clear. “We have to get her back,” he said grimly. “Tonight.”

Marci nodded and turned around, her steps picking up as she starting back down the alley. “Let’s get going, then.”

Thanks to Katya’s headlights, it was much brighter inside the crumbling building than it had been out in the alley now that the dust had settled. Marci was already on her hands and knees beside the upside-down car by the time Julius came in, her head stuck through the shattered driver’s window.

It was the only place she could have stuck her head in, Julius realized with a lurch. The passenger side of Katya’s car was completely crushed where the van had struck it, leaving the roof of the upside down car strewn with glass and the tattered remains of the deflated airbags. Only the driver’s side was still intact, though there was a bloody dent on the dash where Katya must have knocked herself unconscious. The driver’s side seatbelt was still neatly in its place, clearly unused, which only made Julius even more certain that his brother had been behind this.

That thought made him angry all over again. He didn’t want to scare Marci, though, so he took a deep, calming breath. Unfortunately, this actually made things worse.

Now that the initial rush of panic had faded, the smell of the wreck was overwhelming. The stench of burning rubber and plastic mixed with the reek of fresh blood was nauseating. There was quite a lot of blood, actually, which was strange. Other than the splatter on the dash, he hadn’t though Katya was so injured. It smelled odd, too, not like dragon blood at all. It wasn’t until Marci ducked back out of the shattered window, though, that he realized the truth.

Marci’s shirt was soaked in blood. There was so much, he thought she must have been stabbed at first. On the second look, he saw the blood was actually coming from her neck, not that that was any better. “Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

He didn’t realize how sharp his voice was until she winced. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she said, but Julius was already reaching for her. When he examined her neck, though, he saw she was right.

Though the bloody stain down the front of her shirt had made it look like she was dying, the cut on Marci’s neck wasn’t actually that deep. It was more long than anything else, a shallow slice that ran from just below her right ear down to the soft skin covering her trachea. Minor as it was, the cut had still bled like a faucet, which accounted for her horror-movie appearance. But while her face looked deathly pale in the glare of Katya’s halogen headlights, she was clearly alive and functional, a fact that helped Julius drag his panic back down to a more or less functional level.

“How did this happen?” he said, tearing a strip off the bottom of his shirt. “You seemed fine before.”

“I am fine,” she protested, wincing as he pressed the cloth against her wound. “I keep telling you, it’s just a cut. I didn’t even know I was bleeding until I noticed my shirt was wet. Really, though, I’m okay. It doesn’t even hurt that much.”

She clearly meant this to make him feel better, but Julius barely heard it. Now that he’d seen her wound, all he could think about was how close she’d come to having her throat cut. If the slice had been just a little deeper, or a bit farther to the left, it would have gone through her windpipe. A few centimeters’ difference, that was all it would have taken, and Marci wouldn’t be here complaining about his fussing. She would be dead.

His body began to shake, though whether it from was fear or anger, Julius couldn’t say. He tried to keep calm by focusing on the rise and fall of Marci’s breath under his fingers, the undeniable proof that the worst hadn’t happened, but it didn’t work. No matter how hard he tried to ignore it, Julius couldn’t shake the feeling that, unlike the rest of this ridiculous situation, Marci’s survival had been luck. She was only human, and to dragons, human meant disposable. Bob probably hadn’t even considered her a factor. Her death would have been a throwaway, a meaningless detail in the larger draconic scheme, and that made him angriest of all.

“Julius?”

He blinked and glanced up to see Marci watching him with a worried frown. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he grumbled. “You’re the one who’s hurt.”

“It’s really not that bad. I was going to bandage it up, but I wanted to secure a material link before the trail got too cold. See?”

She held up her hand, and Julius saw three of Katya’s gleaming, white-gold hairs pinched between her fingers. That was what she’d been doing inside the wrecked car, he realized. She must have pulled them off the headrest.

“I can’t claim to be an expert tracker,” she said, winding the long hairs around her fingers. “But any idiot can follow a trail this hot. Unless that van is warded, this should be more than enough to take us right to her, especially since she’s a dragon. Not that I’ve tracked dragons before, of course, but you guys are so magical I could probably follow you from space.”

Julius froze. “You knew Katya was a dragon?”

Marci gave him an oh, come on look. “It was kind of obvious. Humans don’t look like that.”

“Like what?” Because he’d thought Katya had looked remarkably undraconic.

She ducked her head, and he was relieved to see a bit of color come back to her cheeks. “Never mind. Just let me go so I can start on the tracing spell.”

Julius stilled her with a firm push. “Not until I’m done.”

Marci froze, but it wasn’t until he saw how wide her eyes had gotten that he realized he was growling deep in his throat. He stopped at once, keeping his attention on his work as he carefully wiped the blood from Marci’s neck. Still, it was hard to keep his hands steady. He was just so angry, angrier than he could ever remember being, and he didn’t know how to handle it. But there was nothing he could do while Marci was bleeding, so he poured himself into the present, tearing off another piece of his shirt to bandage the cut. He was trying to think of the quickest way to get her to a real, sterile bandage when he heard the faint rumble of a car on the road outside.

He stilled, bracing for fight or flight. Since it was unlikely their enemy would be returning to the scene of the crime so soon, he was betting on flight. This might be a nearly abandoned section of a terrible neighborhood in the Underground, but the wreck had been loud. That sort of thing was sure to draw human attention. Not cops, of course, this was still the DFZ, but nosy humans of any sort were the last thing Julius wanted, and when he saw an ancient Crown Victoria drift to a stop behind Marci’s totaled sedan, he knew it was time to go.

“Do you need anything from your car?”

Marci stared at him like he was stupid. “Of course I need the stuff in my car. Do you have any idea how expensive casting markers are?”

“I’ll buy you new ones,” he said, grabbing her arm. “Come on, we have to—”

The blare of a horn cut him off. In the street, the Crown Victoria’s driver was beeping out a Shave and a Haircut pattern, and Julius’s poor stomach clenched again. He turned around, watching in stunned silence as the antique car’s tinted window rolled down to reveal the smiling, too-handsome face he really should have been expecting all along.

“Hello, little brother! I had an inkling you could use a ride.”

When Julius didn’t answer, Bob climbed out of the car. “What? No hello for the loving brother who came all this way just to offer his assistance?”

He was never able to say later what part of that had been the last straw. He couldn’t even explain his thought process, most likely because he hadn’t been thinking at all. He was furious and frightened and the smell of Marci’s blood was all over him. Bob, on the other hand, was standing there grinning like this was all a hilarious joke, and something inside Julius just snapped.

Before he knew he was moving, before he realized he’d even made the decision, Julius was standing right in front of his brother with his hands fisted in the seer’s midnight blue jacket. “You,” he snarled. “I know you did this!”

Bob didn’t answer, just stared down at his little brother with his all-knowing green eyes, and in the silence, the magnitude of what he’d just done hit Julius in a rush. He’d grabbed his brother, his eldest brother, a dragon nearly forty times his age who could swat him like a fly.

This dawning realization must have been plain on his face, because Bob’s lips pulled into a smug smile. “Ah, there it is,” he whispered. “There’s the fear. I was beginning to worry I’d lost my touch.”

By this point, Julius’s hands were shaking so badly he could barely grip, but he still didn’t let go of his brother’s coat. He was in for it now, he reasoned. The hammer of retribution was going to fall no matter what, so he might as well speak his piece.

“I don’t know why you did this,” he said. “I don’t know what you think you’re going to gain from using me or stirring up trouble between the clans, but whatever convoluted mess of a game you’re playing, you had no right to drag others into it.”

“Others?” Bob’s bright green eyes narrowed to dangerous slits. “How interesting. Why don’t I believe you’re talking about the tragically kidnapped Katya?”

His narrowed gaze slid pointedly over Julius’s shoulder to where Marci was standing across the street, but he needn’t have bothered with the dramatics. Julius knew perfectly well that he’d revealed his hand, he just was too angry to care. “Marci is not your pawn,” he growled. “I can’t stop you from using me, but you leave her out of this or I swear I’ll do everything in my power to wreck any of your plans I can reach.”

As threats went, it was a pretty weak one. For all Julius knew, that was exactly the response Bob wanted. It was the only retaliation he had, though, and at that moment, Julius fully intended to follow through however he could. But his brother was looking at him strangely, sagging against his hold in a way that forced Julius to support his weight as the silence stretched thinner and thinner.

Julius’s nervousness stretched with it. The longer his brother went without answering, the more certain Julius was that those rash words would be his last. But then, after almost thirty seconds of horrible, empty quiet, Bob’s face broke into a wide smile.

“I think that little speech might just be the most draconic thing that’s ever left your mouth,” he said, easily breaking out of Julius’s hold. “Territoriality, possessiveness, aggression, threats of reprisal…” He shook his head in wonder. “Why, baby Julius, could you be growing into your fangs at last?”

Julius had no idea how to respond to that, or how to react when Bob reached down to slap him on the back.

“Don’t get your feathers in a fluff,” he chided. “I’m here to help! I can’t let you have all the fun, can I?”

Julius gaped at him. “What’s fun about almost dying?”

“But that’s the best sort of fun,” Bob replied. “The kind you can look back on centuries later and laugh about. Of course, since I’m always centuries ahead, I can laugh about it right now.”

And then he did, loudly.

Julius watched with growing apprehension, reminding himself not to read too much into Bob’s antics. Seers were famously mad, after all, and he’d always suspected Bob had a bit more fun with that than he really should. Since his brother showed no signs of pulling himself together anytime soon, he looked around for Marci instead, spotting her poking through the ruins of her car. He was about to go help her when Bob’s arm suddenly wrapped around his shoulders.

“Don’t bother her yet,” he warned, his laughter gone as quickly as it had come. “She’s about to get a phone call.”

Julius attempted to tug out of Bob’s grip only to find that he couldn’t. “What phone call?”

The words were barely out of his mouth when a jangly electronic tune rang out across the street. Marci jumped at the sound, her hands flying for her shoulder bag, which had never left her shoulder and had gotten rather bloody as a result. She fumbled with one of the wet front pouches before pulling out the phone he’d given her. Rather than answer, though, she looked at Julius. “Should I take it? No one has this number.”

“That’s never stopped me,” Bob said before Julius could open his mouth. “Just answer it already. The suspense is almost as obnoxious as your ringtone.”

Marci shot Bob a surprisingly nasty look, but she touched the screen to accept the call all the same, putting it on speaker. It wasn’t much of a speaker since Julius had been forced to get her one of the cheaper models, but the result was still plenty loud enough for dragons to hear from several feet away.

“I’ve got your girl.”

Julius had never heard that deep, angry voice before, but Marci clearly had, because her whole face flushed with rage. “Bixby,” she spat.

“Hello, Miss Novalli,” Bixby crooned. “Long time no see.”

If Marci had been a dragon, Julius would have expected her to start breathing smoke at this point. “What do you want?”

“You know exactly what I want,” Bixby said, his voice so smug Julius could actually hear the sneer that must have been on his face. “I want my property, and you’re going to bring it to me. And before you get any ideas, let me say right off that I know exactly what sort of company you’re keeping these days, so if you don’t want the Lady of the Lakes to add a pretty blond dragon head to her collection, you’ll shut up and do exactly what I say.”

There was a pause while Bixby waited for Marci to protest. When she didn’t, he continued.

“In one hour, I’m going to send you an address. You come alone with the Kosmolabe, and I’ll let your little friend slither off none the worse for wear. You don’t show, or you decide to bring along that new boyfriend I hear you’ve picked up, and we’ll toss Sleeping Beauty into the lake faster than you can say ‘I miss my daddy.’”

The sound that came out of Marci when he said that last part was closest thing to a growl Julius had ever heard from a human. Bixby must have heard it too, because he sounded smugger than ever. “Good to know we have an understanding. See you in an hour.”

The call had barely cut off before Marci grabbed the screen like she was going to crush it between her palms. “That, that, ooooh.”

Julius swooped in just in time to rescue her phone. He plucked it out of her straining hands and hit the icon to trace the number. Naturally, the results came back blank, and Julius made a mental note to talk to his hacker about putting real tracing programs on their phones, because he was getting mighty sick of this Unknown Caller nonsense. He huffed in annoyance and turned to hand the phone back to Marci only to find her staring at him, her face stricken.

“Julius,” she said, voice shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry. This is all my fault. I never meant to get you involved in my drama, and now I’ve messed everything up. You were right, I should have left that stupid golden softball in the desert. I—”

Julius put a hand on her shoulder. With gentle but firm pressure, he steered her farther down the street, away from his brother. Real privacy was impossible when a seer was involved, of course, but that didn’t mean he wanted a live audience for this.

“Marci,” he said when they were more or less alone. “You have nothing to apologize for. This trap was not your fault, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to get my hands on Bixby.”

She shook her head. “But—”

“But nothing,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “We’re going to handle this together. You help me, I help you. That’s what makes us a team, right?”

She stared at him for a long time after that, biting her lip in a way that made him worried she was going to cry again. Thankfully, she didn’t, but he could hear her heart in her throat when she whispered, “Thank you.”

“No thanks needed,” Julius said, but he coveted her words all the same, hoarding them in his memory like precious stones. If she kept this up, it was going to take more fingers than he had to count all the times someone had thanked him and meant it. He liked that idea very much indeed, and he couldn’t keep the smile off his face as they walked back to her car to salvage what was left of her stuff.

Sadly, it didn’t take long. The wreck had crushed her trunk, destroying everything breakable and burying everything that wasn’t inside a twisted mass of metal. Ghost, being non-corporeal, was the only survivor, if a death spirit could be said to have survived anything. He seemed to be giving Marci a piece of his mind, though, so Julius left her arguing with her cat and returned to Bob, who was watching from the hood of his car like this was the best show ever.

He smiled as Julius approached, patting the spot beside him on the freshly waxed hood, which his weight was already denting. Julius ignored the invitation and leaned on the bumper instead. “So how long have you been playing Bixby?”

Bob’s eyes widened, and then his hands flew up to grip to his chest like he was having a heart attack.

“What?” Julius cried. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Bob said, dropping his hands. “It’s just the shock of seeing you acting so stern and dragon-esque. If I’d known getting you kicked out of the mountain would have such immediate positive returns, I’d have told Mother to do it years ago.” He paused. “Oh wait, I did know! Must have been a timing thing. That’s the problem with being all-knowing but not all-remembering. After a while, you just can’t keep up.” He frowned and started fumbling with his pockets. “I really should start leaving myself notes.”

He did leave himself notes. They were hidden all over the mountain, sometimes for years. Finding them was a favorite game for young Heartstrikers, but Julius had no time or patience for his brother’s antics right now. “Wait a second. You’re the reason I was sealed?”

Bob rolled his eyes. “As I pointed out to your human earlier, the seal was Mother’s idea. She’d been fretting over who to use as a scapegoat for this Ian situation for months. I merely gave her a nudge in your direction.”

“A nudge?” Julius repeated, his anger coming back in a rush. “You nudged me right out of my home!”

“Don’t act all put out,” Bob said. “This little jaunt to the DFZ has been the best thing that’s ever happened to you. You were miserable hiding in your room, and it made me miserable to look at you. At least now you’re actually living up to your potential.”

Julius opened his mouth to argue, but he closed it just as fast, because Bob was right. The last few days had been terrifying and painful, but also completely life-changing. Just because he was enjoying the results didn’t mean he approved of his brother’s methods, though, and he shoved his hands into his pockets with a surly harrumph. “Well, you could have gone about it in a nicer way, or at least a less dangerous one. Last I checked, a car wreck didn’t count as a nudge.”

“Oh, Julius,” Bob said sweetly. “You’re all the nice we’ve got. And as much as it pains me to admit, you’re giving me a shade too much credit in all this. This Bixby person is indeed a pawn, he’s just not mine.”

The confession came so quickly that Julius, who was still stewing over the fact that he’d actually benefited from Bob’s meddling, robbing him of his right to be upset, almost missed it. “Wait, what?”

“I didn’t arrange this little incident.”

“But it had to be you,” Julius said before he could think better of it. “There’s no way this could have happened without a seer.”

Bob rolled his eyes. “I never said a seer wasn’t involved, only that it wasn’t me. If I was going to nab your dragoness out from under you, I’d find a classier way to do it. Being hit by a car is so pedestrian.”

Julius winced as his brother broke into hysterical laughter at his own terrible pun. In a way, though, the break was good, because he needed to think. Bob’s claim that he wasn’t behind this was a huge relief, if it was true. He didn’t think his brother was lying, though, because the idea of Bob kidnapping Katya so Bixby could use her to get the Kosmolabe when Marci had it in her possession not ten feet away just didn’t make any sense, even for Bob. But if the Heartstriker’s seer wasn’t behind this, who was?

“That’s a good question.”

Bob’s laughter cut off like a switch. He was now sitting perfectly still on the hood of his car with his legs crossed in lotus position, studying Julius with a serene expression. “Your face is very transparent,” he explained. “Tell me, Julius, how many seers do you think are alive in the world right now?”

Before Julius could even open his mouth, Bob broke into a grin. “Trick question! The answer is three. There are always three, and only three, seers in existence at any given point. At this moment, the roster includes myself, Estella the Northern Star, and the Black Reach.”

Julius shuddered at that last name. The Black Reach was a legend from the Golden Age of dragons, that mythical time a thousand years before the disappearance of magic when power had been plentiful and great dragons had flown freely. He hadn’t known the old menace was still alive, or a seer, though the latter would explain the former nicely. Still, “I thought the Black Reach lived in China.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Bob said with a shrug. “The Black Reach doesn’t have to be in the same hemisphere to meddle in your affairs. He didn’t get his name for having unusually long arms, you know. But while the Black Reach certainly could have arranged this particular act of automotive tragedy, I don’t believe he would. Far too unsubtle. This is lazy seer tinkering, real last-minute stuff. The Black Reach would never stoop to such sloppiness.”

Julius shook his head. “But if he didn’t do it, and you didn’t do it, that only leaves Estella, which doesn’t make any sense. She’s the acting clan head of the Three Sisters, isn’t she?”

“Indeed.”

“So why would she do this?” Because even by dragon standards, arranging to have your little sister hit by a car and kidnapped by humans was a bit much.

Bob sighed. “Oh Julius, not all clans value family as highly as the Heartstrikers.”

He grimaced at the thought. “So what’s Estella up to, then?”

His brother lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug. “I have no idea. I can’t see a thing. This is why seers normally stay away from each other. We block each other’s sight. It’s highly annoying, which is why I’ve been blocking Estella’s at every opportunity.”

Julius gaped at him. “So you’ve just been antagonizing her?”

“You make it sound like a bad thing,” Bob said. “Come now. I know you’ve spent most of your adult life hiding in a cave, but even you must be aware that our clan’s not winning many popularity contests at the moment. Mother stepped on quite a few scaly toes in her rush to the top, including Estella’s, and the Northern Star never could learn not to take things personally. She’d eat our whole clan for breakfast if she ever got the chance, and part of my job is to make sure she doesn’t. Now pay attention, this next bit is important.”

Julius nodded, and Bob slid off his car to pace in front of it, his hands moving dramatically as he spoke. “For reasons I haven’t figured out yet, Estella is using this Bixby fellow to go after your charming pet mage and her Cosmopolitan.”

“Kosmolabe,” Julius said.

Bob dismissed the correction with a flick of his wrist. “Whatever. I’m not even sure if the Kosmo-thing is her endgame or just another step, but it warms my heart to keep her from getting it. That’s half of why I’m here: interference. If Estella’s taking a personal hand in this, it must be very important, and making sure Estella’s important plans fall through is one of life’s little joys.”

He pressed a hand to his heart with a satisfied sigh, but Julius was more confused than ever. “Only half? What’s the other part?”

“You, of course.”

Julius blinked in surprise, and Bob rolled his eyes. “Please. I know your little human told you about our delightful conversation. This is a test, by me, for you. Though I have to admit it’s a much better one now that Estella’s come into the game. I never would have thought to wreck your car.”

Julius was sure he’d regret asking, but this was already the longest conversation he’d ever had with his eldest brother, and he wasn’t about to waste what might be his only opportunity. “What are you testing me for?”

“Ah, ah, ah,” Bob said, wagging his finger. “If I told you that, it wouldn’t be much of a test, would it? Let’s just say I learned the hard way to always stress test my tools before I use them. Now, go help your human. It seems my lady love has finally woken up, and I need to get her opinion on a few matters before we begin.”

He tipped his head toward the Crown Victoria, and Julius looked back to see Bob’s pigeon perched on the giant steering wheel, her beady eyes blinking as if she had, indeed, just woken up. Bob walked over to the driver’s door and leaned through the open window to drop a loving kiss on top of the pigeon’s head. It fluttered happily in reply, cooing rapidly. Bob cooed back, face beaming, and Julius quickly turned away, walking over to join Marci before he saw something that ruined the last remaining vestige of hope he maintained for his brother’s sanity.