“Well,” she said when she’d finished, her voice scalding. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
Historically, those words were the cue for him to clam up in terror. Woozy as he was from the blast and everything else, though, Julius rolled with the first thing that came to him. “Only that I’m very sorry. I never dreamed you’d be able to feel such weak magic from so far away, but I should have known better than to underestimate your incredible powers of perception. I’m grateful for your mercy in allowing me to survive and learn from the experience so that I may never make such a stupid mistake ever again.”
That was the biggest line he’d ever fed his mother. Even Justin looked taken aback. Bethesda’s voice, on the other hand, sweetened noticeably.
“My my,” she said. “It seems this fiasco has finally taught you how to grovel. That’s a step forward, but don’t you ever do anything of this sort to me again. Children exist to help their parents, not hinder them. And if you must keep a human, teach it some manners before it gets itself killed. Now put Justin back on.”
Julius dutifully handed his phone back to his brother before reaching his hands out for Marci to help sit him up. She did so without looking, eyes glued to Justin’s back as he walked away.
“What was that about?” she whispered. “And what did you do earlier? What’s going on?”
Julius didn’t know how to answer any of that safely. He didn’t know much of anything, actually. The world had started spinning as soon as Marci had pulled him up, and as he tried and failed to focus on a single point, he wondered vaguely if this was what being drunk felt like. Dragon metabolism was so fast that actually getting sloshed took way more effort than he was willing to invest, but he’d always been curious. If this was what it was like, though, Julius was glad he’d never bothered. Not knowing whether you were going to hurl or pass out was hardly his idea of fun.
In the end, passing out won. He dropped Marci’s hands and fell straight back, mercifully blacking out before his skull hit the concrete.
When Julius woke up again, his head was much clearer. It also hurt like hell. Groaning deep in his throat, he opened his eyes to see he was still on the platform by the lake, though he was no longer lying directly on the floor. Someone had put a folded sweater down to cushion his head, and since he was pretty sure Justin didn’t wear bright purple, he could only assume it was Marci’s.
“Hey, you’re up!”
He looked over just in time to see her boots come to a stop right beside his head before her face filled his vision. “How are you feeling?”
He considered the question for a moment. “I’ve been better,” he said at last. “How long was I out?”
“About ten minutes. I’m actually amazed you’re conscious. That was the nastiest case of backlash I’ve ever seen, especially in someone who isn’t supposed to be a mage.”
“For the last time,” Justin’s voice echoed from somewhere beyond Julius’s feet. “He’s not a mage! Julius is terrible at magic.”
“If you can use magic, you’re a mage,” Marci called back with the sullen tone of someone who’s already said this numerous times, though she didn’t take her eyes off Julius. “I’ve never seen someone just shove magic out of themselves like that. How did you do it? Can you show me? Your brother won’t tell me anything.”
“Because he asked me not to,” Justin growled, finally stepping into Julius’s line of sight. “So stop asking questions already.”
Marci shot his brother a deadly glare, and Julius closed his eyes with a sigh. Not that he didn’t appreciate Justin actually keeping his mouth shut for once, but would it be too much to ask that he do it in a way that didn’t make it sound like Julius was hiding things?
“It’s complicated,” he said at last, pulling Marci’s attention back to him. “I’ll be happy to explain everything later”—never—“but this isn’t really a good place or time. We’re still on a deadline, and we need to find those mages.”
Marci and Justin shared a look Julius couldn’t make out. “I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”
Before Julius could ask what she meant by that, his brother grabbed his arm and heaved him to his feet, putting him face to face with the crowd waiting at the other end of the cement platform.
Even seeing it with his own eyes, Julius couldn’t quite believe it. The landing beside black lake was packed with human men and women in clothes ranging from fashionably distressed to straight-out bizarre. Still more humans were on the water in boats, fishing bits of lamprey out of the bloody lake with large nets. All of them were clearly mages, a fact made obvious both by the hum of human magic that had replaced the deathly aura of the giant lamprey pool and by the bright glow of the light spells hanging from the spillway’s roof like the world’s most elaborate chandeliers.
“Turns out my Kosmolabe was right,” Marci said smugly, patting the bag at her side. “They were under the water. Their base is in an old bomb shelter that goes under the lake. That was why we couldn’t reach them from the pipes. They were never actually part of the water system! The storm drain we saw is a fake they use to disguise their entrance. They actually cut a door into this spillway so they’d have a back exit, but they had to stop using it when the lampreys moved in.”
Happy as Julius was that Marci had solved the mystery of their missing mages, he was only listening with half an ear. The rest of his attention was on his nose as he breathed deeply, sorting through the various horrid sewer stenches for any sign of their prey. But while he did catch a trace of a cold, wintry sea scent that reminded him of Svena, it was old. Katya wasn’t here.
“Justin,” he said softly.
“I know,” his brother whispered back. “I smell it, too. But don’t worry, I’ve got a plan.”
That made Julius more worried than ever, but before they could discuss it, his brother yanked him to his feet and half helped, half carried him over to the edge of the platform, as far from the humans as possible. When Marci tried to follow, Justin shot her a full-on “I am predator, you are prey” glare that stopped her in her tracks. Only when she’d turned and scurried back to the mages did he finally return his attention to Julius.
“We need to work quickly,” he said, his voice low and urgent as he propped Julius against the wall. “Our target’s gone, but from the scent, she was with these people up until at least an hour ago, so she can’t have gotten too far. Now, the dragon smell is strongest on the guy who’s acting like their leader, so here’s what we’re going to do. I’ll grab him and be bad cop since you couldn’t pull it off if you tried. You be good cop and tell your mage to run interference on the others. I don’t think they’ll fight since they’re all impressed we killed big-and-slimy, but if they do, we’ll smoke ‘em. Ready?”
“No,” Julius said, resting his weight against the wet cement. “Justin, the only reason I’m even standing right now is because of the wall.”
“Well, how much longer are you going to be?” his brother said. “Because we’re in kind of a hurry.”
“Do you even listen to yourself?” he said, jerking his head at the group around Marci. “There have to be thirty humans here, and that’s not counting the ones in the boats. You can’t actually think we can beat them all.”
Justin didn’t answer, but then, he didn’t need to. His confident look was answer enough.
“They’re mages,” Julius continued, a bit more frantically now. “I’m sealed. Katya’s not even here.”
“She was,” Justin said, adjusting the sword on his hip.
“There’s no way you can do it without revealing your true nature!” he cried, playing his final card.