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.