Thankfully, the basics were more than enough to keep Marci interested. Good thing, too, because Julius was only half paying attention to what he was saying. His real focus was on the plan that was now taking final shape. Furtively, he slipped his hand into his pocket to check Svena’s silver chain. Even after all the rolling around during the fight, it was still there, the enchanted links as cold and magical as ever. He clutched it tight, letting out a long, steadying breath as they drove back toward the hulking shape of the double layered city and the dragon hiding somewhere beneath it.
Despite Marci’s warning, the neighborhood the address led them to caught Julius off guard. When she’d said it was a bad area, he’d imagined something like the housing blocks that surrounded the commuter deck Ross’s people lived under, only with more trash and drug dispensaries. This was like entering another world.
The first thing he noticed was the dark. Thanks to a quirk of skyways above, two enormous support pillars had been placed directly in the middle of the main road that ran through this part of the old city, cutting off all street traffic for eight blocks. Adding insult to injury, the two pillars had also been placed in the exact right position to block out the gaps in the Upper City that would have let sunlight down into this part of the Underground, leaving the eight-block span black as a cave even in the middle of the afternoon.
This combination of oppressive darkness and blocked streets had destroyed any chance the neighborhood had of rebuilding. Even though someone had carved out a driveable path around the north-most pillar, breaking through an abandoned garage in an effort to let in traffic, the alternate route clearly hadn’t caught on. There were no shops here, no flashing advertisements or vending machines or vibrant crowds, just a ghost town of boarded-up brick buildings that still bore the high water marks of Algonquin’s flood on their upper stories. The only building that bucked the trend was the one they were driving to.
Like everything else here, the one story diner was a relic of the days before the flood. Unlike the rest of the rotting city around it, though, this one was relatively kept up. It stood on the corner of what must once have been a busy intersection before the road had been cut off. But though its windows were clouded with dirt and the residue from decades of wax-based glass marker specials, the light that shone through them was yellow and cheerful, and more than enough for Julius to make out the slender blond woman sitting in the red vinyl booth in the corner, staring into her coffee mug like it held the mysteries of the universe.
After searching so long, finally spotting their target felt a little like seeing a ghost. Julius had gotten so nervous during the drive over, he’d half convinced himself that Katya would be long gone, yet there she was, sitting just as she’d been when the tracking program had yanked her picture off the diner’s security camera.
He held his breath as Marci parked the car on the curb right by the diner window, but Katya didn’t even look up. Tapping his pocket to make sure the silver chain was still there, Julius got out of the car and leaned down to speak through the shot-out passenger window. “Wait here. This shouldn’t take long.”
“I hope not,” Marci said, eying the empty, pitch-black street. “Call me if you need me, and good luck.”
He flashed her a tight smile and turned away, walking into the diner as casually as he could. An ancient string of bells on the door announced his arrival, and a voice from the kitchen yelled for him to sit wherever he wanted. Julius ignored them both, keeping his eyes locked on the diner’s only other customer.
From the moment he’d entered the building, the dragoness had given no sign she noticed his existence, but as he walked past the rows of empty booths, he could see the tension building in her shoulders. By the time he’d reached her table, she looked ready to bolt. She hadn’t done so yet, though, and Julius took his chance. “May I sit?”
She glanced up, looking at him head on for the first time, and Julius took an involuntary step back. In the pictures he’d seen, Katya’s kinship to Svena had been obvious—same white-blond hair, same snow-pale skin, same ice-blue eyes—but now that they were face to face, the differences were all he could see.
Where Svena had been perfect, poised, and deadly, everything he expected from a daughter of the Three Sisters, Katya looked awful. The pale skin beneath her eyes was marred by bruise-dark circles, and her long hair was a tangled, ratty mess pulled back in a sloppy pony tail. Sitting in the faded booth in a long sleeved t-shirt and sweat pants, clutching her coffee mug like a lifeline, she didn’t look dangerous or ancient or magical. She looked hunted and exhausted, and more than a little afraid. She was still a dragon, though, and she made him sweat through a long, weighing look before finally nodding at the booth across from her.
Julius didn’t wait to be asked twice. He slid into the seat, placing both hands on the table where she could see them. “I’m—”
“A Heartstriker,” she said, her softly Russian accented voice as weary as the rest of her. “The eyes always give it away.”
He nodded, waiting for her to go on, but Katya just turned back to her coffee, swirling the black liquid in slow, thoughtful circles.
“I must admit it hurts,” she said just when Julius thought the silence would go on forever. “I never was the pride of our clan, but I hadn’t thought Estella’s opinion of me had sunk so low that she would outsource my defeat to one of the feathered serpent’s baby lizards.”
“I’m not here to defeat you.”
Katya snorted. “I’m not worried about that.”
Considering his lowly, non-threatening status was the reason Ian had picked him for this job in the first place, Julius wasn’t insulted by her dismissal. He did, however, have a point to make, so he reached out his hand, resting it palm down on the table right next to where hers were cupped around her coffee. “You should have been,” he said, turning his hand over to reveal the enchanted chain hidden in his palm.
She’d been so certain of his inability to hurt her, she hadn’t even bothered to get out of the way. Now, she snatched her hands back with a gasp, knocking over her mug in the process. Julius caught it before the coffee could spill, setting the chipped mug safely back down beside the silver chain, which he’d left on the table. Katya watched him warily, her eyes flicking from him to the chain and back again, and then, in a tiny voice, she whispered, “Why?”
“Because your sister wants you to come home.”
“I know that,” she snapped, her soft accent sharpening to something much closer to Svena’s. “You think I can’t recognize Svena’s magic? I meant, why didn’t you do it? You had it right there next to my fingers. All you had to do was twist your wrist and I would have been chained. So why didn’t you? Why not put me to sleep and be done with it?”
“Because I don’t work that way,” Julius said with far more confidence than he felt.
Her eyes narrowed. “What is your name, Heartstriker? How did you find me?”
“I’m Julius,” he said. “And I found you by tracing the number Ross Vedder gave me.”
Her expression turned equal parts betrayed and furious when he mentioned her human lover’s name, and Julius raised his hands at once.
“He didn’t sell you out or give in to threats,” he assured her. “I didn’t do anything to him, actually, and it wouldn’t have worked if I’d tried. That man would have fought me to the last breath rather than give up any information about you. He didn’t even tell me you two were together until I’d convinced him I meant you no harm, and the only reason he gave me your number then was because he was out of his mind with worry.”