“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.”