“Unless she knew we’d know she knew,” his brother added, pulling on his shirt. “Then she’ll have counters for both our best plan and the one we’re going to come up after that because we know that she knows the first one.” He stopped, frowning like he’d just confused himself. “This is too complicated. It’s probably best to just assume she has a counter for every contingency and leave it at that.”
“I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” Julius said gently. “First, even a seer can’t plan for every outcome. There are millions of variables, it’s just not physically possible. Second, Bob said specifically that Estella was rushed, and therefore being sloppy.” And the more he thought about that, the more he realized that Bob’s seemingly random seer crash course in the car wasn’t random at all. He’d been feeding Julius the information he needed to make a decision, a decision a seer could see. And then he’d promptly left, probably so Julius could make his decision where Bob wasn’t blocking him, which meant whatever Julius decided, Bob had wanted Estella to see it, and…and…
And this was where seer plotting got to be too much for him. “Give me a second,” he muttered, pulling out his phone. When the AR flashed on, he pulled up the last message he’d received from Bob and began typing. Can Estella see us right now?
The reply was immediate. No. My brothers = my turf. This decision is purely for my own edification. Just try to forget I’m watching your every move while silently judging you and make the decision as you normally would based on the information provided. Thank You! <3 <3
Julius didn’t think the hearts were strictly necessary. Of course, he didn’t think any of this was necessary. This situation was hard enough without his brother getting all cryptic on him. Doing nothing wasn’t an option, though, and he turned back to Justin and Marci with a heavy sigh.
They’d been bickering about something he hadn’t been listening to while he’d been on the phone. When they saw him looking, though, they both went quiet, turning to him expectantly. That threw Julius for a moment. Marci he could understand—unless the subject was magic, she was generally happy to listen to his ideas—but Justin never looked to him for orders. Then again, the parts of being a dragon that required skills other than smashing had never had been Justin’s forte. He was probably just letting Julius do all the work of planning before he tried to take over. Whatever the reason, though, Justin was listening, and that made Julius more determined than ever not to mess this up.
“Estella’s moving quickly,” he said. “And no one, not even dragons, not even seers, can move fast without sacrificing something. She simply does not have the time to cover every contingency, and if we want to break her trap, our best bet is to take advantage of that. We need to do something she won’t have bothered to prepare for, something completely unexpected.”
His brother frowned. “You mean like crashing in through the roof?”
“Crashing in from any direction is exactly the sort of thing she’ll expect,” Julius said. “So is just going along and giving up Marci for Katya.”
“Does that mean we’re not doing that?” Justin asked, eying Marci, who’d gone very still. “Because trading a human for a dragon sounds like a pretty good—”
“No,” Julius snapped. “We’re absolutely not going to sacrifice Marci. In fact, I don’t plan to sacrifice anything. We’re just going to look like we have.” The first wisps of a plan were already taking shape in his head, and he turned to his mage. “Do you think you can make yourself a full body illusion and a strong ward in”—he checked the time—“twenty minutes?”
“The illusion shouldn’t be a problem if it’s just me and I can find a good source to pull off,” she said. “But what kind of ward are you talking about?”
Julius smiled. “One against bullets.”
Marci pursed her lips in an O and began digging through her bag for her casting chalk, dislodging Ghost in the process.
Justin jumped back with a curse as the see-through cat landed on his feet. “What is going on?” he cried. “Why does she need a ward against bullets? And why does your human have a dead cat in her purse?”
“I’ll explain everything in a second,” Julius said, clapping a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “But Justin, you’re a strong dragon, right?”
“Fifth strongest in the clan,” Justin said instantly.
Julius had no idea how he’d come up with that number, but it served his purposes nicely. “Wow,” he said. “That’s even better than I thought. Would you mind sparing some of that power, then? Just to speed things up?”
“What are you talking about?”
Marci, who knew exactly what Julius was talking about, looked up from the pizza boxes she was clearing off the floor with a wide smile. “Oh, he’ll do great! Bring him over.”
“Great for what?” Justin asked suspiciously. “What am I doing?”
“Helping Marci,” Julius replied. “I did it earlier today, but I wasn’t strong enough, and she really knocked me for a loop. I still haven’t recovered enough to do it again, so I was hoping you could step up. If you think you can handle it, of course.”
And just like that, an entire childhood’s worth of living with Justin paid off. “Of course I can handle it,” his brother snapped, puffing out his chest. “Anything you can do, I can do better. Now where do I stand?”
Julius stepped back to let Marci take over, grinning as she ordered his brother into the center of the spellworked circle she was drawing on the newly cleared stretch of floor in front of the couch.
Chapter 16
“I can’t believe you let a human do that to me,” Justin grumbled, glaring across the room at Marci, who was happily putting the finishing touches on the ward she’d built from his magic. “I feel used.”
“Nonsense,” Julius said, checking his phone yet again for some sign of Bob. Their hour was five minutes from being up, but the seer still hadn’t returned. “She didn’t pull a quarter as much magic out of you as she pulled out of me. You’re not even winded.”
Justin lifted his chin stubbornly. “It’s the principle of the thing. My own brother, ordering his human to yank out my magic like I was nothing but a battery, and now I can feel her using it.” He shuddered. “It’s degrading. How did I let you talk me into this?”
Fortunately, Julius didn’t have to answer that. His brother hadn’t even finished talking when Marci’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out at once, holding it awkwardly between her hands to avoid getting chalk dust all over the screen.
“Bixby,” she said gravely, glancing at Julius. “We ready?”
“I should hope so,” Justin snapped. “Considering how the magic you sucked out of me like a—”
A blaring horn outside cut him off, and Julius pounced on it. “There’s Bob!” he called, opening the door. “Let’s go.”
Justin was still grumbling, but he went, claiming the front seat of Bob’s car while Julius and Marci piled into the back. The 1971 Crown Victoria was too old to have a GPS, but Bob said he knew where the address was when Marci told him. She was trying to show him the location on her phone anyway when Bob peeled back out into traffic, driving down off the skyways just as crazily as he’d driven up.