THIRTEEN
MAC
“He’s here,”Roman says confidently as we step into a karaoke bar a few blocks down from the busy street we materialized on.
The place feels like it’s straight out of a Japanese fever dream, with bright neon lights and multiple karaoke stages. Instead of regular tables and chairs, there are massive couches, almost all of them full of a mixture of tourists and people who appear to be local.
It’s hard to tell if the mage knows he’s being tracked or if he’s just naturally too chaotic to easily pin down. My nose still feels fried from the magic overload of the main street, but I take a deep inhale and catch a fleeting scent that no doubt belongs to Rune. But with a bar packed full of people, it’s going to be hard to find him without knowing what he looks like, unless we start sniffing every drunk in here. That might not go over so well.
“We’re close enough to his place, maybe he’s a regular. Should we just ask the bartender if he’s seen Rune?” I suggest.
Cassius arches an eyebrow at me with an unimpressed expression. “And tip him off that someone’s looking for him?” He looks around the bustling, dizzying brightness of the bar. “Assuming he doesn’t already know.”
My shoulders sag. Cassius makes a good point. We need to see if the bartender has any information on Rune without showing our hand. My gaze wanders while I think, my dragon eyes flickering to bring the room into better focus before recoiling again from the unnatural brightness of the neon. There’s a couple cozied up in one of the corner couches, and an idea clicks into place.
“Alright, I’ve got it. You guys go find somewhere to sit, and I’ll talk to the bartender.” I make a shooing motion.
Cassius still looks a little skeptical and Roman is still sniffing the air, but Atlas just shrugs and starts towards the nearest couch where a group seems to be getting ready to leave. Drax drags his fingertips along the inside of my arm, coaxing a flutter of scales that quickly disappear again before anyone else can notice them.
“Can you…” I look down at my hand, more specifically at the ring on my finger that has started to feel so natural there I’ve hardly thought about it all week. A little twinge of guilt and wrongness twists inside me as the question forms on my lips. Maybe because I don’t want to hurt Drax’s feelings? I haven’t been able to shake what Cassius said last night about what a good guy—er,demon—Drax is. “Can you hide the ring with a glamour for me?”
He frowns, and that samewrongfeeling I had a minute ago fills his side of the bond.
“You want me to hide your mating ring?”
“Just for a minute.” I rush to reassure him. “If the bartender happens to know what it is, my plan to get information on Rune won’t work.”
He makes an irritated little huffing noise that’s cuter than it should be considering he’s a demon, but then he closes both his hands around mine without an argument. I’m starting to get familiar with the feeling of a glamour—the warm tingle, the waythe air shimmers almost imperceptibly. When he pulls his hands away, the ring is gone.
My heart sinks and my dragon thrashes.
“It’s still there, just invisible,” Drax says soothingly, in a low voice that I somehow know is meant specifically for my dragon. The beast calms immediately, and I let out a slow breath, smiling awkwardly in apology for my reaction.
He brushes the backs of his fingers against my cheek and a surge of warmth swells in our bond.
“Okay, I’m just going to…” I gesture towards the bar, and Drax nods.
“We’ll be right over there. Shout if you need us.”
I turn away from the group and run my fingers through my hair, rearranging my expression into a flirtatious grin and squaring my shoulders. This isn’t so different from what I’ve always done. Sure, I’ve never taken orders from someone else like I am now with Auri, but a little bit of deception and thievery? I eat that for breakfast.
In a weird way, knowing Auri recruited me, picked me on purpose, maybe even set me up to steal something I’d get caught for so he could offer me a way out… it’s giving me confidence. He wanted the Drake brother with sticky fingers and an insatiable appetite for excitement, and that’s what he’s got.
I swagger up to the bar, sniffing subtly along the way just in case I happen to get lucky and stumble across Rune. Roman is right, the place has his scent all over it. He must come here a lot. But I don’t get any distinct spikes that make me think he’s any of the people I pass by.
I sit down on one of the open stools at the end of the bar, and my eyes wander over everyone nearby again. My instinct to catalog every shiny piece of jewelry within pickpocketing distance kicks in, and I nearly salivate over some of the tempting, sparkly options. A rumble of amusement that isn’tmine vibrates in my chest, snapping me out of my greedy reverie.
I bring my hand to that spot in the middle of my chest where I feel the tether to Drax and rub it absently. He felt my urge to swipe someone’s watch, and he thought it was funny. Not just funny, he thought it was cute. Helikedit.
A strange, warm feeling thatactuallyismine this time snakes through me, leaving me even more confused than I was before. But I don’t get the chance to pick at the feeling or analyze it.
The bartender stops in front of me. He’s a sturdy, muscular Japanese man with his dark hair pulled back into a small ponytail at the base of his skull and a bland, unreadable expression.
“Ready to order?” he asks, his English accented but perfect. I’m sure he took one look at me and pegged me as a tourist.
“Can I get a sake?” I say. He nods and pours my drink, then sets it on the bar in front of me. “Actually, can I ask you a question?” I lean on the bar, putting on a hopeful smile and purposefully lowering my gaze so I come across as a little shy. “There’s this guy I met here the other night. I got the sense he was a regular, so I was hoping to run into him again, but it’s so crowded in here it’s hard to find anyone. His name is Rune.”
If I wasn’t watching closely, I might not have noticed any reaction at all. But there’s a slight flicker in his eyes, a quick dart to the left before they’re back on me with no other change in his expression.
