She bit her lip and looked back at the road. “You just made a really sad sound.”
He looked down at his lap, embarrassed. Great, now Marci thought he was pathetic, too. “It’s nothing,” he lied, sinking lower.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Her quick offer caught him off guard, but not nearly as much as how desperately he wanted to take her up on it. If she’d been a dragon, such a question would have been an obvious play for information. Of course, if she’d been a dragon, she wouldn’t have asked if he wanted to talk in the first place. She would have demanded.
But Marci wasn’t a dragon, and she wasn’t ordering him to do anything. He didn’t even think she was fishing for secrets. She was just being politely concerned. Being nice. Humans got to do that, and Julius was so tempted to take her up on the treasure she’d just unwittingly offered him that he actually started thinking up excuses for why spilling his troubles to her would be a forgivable offense.
In the end, though, he kept his mouth shut. Eager as he was to confide in someone who wouldn’t use every word against him later, revealing clan business to a human was a quick way to get that human killed. Fortunately, being inoffensively quiet was a survival skill Julius had perfected long ago, and he set himself to staring out the window, studiously ignoring the concerned glances Marci shot him whenever she thought he wasn’t looking.
***
Considering the rates most mages demanded for their services, Julius had expected the party to be up on the skyways with all the rest of the money. Instead, the address took them back into the Underground, but not the flashing tourist part this time. Though clearly once a nice neighborhood by the water, nearly all of the original buildings were now gone, replaced by large brick warehouses built to serve the massive riverside casinos overhead.
“You’re sure it’sbelowthe casinos, not in them?” Marci asked, eying the lower levels of the huge hotels that poked down through the suspended skyway like tree roots reaching for the real ground below.
“This has to be it,” Julius said, though even he wasn’t feeling so sure himself. Other than the warehouses, the only other things down here were the massive blocks of prefab tenements built to house the armies of workers who kept the big hotels above them ticking over. There were a few crowded family style restaurants and a cheap chain grocery store, but nowhere a bunch of mages would throw a party, and definitely nowhere he’d expect to find a dragon. Still, according to the listing Svena had shown him, this was the place, so he went ahead and told Marci to find somewhere to park.
The address itself turned out to be for a large warehouse right on the river. Julius didn’t want to risk scaring off his target, so he had Marci park in an alley one block down so they could case the place first. When they approached the warehouse itself, though, Julius realized he needn’t have bothered.
Apparently, this “exclusive mage party” was about as exclusive as a frat kegger. Every door, window, and loading bay in the warehouse had been thrown open to let in the night wind off the water, and music was thumping so loud, Julius could feel the bass through the sidewalk. They walked right in through the front without challenge, and while Julius wanted to attribute this to Marci’s excellent illusions, he had the feeling that he could have crashed through the roof as a dragon and not turned a head.
“It smells like an Amsterdam canal in here,” Marci yelled over the music, batting at the smoky air in front of her face. “What are we doing at this party again?”
“Looking for someone,” Julius yelled back. “I’m going to go check the back. You stay here and try to blend in. I’ll message you if I need help. What’s your number?”
“I don’t have a phone.” When Julius gaped at her, she raised her hands helplessly. “What? You need a Residency ID to get a phone in the DFZ, and I don’t have one yet. I’m working on it.”
Julius heaved a deep sigh. “Just stay here, then. I’ll be back soon.”
He waited until she nodded before moving away, breathing deep as he walked to see if he could pick out the sharp, metallic scent of another dragon. Unfortunately, smelling anything through the overwhelming mix of river, humans, and pot smoke turned out to be impossible, so Julius began searching the old-fashioned way. Fifteen minutes later, he’d found two people who claimed to be dragon shamans, one white-haired young woman who called herself a human dove, and zero actual dragonesses. He was starting to worry Katya wasn’t here at all when he felt a tap on his shoulder.
Julius whirled around, furious and frightened that he hadn’t noticed someone sneaking up on him, and came up nose to nose with a tall, youngish human male with long hair and a pleasantly goofy grin plastered across his face.
“Welcome to our party, newcomer rock-man,” he said, offering Julius a weird half bow. “I’m Lark, albatross shaman and the head of the local circle here on the waterfront. Are you interested in joining our communion with the spirits of the land and such?”
It took Julius several seconds before he remembered what kind of mage he was supposed to be. Deciphering the rest of the greeting took a good bit longer. “Wait,” he said at last. “If you’re an albatross shaman, why is your name Lark?”
The young man threw up his hennaed hands. “Don’t get too caught up in labels, my brother. That way lies madness. You gotta justbewith the magic inside you, ya know?”
Julius nodded blankly. Marci’s rant about shamans was starting to make a bit more sense now. “Well, if you’re the leader, maybe you can help me. I’m looking for a friend. Her name is Katya.”
When the shaman shook his head, Julius pulled out his phone and brought up the picture Svena had given him. The moment he saw it, Lark’s eyes brightened. “Oh! You mean Katie. You just missed her, man. She and the gator left ten minutes ago.”
Julius stared at him. “Gator?”
“Ross Vedder, alligator shaman,” Lark clarified with a wink. “They set up together last week. Great couple, really. Hilarious.”
That description was so undragonlike, Julius wasn’t sure they were talking about the same Katya. “Do you know where they went? I really need to find her.”
Lark shrugged and pulled out a surprisingly nice phone of his own. When he got it close to Julius’s, another picture of Katya appeared in their shared AR with the name KATIE beside it. In it, a happy Katya was smiling wide and hugging an equally ecstatic-looking Lark at a party just like this one, and her blatant joy hit Julius like a punch to the gut.
“Ross and the rest of his peeps have a commune downstream,” Lark went on, sending a map location to Julius’s phone. “Real nice setup, very ‘one with the powers of the place’ vibe. They’re doing some absolutely amazing work restoring magical ecosystems down in the pipes. I’ve been trying to get something similar going up on the old Ambassador Bridge for us bird types for years, but we’re kind of hard to manage. You’d think we’d flock better, right?”
Julius waited impatiently for him to stop laughing at his own joke before asking. “And you’re sure she’s at this place?”
“Who can be sure of anything?” Lark said sagely. “But I’m pretty sure. She said she was going home for the night, and that’s their home. Ergo, et cetera.”
