Marci reached into her shoulder bag and pulled out the glistening golden ball that had started this whole mess. “Right here,” she said, holding it up for all to see. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Fine by me,” Bixby replied, jerking his head.
At the signal, one of the goons walked behind the ancient bleachers and picked up a long, wrapped bundle tucked against the wall that Julius had initially dismissed as trash. Now, though, he saw that the thing inside the black plastic tarp moved and slumped like a body. Sure enough, when the goon reached his boss, Bixby reached over and yanked the dusty plastic away to reveal Katya’s unconscious face.
“No funny business,” he warned, pulling a big, old-fashioned revolver out of his jacket pocket and aiming it at Svena’s little sister. He pointed his other hand at a folding card table that had been set up on the old basketball court’s center line. “Put the Kosmolabe there and step back. Once I’m sure you’re not cheating us, we’ll bring the girl over.”
Marci shook her head. “You first.”
Bixby cocked his gun and pressed the barrel to Katya’s temple. “You’re in no position to make demands. I’ve told you what to do, now do it, or kiss Blondie the Magic Dragon goodbye.”
Julius winced at the casual mention of Katya’s true nature. What was Estella thinking, playing so loose with their identities in the DFZ? Still, so far, Bixby was acting exactly as predicted. Likewise, Marci was playing her part to the hilt, putting on an almost too dramatic show of thinking it over before slumping her shoulders in apparent defeat and starting toward the table.
She placed the sparkling Kosmolabe on the square of blue jeweler’s velvet Bixby had provided and stepped back again, raising her hands as she went. At the same time, a pair of men stepped in to shut the gym doors behind her, blocking her escape. Only then, when the trap was seemingly closed, did Bixby re-holster his gun and walk to the table, leaving Katya in the care of the giant human who’d picked her up.
“Julius,” Justin said.
Julius waved for his brother to shut up. It was almost their cue.
“Julius.”
“What?”
“You know how the Underground is supposed to have all sorts of nasty creatures since it’s super magical spirit land or whatever?”
“Yes,” Julius said, keeping his eyes locked on Bixby as he approached the Kosmolabe. Just a few more steps. “What about it?”
“Can any of them fly?”
That question was just odd enough to make Julius risk a look. He tilted his head back, staring up into the dark, but he didn’t see a thing. He couldn’t even see the bottom of the skyways he knew must be above them, just blackness. But as he turned to ask Justin what on earth he was talking about, something enormous, heavy, and full of jagged teeth fell out of the dark right onto his head, knocking Julius straight through the rusting roof and into the gym below.
***
Marci was ninety percent sure she was going to mess something up. She’d played it off to Julius back at the house, but now that she was actually here, wrapped in so many wards and illusions her hands were shaking from the effort of keeping them all up, she knew, justknewshe was going to blow it.
If she’d been alone in the gym, there wouldn’t have been a problem. She’d held down this many spells plenty of times before, but those had always been in practice rooms back at the university, usually to win bets against her fellow doctoral candidates. Field experience, she was learning, was a completely different animal.
Even with her anti-bullet ward roaring around her like a furnace thanks to the enormous bank of power she’d siphoned off of Justin, she’d underestimated just how terrifying it would be to have an entire room full of guns pointed at you. But even that might have been tolerable if it wasn’t for the toxic ambient magic of the Pit itself.
Any mage with even a year of formal training had heard of the Pit. It was one of the most famous magical fallout zones in the world. Everyone studied it whether they were going to be working with magical ecosystems or not. Again, though, academic knowledge was letting her down. Reading about the magical pollution left by so much death was one thing, but actually being in the middle of all that cold, empty, stagnant power was quickly becoming more than she could take. Even loaded up on Justin’s clean, high-grade magic, just standing in the filth made her feel dirty from the inside out. Add in the Bixby situation, and all Marci wanted to do was run away as fast as she could. But while her instincts were in complete agreement that fleeing was the best course of action, she didn’t move, because Julius’s plan was working perfectly.
So far, everything had gone exactly as he’d predicted: Bixby’s over-the-top setup, the army of hired thugs, his demand to inspect the Kosmolabe himself, everything. The only detail he’d gotten wrong was his assumption that Bixby would have a mage. But, unless he was keeping someone in reserve, Marci didn’t even feel the presence of another ward. A suicidally stupid oversight on their enemy’s part, and a very lucky break for her.
With no mage to worry about, all she had to do was hold on until Bixby reached the golden ball on the table, the illusionary Kosmolabe she’d spent twenty minutes putting together in the safe house with all that wonderful dragon magic. When Bixby’s fingers touched the false surface, Marci would backlash the spell right in his face. With so much power behind it, the shock would kill him instantly, at which point Justin and Julius would drop down and grab Katya while Bixby’s men wasted their bullets on Marci’s ward.
She’d been a bit skeptical about that last part, but Julius had reasoned that Bixby’s hired guns would be much more interested in protecting the man who paid them than the thing they’d been paid to protect. His hope was that by the time the goons realized their shots weren’t doing the job, the two Heartstrikers would be out the door with Katya. Once they were clear, Marci would dump the rest of her hoarded magic into her microwave spell for one final heat blast, opening a window for her to GTFO with therealKosmolabe, which was safely hidden at the bottom of her bag.
That was the detail she’d argued with Julius about the most, actually. She would have felt much safer leaving the actual Kosmolabe in the car with Ghost and Bob where there was no chance if it being damaged in the chaos, but Julius had refused to back down. The Kosmolabe was the highest value target, he’d said, which meant Marci should have it on her to ransom for her own life if something went wrong.
Given her own misgivings about her ability to pull off the operation, she had to admit it was nice to have a backup. But they were nearly halfway through now, and everything was running smoothly. Bixby was almost to the table already, and she hadn’t messed up yet.
She wouldn’t, either. Even though the cut on her neck stung like crazy and the stress was making her sweat so badly she was worried the spellwork she’d painted around her body would start to smudge, Marci just clutched her illusion of perfect calm tighter and waited for her chance. Bixby was almost in position. Six more steps and she would finally be able to pay him back for all he’d done. All she had to do was hold on. Just five more steps and it was done. Four more. Three—
A crash exploded through the room, followed by an animal roar that turned her blood to ice.
No,she thought frantically. Not yet. It was too soon. But Bixby had stopped in his tracks a good three feet away from the fake Kosmolabe to look for the sound, and he wasn’t alone. Everyone’s heads were jerking toward the roof, and Marci knew with crushing certainty that it was all ruined. There was no way she could draw the room’s fire now. All she could do was look up with the rest as Julius hurtled down from the roof to land on the dusty gym floor…
With an enormous creature right on top of him.
