Therehadto be one. Truth was subjective, and spells, no matter how sophisticated, were still just sets of instructions. Even a big, expensive construction like this one wasn’t actually intelligent, or all-knowing. In order to identify what was lie and what was fact, the magic had to be checking her answers against some kind of reference, most likely her own mind, which meant ifsheknew something was a lie, the spell would, too.
That should have put her in a real bind. Instead, Marci had to bite her lip to keep herself from grinning.Gotcha.
“I don’t serve any dragon,” she said, looking the giant spirit straight in the face. “And I never have.”
Vann Jeger’s scowl darkened, forcing Marci to bite her lip to keep from laughing aloud. It had worked! So long as she considered something to be true, the spell did, too, and Julius had gone through great pains to make sure Marci knew she wasn’t his servant. Second, the dragon Vann Jeger was talking about wasJustin, not Julius, and Marci hadn’t even served him pizza. Given these two facts, what she’d said was technically true, and if the spell was going to let her skate by on technicalities, then she could do this all night. But while Marci was finally feeling like she’d found a glimmer of hope, Vann Jeger looked more dangerous than ever.
“You speak around the rules,” he growled, leaning down until he was in her face. “You are clever to have figured out the truth teller’s weakness so fast, but I would not continue this game. I am not in a benevolent mood.”
“I’m not exactly peachy myself,” she said, glaring right back. “Being kidnapped and interrogated kind of puts a crimp in your evening. What made you think I serve a dragon, anyway?”
Again, the technicality skated easily around the truth teller’s restrictions, and Marci gave herself a mental high five. But while the question was mostly meant to stall, she was actually curious how they’d found her. She and Julius had been living in the DFZ for a month now without so much as a peep. Something must have tipped them off tonight, and Marci’s money was on Bethesda. The haughty dragon clearly cared nothing for subtlety. She’d probably led Algonquin’s hunter right to—
Her anger cut off like a switch when Vann Jeger reached back again for his mage to hand him something from her bag. This time, though, it wasn’t an antique case file. It was a gun. A large, horrifyingly familiar revolver sealed inside a plastic evidence bag.
“During our investigation of the Pit event, we discovered the body of a human male,” the spirit said casually. “He was missing his right hand, but the forensics team reported that the actual cause of death was the gunshot wounds inflicted by this weapon.”
He waved the bagged gun in front of her face, and Marci began to tremble.
“After running his dental records, the victim’s identity came back as one Eugene Phillip Bixby, also of Las Vegas, Nevada,” Vann Jeger went on. “The fingerprints on the gun’s grip, however, match the ones on your State of Nevada magic license. Our investigation also discovered that the Clark County Coroner’s Office recently mailed you the unclaimed remains of a family member to a forwarding address at the downtown branch of the DFZ Private Post Office. From there, all we had to do was watch and wait.”
He paused to let that sink in, but Marci wasn’t sure she could sink any lower. Her memories of the Pit were a chaotic mess, but while she clearly recalled shooting Bixby, she couldn’t actually remember what she’d done with the gun afterward. Apparently, she’d left it on the ground for anyone to find like an absolute moron, and now Algonquin’s private cops had her prints on a murder weapon. Then, as if all that wasn’t enough, they’d set a trap using her dad’s ashes as bait, and like a blind idiot, she’d walked right in.
Marci slumped forward, squeezing her eyes tight. Forget embarrassing herself in front of Bethesda,thiswas the screw-up that trumped all others. It was also likely her last. Murder charges were serious business anywhere, but the court system in the DFZ didn’t work like the one in the US. Here, there was no guarantee of a fair trial or a jury of her peers. All criminal cases were settled privately through binding arbitration, and they didn’t send you to jail, either. If you were found guilty, you went to Algonquin, and you never came back.
“I see you’ve finally comprehended the severity of your situation,” Vann Jeger said, handing the bagged gun back to the uniformed mage. “But hope is not yet lost. The Lady of the Lakes cares nothing for the death of a human criminal. All we want is the dragon. If you cooperate, and your actions result in a successful kill, Algonquin is willing to wipe your record clean.”
Marci’s head shot up before she could stop herself, and the dragon hunter smiled a cold, inhuman smile. “That’s right,” he said quietly. “You can continue your life, Marcivale Caroline Novalli, and all it will cost you is your cooperation in ending the dragon who keeps you prisoner. A very generous offer, don’t you agree?”
If Julius had been a normal dragon, Marci probably would have. But he wasn’t, and now she didn’t know what to do. The spirit hadn’t said what would happen if shedidn’thelp, but it wasn’t hard to guess. The stakes were pretty clear: get booked for murder, or betray the only person left in the world who actually cared about her. Both were unthinkable, so Marci did the only thing shecouldthink of.
She stalled.
“Why do you want him so bad, anyway?” she asked, giving the spirit a look she hoped he’d interpret as earnest. “The dragon didn’t do anything except burn a bunch of magic eaters who normally feed on spirits. If you look at it that way, he actually did Algonquin a favor. It’s not like he was flying around flaming the skyways, and I don’t believe for a second that Algonquin cares about a few scorch marks in a place as wrecked as the Pit. So why go through all this trouble? You’re obviously a great and powerful spirit. Surely you’ve got better things to do with your time than chase down a little dragon who isn’t hurting anyone?”
She was legitimately curious, and the questions flowed by the truth teller without so much as a tinge, but Vann Jeger just shook his head. “You are human,” he said, clearly disappointed, like Marci’s humanity was a personal failing. “Dragons have always been irresistible to your kind. Why else do you think they assume your shape? Their beautiful faces are lies, tools designed to trick and seduce you into doing their bidding, and do you know why?”
“No,” Marci said innocently, perfectly happy to play her part to the hilt so long as it bought her more time. “Why?”
“Because they are not predators,” he said bitterly. “They areparasites.”
Vann Jeger folded his giant hand into a fist and pressed it against his armored chest. “I remember when they came to this world. It was not so long ago by our reckoning, but still before your frail, death-bound species discovered how to record your history for the next generation. To you, dragons have always been here, but we are the souls of the land. We remember a time when there was naught in this world but the Earth and those who came from it. When the dragons arrived as conquerors, we fought them. Thousands of years, we fought, and we were slowly winning, for though the dragons were strong, we could not die. We are the land itself, and so long as the land persists, we shall always rise again. But then, one day, the magic of the land faded without warning, and we faded with it, trapped in a sleep not even the greatest of us could wake from.”
His lips peeled back, revealing a mouth full of blunt, yellow teeth. “With no power left to cull them, the parasites spread unchecked,” he rumbled. “When we woke at last, there was not a government in the world that wasn’t infested. Even here, in Algonquin’s own city, the serpents plot and scheme, hiding in the shadows and using humans as their pawns. Just look at yourself. It is clear you are enamored with the dragon and seek even now to save him, despite the fact that you are nothing to him.”
“I’m notenamored,” Marci scoffed, though the only way the words made it past the truth spell was when she kept Justin’s face firmly in her mind. “And Idon’tserve a dragon. You keep implying that I’m lying, but you guys were the ones who put me in this stupid truth box to begin with, so listen to the words that are coming out of my mouth. Yes, I was in the Pit that night for personal reasons, and yes, I saw a dragon, but I don’t know where he is or how to find him, and that’s the plain truth. Just admit you’ve got the wrong mage and we can forget this ever happened.”
For a moment, thatalmostseemed to work. Vann Jeger’s scowlalmostlooked skeptical, and then he doubled down again, crossing his arms over his chest. “Then I suppose all we caught was a murderer,” he said casually, holding out his hand in front of him. “I’ve never been one for trials. I prefer to handle justice in the old way, and since I’ve already seen the evidence, we can get this over with right now.”
Magic condensed in his hand as he spoke, flowing into his fingers like water in a current. It lasted only a moment, and when it finished, a sword winked into existence above Vann Jeger’s empty hand. It was much shorter than his spear, though still longer than Marci’s arm. She was wondering how he’d pulled it out of seemingly thin air when Vann Jeger flipped the blade and leaned down to press the sharpened edge against her neck.
“Do you feel that?” he asked softly, his deep voice sinking to a rumbling whisper as he pushed the cold metal against her throat. “That is death.Yourdeath. One more inch, and all that is you—all you have ever known or accomplished, all that you’ve loved and fought for—will be nothing but red on the floor. There will be no songs sung for you, no rites read. You will be forgotten utterly. Lost to the flow of time, as all mortal souls eventually are, unless…”
Marci knew the answer already, but she asked anyway, if only to keep the sword against her throat instead of in it. “Unless?”
Vann Jeger smirked. “You know your choice. If you wish to continue what is left of your short life, you will tell me where the dragon is. If you want to keep taking me for a fool, I will kill you and find him anyway. It’s all the same to me.”
With each word he spoke, the blade at her throat crept closer, and Marci shut her eyes. She had to do something. This was all her fault. Her careless revenge against Bixby had come back around full steam, and now her choices were get run over or throw Julius onto the tracks instead. Both were intolerable, but she couldn’t stall forever. What she needed was a clever trick, some way to look like she was betraying Julius without actually doing so. Unfortunately, strokes of genius like that weren’t exactly dial-on-demand, but while Marci didn’t have a brilliant plan on tap, shedidhave a crazy one, and with a sword at her neck, that was good enough.
