“I see your anger, little mortal,” Vann Jeger said as the mage began to ease the black cloth gently over her scalp. “You think me a villain, but you are deceived. It is the dragon who is to blame. His kind has beguiled yours from the moment they appeared, living off the fruits of your labor while giving nothing in return but sorrow and death. You think that you are different, that your dragon will not betray you, but so has every mortal they’ve ensnared. When I kill your master, you will see at last that I was right, and if you wish then to join our cause, I will take you to Algonquin myself. You are clever and brave for a mortal, and skilled in magic. The Lady always has need for ones such as you.”
He paused, clearly expecting gratitude for that condescending job offer. When Marci didn’t reply, he said, “Bag her.”
The mage yanked the cloth down, cutting off the world behind a wall of black. When it came back again seconds later, Marci opened her eyes with a gasp to find herself sitting in her car in the Post Office parking deck.
She burst into motion, running her hands over her body, but other than the bandage at her neck, everything was as it should be. Her bag with her dad’s ashes, her bracelets, even her chalk and emergency markers were all back in their normal places. Her phone was there, too, sitting on the passenger seat right where she’d dropped it before she’d gone in. She grabbed the device with trembling fingers, dismissing the Do Not Disturb block to see a wall of missed calls and messages from Julius.
Under any other circumstances, that obvious show of concern would have made Marci giddy. Now, staring at a phone Algonquin’s goons had had access to for who knew how long in a car that was almost certainly bugged, all she felt was a cold stab of fear.
Striving to look as normal as possible, Marci opened her door a fraction and leaned down, shoving her phone directly beneath her front tire. When it was wedged into place, she yanked herself back inside and closed her eyes, focusing hard on her connection with Ghost.
It was a lot more difficult than she’d expected. She’d called for Ghost several times before, but she’d never actually tried to talk to him across distance. She wasn’t at all sure it was working this time, but finally, after several mental pokes, she felt him stir.
Find Julius,she thought, forming each word like an object in her mind before sending it down their connection.Tell him I’ll meet him at the house. Also, tell him to clean out my closet.
If Ghost found any of that odd, he didn’t say anything. Marci wasn’t even sure he’d gotten the message, but she had no time to try again. She’d already been here too long, and the van in the row behind her had been idling with its engine running since she’d woken up.
Marci eyed it suspiciously in her mirror. It could be just her paranoia, or it could be a tail. Either way, they were going for a ride.
With a last, bitter smile at her reflection, Marci set her autonav in the opposite direction of home and backed out, crushing her compromised phone under her tire in the process. Sure enough, the idling van rolled out as soon as she hit the exit ramp, following her through the pay gate and out into the street. After that, Marci didn’t even bother watching. She just grabbed her casting markers out of her bag and got to work, crouching down in her seat as she began drawing a magical circle onto the car’s dash.
Chapter 6
Marci was not at the house when they returned.
Julius kept it together, calmly sending his brother upstairs to take a shower and change before going for his phone. But while Marci’s phone seemed to be off lockdown, shestillwasn’t answering. Even more alarming, the cellular triangulation app—which Marci herself had installed on both their phones for just such an emergency—didn’t seem to be working, either. Now that she was no longer blocking him, Julius should have been able to use the cell towers to pin her location down to within a thousand meters, but every time he tried, all he got was an error. If it wasn’t for the fact that Ghost was still on the couch, he’d have thought Marci was dead in a ditch for sure.
Then again, maybe Ghost’s presence here didn’t mean anything at all? Julius still knew almost nothing about the actual mechanics of how human mages bound spirits. They’d all gone to sleep when the magic had vanished a thousand years ago. What if they went back to sleep when their master died, too?
That thought made his blood run cold. By the time Justin—washed and dressed in Julius’s loosest pair of sweat pants—stomped back down the stairs, Julius was deep in the spirit forums, looking up everything he could find on what happened to bound spirits when their human died.
“Would you stop acting like a nervous hen?” Justin said, plopping down on the couch beside Ghost, whostillhadn’t moved.
“What should I act like?” Julius snapped. “It’s almost three in the morning, and Marci’s still missing.”
“Three a.m.’s nothing on a Friday night in the DFZ,” his brother replied with a shrug. “She probably went to a club or something. Unlike you,somepeople enjoy doing things besides staying at home and staring at their phones like old ladies.”
Julius grit his teeth. It was a dark day indeed when Justin was the reasonable one.
“Besides,” his brother continued. “If you’resoworried, why are you still here? She’s your human. You want her home, go out there and drag her back.”
“She’s not a lost dog,” Julius snapped. “And it’s not that simple.”
“Why not?” Justin demanded.
“Because she might not want to come home!”
Julius hadn’t meant to say that. Like most fundamentally true things, though, it had slipped out on its own, making Justin roll his eyes in disgust. “Is that what this is about?”
“No,” Julius said, and then he sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know.” He walked over and sank down opposite his brother on the couch’s one remaining free cushion. “I was pretty mean to her tonight, and now that she’s missing, I can’t help wondering if maybe it’s on purpose?”
“That’s stupid,” Justin scoffed. “We’re dragons. Whether they love or fear us, humans can’t stay away. Even you can’t mess that up. She’s probably just off sulking somewhere. Though I suppose she could be dead. Mortals kick over at the drop of a hat, after all.”
Julius buried his head in his hands. “Not helping, Justin.”
“Can I help it if you make everything complicated?” his brother snapped. “You’re the one who always insists on treating your humans like they’re equals. If you want her to act like a pet, then slap a collar on her neck and be done with it, but you can’t give her freedom and then freak out when she uses it.”
Julius sighed. Itdidsound pretty ridiculous when he put it like that, but though he’d arrived at it from the completely wrong angle, Justin was right. He was being an idiot. If Marci was out this late without calling, then she was probably in real trouble that had nothing to do with Julius’s insecurities. He’d apologize to her later. Right now, though, he was going to find her. He was turning to ask his brother for help when something icy pressed into his leg.
