Once they were all inside, Julius locked the door and put his back against it, heart pounding as he stared at Marci’s transformed face. “What is going on?”
“I’ll tell you in a moment,” she said in a stranger’s deep, masculine voice, which was pretty unnerving. He’d never seen her use an illusion this thick. If it wasn’t for his nose, he would never have known the man going around his living room and closing all the blinds was Marci at all.
“Did you get my message?” she asked.
“I did,” Julius said. “Your closet is clear, but I don’t understand—”
She grabbed his hand before he could finish and yanked him toward the stairs. When Justin started to follow, though, she ordered, “No.”
“Excuse me?” the dragon growled.
Marci didn’t respond, just looked at Julius, who sighed. “Give us five minutes.”
You’d have thought he was asking Justin to betray the clan. But while he looked seriously pissed, he stopped trying to follow them up the stairs, leaving Julius and Marci alone as she led the way down the hall to her bedroom and straight into her newly emptied closet. The moment they were both inside, she kicked the door shut, plunging them into darkness for a split second before the spellwork lit up.
Circles of spellwork flared all around them, filling the closet like a camera flash before fading to a warm yellow glow only slightly brighter than a candle. But while the flash and fade was in line with most of Marci’s spells, what got Julius’s attention was that the sounds had faded, too. The moment the spellwork had lit up, all exterior noises—the creak of the house, the dull roar of the cars overhead, Justin’s impatient pacing on the floor below—had vanished, leaving the closet in deep, unnatural silence. He still could hear his own breaths, and Marci’s, but nothing else. “What is this?”
“My isolation booth,” she said, standing up. “I was testing a theory for a ward against sound. Think of it like you’re standing inside a pair of noise-canceling headphones.”
“I’d say it works pretty well,” Julius said, rubbing his ears in an attempt to get used to the deafening quiet. “But Marci, what is going on? Why didn’t you answer my calls? And why did you come here disguised like a…”
His voice trailed off as Marci’s illusion evaporated, revealing her real face, which looked like she was about to cry. “Oh, Julius,” she said, her voice breaking. “I messed up. I messed up so bad.”
“Messed up what?” he said frantically. “And what happened to your neck?”
Marci’s neck was swathed in bandages. He didn’t think she was actively bleeding, but she had been not too long ago. “I knew something was wrong,” he said, curling his shaking hands into fists. “Marci, what is going on?”
She dropped her eyes to the floor. “After you left, I went downtown to pick up my dad’s ashes. I know we’re supposed to be hiding, but I thought I was clear since I didn’t use our address. When I came out, though, Vann Jeger was waiting for me.”
Julius froze. “Vann Jeger?” he whispered at last. “TheVann Jeger? As in Algonquin’s hunter?”
She nodded, and Julius’s stomach clenched. He might not be a proper dragon, but even he knew of Vann Jeger. He was a monster from ancient dragon history—the spirit who hunted the hunters—and the rumors about him had only gotten worse since he’d joined Algonquin shortly after she’d claimed Detroit. But though Vann Jeger was famous for killing dragons, he generally stayed away from humans. Or, at least, that was what Julius had heard. “Did he hurt you?”
“No,” Marci said, and Julius sighed in relief. “But…”
“But?”
“I told him,” she said, her eyes locked on the ground. “About you.”
Julius tensed, and Marci’s head shot up. “Not voluntarily, I swear! And I didn’t tell him much. Not your name or your clan or anything big like that. I wouldn’t have said a word, but he had my prints on the gun I used to shoot Bixby. He was going to book me for murder unless I told him about the dragon. I tried to lie, but they had me in a truth teller. I got around it a little, but…” She looked down again, covering her face with her hands. “I betrayed you.”
“Marci, no,” Julius said, moving closer. The closet was so small, there wasn’t far to go, but any space at all felt like too much right now. “It’s my fault there was a hunter in the first place. You did absolutely nothing wrong. I’m amazed you got away.”
“But I didn’t,” she said, reaching up to tug down the bandage on her neck. She did this like she was revealing some kind of horrible truth, but Julius had no idea what he was looking at.
“They drew a sword on your neck?”
“It’s a curse,” she said bitterly. “A big one, called the Sword of Damocles.”
Julius winced. He didn’t know most curses from croutons, but the Sword of Damocles was famous. You saw it in movies all the time, especially crime dramas. It was supposed to be a mutually unbreakable pact, which, now that he thought about it, didn’t make sense in the current situation. “How did they put it on you?” he asked, confused. “I thought the whole deal with the Sword of Damocles was that both parties had to be willing for it to work?”
It was an honest question, but Marci looked like he’d just kicked her. “Vann Jeger was going to turn me over to Algonquin if I didn’t tell him where you were,” she said, shaking. “I tried getting around the question, but he had a sword to my throat, so I stalled by telling them I needed time to lure you into a trap. I told them to put a binding curse on me to keep me in the city, so they’d know it wasn’t a trick. My plan was to break the curse, grab you, and run before they knew what was up, but I miscalculated.” She put her fingers on the black tattoo. “This was the only curse he’d accept. If I turned it down, I’d basically be admitting I was planning to betray him. Ihadto let him do it, and now, if I don’t keep my promise to bring you to him at sundown, it’s going to cut off my head.”
Her voice was cracking by the end, and Julius couldn’t stand it. “It’s okay,” he said, reaching out to gently grab her shoulders. “You bought us time. That’s great! It means we can still figure this out.”
“No, we can’t,” she said, pushing his hands away. “I wasstupid. I should have known they wouldn’t give me something I could break. I should have left my dad in Nevada. I should have remembered the stupid gun! You’d think I’d be better at destroying evidence after all the cop shows I’ve watched, butno.Apparently I’m one of those incompetent murderers who gets caught the first time!” She slid down the closet wall with a hopeless, angry sound. “Your mother was right,” she muttered as she reached the floor. “I really am a bumbling, foolish human, aren’t I?”
“Absolutely not,” Julius said, squatting down as well so he could look her in the face. “Listen to me, Marci. You are the cleverest person I know. What my mother said was wrong then and it’s wrong now. You’re not my human or my pet or anything like that. You’re my best friend and ally who tried everything she could think of to save me from a dragon hunter. That’shuge.Thanks to your quick thinking, we have time to plan. Now we just have to use it to figure out a way to break your curse.”
