“It’s okay,” she assured him quickly. “Really. I just wanted to ask.”
Itwasn’tokay. Julius was all too aware of the money his bleeding heart had cost them. Without the added cash from bounties, the fees from their removal jobs were barely enough to cover expenses. Things had gotten better when Marci had started selling her spellwork services, but Julius was painfully aware that this wasn’t the life she’d signed up for when she’d agreed to come work with him. Happy as he was to be free of his family, the money issue was one of the two giant problems that kept Julius’s current life from actually being perfect. Even so.
“Things are getting better,” he assured her. “Word’s spreading, our name’s getting around. We’ll keep taking more jobs until we don’t have the time to do them all, and then we’ll raise our rates. It’ll all work out.”
“I know, I know,” Marci said, buckling in. “Like I said, no big deal. But can we stop by the house and change before we go for food? No offense, but you kind of smell like a badger.”
Julius looked down at the padded tactical suit he wore for work. The thick fabric was meant to protect him from the bites and stings and other unpleasantness they got into on a daily basis, but it also had an unfortunate habit of sucking up every odor it came in contact with, and tank badgers definitely had a strong odor.
“Of course,” he said, blushing as he gripped the wheel and gave the command for the autodrive to pull them out into the street. “Home first.”
Marci smiled and leaned back in her seat, propping her knees on the dashboard as she balanced her massively over-packed shoulder bag on her lap and started digging through the pockets, re-organizing her already meticulous collection of casting materials. Due to the bag’s size, this move bumped her leg into Julius’s arm where it rested on the console between the seats. It was a tiny touch, barely more than a brush, but he felt it all the way to his toes. It took all his self-control not to shiver, and he looked away at once, hiding his flushed face behind a sudden feigned interest in the old car’s battery system.
This was hisothergiant problem. He’d always thought Marci was cute, but since they’d started living together, the attraction had gone from exciting to downright debilitating. He could keep a lid on it when they were working and there were plenty of distractions, but at times like this, when they were sitting close together in the car or on the couch at home, his awareness of her went from constant to hyper. Even a tiny touch like the one just now was enough to unsettle him for hours, and given how much they were together, this meant Julius was unsettled pretty much all the time.
When he thought about it, which he did way too much, he completely understood what was happening. Marci was beautiful, strong, talented, and smart. She was also the only girl he’d ever spent real time with face-to-face instead of online. Add in everything they’d been through together and Julius would’ve been concerned if hedidn’tget a massive crush on her. But while he knew exactly what was going on and why, he didn’t have any idea what to do about it.
He knew what hewantedto do. And given the number of times he’d caught her staring, he was pretty sure Marci felt the same, at least a little. But even assuming he could overcome his shyness enough to actually act on his feelings, Julius didn’t dare. Hecouldn’t. Marci was the most important person in his life: his trusted ally, insanely competent business partner, and best friend all rolled into one. Their relationship was the first he’d ever had that wasn’t built on debts, fear, or obligation, which also made it the one thing in Julius’s life that he absolutely, positively, could-not-under-any-circumstances afford to mess up. If he tried anything—a confession, a kiss, even a misconstrued look—their friendship as it was would end.
That was a risk Julius couldn’t take. He was already happier right now than he’d ever been in his life. He was free of his family, doing work he enjoyed with his best friend for people who thanked him. Even his mother’s seal didn’t bother him much anymore. If he could just figure out how to solve their revenue issue, life in the DFZ would be perfect. It was close enough already. But while a proper dragon wouldn’t stop until he had everything, Julius had never been one of those, and he wasn’t about to risk what he had in a greedy grab for more.
This was the same conclusion Julius had come to every day over the last few weeks, but wise and prudent as he knew his logic was, it didn’t do him much good at the moment. No matter how many times he told himself it was all a hopeless pipe dream, nothing could dampen the thudding of his heart that came from being in close proximity to Marci. It didn’t help that she looked ridiculously adorable today in her brightly colored jacket and zippered skirt. He couldn’t actually remember seeing her wear that skirt before, but she wore it well, and the purple tights she had on underneath it were some of his favorites. The way they hugged her legs so perfectly all the way up to—
He jerked his eyes back to the road, cheeks burning. The heat only got worse when Marci leaned closer, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “Earth to Julius. You okay?”
“Fine,” he said much too quickly. “I’m fine. Let’s go home.”
Marci frowned, but she didn’t press as Julius began madly fiddling with the autodrive’s GPS, drawing a path manually along the grid of streets back to their house.
Thankfully, they didn’t have far to go. In a move that’d surprised everyone, Ian hadn’t just made good on his deal to find Julius a building as payment for his part in finding Katya, he’d done so spectacularly. The house he’d given Julius was just across the old interstate from the river in a fading neighborhood that had once been called Mexican Town. These days, it was an industrial crossroads where the haphazardly expanded Fisher Freeway fed traffic up from the Underground to the skyways for access to the New Ambassador Bridge, which was still the only road connecting Detroit to Canada. The resulting traffic jam had nearly wiped out what the flood had left of the old neighborhood, but a few classic old houses still hung on amid the forest of highway on-ramps and support columns. Ian’s property was one of these: a classic brick three-story, pre-flood house with arched windows, a big porch, Gothic accents, and what must have once been a very nice, treed-in yard.
The trees had all withered and died years ago when the skyways cut them off from the sun, and the yard was now little more than a gravel lot, but it was still an epic amount of room by DFZ standards. Even better, being surrounded by a spiraling maze of traffic ramps meant their house was almost completely cut off from the rest of the city. The only way in was through a tiny, unmarked access road that ran underneath an on-ramp, and the house itself was hidden inside the eye of the hurricane of ramps, bridges, and support structures that funneled commuters up from the Underground to the elevated Upper City. True, it was dark even by Underground standards, and being directly inside one of the busiest traffic exchanges in the city meant the roar of cars was constant, but the house and surrounding lot were big, private, in good repair, and, best of all,safe.
That was the most important factor when you were a dragon living in a city where you were considered prey. Marci had been a harder sell. She’d wanted a little bit of daylight, but she’d jumped on board once Julius showed her the giant, open attic with its peaked windows and marvelously pointed ceiling that he’d set aside to be her lab. After that, Marci had pretty much moved in on the spot.
Not that they’d had much to move, of course. At that point in time, everything they’d owned had fit on their backs. But the DFZ was a great place for secondhand anything. Now, one month of bargain hunting later, their hidden house was almost homey, the lit windows winking at them brightly in the dark as they drove under the ramp and pulled to a stop next to the front porch.
“I’m going to run upstairs and take a quick shower,” Marci said, hopping out of the car. “I swear I smell more like a badger than you do.”
Julius was opening his mouth to tell her she smelled fine when Marci froze. The change set him on instant alert, and he jumped out of the car. “What’s wrong?”
Marci’s eyes were wide as she turned and pointed at the flat stretch of gravel that had once been a side yard. “There’s a freaking limo over there!”
He whirled around. Sure enough, though, she was right. A huge, black, heavily armored limousine was parked in the shadows right beside their house.
“Maybe it’s a rich client?” Marci whispered, looking at him accusingly. “Did you give our address to someone big and not tell me?”
Julius shook his head, breathing deep through his nose. Now that he was outside the car, something in the air smelled off. Between the badger in the trunk and the reek of the highways overhead, he couldn’t pick out what it was exactly, but it set his whole body on high alert, which meant it wasn’t a good smell. He was still trying to sort it out when Marci turned and ran up the steps to the front door.
“What are you doing?” he hissed, running after her.
“What do you think I’m doing?” she hissed back, frantically fitting her key into the deadbolt. “There’s an unknown car in our secret base! I’m going to get my big guns.”
Julius hadn’t realized Marci had things in her attic lab that would qualify as “big guns.” When she opened the door, though, he forgot all about it. The moment the insulating seal cracked, the tiny wisp of teasing scent he’d been worrying over became overwhelming. It was the smell of his childhood, an unmistakable mix of blood and gold and fire. It was so out of place here, though, Julius couldn’t do anything but stand and stare stupidly as Marci shoved the front door open to reveal the dragon sitting in their living room.
For a shocked moment, nobody said a word, not even Marci, and then the dragon smiled. “Now Julius,” she said, her voice a thousand times sweeter and more terrifying than it ever could be over the phone. “Is that any way to greet your mother?”
And just like that, all of Julius’s happiness vanished in a puff of smoke.
