Nice Dragons Finish Last (Heartstrikers) (41 page)

Julius had no idea how to respond to that, or how to react when Bob reached down to slap him on the back.

“Don’t get your feathers in a fluff,” he chided. “I’m here to help! I can’t let you have all the fun, can I?”

Julius gaped at him. “What’s
fun
about almost dying?”

“But that’s the best sort of fun,” Bob replied. “The kind you can look back on centuries later and laugh about. Of course, since I’m always centuries ahead, I can laugh about it right now.”

And then he did, loudly.

Julius watched with growing apprehension, reminding himself not to read too much into Bob’s antics. Seers were famously mad, after all, and he’d always suspected Bob had a bit more fun with that than he really should. Since his brother showed no signs of pulling himself together anytime soon, he looked around for Marci instead, spotting her poking through the ruins of her car. He was about to go help her when Bob’s arm suddenly wrapped around his shoulders.

“Don’t bother her yet,” he warned, his laughter gone as quickly as it had come. “She’s about to get a phone call.”

Julius attempted to tug out of Bob’s grip only to find that he couldn’t. “What phone call?”

The words were barely out of his mouth when a jangly electronic tune rang out across the street. Marci jumped at the sound, her hands flying for her shoulder bag, which had never left her shoulder and had gotten rather bloody as a result. She fumbled with one of the wet front pouches before pulling out the phone he’d given her. Rather than answer, though, she looked at Julius. “Should I take it? No one has this number.”

“That’s never stopped me,” Bob said before Julius could open his mouth. “Just answer it already. The suspense is almost as obnoxious as your ringtone.”

Marci shot Bob a surprisingly nasty look, but she touched the screen to accept the call all the same, putting it on speaker. It wasn’t much of a speaker since Julius had been forced to get her one of the cheaper models, but the result was still plenty loud enough for dragons to hear from several feet away.

“I’ve got your girl.”

Julius had never heard that deep, angry voice before, but Marci clearly had, because her whole face flushed with rage. “Bixby,” she spat.

“Hello, Miss Novalli,” Bixby crooned. “Long time no see.”

If Marci had been a dragon, Julius would have expected her to start breathing smoke at this point. “What do you want?”

“You know exactly what I want,” Bixby said, his voice so smug Julius could actually hear the sneer that must have been on his face. “I want my property, and you’re going to bring it to me. And before you get any ideas, let me say right off that I know exactly what sort of company you’re keeping these days, so if you don’t want the Lady of the Lakes to add a pretty blond dragon head to her collection, you’ll shut up and do exactly what I say.”

There was a pause while Bixby waited for Marci to protest. When she didn’t, he continued.

“In one hour, I’m going to send you an address. You come alone with the Kosmolabe, and I’ll let your little friend slither off none the worse for wear. You don’t show, or you decide to bring along that new boyfriend I hear you’ve picked up, and we’ll toss Sleeping Beauty into the lake faster than you can say ‘I miss my daddy.’”

The sound that came out of Marci when he said that last part was closest thing to a growl Julius had ever heard from a human. Bixby must have heard it too, because he sounded smugger than ever. “Good to know we have an understanding. See you in an hour.”

The call had barely cut off before Marci grabbed the screen like she was going to crush it between her palms. “That, that,
ooooh.
”

Julius swooped in just in time to rescue her phone. He plucked it out of her straining hands and hit the icon to trace the number. Naturally, the results came back blank, and Julius made a mental note to talk to his hacker about putting real tracing programs on their phones, because he was getting mighty sick of this Unknown Caller nonsense. He huffed in annoyance and turned to hand the phone back to Marci only to find her staring at him, her face stricken.

“Julius,” she said, voice shaking. “I’m sorry. I’m so,
so
sorry. This is all my fault. I never meant to get you involved in my drama, and now I’ve messed everything up. You were right, I should have left that stupid golden softball in the desert. I—”

Julius put a hand on her shoulder. With gentle but firm pressure, he steered her farther down the street, away from his brother. Real privacy was impossible when a seer was involved, of course, but that didn’t mean he wanted a live audience for this.

“Marci,” he said when they were more or less alone. “You have nothing to apologize for. This trap was not your fault, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to get my hands on Bixby.”

She shook her head. “But—”

“But nothing,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “We’re going to handle this together. You help me, I help you. That’s what makes us a team, right?”

She stared at him for a long time after that, biting her lip in a way that made him worried she was going to cry again. Thankfully, she didn’t, but he could hear her heart in her throat when she whispered, “Thank you.”

“No thanks needed,” Julius said, but he coveted her words all the same, hoarding them in his memory like precious stones. If she kept this up, it was going to take more fingers than he had to count all the times someone had thanked him and meant it. He liked that idea very much indeed, and he couldn’t keep the smile off his face as they walked back to her car to salvage what was left of her stuff.

Sadly, it didn’t take long. The wreck had crushed her trunk, destroying everything breakable and burying everything that wasn’t inside a twisted mass of metal. Ghost, being non-corporeal, was the only survivor, if a death spirit could be said to have survived anything. He seemed to be giving Marci a piece of his mind, though, so Julius left her arguing with her cat and returned to Bob, who was watching from the hood of his car like this was the best show ever.

He smiled as Julius approached, patting the spot beside him on the freshly waxed hood, which his weight was already denting. Julius ignored the invitation and leaned on the bumper instead. “So how long have you been playing Bixby?”

Bob’s eyes widened, and then his hands flew up to grip to his chest like he was having a heart attack.

“What?” Julius cried. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Bob said, dropping his hands. “It’s just the shock of seeing you acting so stern and dragon-esque. If I’d known getting you kicked out of the mountain would have such immediate positive returns, I’d have told Mother to do it years ago.” He paused. “Oh wait, I
did
know! Must have been a timing thing. That’s the problem with being all-knowing but not all-remembering. After a while, you just can’t keep up.” He frowned and started fumbling with his pockets. “I really should start leaving myself notes.”

He
did
leave himself notes. They were hidden all over the mountain, sometimes for years. Finding them was a favorite game for young Heartstrikers, but Julius had no time or patience for his brother’s antics right now. “Wait a second.
You’re
the reason I was sealed?”

Bob rolled his eyes. “As I pointed out to your human earlier, the seal was Mother’s idea. She’d been fretting over who to use as a scapegoat for this Ian situation for months. I merely gave her a nudge in your direction.”

“A nudge?” Julius repeated, his anger coming back in a rush. “You
nudged
me right out of my home!”

“Don’t act all put out,” Bob said. “This little jaunt to the DFZ has been the best thing that’s ever happened to you. You were miserable hiding in your room, and it made me miserable to look at you. At least now you’re actually living up to your potential.”

Julius opened his mouth to argue, but he closed it just as fast, because Bob was right. The last few days had been terrifying and painful, but also completely life-changing. Just because he was enjoying the results didn’t mean he approved of his brother’s methods, though, and he shoved his hands into his pockets with a surly harrumph. “Well, you could have gone about it in a nicer way, or at least a less dangerous one. Last I checked, a car wreck didn’t count as a nudge.”

“Oh, Julius,” Bob said sweetly. “You’re all the nice we’ve got. And as much as it pains me to admit, you’re giving me a shade too much credit in all this. This Bixby person is indeed a pawn, he’s just not mine.”

The confession came so quickly that Julius, who was still stewing over the fact that he’d actually benefited from Bob’s meddling, robbing him of his right to be upset, almost missed it. “Wait, what?”

“I didn’t arrange this little incident.”

“But it had to be you,” Julius said before he could think better of it. “There’s no way this could have happened without a seer.”

Bob rolled his eyes. “I never said a seer wasn’t involved, only that it wasn’t me. If
I
was going to nab your dragoness out from under you, I’d find a classier way to do it. Being hit by a car is so
pedestrian.
”

Julius winced as his brother broke into hysterical laughter at his own terrible pun. In a way, though, the break was good, because he needed to think. Bob’s claim that he wasn’t behind this was a huge relief,
if
it was true. He didn’t think his brother was lying, though, because the idea of Bob kidnapping Katya so Bixby could use her to get the Kosmolabe when Marci had it in her possession not ten feet away just didn’t make any sense, even for Bob. But if the Heartstriker’s seer wasn’t behind this, who was?

“That’s a good question.”

Bob’s laughter cut off like a switch. He was now sitting perfectly still on the hood of his car with his legs crossed in lotus position, studying Julius with a serene expression. “Your face is very transparent,” he explained. “Tell me, Julius, how many seers do you think are alive in the world right now?”

Before Julius could even open his mouth, Bob broke into a grin. “Trick question! The answer is three. There are
always
three, and only three, seers in existence at any given point. At this moment, the roster includes myself, Estella the Northern Star, and the Black Reach.”

Julius shuddered at that last name. The Black Reach was a legend from the Golden Age of dragons, that mythical time a thousand years before the disappearance of magic when power had been plentiful and great dragons had flown freely. He hadn’t known the old menace was still alive, or a seer, though the latter would explain the former nicely. Still, “I thought the Black Reach lived in China.”

“That doesn’t mean anything,” Bob said with a shrug. “The Black Reach doesn’t have to be in the same hemisphere to meddle in your affairs. He didn’t get his name for having unusually long arms, you know. But while the Black Reach certainly could have arranged this particular act of automotive tragedy, I don’t believe he would. Far too unsubtle. This is lazy seer tinkering, real last-minute stuff. The Black Reach would never stoop to such sloppiness.”

Julius shook his head. “But if he didn’t do it, and you didn’t do it, that only leaves Estella, which doesn’t make any sense. She’s the acting clan head of the Three Sisters, isn’t she?”

“Indeed.”

“So why would she do this?” Because even by dragon standards, arranging to have your little sister hit by a car and kidnapped by humans was a bit much.

Bob sighed. “Oh Julius, not all clans value family as highly as the Heartstrikers.”

He grimaced at the thought. “So what’s Estella up to, then?”

His brother lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug. “I have no idea. I can’t see a thing. This is why seers normally stay away from each other. We block each other’s sight. It’s highly annoying, which is why I’ve been blocking Estella’s at every opportunity.”

Julius gaped at him. “So you’ve just been antagonizing her?”

“You make it sound like a bad thing,” Bob said. “Come now. I know you’ve spent most of your adult life hiding in a cave, but even you must be aware that our clan’s not winning many popularity contests at the moment. Mother stepped on quite a few scaly toes in her rush to the top, including Estella’s, and the Northern Star never could learn not to take things personally. She’d eat our whole clan for breakfast if she ever got the chance, and part of my job is to make sure she doesn’t. Now pay attention, this next bit is important.”