Julius whirled around, furious and frightened that he hadn’t noticed someone sneaking up on him, and came up nose to nose with a tall, youngish human male with long hair and a pleasantly goofy grin plastered across his face.
“Welcome to our party, newcomer rock-man,” he said, offering Julius a weird half bow. “I’m Lark, albatross shaman and the head of the local circle here on the waterfront. Are you interested in joining our communion with the spirits of the land and such?”
It took Julius several seconds before he remembered what kind of mage he was supposed to be. Deciphering the rest of the greeting took a good bit longer. “Wait,” he said at last. “If you’re an albatross shaman, why is your name Lark?”
The young man threw up his hennaed hands. “Don’t get too caught up in labels, my brother. That way lies madness. You gotta just be with the magic inside you, ya know?”
Julius nodded blankly. Marci’s rant about shamans was starting to make a bit more sense now. “Well, if you’re the leader, maybe you can help me. I’m looking for a friend. Her name is Katya.”
When the shaman shook his head, Julius pulled out his phone and brought up the picture Svena had given him. The moment he saw it, Lark’s eyes brightened. “Oh! You mean Katie. You just missed her, man. She and the gator left ten minutes ago.”
Julius stared at him. “Gator?”
“Ross Vedder, alligator shaman,” Lark clarified with a wink. “They set up together last week. Great couple, really. Hilarious.”
That description was so undragonlike, Julius wasn’t sure they were talking about the same Katya. “Do you know where they went? I really need to find her.”
Lark shrugged and pulled out a surprisingly nice phone of his own. When he got it close to Julius’s, another picture of Katya appeared in their shared AR with the name KATIE beside it. In it, a happy Katya was smiling wide and hugging an equally ecstatic-looking Lark at a party just like this one, and her blatant joy hit Julius like a punch to the gut.
“Ross and the rest of his peeps have a commune downstream,” Lark went on, sending a map location to Julius’s phone. “Real nice setup, very ‘one with the powers of the place’ vibe. They’re doing some absolutely amazing work restoring magical ecosystems down in the pipes. I’ve been trying to get something similar going up on the old Ambassador Bridge for us bird types for years, but we’re kind of hard to manage. You’d think we’d flock better, right?”
Julius waited impatiently for him to stop laughing at his own joke before asking. “And you’re sure she’s at this place?”
“Who can be sure of anything?” Lark said sagely. “But I’m pretty sure. She said she was going home for the night, and that’s their home. Ergo, et cetera.”
Julius glanced back down at the address Lark had sent him. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he was probably going to get. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure to be of assistance to any creature,” Lark replied, clapping Julius on the shoulder. “Hey, you wanna drink? We got a full bar out back. Liquid, herbal, and nitrous, what’s your pleasure?”
“No thanks,” Julius said, ducking out of his grip. “I’ve got to go find my…” He paused, trying to think of an acceptable title for Marci. “Companion,” he said at last. “Maybe later.”
“Suit yourself, Mr. Rolling Stone. We’ll be here all night if you change your mind.” Lark pressed his hands together. “Namaste!”
Unsure what else to do, Julius returned the gesture before pushing back through the crowd to where he’d left Marci. When he reached the door, though, she was nowhere to be seen. This sparked a minute of frantic searching before he finally spotted her standing with a crowd of people in the corner, watching a man in some kind of tribal costume spin a halo of fire over his head.
Julius walked up behind her and leaned down to speak into her ear. “Let’s go.”
“Just a second,” she said. “I want to see if he’s going to blow himself up.” She scowled at the costumed man, who was currently waving his arms in a frantic motion as he tried to maintain the roaring ring of flames. “That is not how you cast that spell.”
Julius grit his teeth. “Come on, Marci.”
She heaved a long sigh and followed him out of the warehouse. When they were safely down the street, he filled her in on what Lark had told him.
“You mean we missed her by ten minutes?” Marci groaned. “That’s so unlucky.”
“Luck has nothing to do with it,” Julius said. It never did with dragons. “We need to find the alligator shaman. If she’s still with him, tonight won’t be a total—”
He never got to finish, because at that point, Marci vanished from his side with a gasp. Julius whirled around a split second later…and found himself staring straight down the silenced barrel of a gun.
Chapter 4
Oddly enough, Julius’s first thought was that the pistol, a souped-up next gen Colt .45, looked oddly small. A heartbeat later, he realized he was mistaken. The pistol was normal-sized—it was just being held by an absolutely enormous man. His other hand, equally huge, was wrapped around Marci’s face, smothering her mouth and holding her tight against his chest with her feet kicking a good foot off the sidewalk.
“Easy there, buddy,” the big man said, wagging his gun in Julius’s face like a tsking finger. “This here is a private matter, none of your concern.”
Marci made an angry, muffled sound against the man’s palm. The thug squeezed in reply, cutting off the noise and her kicking in one move. When she was quiet, the man smiled and shifted his eyes back to Julius. “You just go on about your business and won’t be no trouble.” He tightened his finger on the trigger. “Now walk away.”
Julius looked at the gun, and then at Marci, who was staring at him above the man’s fingers, though not in fear or desperation, as he would have expected. Instead, she was looking straight at him like she was trying to tell him something. Julius was still trying to figure out what when the magic she’d used to disguise him as a rock shaman exploded in the big man’s face.
The thug flew backwards, his scream echoing down the alley before cutting off with a crash as he slammed into the brick wall of the warehouse across the street. His gun went off at the same time, firing harmlessly into the dark. He also dropped Marci, who landed in a coughing heap on the dirty pavement.
Julius was at her side in an instant. “Are you all right?” he cried, pulling her to her feet. When she nodded, he moved on to the next most important question. “What was that?”
“Backfire,” Marci replied, her voice thick and slurring, almost like she was drunk. “Couldn’t cast with him tryin’a crush my skull, so I backfired our illusions at him.” She turned to grin triumphantly at the man now lying unconscious on the other side of the alley. “At’ll teach him to grab me!”
The question why did he grab you? had already formed on Julius’s tongue when he saw the thin trickle of blood coming out of Marci’s ear. “You backfired yourself, too, didn’t you?” When she lifted her shoulders in careless shrug, he grabbed them. “Marci!”
“Was worth it,” she slurred. “He had a gun in your face.”
Julius blew out an angry breath and tightened his grip on her shoulders, using them to steer her firmly toward the car. He’d find out what was going on later, when they were safe. For now, he just wanted to get out of—