If you looked past that, though, the area actually reminded Julius far more of traditional suburbs than the DFZ Underground you saw in the movies. There were chain restaurants and coffee shops and shopping centers with parking decks full of mid-range cars and corporate buses shuttling people up to the massive offices on the skyways overhead. If it wasn’t for the fact that the whole place was basically a cement brick built under a giant bridge, it could have passed for anywhere in America once you overlooked the camera drones and armed private security patrols.
Since she’d driven them down here, Julius expected Marci to turn them into one of the huge chain restaurants, but she didn’t even look at them. She just kept driving until, eventually, they drove right out of the Underground and into the dense factory district that butted right up against it.
Before, when they’d driven out of the city, it had been all open space and plants and strange magic. This time, it was a very different landscape. In a deal that had brought dozens of multinational corporations to the DFZ, Algonquin had ceded the entire south western corner of her city to the new technology of magical fabrication. Even now, fifty years and two monetary overhauls later, the vast majority of the world’s magically integrated consumables—five sense projectors, the mana contacts on phones that made AR possible, even enchanted paper like the stuff Marci’s contract had been printed on—was still made in the massive factory complexes that had transformed what used to be the city of Dearborn, Michigan into a bleak landscape of monolithic, windowless buildings and canyon-like roads.
Huge at it all was, though, the factory park definitely didn’t seem like the sort of place you’d find a restaurant, and the longer Marci drove, the more uncomfortable Julius got. “Um,” he said at last. “Are you sure this is the right way?”
“Positive,” Marci replied. “I looked this place up on my way over before I had to chuck my phone. Best rating in the city.”
Julius didn’t see how a restaurant could survive out here, let alone be good, but he was even more curious about why she’d had to chuck her phone. He was dying to ask about a lot of things, actually, but he forced himself to wait. This job was already much more complicated than he’d anticipated, and as much as he wanted to push his lead on Katya, he wasn’t ready to charge recklessly forward without solving Marci’s puzzle first. Besides, he hadn’t eaten anything since he’d gotten off the plane this morning, and now that she’d reminded him about food, eating suddenly seemed much more important than following a tip that might well be the start of a wild goose chase. Or wild dragon chase, in this case.
Fortunately, he didn’t have to wait much longer. Despite the seemingly endless wall of identical industrial complexes, there were actually several smaller business squeezed in between the factories wherever there was room. Marci’s restaurant was one of these, a squat wooden shack built right up against the wall of a factory that made enchanted glass for AR displays. According to the back-lit sign, it was a BBQ joint. According to Julius’s nose, however, this place served greasy, sauce-covered heaven.
“We’re lucky it’s between shifts,” Marci said as they got out of the car. “I tried to come here yesterday, but the factories had just let out, and the line was around the block.”
Julius could see why. Despite the delectable smell drifting out its screen door, the inside of the restaurant was barely big enough to hold twenty people. It was empty now, though, and he took advantage of that to get them a prime booth in the corner that put his back to the wall and gave him a good view of the front door.
“Order whatever you want,” Marci said as she plopped down across from him. “Everything here is fantastic”
Julius bit back a grin as he picked up the one page laminated menu. Marci had no idea the trouble she was inviting, telling a dragon to order whatever he wanted. Hungry as he was, though, he was determined not to use more of her clearly limited funds than was absolutely necessary to make her feel better. So when the waitress came out of the tiny kitchen to take their order, Julius kept it small, just two plates of pork, three sides, a half order of cheese fries, a basket of cornbread, and a banana pudding.
Marci’s eyebrows were nearly up to her chopped-off hairline by the time he finished, but she didn’t comment as she ordered her own dinner of a pulled-pork sandwich and a beer. When the waitress asked her what kind of beer, Marci shrugged and told the girl to surprise her.
“Honestly, I don’t even like beer,” she confessed as the waitress vanished back into the tiny kitchen. “But a day like today demands a drink.”
Julius couldn’t argue with that. “So,” he said, resting his elbows on the red checkered tablecloth. “Do you want to start, or should I?”
Marci waved her hand. “Fire away.”
“Who is Bixby?”
“One of my dad’s old clients.”
The anger in her voice was all the hint Julius needed. “Bixby was involved in your father’s death?”
Marci sighed, but the waitress returned with their drinks before she could answer. “It’s more complicated than that,” she said when they were alone again. “Dad was one of the first wave of mages born after the comet. He never had a formal magical education because there wasn’t any such thing back then, but he taught himself how to break curses, which was a booming market in Vegas at the time. Business was good when I was younger, but my dad was very bad with money, and soon we were in a lot of trouble.”
She took a long swig of her beer, then made a face and set the bottle aside. “I didn’t actually know how much trouble until I was thirteen. That was when my mom got fed up and left us, and I learned that Dad was up to eyeballs in debt thanks to his moocher family and terrible money skills. I’d also tested positive as a mage by this point and enrolled in the best private magic school in the area, so there was that to pay as well.” She heaved an enormous sigh. “My dad was so proud of me. He would have cut off his right arm before he took me out of class. He was desperate, and Bixby knew it.”
Julius rolled his water glass between his palms. “I’m guessing Mr. Bixby isn’t exactly a legal sort of person?”
“I’m sure some parts of his business are legal,” Marci said. “But he definitely leaned more to the shady side. He knew my dad needed money, so he proposed a racket. Bixby’s mages would curse someone, and then my dad would use the good name he’d built up over the years to come in and break it for an exorbitant fee.”
“They wagged the dog,” Julius said.
She nodded. “It didn’t seem so bad at first. The debts were getting paid and money was coming in again, but Dad was miserable. He had this thing about being a hero, rescuing people from evil magic, that sort of stuff. It was the whole reason he got into curse breaking to begin with, and turning that mission into a scam was killing him. He hid it from me while I was a teenager, but as soon as I found out, we started working on an exit strategy. I was just an undergrad at the time, but I already knew enough to work with him on expanding the legal parts of his business—the wards and magical consulting and so forth. The idea was to get away from curse breaking and Bixby all together, but just when I thought we were clear, Bixby wouldn’t let him go.”
Her shoulders slumped as she spoke, like she was sinking into the table. “He threatened to have Dad arrested. There was more than enough evidence to convict him, and Bixby had cops on the take as well. Dad knew it, too, so he folded and went back. I tried several times to get him free over the years, but every time, Bixby would come up with some threat to make Dad stay until he finally hit his limit.”