Just to be safe, Julius dutifully dropped under the table, motioning for Marci to do the same. She obeyed instantly, crouching down on the padded bench. They stayed that way for a good thirty seconds before Julius got up again with a sigh.
“What was that about?” Marci asked, looking over her shoulder.
“Sorry,” he said, glowering at the message. “I think my brother is confused.”
“Oh,” she said, brightening. “The one looking for the girl?”
“No, another brother,” he said, standing up. “Come on, we’d better get out of here.”
“How many brothers do you have?” Marci asked, following him to the counter.
“Too many,” Julius grumbled, paying for dinner with the last of the money Bob had given him and hustling Marci out before she realized what he’d done.
They’d nearly made it back to the car when the hairs on the back of Julius’s neck begin to prickle. He looked over his shoulder, eyes darting to find who was watching him, but the street was deserted.
He forced himself to walk normally to his side of the car, only half listening as Marci berated him for stealing her chance to pay for his dinner while he focused on his nose. He’d always been better at smelling than listening, but no matter how deeply he breathed, he caught nothing out of the ordinary. Just the chemical smell of the factories, rust from Marci’s car, and the warm scent of delicious barbecue mixed with the faint reek of oil from the truck yard across the street.
He shook his head with a sigh, trying and failing to stomp down on the instinctual urge to run for cover. But then, why should his body calm down? Between his mother, Bob’s cryptic messages, guns shoved in his face, and Ian playing games with powerful females from other clans, he’d had enough stress today to last a lifetime. A little jumpiness was a perfectly natural reaction. It didn’t mean there was actually someone sneaking up behind—
A hand grabbed his shoulder.
Julius nearly jumped out of his skin, but the hand kept him in place, four knife-sharp nails pressing into the tender hollow just beneath his collar bone as a cold, soft, female voice whispered in his ear.
“Hello, brother.”
And that was when Julius knew for a fact that he was dead.
Chapter 5
“Tell your human to wait and meet me in the alley on the left,” Chelsie said, her claws digging deeper into his flesh. “Now.”
Julius nodded, but the hand on his shoulder was already gone, vanishing as suddenly and quietly as it had appeared. He didn’t bother turning around to look after that. The sidewalk would just be empty, and Marci was already leaning over to give him a funny look through the passenger window. “Julius? Are you okay?”
“Just realized I forgot something in the restaurant,” he said quietly. “Give me two minutes.”
Marci nodded, but he was already backing away, trusting his feet to find their own path as he walked back to the barbecue shack’s screen door. When he knew Marci couldn’t see him anymore, he darted to the side and down the alley as Chelsie had instructed.
It was a tiny, dark, dirty place, a gap between factories barely wide enough for a car to squeeze through. The narrowness hadn’t saved the walls from being covered in advertisements, though. Posters covered every inch of the brick as high as a person could reach, mostly for the seedier kinds of services people loitering in alleys would find attractive. But while he found directions to thirteen different massage parlors just off the wall in front of him, he didn’t see any sign of Chelsie. He was starting to panic that he’d gone down the wrong alley when he suddenly felt someone standing right behind him.
The light here was bad even for dragon eyes, but Julius had made it a point to stay as far from the Heartstriker’s family enforcer as possible. As a result, the glimpse he got through the gloom when he whirled around was the best look at Chelsie he’d ever managed.
Oddly, the first thing that struck him was her height. At five eleven, Julius had always assumed his human form was the shortest of all Heartstrikers, but Chelsie was only a hair taller, and that might have been from her boots. What she lacked in stature, though, she made up everywhere else. Everything about her—her lean body packed into black, no-frills carbon-weave body armor, her short, ink-black hair, the long sword sheathed at her hip—spoke to her purpose as the Heartstriker’s bogeyman, but the scariest thing of all was how closely she resembled their mother.
It would have been hard for an outsider to see. Other than the family’s trademark green eyes and her high cheekbones, Chelsie’s physical resemblance to Bethesda the Heartstriker was limited. Her skin was darker, her cheekbones sharper, her body smaller and more compact. If Bethesda was a resplendent queen, Chelsie was a well-honed knife. Both were deadly, however, and Chelsie’s murderous glare was so like their mother’s that Julius had already backed himself up against the far wall before she could open her mouth.
“Well, well,” she said at last, her voice as cold and soft as the year’s first frost. “I never thought I’d have to pay you a visit, Julius.” She paused, tilting her head like a hawk considering the mouse trapped under its claws. “You know why I’m here, of course?”
Julius swallowed, mind racing. On the surface, Heartstriker family rules were simple: don’t do anything that made Mother angry. But what Bethesda took offense at varied according to her mood, the day, the political situation, and who was doing the offending, which was exactly why Julius had tried so hard to keep his head down for the last seven years.
When he didn’t answer, Chelsie narrowed her eyes. “One hour ago, six men in an alley by the river—ring any bells?”
Julius’s heart began pounding so hard he grew lightheaded. How did she know about that? The alley had been empty. Of course, just because he hadn’t seen her didn’t mean Chelsie hadn’t been watching. She’d already proven she could get right on his back without him noticing a thing. But just because she could follow him around didn’t explain why she would. Chelsie had the entire Heartstriker family to worry about. Julius was no one, the underperforming runt of Bethesda’s youngest clutch. It didn’t make any sense at all for her to be watching him, not unless she really did watch everyone. But that was impossible. No matter what the rumors said, no matter how old and powerful and all-knowing Chelsie was supposed to be, there was just no way she could actually watch all of Bethesda’s children all the—
“I do.”
Julius’s whirling thoughts screeched to a halt, and Chelsie gave him a slow, cruel smile. “I don’t actually read minds,” she said, her nails tapping idly on the wrapped hilt of her sword. “But then, I don’t need to. You all make the same face when you start thinking, ‘There’s no way she can do it,’ but I’ll let you in on a family secret.” She leaned in, her neon-green Heartstriker eyes bright with malice as she dropped her voice to a whisper. “I am always watching. I watch every single one of you conniving little lizards. I watch you every moment of every day so that the second you set one claw over the line, I’ll be there to cut it off.”
Julius flinched as she finished, and Chelsie straightened back up, crossing her arms over her chest with a satisfied look. “Now that we’re clear on that point, let me explain what you did to trigger this little visit so we never have to see each other again.”
He nodded, breathing heavily. “I shouldn’t have attacked those men,” he said quickly. “I understand that. I should have stayed out of the human’s business and—”