by Rachel Aaron
“Marci!” he called, keeping his eyes on the badgers as he tossed the broken catchpole away. “How’s it going?”
There was a long, frustrated silence before she called back. “Could be better.”
That was not the answer he’d hoped for. “Better how?” he asked, risking a look away from the badgers just long enough to dart his eyes back to the living room where Marci was standing over their client, a young man whose prone body was overshadowed by the ghostly apparition of a tank badger the size of a car.
“It’s not my fault,” she growled, scowling into the glowing spellwork circles she’d drawn all over the cheap parquet floor. “This should have taken ten minutes, but this stupid curse is so buggy and poorly made, it’s actually almost impossible to remove. It’s like whoever did it went all the way around the circle of incompetence and ended up at accidental brilliance.”
“I keep telling you, it’s not a curse,” the client croaked, his pale face covered in a sheen of nervous sweat that only got worse every time one of the tank badgers made a noise. “It’s a love spell.”
A love spell that attracted male tank badgers looking to mate sounded like a curse to Julius, but he kept his mouth shut. There was no point in antagonizing the client, especially since Marci was doing such a good job of it on her own.
“It’s a scam, that’s what it is,” she said, flaring her spellwork as she fed more magic into her circles. “You got yourself tricked into paying for a summoning by some idiot, no-license shaman, and now you’ve got a female tank badger spirit sitting on your head like you’re her new den. You’re lucky attracting randy males is all she’s doing.”
“So get rid of her,” he gasped.
“I’m trying!” Marci snapped. “But it’s kind of hard to undo spellwork when you have it permanently attached to your body.” She stabbed her finger down as she said this, pointing straight at the crude and obviously brand new spellwork tattoo encircling the client’s bicep. “Seriously, dude, what were you thinking? Why would you get spellwork tattooed when you don’t even know what it does?”
The man began to look panicked. “Just get it off!”
“Too late for that,” she said, rolling up her sleeves. “It looks like the spell’s already gotten cozy with your magic, which means it’s going to take more than physical removal of the ink to get it out.” Marci shook her head. “Nothing for it. We’re going to have to burn her down.”
The man began to sweat harder. “Burn down? That doesn’t sound good. Are you sure you’re qualified for this?”
“Burning down a spirit just means Marci’s going to siphon off magic until it’s small enough to banish,” Julius explained, slipping into his unofficial job of team peacekeeper. “Just relax. I’ve seen her do this plenty of times, and I assure you it’s perfectly safe.”
Marci rolled her eyes at that last bit. Fortunately, the client wasn’t looking. “Just hurry up,” he rasped, closing his eyes. “She’s crushing me.”
Like it could hear them talking about it, the giant female tank badger spirit hissed and crouched down harder over its prey. The noise caught the attention of both males, and they barked in reply, their stubby, club-like tails bashing holes in the kitchen floor in their excitement.
“Can you keep the hordes at bay for a few more minutes?” Marci asked, looking at Julius. “I’m going to try and finish this in one swoop.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised, unclasping the industrial strength cattle prod from his belt. The voltage was calibrated to stun a buffalo, which meant it’d be enough for one of the badgers. The other was another story, but from the intent way they were staring at the female spirit, Julius knew he was just going to have to wing it. Now that they outnumbered him, any hesitation the badgers might have had was gone. They were going to get to the female, and they were ready to go through him to do it. So, before the beasts could shuffle out of the kitchen to flank him, Julius jumped straight at the bigger one, leaping through the air to shove the cattle prod’s electrode deep into the gap below its armored jaw.
The animal’s squeal went off like a siren, piercing his ears as the tank badger’s body went stiff from the shock. It fell over a second later, too stunned to even breathe. The shock wouldn’t last long, though, so Julius didn’t waste time. He’d already whirled around, dropping the prod, which took five seconds to rebuild its charge, to grab the warded cage he’d hauled up five flights of steps back when they’d thought they’d only have to deal with one tank badger, and not a moment too soon. He’d barely closed his fingers around the cage’s spellworked metal tines when the second badger launched itself at his head.
For such a squat, heavy animal, the tank badger was impressively fast, but here, at last, Julius had the advantage. Moving with supernatural quickness, he planted his feet and spun, positioning the cage in front of him. By the time the tank badger saw what was waiting, it was much too late. It was already in the air, and there was nothing it could do but squeal as it flew into the open cage like a ball into a goal. The impact when it crashed into the back was still enough to nearly take Julius off his feet, but he caught himself just in time, bracing against the doorway as he locked the cage door in place, shutting all one hundred pounds of furious tank badger behind an inch-thick grid of spelled metal.
And just like that, one threat was eliminated. The caged badger snarled and snapped, but the slits between the bars were too small to get its nose through, much less teeth around. Feeling satisfied that it was caged for now, Julius turned back to face the larger badger, who was already shaking off the cattle prod’s stun, hissing like a cat as it rolled to its feet. He was trying to figure out what he was going to do about that since they’d only brought one cage when a bowling ball-sized blast of swirling air flew over his shoulder and slammed into the badger’s face, knocking it head-over-claws back into the kitchen.
It hopped back up almost immediately, shaking off the magic like it was nothing, but when it turned around to growl at Julius again, its orange eyes no longer had the crazed gleam. The poor thing actually looked more confused than anything else, its pointy snout snuffing in the dark. Then, almost as though it had done the math and decided this whole mess was no longer worth the bother, the badger turned and fled, jumping through the shattered kitchen window and rattling away down the rickety metal fire escape.
Julius waited a few seconds to make sure it was really gone before looking over his shoulder to see Marci standing behind him with her arm out and her bracelet shining like a flood light. “Thanks.”
She beamed at him. “Glad I could get the assist.” Her bracelet snuffed out, and she shook her hand like it stung. “Man, those bastards are tough. That blast should have sent it flying into Ohio.”
“I’m just glad it decided discretion was the better part of valor,” Julius said, grinning back. “I take it you’re finished, then?”
“Yep,” Marci said, stepping aside to reveal their client, who was no longer being crushed under the shimmering image of a spirit. More telling to Julius, he also no longer reeked of female tank badger. This was a huge improvement for everyone, but especially for the badger in the cage, who was already noticeably calmer.
“Is it gone?” the client whispered.
“Not really, but she’s banished for now,” Marci said, reaching down to help him up.
The man looked bewildered. “What does that mean?”
“Well, a spirit can never truly be destroyed,” Marci explained. “I drained enough of her magic to temporarily disperse her, but so long as there are tank badgers and magic, she’ll always come back, and so long as you have that summoning spell tattooed on your arm, she’ll come looking for you.”
“So if I get it removed, she won’t be?” he asked hopefully.
Marci nodded, her eyes sharp. “Next time, sir, I’d suggest you stick to qualified, licensed mages like myself for your spells, especially permanent ones.” She flicked her wrist, and a business card appeared in her hand. “Our rates are
very reasonable, and as you see, we get the job done right.”
By the time she finished, the young man was gaping at her, but Julius could only smile. That was his Marci—she never missed a chance. Fortunately, the client was too happy to notice he was being hustled. Despite all the panicked complaining he’d done earlier, he was now staring at Marci and Julius like they were his own personal guardian angels. “Thank you,” he said, voice shaking. “You saved my life.”
“It was our pleasure,” Julius said proudly, and he meant it. Oh, how he meant it.
Technically, their business was magical animal removal. This being the DFZ, though, the scope of the jobs that came in was much larger. In the month since he and Marci had gone into business together, they’d done everything from banishments to home warding to clearing out an entire warehouse overrun with sentient snails. They’d seen some pretty crazy stuff, but while tank badgers were definitely too high up on the danger scale for Julius’s comfort, jobs like today’s were actually his favorites. Clients were always happy when you did a good job for a fair price, but when you saved someone from a monster in their home, they treated you like a hero. That was an incredible feeling for a dragon who’d been able to count on one hand the number of times he’d been thanked just four weeks ago, and Julius couldn’t keep the stupid grin off his face as he reached down to hoist the snarling cage containing the remaining badger onto his shoulder.
A mistake he didn’t realize until it was too late.
“Wow,” the man said, his eyes going wide. “You’re a lot stronger than you look.”
“He works out,” Marci covered quickly. “Necessity of the job. Speaking of.” She whipped out her phone. “We’ve got a dangerous animal removal plus a banishment. Would you like to add on a ward as well? You know, just in case?”
The client began to sputter, and Julius took his chance to flee down the stairs so he wouldn’t have to hear her taking the man for all he was worth. He didn’t begrudge Marci her mercenary nature—it was the main thing that had kept them afloat since they’d started this business together—he just didn’t like to listen to it. All that up-selling felt…rude.
That was a terribly undraconic thought, but Julius let it roll off with a shrug. He didn’t care about stuff like that anymore. Ever since he’d left Jessica’s apartment the night they’d rescued Katya and foiled Estella’s plots, he’d barely thought about other dragons. Other than Ian’s occasional check-ins, he hadn’t talked to one either. Even his mother hadn’t called. It was like he’d fallen off the face of the dragon world, which was why—despite crazy animals jumping at his head nearly every day—the last four weeks had been the happiest of Julius’s life. He had nothing he’d been raised to think was important: no wealth, no power, not even a proper lair, plus he was still sealed, but he couldn’t care less. For the first time ever, he was living without constantly looking over his shoulder or worrying about when he’d be attacked. It wasn’t much by dragon standards, but to Julius, it was paradise, and definitely worth risking some tank badger bites for.
Like it knew what he was thinking about, the badger in the cage chose that moment to try and bite his fingers where they held the cage handle, whining when it couldn’t get through. Julius held the cage a little farther away as he took the rusted cement stairs down two at a time to the street where Marci had parked her car.
Technically, it was their car now, though Julius could never look at the rusted out, mustard yellow sedan without thinking of Marci. They could have bought a car ten years younger for what the old rust bucket had cost to fix, but the car had belonged to her father, and Marci was noticeably happier when she was in it, which, to Julius, made the repairs worth every penny. He’d still sprung for a few upgrades, though, like a better autonav and a ventilated, expanded trunk big enough to fit cages like the one he had now. He was strapping the metal box into place when he heard Marci’s footsteps on the stairs behind him.
“How’d we do?” he asked, closing the trunk.
“Medium,” she said, still tapping on her phone. “I couldn’t sell him on the ward, but he did tip. I think you impressed him with that cage catch. We’ll have to conjure another two calls before next Wednesday if we want to actually get into the black this month, but we won’t starve for now, so that’s something.”
“We’re not going to starve period,” Julius assured her, walking around to the driver’s door. “Speaking of, let’s go get some dinner. It’s nearly sundown.”
“How can you tell?” Marci asked, looking up at the unchanging, cave-like dark of the DFZ Underground.
“Because I’m hungry,” he said, plopping into his seat. “Come on. It’s Friday night. Let’s find a nice empty lot to dump Mr. Snarls where he won’t bother anyone, and then we’ll go for pizza.”
He looked up to see if that appealed to her, but Marci was still standing beside the car. “You know,” she said quietly, leaning down to look at him through the open door. “The bounty for an intact, living tank badger is currently listed at over two thousand bucks.”
Julius dropped his eyes.
“They’re pretty dangerous nuisances,” she went on. “And two thousand bucks would go a long way toward filling the hole in our budget…”
She trailed off, her voice painfully hopeful, but Julius couldn’t say a word. It wasn’t that he didn’t agree with what she was saying. Turning the animals they caught in for Algonquin’s animal control bounty had actually been his plan to start with. But that was back at the beginning, when he’d assumed every job would be like the lampreys: nasty, aggressive, violent menaces that needed to be put down for everyone’s benefit. Once they’d actually started going out on calls, though, he’d quickly realized that most of the animals they got hired to deal with weren’t like that at all. Even the tank badgers weren’t normally aggressive toward people. They were just animals doing their best to survive in the shadow of the enormous human city that had popped up like a mushroom on top of them, and as an illegal magical creature trying to make his own way in the DFZ, the thought of turning them in to be killed for Algonquin’s bounty hit a little too close to home. It must have shown on his face, too, because Marci let out a long sigh.
“Never mind,” she said, flopping into her seat. “Forget I said anything.”
Julius started the car. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she assured him quickly. “Really. I just wanted to ask.”
It wasn’t okay. 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 his other giant 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 he didn’t get 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 he wanted to 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. He couldn’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.