Page 17

THIRTEEN

MAC

“He’s here,” Roman says confidently as we step into a karaoke bar a few blocks down from the busy street we materialized on.

The place feels like it’s straight out of a Japanese fever dream, with bright neon lights and multiple karaoke stages. Instead of regular tables and chairs, there are massive couches, almost all of them full of a mixture of tourists and people who appear to be local.

It’s hard to tell if the mage knows he’s being tracked or if he’s just naturally too chaotic to easily pin down.

My nose still feels fried from the magic overload of the main street, but I take a deep inhale and catch a fleeting scent that no doubt belongs to Rune.

But with a bar packed full of people, it’s going to be hard to find him without knowing what he looks like, unless we start sniffing every drunk in here. That might not go over so well.

“We’re close enough to his place, maybe he’s a regular. Should we just ask the bartender if he’s seen Rune?” I suggest.

Cassius arches an eyebrow at me with an unimpressed expression. “And tip him off that someone’s looking for him?” He looks around the bustling, dizzying brightness of the bar. “Assuming he doesn’t already know.”

My shoulders sag. Cassius makes a good point.

We need to see if the bartender has any information on Rune without showing our hand.

My gaze wanders while I think, my dragon eyes flickering to bring the room into better focus before recoiling again from the unnatural brightness of the neon.

There’s a couple cozied up in one of the corner couches, and an idea clicks into place.

“Alright, I’ve got it. You guys go find somewhere to sit, and I’ll talk to the bartender.” I make a shooing motion.

Cassius still looks a little skeptical and Roman is still sniffing the air, but Atlas just shrugs and starts towards the nearest couch where a group seems to be getting ready to leave.

Drax drags his fingertips along the inside of my arm, coaxing a flutter of scales that quickly disappear again before anyone else can notice them.

“Can you…” I look down at my hand, more specifically at the ring on my finger that has started to feel so natural there I’ve hardly thought about it all week.

A little twinge of guilt and wrongness twists inside me as the question forms on my lips.

Maybe because I don’t want to hurt Drax’s feelings?

I haven’t been able to shake what Cassius said last night about what a good guy—er, demon —Drax is.

“Can you hide the ring with a glamour for me?”

He frowns, and that same wrong feeling I had a minute ago fills his side of the bond.

“You want me to hide your mating ring?”

“Just for a minute.” I rush to reassure him. “If the bartender happens to know what it is, my plan to get information on Rune won’t work.”

He makes an irritated little huffing noise that’s cuter than it should be considering he’s a demon, but then he closes both his hands around mine without an argument.

I’m starting to get familiar with the feeling of a glamour—the warm tingle, the way the air shimmers almost imperceptibly.

When he pulls his hands away, the ring is gone.

My heart sinks and my dragon thrashes.

“It’s still there, just invisible,” Drax says soothingly, in a low voice that I somehow know is meant specifically for my dragon. The beast calms immediately, and I let out a slow breath, smiling awkwardly in apology for my reaction.

He brushes the backs of his fingers against my cheek and a surge of warmth swells in our bond.

“Okay, I’m just going to…” I gesture towards the bar, and Drax nods.

“We’ll be right over there. Shout if you need us.”

I turn away from the group and run my fingers through my hair, rearranging my expression into a flirtatious grin and squaring my shoulders.

This isn’t so different from what I’ve always done.

Sure, I’ve never taken orders from someone else like I am now with Auri, but a little bit of deception and thievery? I eat that for breakfast.

In a weird way, knowing Auri recruited me, picked me on purpose, maybe even set me up to steal something I’d get caught for so he could offer me a way out… it’s giving me confidence. He wanted the Drake brother with sticky fingers and an insatiable appetite for excitement, and that’s what he’s got.

I swagger up to the bar, sniffing subtly along the way just in case I happen to get lucky and stumble across Rune. Roman is right, the place has his scent all over it. He must come here a lot. But I don’t get any distinct spikes that make me think he’s any of the people I pass by.

I sit down on one of the open stools at the end of the bar, and my eyes wander over everyone nearby again.

My instinct to catalog every shiny piece of jewelry within pickpocketing distance kicks in, and I nearly salivate over some of the tempting, sparkly options.

A rumble of amusement that isn’t mine vibrates in my chest, snapping me out of my greedy reverie.

I bring my hand to that spot in the middle of my chest where I feel the tether to Drax and rub it absently. He felt my urge to swipe someone’s watch, and he thought it was funny. Not just funny, he thought it was cute. He liked it.

A strange, warm feeling that actually is mine this time snakes through me, leaving me even more confused than I was before. But I don’t get the chance to pick at the feeling or analyze it.

The bartender stops in front of me. He’s a sturdy, muscular Japanese man with his dark hair pulled back into a small ponytail at the base of his skull and a bland, unreadable expression.

“Ready to order?” he asks, his English accented but perfect. I’m sure he took one look at me and pegged me as a tourist.

“Can I get a sake?” I say. He nods and pours my drink, then sets it on the bar in front of me.

“Actually, can I ask you a question?” I lean on the bar, putting on a hopeful smile and purposefully lowering my gaze so I come across as a little shy.

“There’s this guy I met here the other night.

I got the sense he was a regular, so I was hoping to run into him again, but it’s so crowded in here it’s hard to find anyone. His name is Rune.”

If I wasn’t watching closely, I might not have noticed any reaction at all. But there’s a slight flicker in his eyes, a quick dart to the left before they’re back on me with no other change in his expression.

“Don’t know a Rune,” he says with a shrug.

A few seats down to my left, a man slides off his stool, leaving a full drink behind as he casually slips into the crowd.

Hello, Rune .

“Thanks,” I say politely, throwing back the shot of sake before going after my target as casually as possible.

I can’t get a good scent off of him from here, but all my instincts are screaming at me that this has to be the guy.

His dark hair is long and wild. For some reason, after meeting Alenor, I was picturing Rune in a similar way—a punk-y looking twink.

But the man a few feet in front of me is tall and lanky, with both of his arms covered in intricate tattoos that go all the way down to cover the backs of his hands and wrap around his fingers.

He moves fluidly through the bar, managing to hurry without making it seem like he’s moving any faster than anyone else. I don’t want to take my eyes off of him to flag down Drax, so I send a thought through our bond, not sure if he’ll get it or if the bond even works that way.

Target headed for the fire exit at the back.

He doesn’t pause or look over his shoulder when he reaches the exit. Does he know I’m following him? I hesitate for half a second. Could it be a trap he’s leading me into?

He pushes through the door, and I hurry forward. Fuck it. If it’s a trap, then it’s a trap. I catch it before it can swing closed and follow him into the alley.

DRAX

“Mac’s got him,” I announce, shooting out of my seat as soon as I feel the tingle of awareness in my chest. It’s not quite words, but a sense that Mac is trying to alert me to follow him. And, like the tug of a leash, I turn and follow the direction I can feel my mate pulling me in.

I see the fire door swing closed without a sound. The mage must have cast a spell to disrupt the alarm so it wouldn’t make any noise. I look around the crowd, trying to spot Mac. But he must already be outside with Rune.

“Come on,” I growl, hurrying after them.

“Do we want to ruin everyone’s fun tonight?” Atlas asks with a chuckle when we reach the alarmed door.

I grunt thoughtfully. None of us have magic—not that kind of magic, anyway. I could glamour everyone in the bar to see something different, but I can’t glamour away a sound or the fact that it would trigger an emergency response.

“Or we could just do this,” Cassius says in a bored voice, snapping his fingers and vanishing with the power Auri gave him to travel between worlds.

“Duh.” Atlas chuckles and follows suit.

Duh indeed. I slip into the black space and immediately re-emerge in the narrow alley between the bar and the building next door. But the tug in my chest that ties me to my mate is gone and there’s no sign of the mage or Mac.

“Where are they?” I spin around, looking for any sign of them.

The electric scent of magic burns in my nose and their absence is a physical presence of its own, a gaping hole in space that tells me without a doubt that the four of us are alone in the alley.

Roman sniffs heavily and Atlas drops to his knees to feel the ground, uselessly trying to sense what I already know.

The mage took my mate.