True to his word, he hadn’t contacted me since our call last Sunday, which was good for the mission but bad for me. It had been a hard, hard week, and I missed him terribly. I would have given a kidney to drive around the city with him in his car again, windows down and no worries other than what kind of treasures we’d find in our next apartment. Not that we’d ever been that carefree, but the nostalgia was nice, especially given what I was seeing now.
Nik had clearly been working just as hard this week as I had. My internet search turned up a media blitz of trailers, interviews, and a risqué photo shoot I would have loved if they hadn’t gone out of their way to make Nik look like a total psycho. There were pictures of White Snake as well. Mostly shaky-cam shots from when she’d been chasing Dad and I over the river, which definitely made her look scary. I’d almost forgotten how big she was, which was crazy considering those truck-sized jaws had almost bitten me in half, but it was hard to keep something so much larger than you in the proper scale in your memory.
I had to hand it to the Gameskeeper, though. Dude knew how to stir up buzz. He barely even needed the paid advertisements. Nik’s fight was the talk of every media channel. Even serious international news organizations who’d normally never cover something this sleazy couldn’t seem to stop talking about the guy who was going to fight a dragon to the death on live TV. Add in the Peacemaker’s strong objections and vows to investigate, and you had the type of viewer-gluing drama reporters lived for.
The firestorm was so big, I was surprised the DFZ had stayed with me through the entire training. I knew she could be in multiple places at once, so I wasn’t shocked when I saw her on camera, but some of those interviews looked hard. The Peacemaker had to be grilling her behind the scenes, too, but other than looking a bit distracted on occasion, she’d never made me feel like I was anything other than the sole subject of her attention.
I didn’t know if that was because she was really good at doing lots of things at once or if she actually was concentrating on me and giving everyone else the brush-off, but I appreciated her dedication. She might not be able to bodily go into the arena with me, but no one could say she hadn’t done her part. Even lying in bed, I could feel her city magic humming through the bond between us, ready for me to use the moment I needed it.
I just hoped I could pull it off. At the rate this thing was building steam, Nik’s fight really was going to be the event of the century, and we’d helped make it happen. If we didn’t break the Gameskeeper tonight, we were going to make him, and I wasn’t sure I could live with myself if that happened.
“You’ll be fine,” Sibyl assured me. “Remember your positive mindset! Also, this is your thirty-minute alarm.”
“Time to get going,” I told the picture of Nik’s scowling face on my news feed. “Hang in there. It’s almost over.”
That went for me as well. Maybe not sleeping was a bad idea, because my whole body ached when I hauled it out of bed and forced it into clean clothes. Dark ones, because the first part of the plan involved sneaking, and while I wasn’t exactly a ninja, even I knew that my preferred neon palette wasn’t going to fly.
When I was dressed in my darkest pair of jeans, my old knee-high Cleaning boots, and the cheap long-sleeved vending machine T-shirt I’d bought for my dad—which hadn’t been made to be worn twice, but was the only black top I owned—I dug my poncho out of the closet and tossed it over my shoulders. The poor thing was looking a bit ratty these days, but the protective wards still worked, and if there was ever a time I needed a get-out-of-being-shot-free card in my pocket, it was tonight. I was putting the last items I felt I’d need into my bag when my dad knocked on my door.
Since he was up and about, I’d moved back into my bedroom, which was all nice and unbloody again thanks to the DFZ’s redecorating job. This arrangement put him on the couch, but seeing how he needed pretty much no sleep and I was the one paying for the apartment, I didn’t feel bad about it. He hadn’t complained in any event, and he actually knocked before barging in on me, which was huge progress. When I opened the door to tell him I was ready to go, though, the sight of him left me speechless.
“What the hell are you wearing?”
Where I was dressed for intrusion, my dad looked like he was going to a black-tie dinner. Not only did he have on the suit we’d bought to go to the Gameskeeper’s, he’d somehow also managed to score a new tie, slick new shoes, and a pair of silver cuff links, none of which were appropriate for what we were about to do.
“We’re not going to a party, Dad,” I said, looking him over in disbelief. “Where did you even get this stuff?”
“Here and there,” he replied cryptically, brushing a speck of nonexistent lint off his tailored shoulder. “It’s not armor, but I feel more comfortable dressed like this.”
He did look way more like the old Yong in this getup. Even with his long hair pulled back—his one concession to the fact that we were going to be sneaking through enemy territory—my dad looked closer to how I remembered him than he had since this mess started. That would probably come in handy when we talked to White Snake, but getting to her was another matter entirely.
“Okay, James Bond,” I
