Текст книги "Midnight's Kiss"
Автор книги: Thea Harrison
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It was the most genuine warmth Tatiana had shown him since he had cut things off with Melly.
Briefly, he considered mentioning his suspicions about Justine. However, he was under no illusions about his relationship with Tatiana either. She had reached out to him out of desperation, not from any newfound sense of affection or friendship. She wouldn’t believe a word he said about Justine, not without proof, and he didn’t have any. The only thing he had was a train of thought based on what could very well be a coincidence.
Gesturing with one hand, he said, “Of course.”
“I was hoping you might help with increased patrols at the Nightkind border.” She paused, rubbing her forehead. “I know your resources must be strained at present.”
That was her way of referencing the trouble in his own demesne. “Yes,” he told her. “But I can still put out increased border patrols. I’ll also issue a confidential demesne-wide alert for the Nightkind police to keep an eye out for any sign of Melly.”
Her raw gaze dampened. “Thank you. Could you also make a list of places you think should be searched? Bailey and I have been writing down every place we can think of – if you could just take a look at the list and let us know if there’s any place else you think we should add to it.”
“Of course,” he said again.
Bailey approached him, holding the notebook in one outstretched hand. From her rigid features, and tight mouth, he was willing to bet she hadn’t agreed with her mother’s decision to call him for help.
Ignoring her hostility, he took the pad of paper and turned away again as he scanned the places they had jotted down. It looked comprehensive to him. In fact, there were several places on the list he wouldn’t have known to suggest, but then he and Melly hadn’t been together in twenty years.
Had she taken lovers to these places? How many lovers had she had since Ferion? His mouth tightened at the thought, and the old resentful anger tried to resurface.
His skin prickled as a whirlwind of Power swept into the room again. A moment later, Soren reappeared. While the Djinn and the two women began to talk about search strategies, Julian jotted two places down on the paper.
One was a cabin at Lake Tahoe, where he and Melly had spent some time together. The winter that year had been so cold, the lake had turned into a sheet of ice, and he and Melly had made love over and over again in front of a roaring fire.
The other was a winery in Napa Valley. It had been a spur-of-the-moment trip.
That time had been much like the trip to Lake Tahoe. They couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Her curves had felt like heated silk, and he had lost himself in voluptuous sensuality, drunk on the wine in her blood and a desire that burned away everything and left him feeling burnished and new again.
His lip curled at the memories. He shoved them aside. If he could burn them out of his head, he would.
Both places were so far-fetched as possibilities, he couldn’t imagine they might still be relevant. But until they had a search strategy defined, they had no idea what might be relevant or not.
His phone buzzed. Pulling it out of his pocket, he checked the display.
It was a text message.
From Justine.
The old general in him roused, readying for battle. The waiting and strategizing was over. It was time to engage. He thumbed open the message.
If you want to see Melly alive again, meet me in one hour outside the de Young Museum in the Golden Gate Park. Say nothing to anyone. Come alone.
Well, that narrowed down the search considerably.
Rage and renewed fear roared inside as he stared at the text.
He was not surprised. He was not. Yet having the confirmation in writing felt like another blow to the stomach.
The Nightkind King did not negotiate with terrorists or kidnappers, but Julian the man was another matter entirely.
Thumbs flying over the tiny keyboard, he punched in a reply and hit send. I’m in Los Angeles. I can’t make it to San Francisco in an hour. You’ve got to give me more time.
Her reply came swiftly. I am amused. Did Tatiana ask you for help?
Yes.
Behind him, Bailey said in a tight voice, “Can’t you focus on something else besides yourself for once?”
“That’s enough, Bailey,” said Tatiana sharply.
He didn’t bother to look at either Bailey or her mother. All of his focus strained on his silent phone, gripped so tightly between both hands.
Come on, Justine. Come on.
His phone vibrated as her text appeared on the display. You have three hours. Better get a move on.
Goddammit. The flight alone from LA to San Francisco took an hour and a half. Even with his authority to expedite his flight and commandeer a police cruiser to cut through city traffic in San Francisco, meeting her deadline was going to be close, very close.
He knew she kept the deadline tight in order to keep him from making some kind of countermove against her. And of course the whole thing was some kind of trap, but that was the least important part of their exchange.
In a clench, he forced himself to tap out the next words. I need proof of life or there’s no deal.
Justine must have been waiting for that one, because almost immediately, her next text came, and it was a photo.
In the image, Melly stood in front of a man, looking both furious and terrified at once, her hands bound in front of her. The man’s hands were sunk deep in her long, disheveled hair. Was he holding her hair back for the camera? Melly’s face was tilted up at an uncomfortable angle, as if he had yanked her head back.
As Julian stared at the image, his emotions bled out – all the bitterness, resentment, regret, fear and rage – until he felt empty of everything, except the need to commit violence.
You, he thought at the unknown man restraining Melly. You are a dead man. You and Justine have just become my life’s mission.
Soren said, “Julian?”
At the same moment, he received another text: That photo is from early this morning. Do we have a deal?
He replied, I’ll be there in three hours.
Ticktock. Remember, not a word to anyone. I’ll find out if you do.
He knew she could too. Justine was a talented liar. She also had a keenly developed truthsense. All she had to do was ask him a direct question and listen carefully to his reply.
A hand touched him on the bicep. Startling, he whirled to look into Tatiana’s gaze. The Queen still looked frightened, but she was beginning to show signs of other emotions as well – worry and confusion, along with the beginnings of anger and distrust.
Distrust for him.
“Julian, are you paying attention at all?”
Not a word to anyone, Justine had said.
Staring at Tatiana’s distrustful expression when he had done not a goddamned thing in the world to earn it, he decided to take Justine’s admonishment literally.
Pivoting on one heel, he snatched his cloak off the back of a chair and strode for the hallway, ignoring the calls and questions that flew after him. With one slicing gesture, he pointed at his two guards then at the floor at their feet, ordering them wordlessly to stay where they were. They remained in place, immobile.
As he strode toward the front door, he slung the cloak over his shoulders and pulled the hood over his head, holding it in place with one fist. The two Light Fae guards stepped aside at his approach.
The last thing he heard before he left the house was Bailey, as she said bitterly, “I knew you should never have asked him to come.”
Then he stepped out into the sunlight. Searing pain stabbed the skin on the back of his hand, and he broke into a lope that brought him to the car.
The keys were in the ignition. Lunging into the driver’s seat, he slammed the door, started the car and gunned down the driveway. A glance in the rearview mirror showed Tatiana, Bailey, Soren and the Light Fae guards, all standing on the front doorstep and staring in his direction.
He was fleetingly pleased to see that his two guards were nowhere in sight. They were following orders, at least for now.
The others had to have realized something was seriously off, but he couldn’t count on them piecing things together in the right way. Even if they did, and they attempted to do something to help, they might just make matters worse.
If they didn’t… well, fuck them.
He dismissed them from his mind. He had a plane to catch, and a deadline to keep.
Like Justine said, he better get a move on.
Four
Lying so far north of Los Angeles, San Francisco had a much cooler climate and entirely different weather patterns. As the Nightkind plane taxied into SFO, beads of moisture gathered on the outside of the windows from the dense, heavy fog that had rolled in some time earlier that day.
Julian welcomed the fog. It provided an effective cover from the deadly sunshine. From long years of experience with living in the Bay Area, he could tell that he would be able to walk outside freely without needing the cloak, at least for the next couple of hours, and the fog might actually linger until nightfall.
During his trip to LAX, and the subsequent flight, he had received several calls and texts. None of them were from Yolanthe or Xavier, the two people he would have actually chosen to talk to, in case they had discovered any leads on Justine’s whereabouts, so he ignored all the messages and let the phone calls roll over to voicemail. Maybe if enough people took note of his prolonged silence, they would start talking to each other and figure out that something had gone wrong.
Once the airstair had been put into place, he exited the plane, strode through the massive, overcrowded airport to the area allotted for pickups, and approached the first parked police car he saw.
Putting a hand on the edge of the roof, he leaned close to the window to look inside. No key in the ignition.
“I’m going to have to ask you to step away from the car, sir,” a male said severely from behind him.
Straightening, Julian turned to face a young human, one eyebrow raised.
The cop’s expression changed drastically. “S-sir,” he stammered. “I mean, your majesty. No wait, that’s English royalty. You’re a—a—‘your grace,’ right? Or are you a ‘my lord’?”
There was no way Julian could maintain silence after that. On the plus side, the cop would definitely remember every detail of their meeting. He said dryly, “ ‘Sir’ or ‘sire’ will do just fine. I need your keys.”
“Certainly, sir. Sire.”
He was too preoccupied to be amused. “One or the other. I don’t need both at once.” He held out his hand peremptorily, and the cop dropped his keys into the palm of his hand.
“Where shall I go to pick up the vehicle, sire?” the cop asked.
Without replying, Julian climbed into the police car and, switching on the vehicle’s siren, he drove off. He had very little time now to get to the Golden Gate Park, and the museum.
Cutting sharply across the highway, he settled into the fast lane and shot the car’s speed to over a hundred miles an hour. In the heavy fog, it was a suicidal pace. What saved him were his preternatural reflexes.
The other vehicles on the road moved out of his way as drivers responded to the siren, but still there were times he had to slow as he waited for the traffic to shift to the right.
When he turned onto John F. Kennedy Drive, he had five minutes left.
Then four minutes, three.
Two.
He could tell by the line of red lights glowing up ahead that traffic was heavy at the intersection. He wasn’t going to make it if he continued to the intersection to turn onto Hagiwara Tea Garden Drive, the road upon which the museum was located.
He had no doubt Justine would kill Melly without a moment’s hesitation if he were late. None at all.
Yanking hard on the steering wheel, he drove the car over the shoulder and onto the grounds of the park. He could feel the wheels of the car digging into the dirt, and he gunned the engine to compensate.
When the distinctive shape of the museum building loomed out of the fog, he opened the car door and leaped out while it was still running, leaving it to slow to a stop on its own. Blurring into his fastest sprint, he raced around the corner of the building just as the stopwatch on his phone started to chime.
He snatched the phone out of his pocket and texted, I’m at the front of the museum. Where are you?
Justine replied, Stop. Wait.
Coming to a standstill, he did as she ordered, studying his immediate surroundings with a soldier’s sharp eye. Palm trees dotted the area, and despite the heavy fog, there were several people walking along the sidewalk. He focused on their conversations. All of them sounded innocuous enough.
A young girl came running toward him. Perhaps twelve years old, she wore a school uniform and she carried a laptop. He had dismissed her as harmless while she was standing in a crowd of schoolchildren several yards away, but as she came closer she caught his attention again.
Several dangerous creatures could masquerade as an innocuous school-age girl, and he tensed.
“Hi!” she called out as she ran up to him. “The lady from the museum said you left your laptop. She asked me to bring it to you.”
Catching a hint of the girl’s human scent, he relaxed somewhat. “Did she?” he asked, glancing behind her at the museum’s entrance. “What did she look like?”
The girl gave him a bright smile. “Oh, she’s very beautiful, and she has red hair. Is this yours?”
“I guess it is.” He took it from her. “Thanks.”
“Have a nice day!” She raced off again, heading for a yellow school bus where several other children in the same uniform were climbing aboard.
His phone vibrated. Did you get my present?
Tucking the laptop under one arm, he texted, Yes. Quit texting, dammit. Pick up your phone and call.
Oh, we’ll talk, she sent back. Just not by phone. Open the laptop and click on the Skype window. It’s logged into the museum’s Wi-Fi. Don’t move away from the building, or you’ll lose your connection.
Furiously, he yanked open the laptop and clicked on the Skype window.
Even though he braced himself for what might come next, the image that appeared made him go more than a little insane.
The scene was the same as the photo Justine had sent him. The background looked like rough rock, as if it might be a cave, or perhaps an unfinished basement. There were no windows or other potentially identifying characteristics. The lighting was odd and inadequate, and very slanted, as if it came from a lamp set on the floor.
This time there was no sign of the unknown male. Justine stood with Melly in front of the camera. They were both near the same height and size, but Melly was no match for Justine’s far superior strength and speed. Melly had a bunched cloth stuffed into her mouth in a simple, brutal gag. The Vampyre held the younger woman in a tight clench, and in one hand, she held a knife.
Julian ran his gaze compulsively over Melly. By some trick of nature, she was ridiculously photogenic. Even in such a horrible setting, with bad lighting, no makeup and a great deal of stress and danger, the camera loved her features and figure.
She looked disheveled, furious and scared. Her bare arms showed a few smudges that might be either dirt or bruises, but other than that, she didn’t appear to be seriously injured or abused.
Yet.
Their gazes locked. Even through Skype he felt such a strong connection to her, for the tiniest moment nothing else mattered. All his anger and bitterness fell away. She looked at him like she used to with her beautiful eyes so full of emotion. Light glimmered in the wetness of her gaze, and in that moment, he would have given anything, anything at all, to be able to put his arms around her and tell her that everything would be okay.
Anything, just to feel her in his arms one more time.
“First things first,” Justine said. She smiled into the camera. “I want you to tell me you didn’t say a word to anyone.”
He snapped, “I didn’t tell anybody anything.”
“Excellent. Put your phone in your pocket and leave it there. Remember – I have eyes on you right now, and I don’t mean through our Skype session. If you try to do anything stupid, I’ll carve off Melly’s face and make it into a mask to wear to our next encounter.”
His own truthsense told him that Justine wasn’t making an idle threat. He hadn’t targeted anyone suspicious when he’d studied the scene, but that didn’t mean that watchers weren’t there.
Hissing, he jammed his phone into his pocket. “I’m not going to try anything stupid.”
Justine laid her cheek against Melly’s golden hair and rocked her back and forth. “I guess we have an answer to our question, don’t we, kitten? Apparently he does have some feeling left for you after all.” Her smile widened. “Julian, you might want to compose yourself. Remember, the fog offers you some cover, but you’re still in public. Those fangs and red eyes are sure to bring you more attention than you want right now.”
He hadn’t been aware that he had lost such control, and he struggled for some measure of composure. It was difficult, when the need for violence filled his mind with a red haze.
“You’re going to be okay,” he told Melly. “Remember that.”
Briefly, she closed her eyes. When she looked at him again, she did so with a steely calm. Good girl. Gods, she might be faithless, but she was damn brave.
Only then did he turn his attention back to the psychotic bitch holding her captive. “I’m here, just like you wanted,” he said in a harsh voice. “Let’s get on with this.”
“Don’t be so hasty,” Justine said with evident relish. “I can’t tell you how long I’ve looked forward to doing this – or something like this, anyway. This specific scenario is a surprise, but I’m excellent at improvising when I have to. I just want you to take a moment to really appreciate everything I’ve set up here.”
He said between his teeth, “Believe me, nothing you’ve done in the last few days has escaped my notice.”
She batted her eyelashes at him. “I’m so glad. This wasn’t easy to do on short notice, you know. We’re in a remote enough location I had to use a couple of relays just to establish a Wi-Fi connection. You can’t imagine the hassle.”
“You want me to tell you it’s really fucking amazing?” he said flatly. “Okay. It’s really fucking amazing. Justine, you’ve screwed up. Forget about me for a moment – take me out of the picture completely. If you do anything to hurt Melly, Tatiana will never rest until she has you hunted down and staked.”
Justine pursed her lips into a moue. “I guess that means we’ll have to make sure Tatiana never finds out I was involved. Maybe I should just kill her now. After all, it’s not like I can let her go, because as soon as I do, Tatiana will know I was the one who kidnapped her.”
She raised the knife to Melly’s throat.
He started to talk fast, and desperately. “That’s not true. You haven’t gone too far yet. Tatiana will be pissed you kidnapped her, but no real harm has been done. She’ll get over it – Justine, listen to me —”
Watching his face, Justine started to draw the knife slowly across Melly’s neck. A red line appeared on the tawny skin of Melly’s throat. With a hoarse, muffled scream, Melly fought against Justine’s hold, but the other woman held her firmly captive.
Panic blew out Julian’s mind. He roared into the camera, “Stop. Justine, stop! TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT ME TO DO, AND I’LL DO IT!”
Cocking her head, Justine pulled the knife away and licked the blade with evident relish.
As Julian stared while she tasted Melly’s blood, he wanted nothing more than to punch his fist into Justine’s chest, pull out her beating heart and crush it in one hand.
Justine said, “Or maybe I shouldn’t kill her, since she seems to be an effective way to control you. Hm, what to do.” She said to Melly, “Darling, you taste delicious. Stop struggling so hard, I barely scratched you.”
Fixedly, he focused on the bleeding wound on Melly’s neck. Even though the quality of the camera feed wasn’t terrific, the cut didn’t appear to be bleeding copiously. Justine was telling the truth. She hadn’t cut deeply enough to sever the carotid artery.
He thought of all the expert slashes on the throats of her dead attendants. She knew what she was doing with a knife, down to the millimeter. Now that she had decided on her course of action, she would enjoy playing with them both, like a cat with captive mice.
He had to turn her attention away from Melly and back onto him. He snapped, “What do you want?”
All Justine’s playfulness fell away, until her face turned cold and still. “It’s so simple, Julian, I’m sure you already know the answer. I want you. Taking Melly, this whole set up – it was all for you. I hope you feel flattered. Now I want to know just one thing. If I agree to let Melly go, would you take her place? Would you trade her life for yours?”
“Yes,” he said. Justine was right. He did already know she would ask that, because of course that was the trap.
Justine smiled. “That’s what I was hoping you would say.” Her gaze shifted to someone who stood behind the camera. “Now it’s your turn.”
A whirlwind of Power appeared in front of Julian. If that was Soren, his appearance on the scene could ruin everything. Snapping the laptop shut, Julian faced the new arrival with a snarl, his fangs descending.
The figure of a Djinn formed, but it wasn’t Soren.
It was a pariah Djinn named Malphas.
Like Soren, Malphas was a first-generation Djinn, and as such, he carried an intense concentration of Power. His physical form was that of an angelically handsome man with golden hair, but he was nothing like an angel.
Malphas smiled at him. “Hello, Julian.”
He snarled, “What the fuck are you doing here?”
The Djinn lifted a shoulder in a casual-looking shrug. “When I heard Justine was looking to bargain with a Djinn, I decided to pay her a visit to see what she required. We had an interesting conversation, she and I.”
“You can’t bargain to help Justine,” Julian growled. “Pariahs might not keep their word, but you can’t afford to break the bargain you made with Tess and Soren. If you do anything to hurt anyone in the Nightkind demesne, or anyone Tess knows and cares about, Soren will open the envelope of information she gave him and distribute the contents to every gaming commission in the world.”
Malphas’s smile glittered with malice. “I can keep a bargain when it suits me, and I fully intend on keeping that one. However, there’s nothing in that agreement to keep me from offering to give you a ride if you want it. After all, I wouldn’t be hurting you. I would be helping you to get wherever you wanted to go. I can drop you off at the destination of your choice and be on my way. What happens to you after that is none of my business.”
Julian’s eyes narrowed. Clearly this was the Djinn’s way of getting revenge for Julian’s part in the confrontation that had trapped Malphas into making the bargain with Soren and Tess.
His mind raced as he tried to think of options, but Justine had planned too thoroughly and there weren’t any. With Malphas’s travel “assistance,” Julian would have no way to trace their paths or to find out the location of the meeting.
“I know what you’re trying to do,” said Malphas. “You’re trying to think your way out of the situation. But this time all of the cards are in Justine’s favor. You’d better hurry. From everything I’ve seen, I think she really likes to use that knife.”
“All right,” he bit out. Maybe he could think of something he could do once he came face-to-face with Justine.
Malphas raised an eyebrow. “ ‘All right’… what? Do you want me to do something for you?”
“Take me to where Justine and Melly are,” Julian snarled.
Smiling, the Djinn crossed his arms. “Did you ask me a question in there somewhere? I didn’t hear a request in that. I can’t imagine why I would do anything for you when you haven’t even said please.”
His fangs sprang out. Lowering his head, Julian stared at the Djinn. “I might be trapped at the moment,” he whispered. “But you don’t want to push me too far.”
“On the contrary.” Malphas returned his stare with one as implacable and hostile. “That’s precisely what I want to do – push you too far. Hurry up. I’m growing bored. You have no value to me if you stop being entertaining, and I couldn’t care less whether or not Justine slits the Light Fae princess’s throat.”
Julian sucked in a breath. He said, “Will you please take me to where Justine and Melly are?”
“That’s better.” Malphas’s smile returned. “Of course I will.”
As the Djinn strolled toward him, Julian had time to consider a few things.
Every old Vampyre had talents that increased with age, and he was no exception. His talents were persuasion and also the ability to hold on to his prey. If he got his hands on Malphas, the Djinn wouldn’t be able to dematerialize again until Julian either let him go or he was dead.
And he considered it.
He really considered it.
If he waited until after Malphas transported him to where Justine and Melly were, and he tried to call on Soren, he could force Malphas to stay until the other Djinn arrived.
But that was assuming Soren could hear him, or would choose to answer him if he did. Djinn made psychic connections to the people with whom they struck bargains. Those connections allowed them to hear when they were called, but Julian had always been careful to stay clear of Djinn obligations.
Witches were also able to put out calls to the Djinn with enough Power to make themselves heard, but Julian was no witch. Normally when he wanted to contact Soren, he did so in the most ordinary of ways, by phone.
Even if he were able to call Soren and the Djinn responded, the maneuver would kill him. Julian might be able to pin Malphas, but he couldn’t defeat the Djinn on his own. Malphas was too Powerful.
A first-generation pariah could only be destroyed if several Powerful creatures teamed up to take him down. It had been done before, but it was a risky and dangerous proposition, which was why the Demonkind only went after a rogue Djinn when they had no other choice. At their essence, they were social creatures, and their preferred method of punishment was to ostracize a Djinn who went rogue.
And none of that took into account what would happen to Melly in the precious seconds it would take Soren to arrive and assess the situation. Justine would have her throat slit before Soren could do anything to stop it.
They really were well and truly trapped.
So Julian said nothing as Malphas stepped close enough to lay a hand on his shoulder.
And he did nothing, as the Djinn’s whirlwind of Power rose up around him and carried him away.
Blood trickled down Melly’s neck from the stinging cut Justine had given her. She thought, dear lords and ladies, all I want in the whole wide world is a bath, a piña colada, and the chance to stake this bitch in the heart.
And please, gods, a nap in a real bed is mighty high on my list too.
None of those things appeared to be in her near future. Not only was Justine’s iron grip unbreakable, but Melly’s makeshift stake lay several feet away, hidden in the pathetic little nest she had carefully arranged so that it hid the damage she had done to the frame of the cot.
When Justine and Vampyre Guy had shown up earlier, they had given her plenty of warning at their approach, although she hadn’t understood what was happening until it was almost too late.
She had been hard at work staking ferals, which was a rotten, dangerous, tedious task, thank you very much. It was tough physical work, and her arm and shoulder tired quickly.
Horror was so much more fun on a movie set, where all the wounds were special effects applied by makeup artists, and there was a concession table with tasty snacks, and trailers with working plumbing, and weekend parties, and somebody else available to do her stunts whenever she didn’t feel like doing them.
In real life… there weren’t enough words to describe how much this sucked.
Also, the Vampyres were feral – that didn’t necessarily make them stupid. It hadn’t taken them long to learn to jerk back when she lunged for one of them.
Yet they wanted her… they really wanted her, so they stayed close, in case they might be able to grab her whenever she danced near. There were so many Vampyres, they crowded the ones at the front against the bars and hampered their movements, which was why she had been able to make as many kills as she had.
So far, she’d managed to stake five. Four of them had crumbled to dust, while the fifth one had gotten extra snarly and violent, and there were still so many left.
Then a high-pitched whistle sounded.
As she paused and tried to figure out what this new information meant, the ferals turned toward the sound and raced down the tunnel. A few lingered, including the one she had stabbed, but not for long. After a few moments they, too, raced out of sight.
At first she had been relieved but puzzled. What had made them run?
Moments later, she had heard Justine’s and Vampyre Guy’s voices coming down the tunnel. That was when realization had struck.
They had conditioned the ferals to respond to a whistle.
Leaping into action, she had scrambled to get her nest arranged so she could hide her stake. She kept the cot propped on its side, the ends touching the walls in the corner, with the blanket and her food and water stacked inside the triangle.
The whole illusion was as risky as a house of cards. One good puff of wind and it would all fall down.
For example, if anybody chose to right the three-legged cot and sit on it, it would collapse under their weight, but she had bet that nobody would want to settle in for a relaxed visit.
So far she had been right.
“Relaxed” was definitely not what this visit was. Homicidal and psychopathic, but not relaxed.
She had watched them set up their technical operation, complete with camping lantern, a Wi-Fi router and a laptop. None of it had surprised her, except for the arrival of a Djinn named Malphas.
When Justine had stepped into the cell to take hold of her in a firm grip and turn to face the laptop, Melly had been braced to see her mom on the screen, or maybe Bailey, or even both of them together.
Not Julian.
