Airborne (19 page)

“How was your trip out?” He asked her causally, not truly expecting an answer.

Adalyn gave some nonchalant chatter in response, turned, and waved Avery up the sand bank and over the rock bases. Without another word to the hovering male harpie, they marched in silence until they hit a pathway. If Adalyn had intended to finish the Mason conversation, she never got the chance. The sidewalk they were on led them straight onto a market street. Tents were set up on the side of the road bearing everything from fresh fruit to silver jewelry. The whole place smelt like heavy incense of cinnamon and nutmeg. Harpies lingered, chattering loudly and bargaining prices like auction pros. Avery probably should have acted more nonchalant but the chaos of it all had her head spinning.

The wide sidewalk became crowded enough that Avery found herself walking off the side, in the dirt, and receiving smacks of feathers in the face from a careless harpie’s wing. Only her tiny stature helped her to dart through the limited space until she surfaced almost a block ahead. Mason had spoken the truth about her trip here. No one on the island was shocked to see a human.

The crowd parted for Adalyn and the tall blonde watched her as she swaggered her way down the open sidewalk. Leaving the chattering market crowd behind them, they ended up on tranquil pathway with little more than stirring air to disturb the sound.

“So far so good.” Avery told herself to boost her wavering confidence.

“Ha, that was the easy part. Most people don’t know and don’t care. But you’re walking into Grand Central Station now, sweetheart. And if they catch you, they’ll kill you.” Adalyn dropped the foreboding comment just before they’d reached their destination.

In front of them sat an isolated building. Three stories tall, it was the first to demonstrate significant grandeur. The walls had green ivy climbing up the sides that only parted exactly where brilliantly carved insignia adorned the marble. For being on a first floor, it still had a dozen smooth steps to a set of heavy wooden doors. Harpies in sharp blue guard suits stood on either side and stared Avery down before she even got close. Growing more nervous by the second, Avery hesitated by her harpie companion’s side. She’d thought they’d sneak in, not walk in.

Adalyn snatched her shoulder, which with the height difference, was easy to do. Digging her claws straight into Avery’s skin, she pushed them both forward. Taking the unspoken hint to keep her mouth shut, Avery began the slow treacherous climb up the stairs.

“Adalyn.” One the guards stepped forward to intercept their path.

Broad shoulders, a wide abdomen, and thick beefy limbs made him look more pro-wrestler than bird. He wore an amulet around his own neck that flared an angry red. Staring down at them, his dark black eyes trained on Avery specifically.

“Who is this?” He quizzed.

Avery fought the urge to cower under the heaviness of his glare. Adalyn shrugged as casually as she ever did.

“She’s a servant and present from my father to console my breaking aching heart.” She spit out the line to intentionally sound cliché -- a move that the guard seemed to find perfectly normal.

“She can’t have magic, Adalyn, you know that.” In a startlingly swift motion he swung his fingers out, caught Avery’s fake glass necklace, and popped the thing free of its chain.

Freezing, Avery just watched as he brought the thing to just below his chin. The amulet of his still glowed a hot and heavy red. Unsure what it was, Avery hovered. What if everything went wrong? What was her sign to turn and high tail it away?

After their discussion on the beach, Avery wasn’t entirely sure that Adalyn wouldn’t let her get caught either.

“This is setting off the magic detector like an alarm. I can hold it.” He said and then tapped the amulet resting on his own chest. Avery caught on. The amulet he wore detected magic and specifically the magic radiating off her. He’d assumed it was the glass since the red hue hadn’t dissipated.

“Was that really necessary?” Adalyn complained but based on her tone, she’d probably expected it.

“You’re kidding.” He shook his head and then said, “Get it on your way out, Adalyn.”

He shifted to the side, fake amulet still cradled in his hand, and motioned for them to pass. Coldness crawled through Avery’s veins. She realized the detector would stop with its angry red hue once she left, even if the fake glass amulet remained. The second she cleared the area, he’d know in an instant that the fake amulet hadn’t been setting the magic detector off. She glanced at Adalyn’s face only to see the that female harpie had figured that too. Regardless, Adalyn nodded and with her painful grasp on Avery, pushed them up the last step. The second guard pulled the wooden door open on its squealing hinges and ushered them in.

The uniqueness of the inside registered with Avery immediately but it took her a full minute to figure out why. Then it sunk in. Instead of individual floors for the three stories, the inside lobby sat three stories tall without stairs anywhere in sight. Worse, the lobby branched out into open hallways on the top levels but had no path to get to them. The hallways were like holes in the wall. Everything was designed for wings here.

Caught between a mix of shock and amazement, Avery barely realized Adalyn had steered them down the first hallway. Here, the building looked normal. Normal white walls with normal paintings crookedly affixed. Normal red carpet beneath their feet led the way past normal wooden doors. They finally turned another corner that put them out of eyesight of the main hallway. The second they were out of sight, Adalyn gave Avery a powerful shove and they took off running. The carpet dampened the loud clacks of their shoes as they dashed down the hallway, frantic to disappear before the guard was onto them. Adalyn slid left and finally stopped abruptly at the last set of double doors.

“Go.” She hissed urgently as she jigged the door open with a bronze skeleton key. “Find it, and hurry.”

Avery slid past her, inside, and stopped in her tracks. Adalyn told her to hurry and by doing so had drastically underestimated the time it’d take Avery to dig through Samuel’s study. The big room had at least eight towering bookshelves pressed against every available wall. Worse, books had also been set out in leaning stacks everywhere.

She glimpsed back toward Adalyn, ready to recruit help, but just as Avery turned to look, the door slammed shut. Adalyn’s loud voice just barely made it through the heavy wood.

“Father, what are you doing back so soon?”

Heart skipping a beat, Avery whirled back to look around the room. She hadn’t even had a real moment to search. Shaking with panic now, Avery’s eyes desperately sought out any good place to start. She found it. Samuel’s desk sat in the middle of the shelves. Sprinting up to it, Avery searched the disgustingly tidy space. The short search turned up a dead end.

The door creaked and Avery froze. The door hovered but didn’t open. Adalyn had stepped in front of it again. Only thanks to her superior height did Samuel not get a clear look inside the room.

“Adalyn, I don’t have time for this. The counsel head and I have urgent business we must attend to.”

She heard the murmur of a third person, no doubt the counsel head in question. Avery knew she definitely wasn’t leaving out that door.

“You never have time for this.” If Adalyn was acting, she did it well. Her voice spiked with the snootiness of a bitter teenager and she slammed her boot heel on the carpet floor. The door shut, presumably Adalyn’s doing.

“Please. Not now.” Samuel said loud enough, Avery could hear it through the wood.

“I’m so tired of hearing that excuse. Is this what I need to do to get you to talk to me?” Adalyn said.

Grateful for the extra moment bought by their escalating argument, Avery skirted the room’s boundaries again. There weren’t any doors or windows she could escape through. There wasn’t even a curtain she could hide behind, and Avery needed to get out of there now.

“I’m going to ask you to move Adalyn. If you don’t, I’ll have them move you for me. Please don’t have it come to that.” Samuel’s tired voice set a final ultimatum.

Something drew Avery’s eyes to the corner. There was another oak varnished bookshelf. On the third shelf, one book lay askew in a tight pile. Driven by hope, she raced over and snatched it from its high shelf. Avery didn’t need to open it to know for sure. The memorable insignia of a silver crescent moon confirmed it as Jericho’s journal.

Adalyn’s undignified scream shot through the doorway. Avery knew that they must have shoved Adalyn aside. In the next second, the knob rattled. The noise made Avery glance up toward the door and that’s where she saw her Plan B. There a silver vent grate that opened into the bottom of the wall. She dove for it. Avery pried at the sharp metal with her fingers. It didn’t budge.

“Come on, I can’t be this unlucky!” Avery cried to herself. The hollering voices outside wafted into the room and grew louder by the microsecond. The knob had been turned but whoever held it had hesitated. Adalyn must have been struggling.

Knowing her seconds were precious, Avery forced herself to breathe and to think. Mason had told her not to use the magic, but if Avery ever had a good excuse, this was it. She dropped the book and put both her palms dead center on the two screws that held the grate in place. She then tried to conjure the stirring feeling in her finger tips to the hot palpable magic she’d managed before.

It took a moment for the fizzle in her blood to manifest into a vibration. With the vibration came a sort of burning in her veins. The metal obediently shivered with the energy and just as the hotness threatened to be unbearable, Avery yanked her hands away. She’d melted the surrounding grate metal until the screws sat askew. Breaking her fingernails, she dug the screws out and opened the grate.

The inside was just big enough for Avery to squeeze through. Struggling inside, Avery pulled the metal shut just as the wooden door in the room swung open.

Eighteen

Avery had never been the claustrophobic one. She had never fought over the window seat with her classmates or particularity cared about messy and crowded dorm rooms. Now she could, for the first time in her life, honestly describe the sensation of being boxed in. It just so happened to be brought on by crawling through an air duct where the cold metal pressed in on all sides. She didn’t have enough room to turn around but rather wormed her way around the tight corners.

Sliding on her belly as quietly as she could, Avery kept moving. The ducts thus far were dark and loud from blowing air. Far ahead there was always a hint of promising light, but she felt like she’d made no progress on reaching it. To think that somehow the movies made this look cool.

Trying to redirect her increasingly panicking thought pattern, she focused on what she knew. Jericho’s journal, currently wedged between her chin and her chest, held every detail there was about the amulet’s creation. Between her and Mason, they’d probably figure out fairly quickly how to get the Willow magic out of her. The magic would, with their best efforts, then be in another friendly glass amulet which Mason could take home to have his banishment revoked. He’d get married, she’d go home, and the rest would be history.

The devil remained in the details. She’d have to meet back up with Adalyn to get off the island and that was assuming the guards wouldn’t already be onto them. Wedging herself around another corner, Avery heard something and froze in place. On the side of the vent ahead was another metal grate, but this one was far too small for her to crawl through. The sound she’d heard turned out to be voices coming through that tiny grate. Avery held a breath to keep quiet and squirmed up another inch. Light poured in through the grate and combined with the thick metal netting, the room was invisible.

“You will regret this. They will come for me!” A girl screamed. It took a second but Avery recognized the voice.

“Eva.” She gasped to herself.

Mason’s sister was in the room, screaming and thrashing by the sound of metal clattering and clanging. They must have caught her in the Hatcher Pass raid and took her as a prisoner straight back here. Knowing Avery’s luck, she crawled herself straight into the police station.

“Haha.” A male that she didn’t recognize mocked Eva. “The last I heard you were on the outs with the Band. Probably why they threw you at us.”

Intrigued, Avery turned her ear to the grate and listened.

“The Band doesn’t work like that. We’re not traitorous, murderous banishing bastards!” Eva packed so many nasty adjectives in one sentence that she almost lost her breath at the end.

If the male harpie was impressed, he didn’t let on verbally.

“Now Eva, I’m hardly the enemy here. What you’ve done to the Prince, even if he was your father, is very much a hanging offense. But if you help me, I’ll help you.”

“You can’t make me any promises though right? I’ve heard it before.” She spit at him. “And I hate the good cop routine. Why would you want to help me?”

“For information.” The male harpie didn’t sugar coat it.

“I’m not turning in my colleagues.”

“This isn’t about your colleagues. This isn’t about the Band. So don’t jump the gun. This is just information.” The guy interrupted, clearly growing frustrated with Eva’s whining.