Behind the man, several other men in suits stood.
“Good job, Hayde,” said one who wore a shimmering gold watch. He smiled and looked at the men around him. They started for the door.
Shit.
Hayde had set them up.
“Stay back,” Maggie said, the tip of her sword against Hayde’s throat.
“You think we care if you carve up one flit?” the man with the watch asked with a grin.
His men drew swords. They were ready for battle.
Kinzer stood tall, like he was ready to face all of them at once. Then he spun around and raced past Hayde. He grabbed Maggie by her shirt and bolted down the hall.
The higherlings followed after them.
As they came to the end of the hall, Kinzer threw himself against one of the doors and ran through the room.
A little girl played in the middle of the floor with Lego blocks, crafting the beginning foundations of a house. As they entered the living room, the girl gasped and cried, “Mommy!”
A woman, presumably the mother, stood in the kitchen, earphones in, bopping around as she stirred noodles in a pot.
Kinzer threw himself against the window, but it was too thick for him to break through, and he fell back.
“Really?” Maggie asked. She pulled the window open. “This is how a window works.”
They crawled out onto the balcony.
“Oh, great,” Maggie said.
There were no stairs. And they were four stories up.
“Now what are we supposed to do?”
He threw his sword onto the sidewalk below, then took Maggie’s and did the same with hers.
“What are we doing?”
“A good ole-fashioned escape.”
He jumped to the other side of the iron rail. Kneeling, he gripped onto the balcony’s floor and hung so he was able to swing onto the balcony below.
“Oh, God!” Maggie exclaimed.
She hopped over and mimicked his move.
“Where’d they fucking go?” Kinzer heard a higherling on the balcony above them ask.
He listened. A few footsteps moved across the balcony, then stopped.
Kinzer listened until he figured they’d moved on. Then he and Maggie used the same approach to get to the next floor.
“One more to go,” Kinzer said.
Maggie nodded. They used their same strategy, dropped onto the grass around the apartment building, picked up their swords, and sprinted along the sidewalk. An emergency exit beside them popped open and a higherling ran out, wings spreading behind him. He grabbed Maggie, twisting her wrist so that she dropped her sword.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go, you fucking monster!”
