Her body fell. Her feet missed the balcony. She knew a moment of abject terror before her hands were racing toward the railing. Reaching out, she grabbed it just in time. Her weight yanked at her grip, but she held on and scrabbled up and over. The computer broke free, clanging against the metal. It followed her onto the balcony, where both of them were dumped onto the floor.
The slide of shoes echoed against the ground above her. Hands slapped down onto the metal railing. The person was trying to get a glimpse of her. From that vantage point, there was no way.
The clock was ticking. They’d wait a second before running to get to this floor. She could either try to drop down to another floor, or race him.
She dared not try dropping down again. She was nowhere near as good as that fae. The next time she might not be so lucky as to grab on, and if she did, her grip might give out.
A slice of light outlined the heavy curtain on the sliding glass door. Someone was probably inside.
Something popped as she rolled to her knees and then crouched to try the door. The curtain parted before she could. A confused man looked out. He must’ve heard the thumping of her body landing. Upon his seeing her, surprise and increased confusion creased his face.
Seeing an opportunity, she forced terror to bleed into her expression and crawled toward him. Shereached out, a young woman in trouble needing a savior.
The action worked immediately. He quickly reached for the lock on his door before sliding it open. She grabbed the computer before stuffing it back into her pants. Still no footsteps sounded from above. The guy was trying to figure out what was going on below.
“Are you?—”
“Help!” she said in a frantic whisper, cutting the man off. Her words tumbled out, aiming to confuse him further. “I fell. He’s after me. The mob. It’s danger?—”
She launched forward. Her two hands hit the center of his chest, shoving at an upward angle. His weight went off balance and then the force of her push moved him backward. She clamped a hand over his mouth to muffle his outcry of surprise.
A shock of magic blistered the air. The hotel room shimmered until ridged mountains topped with snow took its place. An illusion. She’d gotten lucky this guy’s magic wasn’t something painful.
She kept pushing until his feet caught, and he tumbled over. His body disappeared into a crystalline lake with a mirror-glass surface.
“Sorry, but he’s after me,” she said with a frantic edge to her voice. She hit a solid but soft shape that her eyes didn’t see. The bed. “My ex-boyfriend. He’ll kill me if he finds me.”
Shefelt her way toward the end as the mountains disappeared and the room clicked back into reality.
“Wait, calm down.” The man was struggling to right himself.
She jumped onto the king-sized bed and ran across.
“Wait—just wait a minute,” the man said as she hopped off the other side.
“Thank you for helping,” she said, grabbing the door handle and yanking it open. “Thank you!”
In the hallway, she pulled the computer from her pants and sprinted for the elevator alcove in the center of the floor. The hallways existed on either side of it. It would be faster to take the stairs, which was why the guy from a floor above would likely be in the stairwell.
Instead, she crossed through the alcove to the other hallway, passing a very confused woman in a bright pink dress. Once there, she turned right and aimed for the stairwell on the other side of the building. The building had four, one in each corner. By the time the guy on the floor above realized she’d fled the room, he’d have no idea exactly where she’d gone.
Her breathing became heavy as she reached her destination. Her heart pumped at an unhealthy speed. Everything in her said to burst into that stairwell and take two stairs at a time until she reached the bottom. Instead, she forced herself to slow down. She’d put distance between herself and her pursuer—now she needed to erase suspicion. She couldn’t let anyone see her hurry.
The handle clicked softly as she swung the door open and stepped in like she had a right to be there. No one waited on the other side. She paused to close the door gently and quietly before starting down the stairs. No other sounds greeted her. No footsteps or other doors opening and closing. No breathing, even.
The coast clear, she picked up her pace. Her right foot touched down on something sticky. She grimaced as she smoothed her hair. She needed to look presentable. One floor down…two. Still no one entered the stairwell.
She was passing a large white2when echoes of a door opening way above reverberated against the walls.
“He didn’t see who it was?” a woman asked loudly. Footfalls—two, maybe three people—clattered against the concrete.
Daisy descended faster.
“Orwhatit was, no,” a man answered. “A fae creature of some kind, they said, judging by the look of the body. Instructions are still to kill on sight by any means possible. There’ve been too many instances in this realm lately. They don’t know how to stop it.”
She reached the ground level but paused before opening the door, listening for anything else. She hadn’t heard that creatures had been seeping into this realm. Amber’s computer didn’t contain anything about that, not that Daisy had seen. Did the Demigods know and were keeping it from Daisy, or were they inthe dark too? If they were…who were the people policing that and so far keeping it quiet?
Her mind spun as the voices disappeared behind the thunk of a closing door. She’d ask Zorn about it. He might keep her in the dark sometimes, but if she asked him a question point-blank, he’d tell her what he knew, or he’d tell her she couldn’t know.
