“He’s a demon.” Hiram sounded suspicious. “Why are you here?”
“To delight in the company of my betrothed and her friends.” Daziel’s glib expression slipped when he sipped his ale. He made a face. “What is this?”
“It’s ale,” Ezra said. “Don’t demons drink ale?”
“Can demons get drunk?” Gilli asked.
“On starlight and moonbeams.”
My friends stared at him, then at me.
“He’s joking,” I said. My lips twitched. Daziel was exasperating, no doubt about it, but I could see how everyone being constantly agog at your existence might prod one into light teasing. “He thinks he’s funnier than he is.”
Daziel looked affronted. “I amveryfunny.”
“He’s here to see Talum,” I told Hiram. “He’d never left home and wanted to explore.”
This broke the ice, particularly for Hiram, who also loved exploring. Then Daziel asked about the colors Ezra wore, which set the boys off on an overly excited explanation of knockball. “You should join our league!” Ezra cried. Ezra was forever tryingto recruit people to the club team he captained, which was, by all accounts, actively bad.
“Are you serious right now?” Leah asked.
Daziel tilted his head. “What’s knockball?”
“It’s the best,” Ezra said. “A thinking man’s sport, smart, heady. You’d love it. Demons are fast, right?”
“You can’t have a demon on your team,” Leah said. She flicked a peanut shell at Ezra from the wreckage on the table. “That’s cheating!”
“That’s discrimination,” Ezra said, all superior. “God, Leah, I didn’t realize how prejudiced you were.”
“I am very fast,” Daziel said, looking back and forth between my friends. “With excellent reflexes.”
“Sweet,” Ezra said. “Practices are twice a week on Charing Field—I’ll get Naomi the details.”
Across the room, the musicians returned from a break and burst into an energetic rendition of the popular ballad “Where Has My Love Gone?”—only, they’d tweaked it to be “Where Have the Birds Gone?”
Leah winced. “Too soon.”
“Fast turnaround, though,” Ezra said. “Kind of impressive.”
“Has anyone seen a bird since Tuesday?” Jelan asked.
Everyone shook their head. “Kaylee Shatterly in my Intro to T3 class said her pet parakeet banged his head against his cage over and over until she was afraid he’d kill himself, so she let him go, and he flew away with the mass,” Leah said.
Dark.
The door to the pub opened, and more people gusted in with the rain and wind. Gilli frowned prettily. I committed tofrowning in the mirror later and seeing if I could do the same instead of looking like a gremlin. “It’s one more strange thing, isn’t it?” she said. “The birds flying off. The heat the other night. The winds being so strong.”
Ezra thumped his beer glass emphatically on the table. “It’s obvious something’s off with magic. The Sanhedrin needs to investigate it. Or if they can’t figure out the source of the problem, they need to protect people, put shields up or something against the too-strong winds.”
“What’s the Sanhedrin?” Daziel asked.
Another roar from the group, this one disbelieving. Even I shot him a look askance. “The Sanhedrin?” Leah repeated. “The Council? It runs the city?”
Daziel picked up his cup and idly took a bite of it. Glass crunched under his teeth. “We don’t pay much attention to your politics.”
“Daziel!” I cried. Not understanding money and politics was one thing, but this was a step too far. “You can’t eat glasses!”
“Why not?” He looked confused.
