“I have a hotel room,” Neal says, stepping back. “I couldn’t book for all of us. The whole continent’s at orange security alert, thanks to you-know-what, up there in the sky.” He jabs a finger up.
“What’s the word on it?” Atlanta asks, looking up, as if the ship might be visible right now.
“It’s all anyone’s talking about,” Neal replies. “Front page on every site. The IA transported it back from Gaia, and everyone’s arguing about who gets the tech that must be aboard.”
Mia and I exchange a glance that silently acknowledges everything that’s wrong about what he just said, but nobody corrects him. Atlanta and Dex just listen, blank-faced.
“You can actually see it from down here, certain times of day,” Neal continues. “Anyway, you can’t book into a hotel without a passport right now, but I managed to get a ground floor room with a window, so we shouldn’t have much trouble unofficially checking you in.”
Dex and Atlanta both look at me again, and I realize a lot of what he’s saying probably doesn’t scan.
No wonder they took a couple of Earthling hostages with them. They were supposed to land much closer to Prague—theyneedus to get from here to there, despite all their skills.
Though to judge by the speed and ease with which Dex, at least, is adapting, they might not need us for long.
I swallow the icy trickle of fear that thought brings, and try to focus on my cousin as he rummages in his pocket.
“Here,” he says, holding out a little plastic package. “A new SIMcard for your watch, Jules. I replaced mine, too, after your last call. They won’t be able to track either of us now.” He casts a longing look over his shoulder at the gendarme’s bike, and lets out a sigh. “I suppose Fleur will have to stay behind. I’ve disabled her tracking chip, but sooner or later someone will find her, and I’d rather be far away when they do.”
The rest of us keep our bicycles, and nobody speaks as we wheel them silently out of the park. His hotel is only a few blocks away, and Neal strolls through the front door while we head down the alleyway beside it. A couple of minutes later he’s popping open his window with a loud creak of rusty hinges, and helping pull the four of us through.
It’s a modest room in a family-run pensione, with two small double beds topped by gaudy, flowery bedspreads, and an emphatic sign littered with incorrectly used quotation marks warning against “smoking” tobacco or “electronic” cigarettes—the sort of sign you know there’s a story behind, if it’s that large. There’s a trio of backpacks on the bed.
Mehercule, please let there be fresh clothes in there.
Mia speaks. “Atlanta, Dex, you can shower first.”
The two have barely spoken a word since we met Neal, but their unspoken question is obvious now—they look around, their gazes lighting first on the door that leads out of the room, and then the door that leads to the little bathroom.
Do spacefaring aliens even know what a shower is?
“Neal, could you show them how the shower works?” I ask.
He shoots me a querying glance that only lasts a beat, then nods smoothly. “Of course,” he says, leading the way through into the bathroom. Dex follows without hesitation, but Atlanta halts long enough to eye the two of us speculatively, and then crosses the room to shut the window and latch it. It’s an old building, and the window shrieks in its frame—she doesn’t have to say a word for us to understand her meaning.
If we try to slip out while they’re in the next room, she’ll hear. And we’ll wish we’d stayed put.
As she turns to join her partner, I crack open one of the complimentary bottles of water on the nightstand and hand it to Mia, then pick up the other for myself. In the bathroom, I can hear Neal passing out towels, showing them how to control the water flow and temperature, and jokingly asking if anyone wants help washing their backs. When he reemerges, Atlanta firmly closes the door behind him.
He looks back over his shoulder, then pulls a face. “Aw, they’re staying in together? Boy, did I misread that one.”
“No,” says Mia. “You didn’t. They just have different ideas about modesty. And probably, they want to talk where we can’t hear.”
“That seems more likely,” Neal agrees solemnly. “I’m pretty sure he swings my way, and few can resist my charms.”
Oh, Neal. You’ve got no idea. I doubt he even swings toward ourspecies.
“We need to hurry,” Mia says quietly, sinking down to sit on the edge of the bed.
I settle behind her, ignoring—mostly—the way my thighs scream a protest at all their recent cycling as I lower myself down.
Neal takes a spot on the other bed, opposite us.
“Neal,” I start, “I’m going to tell you about the last few weeks, and I don’t have time to convince you I’m not crazy. I need you to just believe me.”
The laughter falls away from his eyes, and he nods, instantly serious. “I’ll believe anything,” he says. “I know where you’ve been.”
That pulls me up short. “You do?”
