He shot back the green stuff, then tapped his index finger against his glass.
The barmaid, whose flexible screen dress lit up with moving images of the various cocktails on York House’s menu, gave him a refill. “What can I get you, hon?”
“Just some water, please.” I stared at the patrons closest to us. Although more than a few stared back, all were strangers. Still, I regretted having dismissed my earlier disguise of a bald septuagenarian.
“You do realize you’re old enough to have alcohol. I mean, according to human standards, youareeighty-n—”
“What is it you want, Josh?”
“Straight to business, huh?”
“I agreed to meet you here because I owe you. However, I need to get back to Neverra soon, so make it quick.”
“Have you ever owed anyone agajoï?”
Not for the first time, I regretted asking Josh to take the downfall for my little illegal dealings. “No. You should feel privileged.”
“I do. I feelveryprivileged.”
The barmaid came back with my water.
When she left, he said, “A person, who’d rather remain anonymous, recently told me about a supernatural prison Gregor and your grandfather Linus created centuries ago.”
My eyebrows drew together.
“Apparently, it’s only accessible in Neverra through a portal that magically relocates itself every month.”
I let out a disbelieving grunt. “I may be gullible, but come on.”
“I’m not pulling your wing, Amara.”
“I don’t have wings.”
Smiling, he spun on his stool until his broad body was angled toward me. “Figure of speech.” Josh’s shoulders, like most Daneelie shoulders, were wide, and his biceps bulged from hours spent in water. My arms weren’t as defined, but that probably had to do with the fact that my preferred means of locomotion was flight.
Josh was pure Daneelie; in other words, he couldn’t fly.
I was a mix of everything: Seelie, Unseelie, Daneelie, and human. Which meant I had blood, fire, iron, and water coursing through my veins. I was a lethal faerie cocktail who could live underwater, in the sky, and on Earth.
“I swear. No joke.” Josh’s freckled face puckered. “My source tells me the portal’s presently located in the ceiling of the Duciba, more precisely in one of the leaves of the golden circlet mural your aunt Lily painted. Since I’m locked out of Neverra, I can’t check it out myself.”
“Wait. This source of yours actually saw it?”
“Yeah.” He speared his freckled fingers through his nose-length bangs and shoved them off his forehead. The rest of his hair was buzzed close to his scalp. “If you look long enough at the leaf, the paint ripples. Like a faulty projection.”
“Okay. . . And what does this prison have to do with ourgajoï?”
“I believe Kiera might be in there.”
“Kiera?”
“My sister. The one who didn’t make it into Neverra.”
Didn’t make itwas putting it nicely. Kiera had tortured my aunt and uncle when they’d visited the Daneelie camp back in Michigan a little over an Earthly century ago.
“Um. You do realize that if time in this prison moves like it does around here”—I gestured to the bar but obviously meant Earth—“her chances of being alive are extremely slim.”
He shot back his drink. “Time doesn’t move the same in there as it does in the human world. ’Parently doesn’t move like in Neverra either.”
