I hugged my arms tighter. “You don’t see an elevator by any chance?”
“Afraid of a few stairs,prinsisa?”
I set my teeth. Remo Farrow had the temperament of aquila. We’d surely end up murdering each other before any pack of zany animals found us.
“I’d offer to carry you but I might be tempted to drop you”—he dipped his chin into his neck—“and not from the first floor. Even though, considering the height of the first floor, it would surely hurt.”
My arms fell from their tight knot and swung as I stormed ahead of him toward the stairs. “Like I wouldevertrust you to carry me.”
“Would you honestly have trusted an elevator in this place, though? It would probably take you to the top and then drop down.”
Goose bumps of fear sprouted over my goose bumps of cold.
“Plus, walking up a couple dozen flights of stairs should warm you right up.”
“Hating you is already helping with that.” My heart pumped harder, allocating heat to my extremities.
I caught his smirk in the shiny handrail.
The equivalent of four floors later, we reached the first landing, and I pirouetted to take in the expansive space. Nothing. There wasnothing. No fake furniture. No fake people. No crazy animals. The next two floors were identical to the first. Instead of heading up another flight—I’d exercised enough to last me a decade—I crossed the gigantic space toward the floor-to-ceiling window that gave onto the street below, bumping the tip of my nose against the impeccably clean glass that must’ve been made from a special material, because my breath didn’t fog it.
Inside the skyscraper across the road, apartments made of steel, pale stone, and cream drapes filled each floor. And the building next to that one was littered with office furniture. “Is it just me, or did you pick the only vacant building?”
Remo, who’d come up next to me, frowned.
“What?” I asked.
“When I looked up, I didn’t see anything in those buildings.”
“Maybe you should get your eyes checked?”
He turned said eyes on me. “Didyousee anything?”
“I was too busy scanning the street for mutant mice.”
He cocked up an eyebrow, which told me he couldn’t tell if I was joking; I wasn’t. I really was more worried about what lay in wait in the concrete wilderness. Now that I knew the buildings were missing front doors, though . . .
“Mutant mice,” he grunted. And then, because he was glib like that, he spun around and pounded back toward the spirals.
“Careful. Glass breaks,” I said.
“Probably not the magical kind. What the—Where the fuck are the stairs?”
“Seriously?” I gestured to where they . . .should’ve been.
Across from us, an elevator dinged.
He looked at the floor some more, then at the ceiling, and then back at me. “Next time, don’t wish for something so loudly, Trifecta.”
“Yeah. Because disappearing stairs are my fault.” Mutteringbagwaunder my breath just loud enough for him to hear, I crossed toward the elevator.
“You’re not actually going to get in?”
“Do you see any other way out of this building?”
I stepped inside, then searched for the keypad to input Lobby, but the elevator’s walls were black glass and devoid of buttons. I brushed my fingertips where the keypad should’ve been, hoping one would materialize. The doors began to slide shut. I jerked my attention to where Remo still stood by the missing spirals. Growling, he ran toward the elevator. I stuck my boot between the closing doors, which he seized and prized apart.
“I don’t like this,” he grumbled, squeezing himself through.
