If we ever freaking did!
I stared at the cliff. Was the portal somewhere beyond it? And then I looked up into the surrounding buildings, seeing furniture, even in the tower we’d just come from.
I’d been wrong about the glass being magical. It wasn’t magical; it was evil, offering deceptive salvation and cruel truths. As I stalked off toward the train again, I rebaptized this cell Deception Central. I neither sang nor hummed, and not because I was afraid Remo would pick on me, but because I was so disheartened I couldn’t find it in me to produce a single sound.
My stomach growled, but I doubted it was in hunger. I didn’t think I could eat anything after the horrific movie in the elevator. However, if I remained in the Scourge much longer, I’d need to find food. I thought of the pack oflupa. I’d never eaten one before, and the idea was revolting, almost as much as the oozing sores from the video, but meat was meat. How could I hunt one down without a weapon, though? And how would I cook it without fire? Sure, there’d been a chimney in the boarding house, but without access to my Seelie power or to matches, I had no way of kindling flames.
The glare of white sky against glass made me blink my eyes closed. And then an idea made me blink them wide open. Sun through glass created flames. I’d seen it done in a movie. There had been windows in Frontier Land. I could surely punch one out.
I was about to share my musings when I remembered I wasn’t talking to Remo. And then a spot of color made me forget all about huntinglupa.On a stair in the building closest to me rested a single red apple. I pirouetted to take in the silent city on the lookout for a shadow or some flicker of movement. Was someone leaving them for us? Were they our magically-allotted prison meal?
I decided to go retrieve it when Remo clapped his hand around my forearm and held me back. “Did thelupa’s reaction to it slip your mind?”
I plucked his fingers off my sleeve. “It showed up inbothworlds, so it’s got to be important. Besides, the wolves here might only like human flesh.”
Remo stayed quiet as though mulling over my hypothesis.
“And holding it didn’t hurt me.”
He nodded to my hands. “Maybe because you’re wearing gloves.”
I waited for him to ask for them back; he didn’t. Had he forgotten they were his? I didn’t remind him. “Perhaps. Or perhaps because it’s not poisonous.” I trotted into the building and up the glass spirals, climbing fast, afraid the fruit might vanish or relocate. Thankfully, it wasn’t on the first-floor landing. I didn’t want to be caged inside an elevator again with one of Remo’s or Faith’s memories.
When I reached it, I was completely out of breath and had a stitch in my side. I really needed to exercise more when I got back to Neverra. I bent down and scooped it up. It was as unblemished and glossy as the one from the schoolhouse.
I brought it up to my nose to sniff it when Remo raced across the lobby, bellowing, “Don’t eat it!”
I jumped, and the apple almost slid out of my fingers. “I wasn’t going to,” I mumbled, body vibrating from his yell. Clutching the fruit to my heaving chest, I took a step down.
A great, rattling rumble echoed around me. I thought the sound was coming from my stomach, but I couldn’t bethathungry, could I? When another boom sounded, I stared out the windows, expecting to find the street darkened and slick from a thunderstorm. Instead, I saw fissures race through the enormous clear panes. Another rumble reverberated through the skyscraper and up my legs.
Aw fae, what now?
“Amara!”
Another loud quake rolled through the city, splintering the stair beneath my boots.
“Amara, the building’s breaking apart! Get down here! NOW!”
Heart pinned to my throat, I ran, leaping from one stair to the next. Glass and stone cracked and crashed all around me. I wanted to yell at Remo to run to safety, but my voice couldn’t get past my battering heart. If only I could jump the rest of the way down, but I was still much too high.
The stair beneath me gave way, and air replaced the sensation of shaking ground. A cry tore up my throat as I fell, arms flailing to latch on to something solid. I managed to seize the edge of a step, but the momentum of my fall sent a bolt of fire into my elbow and rent a scream from my lungs.
“Amara, let go!”
“I know you want me dead, but I don’t want to die like this,” I shrieked.
CouldI die from a fall, though? Not in Neverra and not on Earth, but back home, when skin tore, it knitted; when bones ached, they mended. Here—I whimpered as the outside tremors breached my body and flowed into my veins.
“If you don’t let go, we both die, so fucking let go already!”
The building shuddered, and my hold broke. I squeezed my lids shut, desperately seeking out my fire, even a wisp of it, but my veins were empty, and I tumbled through the air like the doll Nana Vee had made me when I was a baby.
Glass shards tinkled like tossed glitter around me, scratching my skin and poking through my suit. I almost wished a piece would just pierce my heart, because the anticipation of cracking my skull and every bone in my body was beyond horrifying.
I thought of Iba and Nima, prayed they assumed I’d run away. I didn’t want them mourning me. And then I thought of Sook and Giya, and how they probably wouldn’t stop looking for me if they believed me gone and not dead. I thought of Pappy and of my two favorite nanas. I even thought of Remo, the boy who hated my mother. I hoped he’d make it out of the Scourge and alert Neverrians to Gregor’s atrocity.
Suddenly, I stopped falling, and although the landing was brutal, and the entire world around me seemed to be shattering, my body miraculously stayed in one piece.
