I look up.
“You want to tell me where all the blood came from?”
I blink. “What blood?”
He raises his eyebrows at me. “Theblood,” he says, gesturing, generally, at my body. “On your face. Your dress. All over your hands.”
“Oh,” I say, startled. I look at my hands as if seeing them for the first time. “The blood.”
Kenji sighs, squints at something over my shoulder. He pulls a pair of gloves out of his back pocket and tugs them on. “All right, princess, turn your power back on. We have to move.”
We break apart. Kenji pulls his invisibility over us both.
“Follow me,” he says, taking my hand.
“Where are we going?” I say.
“What do you mean,where are we going? We’re getting the hell out of here.”
“But— What about Warner?”
“Nazeera is looking for him as we speak.”
I stop so suddenly I nearly stumble. “Nazeera is here?”
“Uh, yeah— So— It’s a really long story? But the short answer is yes.”
“So that’s how you got in here,” I say, beginning to understand. “Nazeera.”
Kenji makes a sound of disbelief. “Wow, right off the bat you give me no credit, huh? C’mon, J, you know I love a good rescue mission. I know some things. I can figure things out, too.”
For the first time in weeks I feel a smile tug at my lips. A laugh builds and breaks inside my body. I’ve missed this so much. I’ve missed my friends so much. Emotion wells in my throat, surprising me.
“I missed you, Kenji,” I say. “I’m so happy you’re here.”
“Hey,” Kenji says sharply. “Don’t you dare start crying. If you start crying I’ll start crying and we do not have time to cry right now. We have too much shit to do, okay? We can cry later, at a more convenient time. Okay?”
When I say nothing, he squeezes my hand.
“Okay?” he says again.
“Okay,” I say.
I hear him sigh. “Damn,” he says. “They really messed you up in here, didn’t they?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry,” he says.
“Can we cry about it later? I’ll tell you everything.”
“Hell yeah we can cry about it later.” Kenji tugs gently on my hand to get us moving again. “I have so much shit to cry about, J. So much. We should make, like, a list.”
“Good idea,” I say, but my heart is in my throat again.
“Hey, don’t worry,” Kenji says, reading my thoughts. “Seriously. We’ll find Warner. Nazeera knows what she’s doing.”
“But I don’t think I can just wait while Nazeera goes searching for him. I can’t just stand around— I need to do something. I need to look for him myself—”
