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I stand up off the parapet. My heart is going very hard.

"How do you even carry somebody?"

"Against my chest. Both arms. You hold on around my neck, and the wings are behind us, so you won't be near them." He tips his head. "I won't drop you."

"Have you done this before?"

"Twice. Once in 1944, with a pilot whose plane went down in the Gorge. Once in 1996, on a dare." His face doesn't change. "That was Merek."

I bark out a laugh.

"How high?"

"High enough to see the whole river. Not so high you're cold. If you want to come down, say so, and we come down."

"And if I say no? To all of it?"

"Then we sit on the roof," William says, "and I show you which bridge is which."

I look at the edge of the roof, and the dark beyond it, and the lights.

An hour ago, somebody locked me in a box under the ground and turned out the lights and the air.

"Show me how you'd hold me," I say.

He folds his wings halfway and comes to me. He puts one arm behind my back and bends and slides the other under my knees, and lifts me, slowly, against his chest, and holds me there. He doesn't move. He just holds me, and lets me feel how solid it is. His arms are like a seat. His chest is cool and hard and very wide, and I put my arms around his neck, and his skin is warmer than I expected, warm like stone that's been in the sun.

"Like this," he says. "All the way up and all the way down."

"Okay," I say. "Yes. Let's go."

He walks to the edge of the roof with me in his arms. He steps up onto the parapet.

The wings open behind us.

He crouches. I feel every muscle in his body gather.

Then he jumps.

For one second, there's nothing. We drop. The roof is gone and the street is coming up and my stomach is somewhere above my head, and I scream, I scream so loud I'm going to feel it tomorrow. Then the wings come down hard, once, with a sound like a sail filling, and the drop turns into a lift that presses me into his chest, and the street falls away instead.

He laughs.

I feel it before I hear it, a rumble against my side, and then I hear it, low and delighted, right by my ear. I've never heard him laugh.

"You did that on purpose," I yell over the wind.

"Yes," William says.

The wings beat, deep and slow and powerful, every stroke lifting us higher. The rooftops spread out under us, flat and gray, and then the streets become lines of light. The wind is cold on my face and pulls my braid loose from its tie, and my hair goes everywhere, and I don't care. The traffic noise fades, and then it's gone, and there's only the wind and the deep, steady sound of his wings.

I hold on to his neck. I don't need to. He's got me. His arms haven't shifted an inch since we left the roof. I hold on anyway, because I want to.

He turns east. The river opens up underneath us, wide and black and full of light, the reflections of the bridges stretched out long and shaking on the water. He climbs one more time, three long strokes, and then the air catches us, a current rising up off the river, warm from the day, and he feels it, and he spreads his wings all the way and stops beating them.

We glide.

There's no sound at all. No flapping. No strain. We just hang there, high over the Willamette, with the Steel Bridge and the Broadway Bridge and the Fremont far off to the north all lit up below us, so far down they look like jewelry laid out on dark cloth. The wind's gone quiet. I can hear his breathing. I can hear mine.