The Girl at Midnight (11 page)

Echo emerged from the Astor Place subway station, the locket weighing heavily around her neck. She didn’t dare go back to Grand Central, not when there was a chance that the Drakharin had been able to track her through the in-between. Her hands still shook from adrenaline, fingers sooty with the remnants of shadow dust. Before she did anything else, went anywhere else, she needed more. If they found her, she needed to be able to make a break for it through whichever gateway was nearest. Zipping her jacket against the wind, she started down Saint Mark’s Place. One quick stop at the Agora to get more dust from Perrin, and then onward to the Ala.

She sucked in a deep breath, losing herself in the crowd of anonymous pedestrians. She was afraid that if she closed her eyes she would see the bright red of the old woman’s blood gleaming on the one-eyed Drakharin’s blade. It had been so shiny, like liquid rubies. Even with the blaring horns
of rush-hour traffic, Echo could still hear the woman’s last, rasping breaths.

Echo fumbled for the locket, slipping the chain over her head. There had to be something in it, something the Drakharin wanted badly enough to kill for. She tried to pry it open at the seam, but the clasp was old and warped, as if it had been smashed shut. It was jammed. Whatever secrets it held would stay secret until she or the Ala managed to coax them free.

With the locket clutched tightly in her fist, Echo shoved her dirty hands in her pockets as Crif Dogs’ cheerful sign came into view. The blue-haired girl was still behind the counter, feet propped up, as if she hadn’t moved since Echo had last been there. Echo didn’t bother smiling this time, breezing past the crowded tables to the phone booth, speaking the password into the receiver on autopilot. She was halfway through the labyrinth when she heard voices. Voices she recognized. Biting back a curse, Echo ducked back behind a corner, praying to every god there was that she hadn’t been seen.

“She’s planning something. I can feel it in my bones,” the speaker hissed. It was Ruby. Teacher’s pet to Altair. Training partner to Rowan. Mortal enemy to Echo.

Crap
. Echo pressed herself against the wall, the edges of an alcove digging painfully into her back.

“I can’t bring the Ala herself before the rest of the council without evidence of wrongdoing, Ruby.”

The second voice was deep, with a hint of rumble, like thunder. Altair.
Double crap. Triple crap. Infinity crap
.

Daring a glance around the corner, Echo swore silently. It was just the two of them, but it was enough. Altair, white
feathers smooth against his head, matching the white of his Warhawk cloak. The deep brown feathers on his arms were almost black in the dim light of the labyrinth. Ruby’s cloak, dark and shiny as an oil slick, blended with the black plumage on her arms and head, and she was all but lost in shadow. When she was in armor, she had to wear Warhawk white, and the brightness of it made her look sickly and sallow. Echo had heard that Ruby had learned to bend shadows to her will, but she’d never seen her actually do it before. It was one of the reasons she was among Altair’s favorite recruits. Magic came easily to the Avicen—far more easily than it did to Echo—but Ruby was unusually talented for someone her age.

“After what you just saw?” Ruby asked. “How much more proof do you need?”

“You forget yourself, Ruby. I’m your commander, not your friend.”

Embarrassment laced its way through Ruby’s voice. “I’m sorry, sir. What would you have of me?”

Echo’s stomach performed an impressive bout of calisthenics. If Altair started digging into the Ala’s business, he wouldn’t stop until he uncovered their plans to find the firebird. Calling Altair persistent would be a massive understatement.

“All I know is that the Ala has been sending that human girl of hers out,” Altair said. “She’s running errands for the Ala that no one else knows about. Keep an eye on her. The Ala may trust her, but she’s not one of us.”

“I never understood why we let her stay,” Ruby said. Echo bit the inside of her cheek so hard she was in danger of drawing blood.

“Sentiment.” Falling from Altair’s lips, the word was profane.

Ruby said something that Echo didn’t catch, but she didn’t need specifics to hear the snideness in her tone. She needed to get out of there before they found her hiding in the dark like this, yet she couldn’t go back, not without more shadow dust. Zipping the locket into her pocket, she squared her shoulders and rounded the corner. At the sound of her footsteps over the mess of loose planks that made up the labyrinth’s floor, two pairs of eyes snapped to her.

Echo wiggled her fingers at them, silently relishing the way Ruby’s lip curled in a sneer. The feeling was mutual. “Howdy.”

Altair stared at her, the orange and black of his eagle-like eyes as sharp as ever. “Echo” was all he said before nodding at Ruby once and turning to leave. He walked down a corridor that would lead him to the tunnels beneath Astor Place, shadows swallowing his retreating form.

When Echo turned back to Ruby, she was greeted to the least amicable smile she had ever seen. She felt small, alone with Ruby like this. As much as Altair considered her an inferior being, she’d felt safer when he was there. He was a by-the-book sort of guy. Echo wasn’t so sure about Ruby.

“Echo.” Ruby’s voice was cloyingly sweet and so fake that Echo wanted to scream. “And where have you been?”

Being chased around Japan by a bunch of Drakharin
, Echo thought. But she couldn’t exactly admit to that, so she lied. “Human doctor.” She clasped her hands around her stomach. “Digestive woes.”

Ruby scrunched up her nose as if she smelled something foul. “And where are you off to now?”

“Perrin’s. I told Ivy I’d pick a few things up for her.” Not the truth, but close enough. Maybe she ought to make that her life motto.

“I’ll walk with you.” Ruby said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world. As if their mutual dislike weren’t so thick Echo could have scooped it up with a spoon.

Echo hesitated a few seconds before nodding. They proceeded in silence through the rest of the labyrinth and into the yellow light of the Agora. Echo smiled at a few Avicen who looked their way—the baker who carried the smell of flour and butter with him everywhere, the seamstress who bore a striking resemblance to a bird of paradise Echo had seen in a book—but the smiles she got in return were tight and cautious. They must have made a strange sight. Ruby with her black-feathered cloak, so like a shadow, walking side by side with Echo—small, featherless, human.

When Ruby spoke, she kept her voice pitched low enough that Echo knew the words were meant for no one’s ears but hers. “Altair would see you handled with kid gloves, but I know the Ala is up to something, and you’re involved.”

Echo tensed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, keeping her voice as neutral as possible.

Ruby took Echo by the arm, fingers tight as a steel vise. “Whatever it is you’re up to, you leave Rowan out of it. He has a bright future with us. Don’t drag him down with you.”

Echo wrenched her arm free, fighting the urge to rub the spot where she knew she would find finger-shaped bruises later. There wasn’t a strong enough word in the English language to encapsulate how much she despised Ruby. She glanced at the Avicen milling about the square. Half a dozen heads snapped around, as though they’d just been staring.
She knew they were still straining to hear the conversation. Ruby’s feelings about humans—Echo in particular—were public knowledge, and seeing the two of them together was probably the juiciest thing to happen all week. It was like Rowan said: too few Avicen, not enough gossip to sustain them. Echo turned back, meeting Ruby’s steady gaze. Her eyes were the sickly pale blue of a vulture’s. Echo hated them. She hated her stupid eyes and her stupid black feathers and her stupid milk-white skin. She hated everything about her.

“Backpfeifengesicht,”
Echo said. It was one of her favorite words.
German. A face made for punching
. It suited Ruby perfectly.

Confusion flitted across Ruby’s face for half a second. It was the sweetest half a second of Echo’s life.

“What does that mean?” Ruby said. Echo could almost taste how much it pained her to ask that.

Echo smiled, saccharine sweet. “Look it up.”

Ruby narrowed her eyes. “All I’m saying is if I were you, I would be careful in whom I place my trust.”

“Gee, Ruby, I didn’t know you cared.”

“It’s not you I care about,” Ruby said.

In the time it took for Echo to blink, Ruby was gone. Echo scanned the crowd, but it was as though Ruby had simply faded into the shadows. Echo wouldn’t have been surprised if Ruby had still been there, watching. Waiting for her to slip up. With the feeling of phantom eyes on her back, Echo walked the last few yards to Perrin’s shop. Go in, grab the shadow dust, get out. First the Drakharin, now Ruby. She needed to get to the Ala. The Ala would know what to do.

Banging the door to Perrin’s shop open, Echo’s greeting died in her throat. The place had been ransacked. Jagged shards of glass littered the floor where Perrin’s curio cabinets and display cases had been smashed open. Shadow dust had scattered everywhere, some of it lingering in the air. Broken wooden beams stuck out from where it looked like a body had crashed through the bookshelves, and heavy atlases and rolled-up parchment were strewn across the floor.

And right in the midst of all the chaos and debris lay a single white feather, as familiar to Echo as the hair on her own head. It was Ivy’s. Echo’s stomach dropped like lead through water.

“Shit.”

“Ala!”

Echo burst through the door to the Ala’s nest, her muscles screaming in protest. She’d run all the way from Perrin’s shop, barely registering the people—Avicen and human—she had shoved out of her way as she flew through the crowded tunnels of Astor Place and Grand Central, barging through thresholds as if she were on fire. “Ivy’s gone, they’ve taken her—”

“We know.” Altair’s voice was a steely rumble, its bass vibrating straight through to Echo’s core. He and the Ala were deep in conversation. The Ala stood behind him, meeting Echo’s frantic gaze with a guarded expression. The whites and browns of Altair’s short, sharp feathers were almost pretty against the warm earth tones of the Ala’s furnishings.

Echo’s mouth opened and closed. She could imagine what the Ala would say, had these been normal circumstances.
Catching flies, are we?
But these were not normal
circumstances. The Ala and Altair could hardly stand one another, and the latter never, ever made house calls.

“Uhhh …” Sometimes Echo had the sinking realization that she was not nearly as quick on her feet as she liked to believe. “It’s Ivy.… She …” The words stuck in her throat, refusing to come out.

The Ala brushed past Altair. She took Echo’s hands in her own, giving them a squeeze that was just this side of too hard. “I know. Altair’s just told me. We have reason to believe it was warlocks.”

“I went to Perrin’s shop,” Echo said, words tumbling out in a rush. “It’s a wreck, and there’s glass everywhere, and everything’s broken, and”—Echo slipped her hand from the Ala’s to reach into her pocket and pull out the single white feather she’d picked up off the shop floor—“I found this.” Hot tears stung her eyes, but she did her best to blink them away. She would not cry in front of Altair. She absolutely, resolutely would not cry.

The Ala’s hands flitted to her mouth as her carefully neutral mask crumbled. “Oh, Ivy. My sweet girl.”

“We think the warlocks were hired by the Drakharin,” Altair said, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword. He never went anywhere unarmed. “An attack inside the Agora would be too risky to attempt without the right motivation. Warlocks are a greedy lot. Easy to bribe and brutal when they want to be.”

Echo opened her mouth to respond, but the Ala beat her to it. “But why would they take Ivy? Few would dare lay a finger on a healer—and an apprentice, at that.”

It’s because of me
. The thought settled like heavy stones in Echo’s stomach. She reached into her pocket to wrap her
fingers around the locket.
They took her because of me. Because I have the locket and they want it
.

In that moment, she felt hopelessly young in a way she hadn’t since she’d first run away. The Ala reached for her, but Echo pulled back. She would be strong, if not for her own sake, then for Ivy’s. The thought that the hunt for the firebird had brought the Drakharin to the Avicen’s doorstep coiled its way around Echo’s heart and squeezed. If Ivy had been hurt, or worse, and if it had been Echo’s fault, she would never be able to live with herself.

“A very good question, Ala.” Altair’s voice was quiet, but it carried a weight that sent Echo’s heart pounding. “I was hoping the two of you might be willing to shed some light on the situation.”

The Ala didn’t bat an eye. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Altair.”

“Don’t play dumb,” Altair said. “It doesn’t suit you.” He stepped toward them, and Echo had a sudden appreciation for his formidable size. He was six and a half feet of battle-hardened warrior, and better women than she had fallen at his feet in fear. She felt every inch of her fragile humanity as she stood before him. He met Echo’s eyes as he went on. “I have more ears in the Nest than either of you realize. I know the two of you have been plotting something behind my back, and I came here to find out what it is. The timing of the attack can’t be coincidence. If it is related to whatever scheme you’ve been working on, you need to come clean.”

The Ala placed a hand on Echo’s arm, pulling her away from Altair. “Echo has nothing to do with this. You will leave her out of it.”

The corners of Altair’s mouth pulled into a frown. “If the
two of you are keeping secrets that might be relevant to rescuing Ivy and Perrin, I need to know.” He inclined his head to peer around the Ala’s shoulder at Echo. “You will tell me what you know, child, or we’ll find out if a night in the cells loosens your tongue.”