“What happened to Izîl?” she asked. “He didn’t really kill himself, did he? The angel—”
“Ah, well, you can blame him, he dragged us up the minaret, but the fool hunchback flung himself off, all to protect you.”
“Me?”
“My brother seraph was looking for you, lovely. Naughty boy, with all his questions. What does he want with you, I wonder.”
“I don’t know.” It gave Karou a chill. “Izîl didn’t tell him where I live?”
“Oh no, noble fool. He danced with the sky instead, and the sky dropped him like a rotten plum.”
“Oh god.” Karou slumped against the wall and hugged herself. “Poor Izîl.”
“Poor him? Don’t pity him, pity me. He’s gone free, but look at me! Do you think mules are so easy to come by? I haven’t even been able to trick a beggar.” Razgut pushed himself upright and used his good arm to drag his legs around in front of him. His face contorted with pain, but as soon as Karou began to feel the smallest hint of pity for him, his pain turned to a leer.
“You’ll help me, though, won’t you, sweet?” he asked her, smiling. His teeth were incongruously perfect. “Give me a ride?” He might have meant “a ride” such as Izîl had given him, but his tone caressed a lewder implication. “After all, this is your fault.”
“My fault? Whatever.”
Coaxing, he purred, “I’ll tell you secrets, like I told Izîl.”
“Ask for something else,” Karou snapped. “I will not carry you. Ever.”
“Oh, but I’ll keep you warm. I’ll braid your hair. You’ll never be lonely again.”
Lonely? Karou felt bare in that moment, to have this creature get at her substance like that. He went on, whispering: “All that beauty, it’s wrapped around loneliness. You think I didn’t taste it? You’re practically hollow. A piece of empty candy to lick, but oh, you taste so good.” His head fell back and he gave a groan, eyes half-lidded with remembered pleasure. Karou felt ill. “I could lick your neck forever, lovely,” he moaned. “Forever.”
Karou was a long, long way from desperate enough to strike that bargain. She pushed off the wall and began to walk away. “Nice chat. Good-bye.”
“Wait!” Razgut called after her. “Wait!”
And she wouldn’t have thought there was anything he could say that would make her stop. But then he called after her, “You want to see your Wishmonger again? I can take you there. I know a portal!”
She turned to look at him, suspicious.
His leer was gone, replaced by his singular sustaining emotion. It was one she recognized, and for the merest instant, she felt a link to the broken thing that he was. It was longing on his face. If her own substance was loneliness, Razgut’s was longing.
“The portal they pushed me through, a thousand years ago. I know where it is. I’ll show you, but you have to take me with you.” A hitch in his breathing, and he whispered, “I just want to go home.”
Karou’s heart hummed with excitement. Another portal. “So let’s go,” she said. “Right now.”
Razgut chuffed. “If it was that easy, do you think I’d still be here?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s in the sky, girl. We have to fly there.”
And now, thanks to two greasy gavriels pillaged from a hunter’s beard—one for her, and one for Razgut—they would.
23
INFINITE PATIENCE
Fairy-tale city. From the air, red rooftops hug a kink in a dark river, and by night the forested hills appear as spans of black nothing against the dazzle of the lit castle, the spiking Gothic towers, the domes great and small. The river captures all the lights and teases them out, long and wavering, and the side-slashing rain blurs it all to a dream.
This was Akiva’s first sight of Prague; he hadn’t been the one to mark this portal. That had been Hazael, who had remarked on it after, back in their own world. He’d said that it was beautiful, and it was. Akiva imagined that Astrae might have looked something like this in its golden age, before it was razed by the beasts. City of a Hundred Spires, the seraph capital had been called—a tower for each of the godstars—and the chimaera had torn down every one.
Many a human city had been demolished in war, too, but Prague had been lucky. It stood lovely and ghostly, its chapped stone worn smooth by centuries of storms, millions of rivulets of rain. It was wet and cold, inhospitable, but that didn’t bother Akiva. He made his own heat. Moisture hissed on his invisible wings and vaporized, marking out the shape of them against the night in a diffuse halo. Nothing a glamour could do about that, any more than it could hide his wings from his shadow, but there was no one up here to see it.
He was perched on a rooftop in Old Town. The towers of Týn Church reared up like devil’s horns behind the row of buildings across the street, in one of which was Karou’s flat. Her window was dark. It had been dark, and her flat empty, for the two days since he’d found it.
Folded in his pocket, its creases worn smooth from much handling, was a page torn from a sketchbook—number ninety-two, as was printed on its spine. On the page, which had been the first in the book, a drawing showed Karou with her hands clasped in supplication, accompanied by the words: If found, please return to Krâlodvorskâ 59, no. 12, Prague. You will be rewarded with cosmic goodwill and hard cash. Thank you.
Akiva hadn’t brought the whole book with him, just this one page with its ragged edge. He wasn’t after cosmic goodwill or hard cash.
Just Karou.
With the infinite patience of one who has learned to live broken, he awaited her return.
24
FLYING IS EASY
Flying, Karou discovered to her delight, was easy. Exhilaration chased away her weariness, and with it the apathy that had settled over her after too many encounters with Brimstone’s tooth-traders. She flew high, marveling at the stars and feeling as though she were among them. They were almost beyond belief. Give Bain that, at least. He might have no decorating sense, but he lived in the company of stars. The sky looked sugared.
She left the cabin behind and followed the road back in the direction of Boise. She dipped up and down, through tiers of wind. She toyed with speed—effortless, though it left her eyes streaming icy tears. It wasn’t long before she overtook the taxi that had abandoned her to the wilds. Devious scenarios played in her mind. She might fly alongside and knock on the window, shake her fist before launching upward again.
Wicked girl, she thought, and she heard Brimstone’s voice in her head, decrying such mischief as reckless. Well, maybe a little.
The wish itself, though—flying—and the plan that it was part of, what would he think of that? What would he think when Karou turned up on his doorstep, her hair mussed from the wind of two worlds? Would he be glad to see her, or would he still be furious, and roar at her that she was a fool, and cast her out once more? Was she supposed to find him, or did he want her to go on like a butterfly out a window, without a backward glance, as if she’d never even had monsters for a family?
If he expected her to do that, he didn’t know her at all.
She was going to Morocco to find Razgut beneath whichever trash heap or donkey cart he was hiding, and together—together! It made her cringe to even think the word connecting herself to him—they would fly through a slash in the sky and emerge “Elsewhere.”
It struck her that this was what Brimstone had meant by “hope makes its own magic.” She hadn’t been able to simply wish open a portal, but by the strength of her will, of her hope, when she might have given up her chimaera for lost, she had instead done this. She had found a way. Here she was, flying, and a guide waited to take her where she wanted to go. She was proud, and she believed that Brimstone would be, too, whether he showed it or not.
She shivered. It was cold in the sky, and her glee at flying was giving way to chattering teeth and the return of her exhaustion, so she set herself down in the middle of the road, making her first landing as easily as if she’d done it a thousand times, and waited for the taxi to catch up to her.
The driver, needless to say, was surprised to see her. He looked at her like she was a ghost, and spent more time peeking at her in the rearview mirror on the way back to the airport than he did watching the road. Karou was too tired to even think it was funny. She let her eyes close and reached into the collar of her coat for the wishbone, tucking its flanges neatly between her fingers.
She was almost asleep when her phone rang. Zuzana’s name lit up its screen. Karou answered, “Hello, rabid fairy.”
Snort. “Shut up. If anyone’s a fairy, it’s you.”
“I’m not a fairy. I’m a monster. And guess what. Speaking of fairies, do I have a surprise for you.” Karou tried to imagine Zuzana’s face on seeing her rise into the air. Should she tell her, or surprise her? Maybe she could pretend to fall off a tower—or was that just mean?
“What?” asked Zuzana. “Did you get me a present?”
It was Karou’s turn to snort. “You’re like a kid when her parents come home from a party, checking their pockets for cake.”
“Ooh, cake. I’ll take cake. But not pocket cake, because yuck.”
“I have no cake.”
“Sigh. What kind of friend are you anyway? Besides the mostly absent kind.”
“Right now, I’m the mostly tired kind. If you hear snoring, don’t be offended.”
“Where are you?”
“Idaho, on the way to the airport.”
“Oh, yay, airport! You’re coming home, aren’t you? You didn’t forget. I knew you wouldn’t forget.”
“Please. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. You don’t even know. It’s like, gross hunter, gross hunter, gross hunter, puppet show!”
“How go the gross hunters, anyway?”
“Grossly. But forget them. Are you all ready?”
“Yep. Freaked. Ready. The puppet’s done and magnificent, if I do say so myself. Now I just need you to work your magic.” She paused. “I mean, your nonmagical magic. Your ordinary Karou wizardry. When will you be back?”
“Friday, I think. I just have to stop in Paris really quick—”
“ ‘Stop in Paris really quick,’ ” repeated Zuzana. “You know, a smaller soul than I might end our friendship on the grounds of you saying obnoxious things like ‘I just have to stop in Paris really quick.’ ”
“There are smaller souls than you?” countered Karou.
“Hey! My body may be small, but my soul is large. It’s why I wear platforms. So I can reach the top of my soul.”
Karou laughed, a bright bell sound that drew the cab driver’s eyes to her in the rearview mirror.
“And also for kissing,” added Zuzana. “Because otherwise I could only date midgets.”
“How’s Mik, anyway? Besides not a midget?”
Zuzana’s voice instantly went gooey. “He’s goood,” she said, stretching the word out like taffy.