Daughter of Smoke and Bone(62)

“Tch. Whatever you are, Karou, you are not enemies.”

“But we are,” she said, and they were, no matter how powerfully her body was trying to convince her otherwise.

“Then what are you doing, watching sunrises and drinking tea with him?”

“You’re right. What am I doing? I don’t know what I’m doing.” She thought of what she should be doing: getting herself to Morocco to find Razgut; flying through that slash in the sky to… Eretz. A chill snaked through her. She’d been so focused on getting gavriels that she’d avoided thinking too much about what it would be like to actually go, and now with Akiva’s depiction of his world fresh in her mind—war-torn, bleak—dread crept over her; suddenly, she didn’t want to go anywhere.

What was she supposed to do when she got there, anyway? Fly up to the bars of that forbidding fortress and politely ask if Brimstone was at home?

“Speaking of enemies,” Zuzana said, “Jackass was on TV this morning.”

“Good for him,” said Karou, still in her own thoughts.

“No. Not good. Bad. Bad Jackass.”

“Oh no. What did he do?”

“Well, while you’ve been watching sunrises with your enemy, the news has been all over you, and a certain actor has been most helpful, preening for the camera and telling the world all about you. Like, um, bullet scars? He’s made you out to be some kind of gangster’s moll—”

“Moll? Please. If anything, I’m the gangster—”

“Anyway,” Zuzana cut her off. “I’m sorry to say that whatever anonymity you might have had, blue-haired girl, your flying stunt put an end to it. The police are probably at your flat—”

“What?”

“Yeah. They’re calling your fight a ‘disturbance’ and saying they just want to talk to the, er, people involved, if anyone knows their whereabouts.”

Akiva, seeing her distress, wanted to know what was being said; she quickly translated. His look darkened. He stood and moved to the door, glancing out. “Will they come for you here?” he asked. Karou saw the protectiveness in his stance, shoulders hunched and tense, and she realized that in his world, such a threat might be much more dire.

“It’s okay,” she assured him. “It’s not like that. They would just ask questions. Really.” He didn’t move away from the door. “We didn’t break any laws.” She turned to Zuzana and switched to Czech. “It’s not like there’s a law against flying.”

“Yes there is. The law of gravity. The point is that you are looked for.” She shot a glance at the waitress, who was skulking nearby and most certainly eavesdropping. “Isn’t that right?”

The waitress blushed. “I haven’t called anyone,” she was quick to say. “You’re okay to stay here. Do… do you want more tea?”

Zuzana waved her off and told Karou, “You can’t stay here forever, obviously.”

“No.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Plan. Plan. She had a plan, and it was near its fruition. All she had to do now was go. Leave her life here, leave school, her flat, Zuzana, Akiva… No. Akiva was not part of her life. Karou looked at him, watchful in the doorway, ready to protect her, and she tried to imagine walking away from the… placeness… of him, the rightness, the patch of sunlight, the pull. All she had to do was get up and leave. Right?

A moment passed in silence, and Karou’s body did not so much as twitch in response to the idea of leaving.

“The plan,” she said, exerting a massive effort of will and facing up to it. “The plan is to go away.”

Akiva had been looking out the door, and only when he pivoted to face her did she realize she’d spoken in Chimaera, addressing this to him.

“Away? Where?”

“Eretz,” she said, standing up. “I told you. I’m going to find my family.”

Dismay spread over his face as understanding dawned. “You really have a way to get there.”

“I really do.”

“How?”

“There are more portals than just yours.”

“There were. All knowledge of them was lost with the magi. It took me years to find this one—”

“You’re not the only one who knows things, I guess. Though I would rather you showed me the way.”

“Than who?” He was thinking, trying to figure it out, and Karou saw by the flicker of disgust when he did. “The Fallen. That thing. You’re going to that thing.”

“Not if you take me instead.”

“I truly can’t. Karou. The portal is under guard—”

“Well then. Maybe I’ll see you on the other side sometime. Who knows?”

A rustle from his unseen wings sent sparks shivering across the floor. “You can’t go there. There’s no kind of life there, trust me.”

Karou turned away from him and picked up her coat, slipping it on and fanning out her hair, which had a damp mermaid quality to it and lay in coils over her shoulders. She told Zuzana that she was leaving town, and she was fending off her friend’s inevitable queries when Akiva took her elbow.

Gently. “You can’t go with that creature.” His expression was guarded, hard to read. “Not alone. If he knows another portal, I can come with you and make sure you’re safe.”