Wonder Woman: Warbringer (DC Icons #1)(36)

She hadn’t talked to Jason about it. She’d just asked their driver, Dez, if he knew where to go, and he’d taken her to Ebele’s without a word. Alia thought she was ready to walk through that familiar door, and she’d been fine when she saw its cheerfully painted awning, even when she glimpsed Ebele through the window. But when she’d walked inside and that bell had jingled, the smell of sweetness and chemicals had just about knocked her down. She was crying before she knew it, and Ebele and Norah were hugging her tight and handing her tissues.

They hadn’t fussed or asked questions Alia didn’t want to answer. They hadn’t spouted useless crap like “everything happens for a reason.” They’d just turned on the TV, plopped her in a chair, and set to work as if nothing terrible had ever happened, as if Alia’s life hadn’t been torn in two. Ebele’s had become a kind of refuge. In fact, Alia had been there less than two weeks ago, getting her hair braided before the trip. They’d watched a billion episodes of Justice Served because Norah was on a serial-killer kick, and by the time Alia left, her scalp felt as if it had been winched tight to her skull.

Alia had passed beneath the sign of the Good Night with its sleeping moon as she always had, made a wish as she always had, her mind trained only on preparing for her trip aboard the Thetis and escaping New York. Now she looked up at that sign and scowled. “Stupid moon.”

The hotel was just as miserable on the inside, the lobby walls water stained, the linoleum chipped in places.

The guy slouching at the front desk didn’t look much older than Alia, and he had one of those chin-burp goatees that always made her want to offer up a napkin. This was the part Alia had been the most nervous about, but she did her best to sound calm and beleaguered as she explained that they’d had their luggage stolen at Port Authority.

“I don’t know,” he said in a heavy accent. Russian maybe. Definitely Eastern European. “Lots of bad stuff happening. Must be careful.”

“Come on,” Alia said, attempting some measure of the easy charm her father had possessed in such abundance. “Do we look like trouble?”

The guy looked up, up, up at Diana.

“Nie ne sme zaplaha,” she said, looking solemn.

Alia stared. Diana spoke Russian?

The man’s flat expression didn’t change. “Cash,” he said. “A full week. Up front.”

A full week? Even at a dump like the Good Night, that cut deeply into their funds. It’s fine, she told herself as she counted out the bills. You’ll figure out a safe way to contact Jason, and then money isn’t going to be an issue.

And what if you didn’t have the Keralis name and fortune to back you up? She’d save that question for another day.

“Rooms are cleaned every afternoon,” said the clerk as the money vanished beneath the desk. “No cooking in rooms. No tampering with thermostat.” He slapped a metal key on the counter. It had a pink plastic tag with “406” written on it in black marker. “You lose key, pay one-hundred-dollar fine.” He narrowed his eyes at Diana. “I watch you.”

“Geez,” Alia said as they headed up the stairs. “What did you say to him?”

“I simply told him we weren’t threats.”

Alia rolled her eyes. “Not suspicious at all. How did you learn to speak Russian?”

“It was Bulgarian, and…I’m not entirely sure.”

“How many other languages do you speak?”

Diana paused as if calculating. “I think all of them.”

A day ago, Alia would have said that was impossible, but now it was just one more weird thing to add to the list. “Where were you when I had two hours of French homework?” she grumbled.

Naturally, the Good Night didn’t have an elevator, so they trudged up four flights to their floor. Well, Alia trudged. Diana scampered up the stairs like the world’s most beautiful goat. They followed a long, dank hall to their room, but the old-fashioned lock beneath the doorknob didn’t want to cooperate at first.

After a few minutes of swearing and key jiggling, the door popped open. The room smelled of old cigarettes and was carpeted in a color that might have started life as emerald but had faded to what Alia would have described as “Summer Swamp.” A cramped passage led past a tiny bathroom tiled in grubby white to a room with a low ceiling and two narrow beds, a battered nightstand between them. No phone, no television, just a radiator against the wall and an air conditioner in the window. Alia set her bags down and pressed one of the buttons. Nothing.

“Don’t tamper with the thermostat, my butt.” She was already sweating.

Diana stood in the center of the room, arms still laden with plastic bags. “Do you really live in such places? No view of the sky? So little light and color?”

“Well, yeah,” Alia said, feeling defensive, despite the fact that she’d been composing a list of the room’s shortcomings herself. “Some people have to.”

Diana placed her cargo carefully on the bed. “This must be why everyone looks so tired. You travel in tubes underground, live crammed into warrens not fit for rabbits.”

“We manage,” Alia said, extracting the clean clothes and toiletries they’d purchased.

“I didn’t mean to offend,” Diana said. “It looks mostly tidy.”