kept pounding long after I’d crawled out of the field and bolted into the forest of calimbors where I became one with the shadows. Faeries were out and about—some flew, some walked. I gave them all a wide berth, reaching the Duciba without incident.
Insects droned around the thick branches. I squinted to make out if any of them glowed. I really didn’t feel like answering to lucionaga about why I needed to visit the government facility in the middle of the night. Since sensitive files weren’t stored inside, the place was neither locked nor guarded. Which led me to believe there was no secret portal. Wouldn’t Gregor employ at least one person from Neverra’s vast army to protect it?
I twisted the handle, and the heavy latch clicked. I dragged it out just enough to slip inside, then summoned up shallow flames that danced over the smooth surface of my borrowed glove. As quietly as the striped tigri that prowled the uninhabited jungle beyond the Glades, I jumped into the darkness, rising through the hull cautiously. When I reached the ceiling, I circled the golden crown, holding my fiery palm up to illuminate the painted leaves.
Josh’s source had told him the paint rippled if you stared long enough at it. None of the leaves seemed to undulate. They were all perfectly flat and golden. I drifted down and conjured up a brighter flame, then leaned back until my body was parallel to the ceiling. I stared at the mural till my eyes watered. Josh’s informant was either a liar or crazy, perhaps both knowing the type of people the Daneelie frequented.
For good measure, my gaze cycled around the crown of leaves one last time. I was about to draw up my Infinity to inform Josh that if a portal existed, it wasn’t here, when something shifted in my peripheral vision. Something golden. I blinked and focused on the spot, then rose up to inspect it more closely. The paint was static. Hesitantly, I touched it, but the surface was grainy and hard and stayed grainy and hard. My weary mind must have imagined the movement.
I grazed the spot behind my ear and commed a message over to Josh, then started to fly back down when my Infinity beamed his answer.
JOSH: Touch every leaf. And don’t forget the salt.
ME: Feeling up the Duciba’s ceiling wasn’t part of the bargain, Locklear.
JOSH: Wasn’t it? :)
Out of nowhere, a pang so violent cramped my stomach that I muttered, “Bagwa,” before drifting back up. I suddenly hated Josh more than Remo but less than Karsyn. Karsyn’s homicidal tendency had won him top place on Amara’s Most Loathed Fae list.
I purchased a packet of salt on my Infinity, which materialized in the beam of my band, then sliced it open, grabbed a handful of grains, and ran my knuckles along the paint. Halfway around the circlet, something moved again in my periphery, something that glittered, not on the mural but lower. Had I loosened a fleck of paint?
Keeping my gaze affixed to the space that had sparkled, I continued my slow loop. Suddenly my knuckles sank into something gelatinous, as though the ceiling’s consistency had morphed from wood to sea sponge. Before I could snatch my hand back, the leaf slurped it up.
“Shit shit shit,” I whispered.
My wrist went in and then my forearm. Releasing the packet of salt, I shot my legs up and pressed the soles of my boots into the ceiling, trying to fight against the suction, but the pressure almost dislocated my shoulder. My feet skidded off the ceiling and dangled uselessly beneath me. My stomach squeezed as tightly as my heart, and cold sweat beaded on my forehead.
The dot of gold I’d mistaken for flaked paint transformed into a human body. Relief that I’d been unstealthy, and thus followed by a lucionaga in firefly form, vanished the moment I saw mussed red hair. Out of all the sentinels in the kingdom, the one to trail me had to be the one who wanted me gone.
Today really wasn’t my day.
Fate, you cruel lady, you saved me just to curse me.
When the portal sucked in my shoulder, I shut my eyes and damned the day I’d struck up a bargain with a Locklear. If I’d known my ticket out of trouble was a trip into a supernatural jail, I would’ve owned up to my mistake instead of allowing Josh to take the blame.
The gelatinous portal molded around the top of my head, then my