“Can you positive-think us back to Neverra?”
He smiled. “Trust me. Every few seconds, I’m sending brainwaves toward the portal.”
I shook my head but smiled . . . a little.
He tipped his head toward the open door. “Ready to go explore?”
“I hate exploring. Maybe if we sit here long enough, the magical train will take us back home.”
“If my grandfather designed this place, this train won’t take us anywhere nice.”
I slid my lower lip between my teeth and stared back out at the skyscrapers of glass rising from an endless slab of concrete. To say I missed the dry dusty town we’d left behind would be a stretch, but I wasn’t looking forward to finding out what hid in this world.
Remo hopped out of the train, head swiveling as he scrutinized our new surroundings. Slowly, I rose from the bench and climbed out, too. The station had adapted to the environment. Instead of bricks, a single-paned dome of glass enclosed a platform fashioned from silver metal polished to a mirror-shine. The tracks consisted of the same magnetic strips humans used in their metropoles, and the train was sleek and bullet-shaped.
Even though this land looked more familiar than the last, it didn’t feel any more familiar. It was cold, made colder by the blistering white sky and frosty air. I hugged myself as I took in the glass rectangles glittering like cut diamonds. They stretched so high that if the portal had been in the valley, we could’ve cracked open a window and easily hopped onto it.
Remembering something Josh had told me about the Neverrian prison portal, I whipped my attention to Remo. “You think the portal relocated?”
“I don’t know.” His gaze surfed toward the mountain we’d skidded down in Frontier Land.
Instead of a tangle of bulbous cacti, the forest that sprawled atop the cliff seemed made of pale blue trunks with glossy white branches—an ice garden?
“Does that mountain flank look steeper to you?” I asked.
“It does.”
Was it to keep us from reaching the plateau? Did it mean the portal was up there?
“Your lips are purple, Trifecta.”
“Well, it is freezing.” My teeth chattered, but I wasn’t sure how much of that was due to the biting air and how much was due to my mounting pessimism. “Aren’t you cold?”
He shrugged. “Let’s get moving. You’ll warm up.”
“Or we can hop back in the train and go someplace else?” Preferably somewhere tropical like a sun-drenched beach with floating hammocks and piña-coladas topped with cocktail umbrellas.
“We might end up right back with the lupa.”
Sighing, I turned away from the train. My toes tingled in my boots, and the tips of my fingers throbbed. Thank the Skies for the gloves Remo had lent me. How I prayed he wouldn’t reclaim them.
His dark eyebrows, which shone a deep auburn amidst the streaks of dried ochre, gathered a little closer together. “What?”
“What what?”
“You were clearly thinking something.”
“Nope. I was thinking nothing.”
He narrowed his eyes.
Before he could link my guilt to his gloves, I said, “Your eyes are green.”
His forehead smoothed even though his gaze remained tapered. “And yours are blue. Shall we move on to hair?”
I snorted. “What I meant was, they’re no longer gold.”
His pupils shrank, then spread back out. “I figured as much when I tried shifting and didn’t manage.” He rolled his neck from side to side as though getting ready for a fight. Since for once, his fight wasn’t with me, I worried what he expected to find in this place. Maybe mammoth polar bears or vampiric bunnies?
He started toward the curved opening in the glass dome, and I trotted to catch up. I’d promised not to stick too close to him, but there was no way I was letting him out of my sight. Our footsteps pinged off the metal and curved glass. Once outside, we circled around the modern station, coming to a stop on the cement road that stretched toward the cliff frosted with the ice garden. The setup of this world was the same as in Frontier Land—a single street bracketed by buildings. But the similarities stopped there.
“You think we’ll find running water?” What I wouldn’t give for a drink and a hot bath.
“Let’s hope so.” Remo tipped his head back, squinting at the buildings before heading into the tallest. “This one should afford us the best view.”
“We’re not looking for a piece of prime real estate, Remo.”
He shot me an eloquent look. “The reason I want the best panorama, Trifecta, is to peer into the rest of the buildings