I ignored my shaky hands and balanced against the wall as I climbed onto the railing, adjusting my weight until I didn't feel like I was going to fall to my death. I pointedly didnotlook down.
"It'll be fine. Just a small jump, grab the next railing, no problem."
It was a three-foot jump. I was a five-foot person. I could do this.
I ignored my shakiness and tensed my body, leaping before I could talk myself out of it.
For a dizzying second, I was weightless, scything through the air with nothing to anchor me, but then my stomach slammed into iron hard enough to wind me, and my fingers wrapped around the railing, and somehow I heaved myself over it and onto steady concrete.
"Okay," I panted. "Good job, Hala. Just two more to go, and you’re safe."
Not that I’d ever be safe, even on Earth. The keepers would never stop hunting me, and I knew weapons were scouring the world for me.
I peered through the balcony doors into a classy looking bedroom, relieved it was empty. I could break in and just hide out here. But Void, Sang, and Mav would find me eventually, and then force me to face my past.
"Nope. Too busy running from it," I said, more than a little breathless. Despite prosecco pilates classes, I was a little out of shape.
If I kept running, none of the bad things would catch me. So I heaved myself onto the railing and jumped again, and again, and then sent up a prayer as I made the final, treacherous jump.
Clinging to the ladder on the opposite building, my whole body trembled and every wheezing breath I took tasted like sticky air and blood. But I made it.
Now all I had to do was cross a shadowkind city and find a portal.
I hoped the hard part was over. I really should have known better.
13
"This is crazy," I whispered to myself, walking with my head ducked but still gawping at the city around me.
I was in the thick of it now, and it was bustling, loud, and so normal it made me question my sanity.
On a corner, a cart sold some kind of meat on sticks and shadowkind queued to purchase them, pushing hair out of green faces or shifting the weight of ten-foot-tall bodies or slapping tails impatiently on the concrete ground.
It was all so ordinary that my mind was fit to explode.
There were no cars, but monsters walked paved pathways between buildings, unhurried except for some shadowkind wearing bow ties and carrying briefcases. I honestly thought I was mad, but everything was too clear, too detailed, to be a delusion.
Cooking meat filled my nose, the ground was warm under my feet, and the sounds of conversations were too real. I reached out to touch a skyscraper I passed just to be sure, but it was solid, sun-heated glass under my fingertips. A sheen of dust even coated my fingertip. No way could my mind have come up with this good a delusion.
We’d been lied to. Maybe not entirely—these monsters still attacked and ate humans—but they were civilised and so … human-ish. They couldn’tallbe brainless beasts.
But maybe no human who’d come here had ever made it back to tell anyone about this place. I’d never heard ofanyonesurviving the portal, and my keepers had been trying to find a portal for years.
I finally stopped staring when I came to a corner, where a big, black and white pub squatted, incongruous beside modern glass high rises. Pubs were loud and busy—perfect for finding a dark corner to listen to monsters’ conversations. I’d wait until someone mentioned going to Earth and then follow them to the portal. Easy.
The door creaked as I pushed it open, and I hunched my shoulders, half waiting for someone to turn and see me, maybe grab me by the arm and toss me out on my ass. But it must have been a commonplace creak, because no one even turned to see who'd entered.
I didn't have money for a small glass of wine—if the void evenhadwine; everyone seemed to be drinking beer or clear alcohol, hops flavouring the air with a tang—but I kept my head down and weaved around tables twice as big as the ones in the pubs back home. Even shadowkind pubs didn't have furniture as big as this, and on Earth the shadowkind wore their glamours. Here talons, claws, feathers, scales, tentacles, and pincers flew free.
I carefully avoided being nicked or cut by the monsters' sharp edges, a breath of relief puffing out of me when I spotted an absent table tucked into the corner. It was right beside a monster with a craggy purple face and so many horns and spikes I couldn't count them, but surely if I didn't bother him, he wouldn't look at me twice.
I slid into the corner seat and sagged, glad to be out of the crushing chaos of the main taproom. A barmaid far bolder than me glided around tables, knocking questing fingers aside and handing out glares as freely as pints. She looked completely ordinary, except she was four-foot-three and bright, buttercup yellow.
I watched her flit around the bar, picking up empty glasses and joking with the men and women sitting at the tables. I wished I was brave enough to ask her if she knew how to get to Earth. My own lack of confidence held me back, as did the instinct to keep safe by staying by myself.
"A tiny thing like you shouldn't be alone," a soft male voice said, making me startle and snap my gaze from the yellow barmaid to the purple shadowkind with the horns and bumpy face.
He watched me with bright, glowing eyes, and my stomach shot up into my throat at the intent gleam.