Chapter 6

On and on I went, roof after roof, road after road, crossing longer ladders or wooden planks held aloft by the same cocoa and ginger scented magic.

Up here, there were fewer shadows to hide the Berkano than the streets below because the trees were sparse and the buildings were usually about the same height. When the buildings weren't or the rooftops were sloped, ladders had been magically secured in the right spots to get over easily. Traveling over roofs like this was the ultimate game of "lava floor and snapping crocodiles," or so I told myself.

Finally, I spotted Hendry across a narrow street on top of a three-story building. Long boards protruded from a few of the upper windows. He crouched low, the sun highlighting the reddish hue in his hair, sweat sticking his curls to the side of his head. He tapped his wrist where a watch might've been with a scowl tipping his mouth.

Was he telling me I'd taken too long? Asshole.

Not only had I earned actual words from him today, but now I was worthy of an admonishing via his own brand of sign language. I stared down at my imaginary watch, too. With my other hand, I raised two fingers, my palm facing me, in the Australian gesture for "Fuck you."

He shook his head and wiped his face with his forearm, seemingly unimpressed, and stepped forward to toe the very edge of the building across from mine. Then he jumped. He landed several feet down on one of the boards without barely a thump and vanished into the open window.

My jaw dropped. I wasn't even close to that level of talent. Did he expect me to follow him without breaking all my bones? Or was that his intent? Split me open and then leave me for dead?

He knew I had to follow since he - hopefully - had my supplies. But surely there was an easier place to dump me off and then forget about me.

I had to follow. Yet there wasn't any way across the narrow street as far as I could tell. I didn't think I could make the leap to one of those boards sticking out of the windows, and there wasn't a ladder connecting the two buildings.

I strode back to the ladder connecting this building to the last one I'd crossed and dragged it toward me, wincing at the gravelly squeak as metal scraped stone. The magic surrounding it didn't stop it from being moved, I guessed. On the other side of the roof, I pushed the ladder out toward the nearest board. Since the ladder angled toward a window instead of the roof, the steep slant rolled my stomach just looking at it. This was a ladder. It had rungs spaced far apart instead of a constant place to set my feet, and my hope that this would end well fell right through those gaping holes.

I stood and hissed out a slow breath while every ounce of reason in my body screamed not to do what I was about to do.

One.

I filled in the blanks between the rungs in the ladder with pretend blue beanbags.

Two.

Think fast. Just get it over with.

Three.

Go time. I lifted my foot and set it on the first rung.

A low growl sounded from the street below somewhere to my right. My muscles clamped tight. My step faltered. I tried to reel my leg back in, but my momentum already aimed me forward. My foot slipped, so I flashed my other leg out onto the ladder to catch myself, but I didn't place my step where it needed to go. Instead, I stepped too far on the left, on the edge of the ladder, and the whole thing rocked violently underneath me.

Dark movement far below my feet. I didn't dare look. I lunged forward, my steps wild even though I aimed them for the flat edges of the ladder, hoping, praying, wishing the ladder would flatten itself out and stop moving. But it didn't. It was tipping, too fast, too out of control, and suddenly I was freefalling with nothing but concrete and monsters below. Desperation rocketed through me. I grasped at empty air with a scream tipping my tongue, though I knew that would bring even more Berkano.

My foot snagged on the ladder, but it was falling, too. The front of it smashed on the end of the board jutting from the second window down on the building across the street. Gravity swung the ladder out from underneath me like a pendulum I couldn't stop. I leaped off it toward the board, swinging my legs to propel me toward it, and somehow crashed onto the middle of the wood. My forward momentum had to go somewhere, but not off the other side of the beam to the Berkano below. I pivoted my feet toward the window. The broken window with lethal-sharp glass shards that could razor me in half.

Shit.

I covered my head and bulldozed through it at full speed. Glass bit at my whole body and hailed down with me as I landed in a pile on stained carpet. I blinked into the sparkling bits of window next to my face, too dazed and too surprised that I was still able to draw breath, to immediately feel any pain. But as soon as I pushed myself to all fours, my body felt like it had been chewed up and spit back out.

My elbows threatened to give out under my weight. I almost allowed them to, but a man with a thick beard and his jaw dropped open wide enough to invite a curious cat inside locked my joints up again. Underneath his bushy beard, an ugly red scar sliced across his neck. Could this guy speak?

He ticked his gaze toward the window. It was two stories up, but surely the Berkano had heard the sound of breaking glass. Would they gather below to investigate? Or worse, could they scale buildings? I doubted it, what with the system of ladders and boards in sunny patches, but like most everything about the outside world, I wasn't sure. Maybe there was another way up that was hidden in shadows.

I glanced back at the bearded man, whose face shaded redder the longer he stared at his broken window. Even though it had already been broken before my grand entrance, I'd made a sound. A loud one.

A quick look around indicated that maybe his memory wasn't what it used to be. The people in the photos plastered above his couch and bookshelves shouldn't have x's for eyes or colored-in gashes across their necks. I didn't know what it meant exactly, but it scraped a shiver across my shoulders.

The man's face settled on a crimson color I'd never seen before. His large hands squeezed into fists, and he charged.