“What do you want?” Ivy asked.
The café was quiet at this time of night—as quiet as one near a major hospital ever got, which was not very quiet at all. But the crowd wasn’t large enough to cause Helios any undue trauma, which relieved Ivy. He was growing more and more accustomed to being around humans, but large groups of them remained problematic. Ivy sympathized. She pulled the scarf around her head tighter, her feathers hidden under the silk.
She knew what she was getting. Something gigantic and full of sugar. With extra whipped cream. And maybe a cupcake. Or a doughnut. No, both.
Helios peered up at the sign, squinting at the names of drinks scribbled in chalk as if trying to puzzle out the meaning of ancient hieroglyphs. “I don’t know what any of this means. What’s a skinny mocha latte? How do you make coffee skinny?”
“You use skim milk instead of cream,” Ivy replied, suppressing a smile. This was delightful.
“What’s skim milk?”
“Milk that isn’t whole.”
He looked at her over the dark lenses of his sunglasses. It always surprised Ivy how few stares she and Helios attracted when they wore sunglasses at night; people probably just thought they were pretentious.
“How strange,” Helios said, pushing up the sunglasses before anyone spotted his unusual golden eyes. “I understand each individual word coming out of your mouth, but when you string them together like that, they cease to have any meaning.”
“Do you want me to order for you?” Ivy asked.
He shot her a look so deadly it pierced the tinted lenses. But confusion overpowered his pride and very, very grudgingly he said, “Yes, please.”
He didn’t have the sweet tooth Ivy did, so she opted for something simple. Coffee. A splash of whole milk. One sugar. Ivy didn’t know how non-Avicen taste buds operated, but that seemed reasonable to her. She didn’t know how someone could choke down bitter bean juice without at least eight packets of sugar, three pumps of syrup, and a generous swirl of whipped cream, but that wasn’t any of her business.
Their fingers brushed when she handed him the cup and that awful blush returned, this time with even greater zeal. Ivy hid her face behind her cup as she took a scalding sip. Gods, it burned. She accepted her change with all the grace of a socially inept buffalo and buried her mortification in an unseemly generous bite of cupcake. Vanilla, with lemon buttercream frosting. Bliss.
Drinks—and doughnut and cupcake—in hand, they made their way to the subway station at Seventy-Seventh Street. Helios, seemingly determined to assuage Ivy’s obvious embarrassment, asked her questions about things he spotted on the way. Unusual architecture. Poems written on the sidewalk in multicolored chalk. A dog wearing a sweater and walking down the street, sans owner. Ivy couldn’t explain that last one.
The cell phone in Ivy’s pocket rang, startling her. No one ever called it. Only three people had the number, and if it was one of them, then she was about to get either very good news or very bad news. She thrust her hot chocolate into Helios’s hands and fumbled for the phone. Once it was in her hand, she looked at the caller ID flashing on the screen.
Echo.
Ivy swiped the screen with her thumb. “Echo?” Her voice came out in a rush. “What happened? What is it? Are you okay?”
“We found him.”
Relief cascaded through Ivy in a powerful flood. She had lived each day since Echo’s departure dreading the worst: that her best friend would be hurt or that someone she had come to care about would be lost to them forever, ensnared in a madwoman’s trap, that one or more of their party would fail to return home.
As if sensing Ivy’s need for reassurance, Echo added, “We’re all okay. We’ll be heading back to Avalon in mostly one piece once Caius wakes up.”
Ivy frowned. “Mostly?”
A weary sigh hissed through the phone. “Tanith took a few chunks out of Caius’s back with a whip. And there’s a constellation of bruises and scars on the rest of his body.”
“Holy shit.”
Helios arched an eyebrow in question, no doubt puzzled by the half of the conversation to which he was privy.
“Yeah,” Echo said. “That about sums it up.”
“But you’re okay, right?” Ivy asked. “Like, really okay?”
“I’m fine,” Echo assured her. “I’ll see you soon. Just wanted to let you know. I know how you worry.”
Ivy thought she could hear the tired smile in Echo’s voice when she said that.
The news made Ivy feel lighter. Perhaps there was a sliver of a chance of things looking up. Maybe they’d be able to fight the bad guy, save the day, and have all their lives go back to whatever normal meant for them now. After everything.
A thought occurred to Ivy suddenly. “We missed your birthday,” she blurted before Echo could hang up. “We should do something when you get back. Celebrate. I’ve always wanted to throw a Great Gatsby party.”
Echo laughed, and it sounded more genuine than any of her laughs over the past few months. “Did you even read that book?”
“No, I just think I’d look cute in a flapper dress.”
“I don’t want a birthday party where someone dies in the pool at the end.”
“Fine, fine. Have it your way. But I’m still going to wear a flapper dress. Maybe a fascinator.” Ivy squeezed her eyes shut. “Just come back in one piece, okay? Then you can spoil The Great Gatsby for me, ’kay?”
“Okay,” Echo said. “But I’m still going to make you read the book and not just watch the movie.”
They said their goodbyes and Ivy slid the phone back into her pocket. Helios offered her cup.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
“Yeah.” A knot of anxiety that Ivy hadn’t even realized had formed at the base of her neck began to loosen. “They found Caius. He’s okay. Echo’s okay. Everybody’s okay.”
Helios tapped her cocoa with his coffee, a travel cup toast. “Good,” he said. “The day has been kind to us.” He offered her his arm as they descended the steps to the train that would take them north, toward Avalon. The city had worked hard to get the trains up and running again after the attack on Grand Central, but the 6 didn’t go any farther south than this. Ivy pushed the thought away. Much better to focus on the good. The day had been kind, and Ivy prayed their run of luck would last just a little bit longer.
The problem with prayers was that sometimes, no one was listening.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN