“I never give up. But I already found him.”
“Then what’s this about?”
“That’s none of your business,” Nea said, glaring up at her brother, and I was pretty sure that if male harpies weren’t rare to the point of mythological obscurity, she and her flock would have eaten the jackass alive years ago.
Desi, the skinnier girl harpy, tossed long brown hair over her shoulder to reveal a wickedly pointed ear, pierced with a tiny bone—she’d once told me it was a human fingertip—near the top of the cartilage. “Can you pay?”
“If not, I know how you could work off your debt,” Troy suggested, ever eager to flaunt his utter lack of originality.
“What, they’re paying people to neuter harpies now?” I said, both brows raised in challenge, and he hissed, an oddly feline sound coming from someone with wings. “Relax, your balls are safe for the moment.” I slid one hand into my hip pocket and pulled out a plastic test tube I’d taken from the school’s chemistry lab. I held it up to the light flickering overhead, and the harpies leaned forward for a better look at the dark, greenish liquid.
“What is that?” Nea reached for the tube, and I pulled it away.
“Nothing you wanna touch. At least, not at full strength.” I’d kept it in a glass vial at first, until it started eating through the tube. “This is hair from Invidia, a hellion of envy.”
“Hair?” Troy frowned. “That’s a liquid.”
“Congratulations, you’ve mastered at least one state of matter.” I tilted the vial, and the residue it left on the side of the plastic looked even greener and murkier than the bulk sloshing at the bottom. “Invidia’s hair is liquid. Like her follicles secrete pure liquid envy—toxic, caustic, and a real bitch to scrub out of leather. I’ve asked around, and everyone says a vial this size is worth way more than a single audience with Syrie. So why don’t you scurr
y back there and tell her I’m here.”
Troy stared at me for a minute, then gestured for me to follow him until Nea put one arm up to stop us both. “Where did you get hair from a hellion? How do we know that’s not just river water and food coloring?”
“You want a sample?” I gripped the stopper, like I was ready to pull it out. “Fine. But I gotta warn you, this shit sizzles like acid. Plastic is the only thing I’ve found that’ll hold it.”
Nea frowned, a sharp look of frustration on her angular features, but the others all seemed interested. I’d just dangled a very fat carrot—an exotic addition to their collection of . . . stuff—in front of several hungry rabbits. Rabbits with claws, and wings, and teeth that could strip flesh to the bone, no matter what they looked like on this side of the world barrier. I’d seen them on the other side, and without that mask of humanity, harpies were a very scary—and ugly—species.
I slid the vial carefully into my pocket and backed toward the corner of the convenience store, shooting a glance at Emma as I passed her car. “Are you going to take me to Syrie, or do I get to wander back there on my own?”
“That wouldn’t be very smart,” Nea warned.
“Yeah, well, I’m not known for my brains.” I stepped past the corner of the building and could see the house behind it, a hulking outline against the darker patch of woods beyond.
“What’s this you brought with you?” Troy asked, and I looked up to find him running the long, sharp nails of his left hand over the hood, eyeing Emma through her windshield while she stared boldly back at him. “Food or plaything? Or both?”
“Neither. She’s a friend.” For lack of a more accurate description. “And she’s human.” Which meant she was off limits for the harpies. At least, for those playing by the rules. They got to live on our side of the divide on the condition that they only hunt on the other side, to keep from decimating the local population. Or drawing the attention of the human authorities.
“You never let me have any fun,” Troy complained, trailing his fingers over the hood one more time toward the edge of the building.
I shoved him around the corner ahead of me. “And I’m not gonna start now.”
“You get twenty minutes, whether she talks or not,” Nea said, one hand on the front doorknob of the house behind the Sac-N-Pac. “If you don’t come out on your own, I’ll let Troy drag you out.”
Troy grinned at me from the steps, a joyless note of anticipation stretched over long, harsh features.
“Come near me and I’ll rip your wings off and beat you with them.”
“I had a feeling you like it rough,” he taunted as his sister pulled the door open.
The hinges creaked and the floorboards groaned beneath my feet, but the old house was a lot sturdier than it looked. It predated the gas station by several decades and was the oldest— and at one point had been the only—building in Niederwald.
“Try not to upset her this time,” Nea said, crossing the dim, sparsely furnished living room toward a closed door on the right. “Last time she wouldn’t eat for days.”
I reached for the doorknob, but Nea stuck out one bony hand, palm up. I gave her the test tube, then brushed past her into Syrie’s room, where the first part of my business in Niederwald would be conducted.
“Syrie?” I bent to unzip the top left pocket of my cargo pants as Nea closed the door behind me. “It’s Sabine. I have something for you.”
What most people don’t realize when they come to see the oracle is that what you pay Nea only covers access to her. If you want Syrie to talk to you, well . . . she doesn’t take payment in the traditional sense of the word, but a little kindness goes a long way.