DESTINY OR NO, and dirty and disheveled or no, as soon as dawn broke, I insisted that we get some food before we did anything else. We found a street vendor, and I wolfed down two plates of sides plus whatever greasy meat he’d been grilling in the back. No surprise, from how fast I ate plus the greasiness of the food, I was sick to my stomach soon afterward.
“I should’ve stuck to one meal, not fried, and eaten it slower,” I told Adrian after I emerged from the thankfully close public bathroom. “That food came up as fast as it went down.”
He gave me a worried look. “You still look pretty pale. Sure you want to try doing any of this today?”
“No time like the present.” I’d stalled way too long as it was. “But I’d kill for some toast to help with the new acid in my stomach. Oh, and some, ah, fruit.”
I stammered over that last word because I’d almost said watermelon, which was ridiculous. I didn’t even like watermelon, and late September in Germany was hardly watermelon season, so I had no idea why it popped into my mind. And yet thoughts of that bright pink fruit suddenly consumed me, prompting my taste buds to nearly scream Gimme!
Well, too bad. Craving toast to soothe an upset stomach was one thing; inexplicable urges for watermelon could shove it.
“No watermelon,” I said out loud, as if my sudden, senseless cravings needed both an internal and verbal rebuke.
Adrian’s expression grew even more concerned. “Are you sure you’re okay, Ivy?”
“Fine,” I said in a firm tone. “Now, let’s see if that fried-food peddler has any plain toast, and then let’s get some new clothes so we don’t scream Demon attack survivors! to any minions who might be in this city looking for us.”
Adrian gave me another I’m-not-buying-that-you’re-fine look, but he didn’t argue as we went back to the street vendor. He didn’t have toast, but he had hoagie buns, and I ate two of them far slower than I wanted to. Wow, I’d gone from ravenous to puking to ravenous again. Maybe my body was trying to stall even if my willpower had no intention of doing that.
Then we went in search of new clothes. We didn’t go back to the same clothing store we’d been to yesterday. We might have been spotted there. The demons probably thought we’d left Trier, but still, no need to show up at the same places we’d been to yesterday if they were tracking us and knew we were here. Instead, we went to a clothing store that was so small and cramped, most of its walls were covered with merchandise instead of mirrors. Perfect.
I had covered the mirror as soon as I entered the dressing room to change into my new outfit, which was essentially an unstained version of my old one, since I went with a sweater and jeans again. After I was done, Adrian squeezed into the tiny dressing room and changed, too. Then he stuck his head over the top of the door but didn’t open it.
“Stay here. I’m going to try this without you first.”
“Oh, no, you’re not,” I snapped.
He gave a pointed look at the pilum, which most people seemed to regard as nothing more than a walking stick. “I have no idea what will happen when, or if, I go through the mirrors. We can’t risk bringing that into it if we end up coming face-to-face with a bunch of demons. We also can’t risk leaving it behind if that doesn’t happen and this does work. We need a trial run first, Ivy, and I’m the only one who can do that.”
My teeth ground together from how much I wanted to argue, but he was right. We couldn’t risk the pilum until we knew what would happen inside the mirrors. Yes, we knew they worked as portals, but how was still up in the air. I hated to leave Adrian to find out on his own, but he wasn’t defenseless. He had his shadows, which thankfully, no one here seemed to notice. Demetrius’s shadows had been like that, too. Maybe they came with a natural version of demon glamour that made them invisible to regular humans. Either way, this was what it meant to put the mission above my own wants, so reluctantly, I nodded.
“Fine. I’ll wait for you here.”
“Wait by the exit,” he told me. “I don’t want you anywhere near this mirror if someone other than me comes out of it.”
Once again, I didn’t argue. “Be careful” was all I said.
He flashed me a smile that was far too impish for someone about to embark on a dangerous expedition with unknown outcomes and consequences. “Careful? Never. Ready? Yes.”
Then his head disappeared from the top of the door, and I walked over to the front of the shop.
“He’s trying on more outfits,” I told the clerk, who had proved to speak enough English to understand that. Then, because I had no idea how long this would take and I didn’t want him nosing around the dressing room, I added, “He’s so indecisive. Best to leave him alone to figure out which one he likes.”
“Ah, of course, fraulein.”
The clerk busied himself at his register. It probably helped that we’d already paid for what we were wearing. Otherwise, he might have been less laid-back as the minutes started to tick by and Adrian still didn’t emerge from the dressing room. When it was nearing the twenty-minute mark, he left his register and began to wander toward the back.
“Can you help me with this dress?” I blurted out, holding up the first garment close to me. “I...I’m not sure if this looks good with my coloring. What do you think?”
That stopped him, and I spent the next ten minutes acting as if I were in dire need of reassurances that yellow didn’t make my skin look sallow. I bought that dress and another one, then lingered at the register in apparent indecisiveness over whether I wanted to add a pair of hoop earrings to my tally, or go with the plain stud ones.
“You pick which. I check on your husband now,” the clerk told me in an exasperated tone.
I could understand why he was fed up, but he didn’t know what being stressed out was. Each minute seemed to grab a new nerve ending of mine and pull on it. Now all of them felt like they were at the snapping point. It was no wonder I felt nauseous again, and I tried to use that to my advantage.
“I don’t feel well,” I said, putting a hand on my stomach for emphasis. “I think I’m going to be sick. Do you have a trash can or bucket? I don’t want to get vomit on your nice clothes.”
He was back by his counter in a flash. Moments later, a trash can was shoved in front of me. I was surprised when I made good on what had started out as a false, empty threat by using it. Ugh. Worry for Adrian plus that greasy mystery meat from earlier must have really done a number on me.
“Thank you,” I said, accepting the tissue he handed me next. I wiped my mouth with it and tried to ignore the smell emanating from the trash can. It was so disgusting, I felt like I was going to hurl again.
That also didn’t turn out to be an empty threat, and my hands were slightly shaking after I finished my second round of puking and wiped my face with another tissue.
“Sorry,” I said in an uneven voice.
The clerk gave me a look that was still partly annoyed yet also laced with sympathy now. “Don’t worry about it. Is this your first kind, fraulein?”
“Kind what?” I asked, not really caring about the answer. All my attention was on the fact that Adrian had been gone too long for things to be okay. Or did time pass differently in the mirrors, like it did in the realms?
“Child,” he said, enunciating the word carefully.
That got my attention. “I’m not pregnant!”
His brows rose and he gave a meaningful glance at the puke-filled trash can in front of me. “Are you certain, fraulein?”
“I think I would know,” I said in a huffy tone, but then a question roared into my mind that shattered the confidence behind my borderline-snippy reply.
How long had it been since I’d had my last period? Not since Adrian and I had gotten back together, but that had only been for a few days. I thought back to the long train, boat and car trips from Montenegro to the Icehotel in Sweden. Nope, although Jasmine had gotten hers then, because she’d borrowed some of my tampons during the train ride when she couldn’t get to a store.
Okay, so I must have gotten it right before that when we were staying at that villa in Vatican City, except...
Oh, shit. I didn’t remember getting it there, either.
But I couldn’t be pregnant! Adrian had had a vasectomy! It must be all the stress that caused me to skip one—okay, maybe two—periods. That had to be it, because weren’t vasectomies a hundred percent effective against pregnancy?
Wait. Was anything a hundred percent effective?
In response to my inner query, I threw up again.
Moments later, the shop door flung open and Adrian came in. My first reaction was relief, then I was back to sheer, panicked denial. To hide the evidence of what might be morning sickness, I kicked the trash can beneath the space under the clerk’s desk. Only once it was safely out of sight did I wonder why Adrian had come in through the front of the store instead of the mirror in the back. And why was he soaking wet, to the point that he dripped water all over the floor when he went straight to the back of the store?
I heard the distinct sound of glass shattering seconds later, which had to be Adrian breaking the mirror in the dressing room. The clerk began sputtering out protests in German, but those stopped when Adrian threw a stack of bills on the counter that would more than cover the damage.
“Sorry,” he muttered to the clerk. “But believe me, I did you a favor.” Then he took my arm. “We have to hurry. They might not be far behind me.”
In spite of the danger he implied, part of me was glad that Adrian hadn’t seemed to notice how I’d been bent over a trash can when he entered the store. I grabbed the pilum and our satchel, then threw a hurried “Sorry, and thanks!” over my shoulder to the clerk, and left.