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IMARA RUSHED INTO HER BEDROOM, A month later, and grabbed the first shoes she could find. She, Abe, and the others had been sitting around making plans since Takara gave her speech at the business fair, but today they finally had the chance to do something.
“You promised we would go to the rugby game together,” Naki said.
“I know, but something came up,” Imara said as she stuffed her foot into a shoe.
Naki glared and kicked over an empty trash bin. “What is it this time?”
“Abe is trying to get new employees. He just got a message from some gangsters saying they want to join us. We have to go meet with them and see if they’re genuine.”
“Can’t someone else go?”
“Husani and Keiko are already on a different job.”
Naki grumbled and followed after Imara as she ran into the kitchen. “Can we hang out tomorrow then? And will you please bring your boyfriend because Mom and Dad are getting mad that he hasn’t come to Kenya yet.”
Imara froze in her place and turned on her heel. “It’s not his fault,” she said. “Please tell them it’s not his fault. He’s trying to save his business. Cairo is being overrun by taggers and gangsters. It’s just crazy right now, but things will calm down soon.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Naki said under her breath.
Imara jumped toward her sister and tried to topple her over with a hug until Naki started laughing. “I promise, Naki,” she said. “I promise things will be different soon.” She looked down with a swallow. “We have a lot of lost time to catch up on.”
Naki pulled away with a tiny shake of the head. “Oh, go on and save the world. Or Cairo, whichever one you’re working on at the moment. And tell Abe if he doesn’t come to visit soon, I’m going to start talking bad about him to Mom and Dad.”
Imara rolled her eyes as she threw her purse over her shoulder. “It’s going to be different soon. Just wait and see.”
* * *
IMARA SETTLED INTO the seat the waiter had offered. The restaurant seemed suspiciously empty, but it was late afternoon. Not exactly a normal meal-time. She scanned the empty tables again while a thrum of anxiety danced through her.
Abe didn’t seem to share any of her concerns. He grinned at her before glancing around the room. “This is great, isn’t it? Finally some of the gangsters are going to join us instead of Takara.”
She bit her lip, eyeing the nearest exit. Before she could spend too much time thinking about running away, a group of three gangsters sat down at the table with them. Two young men and a young woman, each with scars covering their knuckles and a red armband above their elbows. All three looked to be about Imara’s age.
A rich, earthy smell accompanied them, reminding her of both leather and wet earth after rain. She breathed in deeply, almost forgetting why they were there.
The first one leaned forward. “We want to join you,” she said.
Imara’s teeth set on edge the moment the young woman started speaking. The way her eyes shifted around the room felt strange. Dishonest. The gangster sitting next to her wore an unconvincing smile.
“Me too,” he said. A lie. It had to be.
She clenched her jaw as her fingers reached under the table for Abe. She didn’t know how, but she needed to communicate to him that they had to get out of here. This felt like a trap. Just before her fingers reached him, the last gangster looked up at her.
Her hand dropped to her lap as she noticed his chestnut brown eyes. The expression in them looked completely different than the other gangsters. He sucked in a breath that seemed to tremble through him. Was he afraid, yes? But was he dishonest?
“I do want to join you,” the third gangster said. The emphasis in his words put a different feeling in the air. She didn’t trust the other two, but that didn’t change the truthfulness of his words. This gangster didn’t want to work for Sef anymore. She was sure of it.
She’d gotten so distracted by the gangster that she didn’t notice a new crowd of people arriving. All gangsters and all angry. Abe grabbed her hand from under the table and jumped to his feet. “Time to go,” he said.
Apparently, he hadn’t been as oblivious as she assumed. He ignored the front door and went for the back one instead. Unfortunately, the gangsters seemed to have expected that.
When Imara and Abe stepped out the back door, a fire blazed in front of them, blocking the alley. They were trapped.
She whirled around to look at the door with a frown. “What do we do when the gangsters get out here? Fight?”
“They won’t come out here.”
She tilted her head to the side, but as she did, a flame from the fire burst toward her. Abe pulled her back just in time to keep her safe from the flames. Even as he pulled her away, they both stopped and leaned toward the fire. The musky smell of smoke, not only seemed inviting, but intoxicating. As stupid as it sounded in her head, she found herself wanting to jump into the fire and let the fragrance engulf her.
Luckily, she’d known a smell master since her first day of hila school. Siluk. They didn’t have the most pleasant history, but she remembered one thing he taught her.
Never trust a smell that tries to control you.
“Stop!” she shouted as Abe stepped toward the flames. “That will burn you.” She yanked him back, which seemed to help him snap out of it.
He joggled his head until the glazed look came out of his eyes. “Right,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the fire. “The gangsters won’t come after us out here, but if we go back inside, they’ll probably beat us until we pass out. But we can’t go through the fire either. No matter how good it smells,” he added under his breath. “So, which one’s worse? Fire or gangsters?”
She drummed her fingers against her thigh, considering his question. A moment later, she grinned at the wall on her right side. Smirking, she said, “When faced with two choices, one bad, the other worse, I like to ignore them both and choose a third option.”
Abe’s lips curved into a half smile. “Such as?”
She pointed out a rickety ladder attached to the side of the building. It was half hidden by a stack of boxes, but still easily within reach.
He grinned and waited for her to grab the ladder first. Her fear of heights did not make the climb easy, but she felt safer knowing Abe was right behind her. The ladder led all the way up to a covered roof.
Once at the top, she braved a glance over the edge and down at the fire. Her heart nearly stopped at the sight of such a distance. She had to take several steps away from the ledge to calm her pounding heart. “Do you think there’s another way down?” she asked. “Another ladder or something.”
Abe walked around the roof, looking over the edge as he went. When he got back, he said, “Nope. We’ll have to wait until the gangsters leave the restaurant or until that fire burns out.”
She let out a huff and sneered at nothing in particular.
“You have stuff in your eye again,” Abe said.
She tilted her chin up without thinking. But as he started cleaning her eye, she remembered the last time he’d done this. After the dinner with his dad, she saw a flash of an emotion coming off his skin. Or she thought she did. It could have been a trick of the lights. But this time, she was anxious to find out if the mysterious goop was related to seeing her hila again.
Abe wiped the goop on his pants and tapped his ring. “Do you want to check the news feeds while we wait?”
After she nodded, he sat down cross-legged, and she settled next to him. Their hands instinctively moved until they found each other. He pulled her fingers up to his lips and then held on tight as he chose a video.
With his eyes on the screen, hopefully he wouldn’t notice her staring. She bit her lip as she stared. Watching his copper skin and hardly taking a breath. Waiting.
And then she saw it.
Just a wisp. The ghost of a color, not even the color itself. But she saw it.
A raven black rash of anxiety wafted away from him as he narrowed his eyes at the video. The rash disappeared a moment later, but she definitely saw it.
Now she knew for certain that the stuff in her eyes did have something to do with her hila. When Abe cleared it away, she could see emotion again. Not like she could before, but more than she had since the eraserfall.
Should she tell him? He didn’t even believe he was a healer, yet. Maybe it was better to wait until he accepted his hila before she tried to convince him he could heal hers.
With her mind on hilas, another question bounced forward. “What is Sef’s hila?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Nobody knows. He keeps it a secret.” He pulled his eyes away from the screen for a split second. “Why? Do you think you know what it is?”
She bit her lip, trying to decide if it was all in her head. “No. It’s probably not what I think. But the smell of that fire reminded me of—”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Abe said, staring at his screen.
“What?”
He shook his head as his lip curled up. “Sef’s latest antics. Watch this video.”
He restarted the video, which showed Sef standing behind a short podium. The spattering of freckles over Sef’s nose didn’t look sinister at all in the daylight. He wore a gray pinstripe suit and looked out at the crowd with an air of authority. “My proposed plan has the potential to make Cairo even better than the revered Alexandria. I propose we do away with prisons completely. We will replace all of them with reform institutions.”
“Good idea,” Abe said to the screen. “Except if you’re the one implementing it, then those reform institutions might as well be named Slave Cartel 2.0.”
With a grunt, he jumped to his feet and kicked an empty flower pot. “I’m so sick of Sef ruining my city.” He kicked another flower pot, which soared off the roof until it broke against the building nearest them.
When the pot shattered, Abe stared at the building across from them with narrowed eyes. She tried to imagine what he was thinking especially with his sudden outburst toward Sef. Even with all her guesses, she never could have imagined the words that came out of his mouth next.
“Do you think I can jump across to the other roof?”
“No,” she said, trying to laugh off the suggestion. When he kept staring, her stomach dropped. “Abe, no. It’s way too far. You’ll never make it.”
“I’m going to try it,” he said.
“No,” she shouted.
But he was already running. He leapt up and pushed his feet off the ledge, causing his body to soar through the air.
Her breath had been sucked entirely from her lungs as she watched him fly. For one terrifying moment, she thought he would fall when he was only halfway across. But his body kept soaring, and his feet arched ready to touch down on the roof ledge across from them.
His toe made contact with the ledge. He swung his other foot forward so it could touch down. But as his foot moved, the momentum swung his body back. The toe that had touched down first got pulled away from the ledge. He gasped as his entire body swung back. Falling.
He had almost made it.
“ABE!” she screamed out. She ran to the edge of the roof, ignoring the fear that bubbled in her chest. She lifted her leg, ready to jump after him, but knew it would do no good. Her heart froze for three breaths. But where his feet had failed, his hand succeeded. He gripped, not the roof edge, but a window ledge. His body jolted to a stop as his fingers found the wood jutting out from the building side.
“Reckless!” she screamed at him.
He tried to respond, but his grip started failing, and he had to focus on gripping the wood.
“Just hold on. I’ll find something to help you. Don’t let go,” she said. And don’t die. She scanned the roof, looking at it for what seemed like the first time.
More empty flower pots sat in one corner. A broken chair was tipped on its side next to the flower pots. A long wooden board was propped up against it. She scowled at the worthless items until she found a yellowing rope draped over a flower pot.
She snatched it from the ground and her excitement quickly faded. The rope was barely a meter long, which meant she’d have to be much closer to Abe in order to use it.
Her eyes flitted up to the wooden board propped against the chair. It looked sturdy and pretty long. Maybe long enough to...
She lifted it and set it up straight to check the length. With how high it towered over her, it had to be long enough to bridge the gap between the two buildings. She scuttled to the edge of the building and lowered the board, holding her breath as it fell to the edge of the roof across from her. It landed with a thud, which confirmed what she had already guessed. It fit perfectly as a bridge between the two buildings, but that meant she’d have to cross it in order to help Abe.
She gripped the wooden board while images of her tripping off it and falling to her death played over and over in her mind. She tried to take deep breaths, but each one felt shallower than the last. Blinking rapidly, she willed her feet to climb onto the roof ledge, but they stayed rooted to their spot, heavy as lead.
“You don’t have to walk across it,” Abe called out. “Maybe I can climb up on my own.” He jammed a toe against the building and tried to push his body up. He raised himself a head length up before his toe slipped, and he was falling once again. He gripped the window ledge, but held on with even fewer fingers than before.
A bead of sweat slid down Imara’s forehead as she finally convinced her feet to move. Abe’s fingers wouldn’t last much longer, which meant she had to act. Now.
She climbed onto the wooden board, trying to decide if the journey would be better with her eyes open or closed. She stuffed the yellowing rope into her pocket, then shuffled across with her belly against the board.
Eyes closed. That was better.
She peeked out after several seconds only to grimace. Not even halfway across yet, and Abe was losing his grip with every second that passed. Squeezing her eyes shut, she shuffled across the board at a speed she hoped was faster than before.
After peeking three more times, she finally made it close enough. She dug her nails into the board with one hand as she pulled the rope from her pocket. Her body shivered as she lowered the rope down to him.
The rope pulled taut as he took hold of it. But she knew right away that she’d have to grip the rope with both hands in order for Abe to climb. Long beads of sweat trickled down her cheeks as she extracted her nails from the wooden board. She sucked in a gasp, but managed to wrap both hands around the rope.
Soon, Abe was climbing. The grip required to keep him from falling was enough to keep her mind off her fear of heights. But then he made it safely to the wooden board, and her fear was back in full force. He led her the rest of the way across the board until they both jumped onto the safety of the second roof.
Her body shook as she clutched him, burying her face in his chest. He moved along the roof but kept one hand firmly on her back, providing a small measure of much needed comfort.
“There’s a ladder here,” he said. “It’s far enough from the fire that we should be safe.”
She nodded and let him lead her as long as possible so she wouldn’t have to open her eyes. He ordered a bubble car as they climbed down, and by the time they reached the bottom, it had arrived.
