‘Asta! How did you and Felix come up with the idea for the stunt?’ Allie Vorajee called up to her. At the mention of Felix’s name, a flutter of interest spread through the crowd.
‘We didn’t plan it.’ Asta glanced in Felix’s direction.
‘You must have planned it,’ another reporter said, his tone almost combative. ‘It was the exact same trick.’
‘I just mean we didn’t plan it ahead of time,’ Asta said. She wasn’t good at this. She needed time to think about what she wanted to say, but that’s not how this worked. ‘It’s called the Running Corkscrew.’
Several voices shouted follow-up questions. Was it for training? Would she use it in competition?
Asta was flustered. ‘It’s just something we used to do as kids. We were neighbors.’ A few heads in the press crowd shot up and others bent down as they began scribbling notes.
Allie looked happy enough to faint. ‘Neighbors! I love that!’ They started to ask a question, but it was lost in the mayhem of shouting from the other reporters.
Natalia trotted up behind the reporters on Vulture. The dragon, her body as dark as wet earth and her head a dull bronze, fidgeted restlessly, but Nat held her in place.
‘No more questions!’ she hollered. Her voice was commanding, authoritative. Several of the reporters glanced over their shoulders. Nat motioned for Asta to join her.
Asta smiled apologetically at Allie and urged Carmine forward. The reporters scattered out of his path like skittish sheep.
‘Are you allowed to do that?’ Felix called over the heads of the press. ‘You just say “no more questions” and they leave you alone?’
He was joking, and the reporters laughed, but Asta heard an edge in his voice.
Apparently, Nat did too. ‘You can if you want to, Golden Boy. Free will. Come with us. I dare you.’
‘Oh, for real?’ Felix said. He looked at the reporters. ‘Let’s see. Okay, you heard the lady, no more questions!’ There was more laughter– an uncomfortable tinge to it this time. Felix pulled Essie close so that he could speak to Nat and Asta at a normal volume. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Who knows?’ Nat said. ‘Maybe we’ll paint the town red. Maybe we’ll burn it down.’
His face registered three different emotions at once.
‘Felix,’ called a heavy voice. It was the kind of voice that took its time over every syllable. The kind of voice that made children sit still and adults grow quiet. It was the voice of Peter Seraphin, Felix’s father. He rode up beside them on his old green-mottled dragon with a feathered crest, the same one Asta had seen him ride through her telescope when the Seraphins first came to Medley.
Felix met his father’s gaze, and his face hardened. He backed Essie away a few steps, back in the direction of the reporters. ‘I can’t disappoint my fans,’ he said to Nat, trying to sound jovial. ‘Maybe next time.’
‘Coward,’ Nat said.
But Felix was already back in front of the cameras. He and his father leaned toward each other, their gyroscopic saddles compensating for the tilt. They grasped hands in a preemptive victory pose as the cameras clicked and flashed.
‘Let’s go,’ Nat said, and she steered Vulture down the track toward the nearest gate.
9
Asta followed Nat off the track, down the main avenue of the Horizons complex, and straight out into the city streets. Nat rode Vulture over a long bridge that spanned the Hallium River, its cables lit up with rippling ice-blue lights in honor of the tournament. The traffic on the bridge, glutted with departing fans from the Horizons complex, slowed to a crawl, and people gazed up at the pair of large dragons passing them by. Some honked their horns or rolled down their windows to shout and cheer and wave at them. Carmine nosed his head into one car and came away with a morsel of something in a greasy wrapper, which he scarfed down before Asta could stop him. The occupants of the car were beside themselves, laughing and exclaiming to one another.
At the end of the bridge, Nat led them down a side street, then another, then another. Asta could hardly keep track of where they were anymore. The streetlights gave off a flat orange light that made everything seem more like a photograph than real life. Asta gazed up at the backsides of the tall buildings– some of the same buildings, she supposed, that she had admired from the hotel lobby earlier today. How plain they looked now, she thought. How lifeless. As if all their industrious activity of earlier was just for show. Most of the floors stood dark, though a few windows remained lit here and there, the last holdouts against the surrender to the night.
Asta and Nat skirted dumpsters and parked cars and kept on through the back streets of the city. Nat said nothing, so Asta said nothing. Every now and then, one of the dragons would groan at the other, sometimes sneaking in a petulant nip, until they too fell into silence.
They left the business district and entered a much more industrial area of the city, with factory buildings and manufacturers, warehouses and smokestacks. At last, Nat turned down an alley between two low, steel-clad buildings and led Asta into some sort of construction depot.
Asta saw Hummer, his sister Tru, and several other members of the Bruce clan waiting for them between mountain-sized heaps of gravel and sand that loomed throughout the dark lot. Following Nat’s example, Asta dismounted, leaving the dragons to their own devices, and walked over to where the others waited. One of Nat’s many cousins came forward with helmets for both Nat and Asta.
‘Thought training was over, didn’t you?’ Hummer called as Asta and Nat approached. Hummer’s hat made it so that his face, down to his nose, was swamped in darkness. Asta watched his mouth spew spittle into the harsh beam of the floodlights that shone over the depot. ‘I heard that chucklenuts Seraphin harping on about how great it is to fail, and I thought you girls needed one more lesson.’
Tru snorted. Gertrude Bruce was the same height as her brother, the same build, with almost the same face. If it weren’t for her sagging breasts and his scruffy beard, they would have looked almost identical. Tru wore a boxy tan blazer over a thin-striped sweater, gray corduroys, and a billowy neckerchief. Her sense of fashion was fairly eclectic– floral-print blouses and plaid trousers, drop-waist chiffon dresses, a swishy track suit– but she always paired her choices with the same blazer, as if her brother’s trademark hat had made her jealous.
‘The magic of failure,’ Tru said. She was mocking Felix’s speech from dinner, and her face creased with disgust.
