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“Who all knows about this?” He came up, demanding—as Nia’n’an retreated, almost to the tower’s edge.
“The people I trust,” Nia’n’an said, over the translation device. “You are not among their number, however. Step back.”
“What?”
“She’s my ward. Not yours. You have failed her. Repeatedly.”
And then I felt him tense. I knew exactly what that meant, from my time in the caverns with him. We were in danger—and I was about to get stuck somewhere for my own safekeeping—only there weren’t any high rock walls here to put me on.
I swallowed down all of my panic and closed my eyes because I knew whatever happened next I wasn’t going to like it.
I felt myself getting webbed, and then had the sensation of sailing through the air. I couldn’t help it, I shouted “Fuuuuuckkkkkkk!”—right before I found myself suspendedover the edge of my father’s highest skyscraper, dangling down from about twenty feet of thick webbing, halfway trussed. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” I panted as I heard the sounds of a fight breaking out from above.
And then a minotaur was flung down after me. Ellum dropped down like a cement yo-yo, only to stop roughly six feet away from me with what I was sure was a bone-jolting bounce.
“What’s happening?” I asked him frantically. “Why aren’t you up there, helping him?”
“He won’t let me be in danger because he likes my kids,” the minotaur said, then framed his snout with his hands to shout up at the helipad. “It’s very fucking annoying!”
“Why are they fighting?”
Ellum twisted his head over. “I don’t know. He must have his reasons.”
I couldn’t just stay here and do nothing. “Do you have your phone on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you open it up and give it to me?”
He moved inside his webbing and then paused. “Only if you promise not to drop it. If you do, my wife will kill me,” he said, but then started swinging back and forth. Just watching him do that was making me sick.
“Aren’t you afraid of heights?”
“Nope,” he said, still rocking, with his phone in his hands held out. “I’m a pilot. I’m only afraid of landings.”
He finally swung himself near enough to me and Igrabbed it, swiping the screen quickly to keep it ready for me.
I only had two phone numbers in the entire world memorized: my father’s and Westly Bones, the editor ofThe Bone Zone, the gossip site most responsible for terrorizing me.
I called Westly up, as fast as I could.
Forty-Three
NIA’N’AN
Once Sloane andEllum were out of the way, I could take on the orcs alone.
“Nine? What are you doing?” Shiranak asked, only pretending to be surprised by my actions, I knew.
“Keeping them safe.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, placing an affronted hand against his chest. “And more than that, I’m offended by what you’re implying here.” He snapped at his two underlings, and they flew back into the elevator behind him, off to get reinforcements. My hindmost legs worked on making a net, while the orc and I began to circle.
“I’m not implying anything.” I already knew the truth—the reason kidnappers had managed to get Sloane, and that she wasn’t rescued untilmyarrival, was because Shiranak had been behind it all along.
Shiranak’s big face was split by an equally large grin. “How’d you manage to figure it out?”
“We traveled through some of the same caves.” I hadn’t realized it until I’d been standing in front of Shiranak, watching the setting sun glimmer off of his overly large belt buckle. It would’ve been nothing for one of his teams to send a drone in and do a 3D map of the place.
