We run through the living room and bedroom and out onto the balcony. Ash relocks the balcony door, using his tools, and I tie the rope. One by one they climb down. As soon as Ines lands on the ground, I toss the branch gently down to her and untie the rope. I swing my legs over the balcony and waste no time grabbing hold of the decorative masonry. I work myself three-quarters of the way down and jump the last few feet into the grass.

Ash hands me my backpack, which he retrieved from the bushes, and I shove the branch into it as we all book it out of the park. When we’re three blocks away without any obvious pursuers, Aarya looks at me and her serious expression melts into a smirk.

“You’re absolutely mental, you know that? The way you licked that branch…” She laughs. “I always thought you had some quirk, but that was brilliant.”

“You didn’t see her make the pinecone kiss the man at the table….I’ll never forget his look of utter shock and horror,” Ash says with a grin.

And now that we’re on the sidewalk hailing a taxi with the branch in my hand and no Hawk staring us down, I allow myself a laugh, too.

Chapter Twenty-two

WE ALL SIT in Aarya’s living room and I unzip my backpack, pulling out the branch. I run my fingers over it, humming with anxious anticipation. It has four pinecones, all identical and all superglued to the branch. I take my knife from my boot and begin to cut the glue, easily popping off the first cone.

I examine the bottom of it, pulling at the remaining glue. I inspect each of the scales for anomalies and look at the branch, but there is nothing there but pinecone and wood. So I start on the next one, which proves much the same.

“Anything?” Aarya asks impatiently.

I shake my head, removing the third pinecone and examining it carefully. But once again, there is nothing special about it, and no message from my dad. What if I got it wrong? What if it wasn’t table number eleven, or if it was, but the clue wasn’t the pinecones? I hold the fourth cone in my hand, knife poised to cut it off.

“I would move faster if I were you,” Aarya says. “Or the Ferryman might very well kill your father while you’re being precious about those pinecones.”

Ash gives Aarya a sharp look and Ines shakes her head.

“What? I’m only stating the obvious,” Aarya continues.

“If it’s obvious, then you don’t need to state it,” Ash says.

But Aarya only shrugs. “Testy, testy.”