Desperation propelled him into an insane leap. He caught her in midair, relief shooting through him as his arms locked around her, and then he twisted, trying to land on the pillar. The rock punched his feet. He landed hard, the shock reverberating through his legs, and fell backward, trying to keep them from hurtling over the edge. She landed on him. For a tiny moment they were face-to-face, and then she jumped off him. “The bag!”

He rolled to his feet. The two birds soared above them, melting into the night sky. He squinted and saw Julie’s backpack hanging from the right bird’s claws.

“They have the rock! And the sample! Damn it.” Julie stomped on the pillar. “Damn it!”

She’s alive, he told himself. Relax. She made it.

“They’re flying northeast,” he said. “That’s the opposite way from the Warren and Adams’ base. Can you see anything?”

She stood up and walked to the very edge of the rock and stood an inch from falling, looking into the city as if it were an endless indigo ocean and she was searching for that one sail at the horizon. She turned slowly and pointed. “There.”

“Another glowing rock?”

She nodded.

Predictably, he couldn’t see anything. “Where?”

She pointed northeast, in the exact direction the birds flew. “Maybe five, six miles.”

He glanced behind them. “The Warren is there.”

She turned and looked at the Warren. “Nothing there. If the birds belong to Adams, then he took what he had over there, or else the birds belong to someone else, and Adams knows how to hide his rock.”

He searched the dark city. “And you haven’t seen it before?”

“No.”

“Let’s say I’m Caleb. I want the shiny rock, but I don’t like getting my hands dirty. I send some assholes to retrieve the two pieces of the rock. They get one from Luther, but they botch the other job, kill people, and cops are called. So I hire some idiot shapeshifters to go get the rock for me and bring it here. I break the linked ward guarding this place, so the fucked-up mermaids will eat the shapeshifters.”

“Then, when it’s daylight, the lobasti will hide and I’ll come and get the rock,” Julie said. “Easy.”

“Except that if I were Caleb, I’d want to make sure that everything went according to the plan.”

“You’d stay and watch.” Julie’s eyes narrowed. “You’d see us kill the lobasti and then hide on the pillar. You’d know we would be trapped up here for at least an hour. Plenty of time to make a new plan, summon some birds, and take the rock away from us. And then have them take it there?” She pointed to northeast. “Why?”