“Okay.” There was this particular way in which he said that word. With acceptance, and curiosity, and humor.

There was a sound. Her aji had come back up.

“You have to leave.”

“Okay.”

“You’ll have to put me down first.”

“Okay.”

“Sid?”

He shook his head. “I have to see you again.”

“I have to see you again too. But I don’t know how.”

“I’m India’s brother, she’s Yash’s girlfriend. Surely I can just walk in here.”

“No!” That would make Esha’s whole life a lie.

She had no idea how she would face that. She shook her head, stomach suddenly queasy. “You can’t. You can’t tell anyone. You have to go now.”

He put her down, and that made the queasiness worse. “Does anyone hurt you?” he whispered, anger and the will to stay calm warring in his eyes. “Do you need help?”

Something filled her chest. She touched his face, stroking the line between stubble and skin. “Not at all.” At least not the way he thought.

He touched her hand, pressing it against his face as though he couldn’t quite believe what was happening. Unlike her, he seemed far too comfortable with the feeling.

“I’ll find a way. I’ll come see you soon. I promise.” Pulling her hand to his lips, he dropped a kiss on her fingertips. Then, leaving a strange magic swirling from her fingers through her body, he jumped over the railing the way he had come.

Before she could stop him or worry that he might fall, he leapt onto the overhang of the floor below, then the one below that, as agile as a mountain goat. He knew exactly where to step next.

As he disappeared from sight, eyes returning to her again and again, Garuda swept back onto the railing post.

“How did he see you?” Esha said, and got nothing but silence from his moonlight eyes. “Why did you let him see you? Do you know why he was so interested in you?” Questions she used to avoid the real one.

All she got in response was a cocking of his white feathered head. Then he too was gone. As always, leaving her alone when her grandmother stepped out onto the balcony.

Chapter Seven

Naina made her way into the gigantic steel-and-glass lobby of the Omnivore Systems office building. For ten years now her workplaces had been in structures ranging from trailers to tents to barely plastered brick-and-mortar rooms.

The Omnivore steel-and-glass tower had an amusement park in the lobby. Yup, an amusement park, which meant the lobby took up the first twenty-odd floors. There was a Ferris wheel, a climbing wall, and a bungee-jumping cliff, built to look like an actual cliff. A bloodcurdling scream ripped the air as someone took a tethered leap.