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Flint aside long enough to wave back, grinning toothily around a bright pink chunk of rock candy. “You’re like Oliver Twist to those kids.”
    Echo extracted herself from the gaggle of children that had lost interest in her the second she’d relinquished her candy. She skipped over to Ivy, linking their arms together.
    “I always saw myself as more of an Artful Dodger.” Echo pulled Ivy down the stone hallway that would take them to the heart of the Nest. It was designed a bit like a wagon wheel. All roads led to the center, which housed the massive gateway that acted as the Avicen’s primary point of access to the in-between and the world beyond. “You’re Oliver Twist.”
    “Whatever you say, Artful Dodger.” Ivy laughed. “I take it you stole that candy.”
    “I liberated it.” Echo rummaged through her bag once more, fingers closing around a carefully wrapped honey cake. “I also liberated this.” She handed the cake to Ivy, whose efficient fingers made quick work of the pink paper wrapping before she took an obscenely large bite.
    Around a mouthful of half-chewed cake, Ivy said, “Please, sir, may I have another?”
    “Ew.” Echo wrinkled her nose. Someone had to maintain an air of civility. “It’s almost like you were raised with a deficit of adult supervision.”
    “Been reading your big fancy books with their big fancy words again?” Ivy swallowed the cake in a single gulp. It was like she hadn’t even bothered chewing. “And yeah, it was exactly like that, actually.”
    Echo had not been the first lost child the Ala had taken in, nor, she suspected, would she be the last. War had a way of making orphans. Like Daisy. Like Flint. Like Ivy. They walked along the warmly lit corridor, and Echo nodded at the few passing Avicen she recognized. There was the green-feathered Tulip, who made a living selling odds and ends like buttons and mismatched tea sets. An older Avicen named Willow, who draped herself in brightly colored scarves and crooned for dollars in the subway. The blue-eyed Fennel, who obsessively collected purple straws.
    “I’m feeling decidedly celebratory,” Echo said.
    “Thievery go well, then?” Ivy asked.
    “
Well
might be an exaggeration. I had a run-in with a warlock and some cops and just barely made it out by the skin of my teeth.”
    Ivy’s brows drew together in concern. “Echo—”
    Echo took Ivy by the hand and twirled her. It was just as Fred Astaire had twirled Ginger Rogers. Echo’s knowledge of dancing was almost entirely informed by the library’s collection of old movies. “Chill, Ivy. Don’t lay an egg.”
    Ivy twirled away from Echo, moving to a tune only she could hear. “That wasn’t funny the first five hundred times.”
    “Yes, it was,” Echo said. “But anyway, I got the booty, made it back in one piece, and I’m thinking victory drinks are in order.”
    Ivy snorted. “Ha. Booty.”
    “You’re a disgrace.”
    “Whatever,” Ivy said, spinning to a wobbly stop in front of Echo. They’d reached the gateway, an architectural wonder that never failed to take Echo’s breath away. Two black swans, fashioned from delicately rendered iron, held their necks aloft, beaks meeting at the very top and forming an arch. On their backs sat two massive cast-iron braziers holding fires that burned perpetually. Echo and Ivy joined the queue. Two Avicen stood in front of them: one as wide as he was tall, which was not very, and a stately older woman with hair-feathers that were a lovely shade of dusty pink.
    “You were saying something about victory drinks?” Ivy stepped forward as the Avicen woman threw her handful of dust into a bowl of fire. The air between the swans’ necks shimmered as she stepped into it before a cloud of black smoke rose. When the cloud dispersed, the Avicen was gone. “I hear London is lovely this time of year.”
    Echo weighed the pouch of shadow dust in her pocket. Just enough to make the trip. “Maison Bertaux?”
    Ivy