17. Angie

17

ANGIE

I t was a good thing I hadn't eaten thatcanapé. If I had, I would've lost it, splattering concrete gook on the eager group of gargoyles watching us plummet toward them with their heads tilted back and their faces wreathed with smiles.

"Ahhh," I cried out as Tuvid twisted like a feral corkscrew.

The ground rushed up toward us, and my head pounded with dizziness.

He leveled out.

Before I could scramble up his body and perch on his head—or leap away from him and skid across the ground, he pried my fingers off his shoulders. "You need to let go."

"I can't," I wailed. "I'm going to fall." No, I was going to plow through the guests. What a way to ruin the party.

"We have to fly together above them," he shouted.

"Like in Peter Pan? You don't have any fairy dust."

"Hold my hand. Trust your tail and me. I've got you. "

Ugh. As he leveled off and swung around to approach the group once more, I released his shoulders.

I sagged, dangling below him with my legs kicking, my guttural yelps ringing around us, and my heart plunging all the way to the center of the Earth. Only my strap-on tail tied to his and his hand clutching mine kept me from falling to my death.

Then the strap-on belt gave way and my body dropped, swinging down over the crowd close enough that a few of the guests had to duck or be impaled by my shoes.

With my breaths jerking in and out of me, I hung precariously, our fingers linked and my wails echoing across the pretty backyard setting.

We finished swooping over the crowd who cheered us on.

Tuvid slowed the flutter of his wings and lifted me up, easily wrapping his arm around my waist and holding me against his side. He landed on the edge of the group, our feet planting on the ground like he really was Peter Pan and me, Wendy. He tucked his wings against his back.

"Easy, huh?" he said by my ear.

Would it be bad taste to smack him with my strap-on tail? Since I suspected it would, I smiled to the happy shouts of his—and my—friends.