Bonnie sat alone on the floor of the Draconi's repurposed safe, where Nico had hidden her after driving back to the marina in the Jeep. She was fairly certain that Nico did not have a driver's license and was not meant to be careening wildly down the winding park trails, but seeing as he was the tallest of the boys and the vehicle was clearly marked as park's department equipment, no one seemed to take notice. Rather, the various groups of vagrants and gangbangers tended to scurry away as they approached, not wanting to be bothered in their various activities.

Lyra had warned her not to let herself be seen by the human children, but she had been impatient. She had hoped the older kids would know where they could find the Emerald Necklace that would lead them to Alexander, and she hadn't listened to her sister. Before Lyra could stop her, she had transformed into her human form and slid down the trunk of the tree to talk to Marco and the tall, cranky-looking girl that had been with him. Marco had recognized Bonnie immediately and together, he and the cranky girl had grabbed her, chained her to the roll-over bar of the jeep, and pricked her with one of the remaining tranquilizer darts. Bonnie was strong and feisty enough to offer them a great deal of trouble, and through her wiggling, she only got a small portion of the shot, but it had been enough to knock her out for a short time. Vernita had instructed Nico to take the Jeep and get her locked up inside their makeshift gargoyle prison as quickly as possible.

Now she was stuck inside the dilapidated gangster safe, with only a few beams of light that shone through the air holes that were punched in the roof. She felt very silly and ashamed as she talked over the situation with the little gargoyle doll that Adelpha had made for her.

"That Nico is very mean!" she complained and her Friend was in agreement.

"A warrior does NOT get locked up in a box!" she continued, "Goliath would be very upset about this!"

She picked up the doll and made her dance playfully around among the uneven shapes of light on the floor, as she thought through her predicament.

"But Goliath isn't here!" she concluded, "It's just you and me, Friend. We're going to have to break out of this and find the Emerald Necklace, or we'll be stuck in Chicago forever!"

Suddenly, she heard some beeps from outside the box. Dimwitted Nico was probably playing games on his phone while he waited.

"I hate Chicago," Bonnie complained to Friend, "I wish Orion had taken us to Egypt instead!"

"What?" came a voice from above her and Bonnie's ears perked up. Nico was sitting on the tailgate of the truck and talking to someone.

"What…what?" she answered, but all she heard was another beep and then Nico said,

"No. Why would I?"

Bonnie strained to hear, wondering who he was talking to in this slow, deliberate tone. Then, with another beep she realized what was going on. Nico wasn't talking to anyone. He was sending talk-to-text messages on his phone.

"Just a second," he told whoever he was messaging and Bonnie felt the safe bounce as he jumped down off the back of the truck. Next, she heard the door opening.

"Oochi?" he asked, and Bonnie blinked in confusion. What did "Oochi" mean?

He opened another door and called again, "Oochi? Are you there?"

Curiously, Bonnie waited and listened as the frustrated boy circled the truck twice, calling out "Oochi" as if calling for a pet.

"I wonder if Oochi is his dog?" Bonnie whispered to Friend.

"She ain't here," the boy finally said to his phone, followed by, "Yeah, I'm sure!"

Bonnie listened and thought about this exchange for a moment, until the boy grumbled in an irritated tone.

"Little chicken probably ran off again!"

"Hmm?" Bonnie thought out loud, "A chicken? Is Oochi a chicken? I love chickens!"

Bonnie wondered just how fond Nico was of his lost chicken.

"Hey, Nico!" she called in her sweetest, "Are you looking for someone?"

"Shutup!" Nico yelled, jabbing the side of the safe with his elbow.

"I said, are you looking for your lost little chicken? Oochi?"

"What do you know about Oochi?" Nico asked suspiciously.

"Well, I know a chicken when I see one and there's a poor, little lost chicken in here with me now!"

"No way!" Nico replied incredulously, "How'd she get in there?"

"She was just hiding in here under the blanket when you threw me in!"

A long pause followed this far-fetched claim.

"Oochi?" he called apprehensively, "Are you in there?"

Bonnie looked down at the floor of the safe, trying to imagine a nerve-wracked hen that just wanted to go home to her human. But only Friend sat there, a questioning look in her red-beaded eyes.

"Oochi says, 'yes, I am here''," Bonnie informed him.

"I don't believe you! Prove she's really there! Ask her what's her favorite food?"

"Ummm…What?" Bonnie replied, now in complete confusion, "Chicken's don't talk, Nico!"

Nico slumped down on the side of the truck bed, wishing his friend's selectively mute little sister wasn't such a weirdo. Now he had no idea what to do.

"Nico?" Bonnie called again in a sing-song voice.

"Shutup!"

"I just wanted you to know that I'm getting really, super hungry!"

"So what?" he replied irritably.

"Oochi looks really, super yummy!"

Nico's eyes widened.

"I thought Ruthless said gargoyles don't eat people!?" he replied hesitantly.

"No, we don't eat people!" Bonnie agreed in the eeriest voice she could manage, "But little chickens? That's something different! Especially fried! You better hurry up and open this door! Or when you do, you're going to find nothing but a pile of little chicken bones!"

Sufficiently unnerved, Nico quickly got to his feet and opened the door of the safe to peek inside. He saw no sign of Bonnie or Oochi. Only the small doll in the center of the floor and a bunched up blanket in the corner. As he gazed around, he heard giggling from under the blanket. Reluctantly, he reached for the corner and began to tug at the blanket.

Suddenly, Bonnie burst forward with great force and wrapped the blanket tightly around Nico, tying the corners so he couldn't easily escape. Then she picked up her doll and said,

"Night-Night, Nico! It's past your bedtime!" before slamming the door shut.

"He was so mean!" Bonnie told Friend as she ran along the boardwalk, past the giant shed that held all the wintering boats, and down the path that would take her to a tunnel that crossed under the highway, "I'm not surprised his chicken ran away!"

Just on the other side of the bridge, Bonnie came upon a concession stand, and she studied a large, colorful poster advertising a Chicago style hotdog.

"Are you hungry, Friend?" she asked, and in words only Bonnie could hear, her doll confirmed that she was. Bonnie circled around the stand, trying to find a way in, but the doors were heavily locked and boarded. The awnings were removed from over the window of the stand and the window itself was covered with clapboard. Bonnie realized that the stand was probably closed for the season and there would be no food inside. Disappointed, she walked around the back of the building until she heard the sound of a door creaking. Bonnie jumped behind a metal picnic table and watched the door on the back of the stand open a tiny bit, and a small, tear-stained face peeked out at the dark, cold park.

The door led to a public restroom, though it bore a sign that said it was "closed for the season". Such an edict from the Department of Parks and Recreation didn't faze the locals, who had broken the metal bar reinforcing the door and left it swinging uselessly in the wind. Likely some vagrants had used the abandoned washroom as shelter one night. But Fiorella Draconi was sheltered there now, peeking out occasionally for signs of someone she knew. Bonnie watched the little girl curiously, until her small face disappeared behind the heavy door again.

With a purposeful expression, Bonnie regained her human form, crept out from behind the picnic table, and opened the door, peeking inside.

"Hello?" she called, her voice reverberating off the tiled walls. She heard a scurrying sound behind a stall door and she noted two pink sneakers with glow-in-the-dark shoelaces exposed beneath the wall that separated the stalls.

"I like your shoes," she complimented genuinely, and the two shoes shuffled anxiously. Bonnie steped a little closer, noticing the brown eye watching her apprehensively through the crack by the door.

"Do they light up?" Bonnie asked enthusiastically, "I used to have some that looked like that, but they lit up!"

The little girl didn't answer, but stepped slowly away from the door, until Bonnie's bright face appeared hanging over the top of the stall, startling Fiorella so much that she almost fell backward into the waterless toilet.

"I had to get rid of those shoes though. Do you know why?"

Staring at the small girl hanging effortlessly on top of the metal wall like a cat, Fiorella shook her head.

"Because I kept breaking them and losing them! Every time someone said 'Bonnie, go put on your shoes!', I couldn't because they were either lost or torn to pieces!"

Bonnie giggled at her own misfortune and her bell-like voice reverberated through the murky, smelly, echoing chamber. Fiorella hurried back to the crack as the strange, small girl disappeared again over the top of the wall.

"Look!" Bonnie insisted as she stuck her own feet through the opening under the door, "My Uncle Alexander gave me magic shoes!"

Fiorella glanced skeptically down at the girl's feet.

Her shoes DID look strange. They were simple girls' slippers at first glance. But there was something about the material they were made from that confused the observer. Their silver color seemed to absorb light in a way that didn't seem natural, and if you rested your eyes on them too long, you could almost sense a wavy energy that would make a grownup blink and turn away, thinking their eyes were playing tricks on them. But Fiorella remained focused on the strange shoes, almost forgetting the even stranger girl attached to them on the other side of the door.

"Do you wanna see me do a trick?" Bonnie asked in a hopeful voice and the two shoes disappeared from under the door. Fiorella pressed her face anxiously to the crack in the door to see where the strange girl had gone, but she was no longer standing in front of the stall. Looking through the large circular gap where the door's lock had once been, she saw that Bonnie had gone past the row of sinks and moved to the door.

"You have to come out!" she said and Fiorella heard the heavy door scrape as she opened it and went outside, leaving her alone in the bathroom. Fiorella considered the situation for a moment, before taking a deep breath and exiting the stall to follow her.

By the time she emerged from her hiding, Bonnie had disappeared again.

"Up here!" Fiorella heard a voice call. To her surprise, she followed it to a thick branch of an enormous tree, unbelievably high above a patio of picnic tables. Fiorella couldn't imagine how the girl could have climbed the sparse branches of the mature oak tree so quickly, or how she so casually balanced herself over a precarious fall that would easily kill her. With a playful hop, Bonnie settled herself on the branch, which swayed under her weight. Her pale, bare feet wiggled against the darkness of the night sky.

"Look!" she directed, pointing without concern at a square table in the courtyard far below her, where she had neatly laid the two magic shoes.

"You can put them on!" Bonnie told her and Fiorella, glancing suspiciously at the shoes, shook her head.

Bonnie shrugged.

"Well pick them up at least!" she ordered, "That's how the trick works!"

Against her better judgment, Fiorella approached the shoes that almost seemed to beckon to her. She lifted one of them and examined it curiously. There was something subtle but disorienting about the feel of the object. It weighed less than it should, and though it could have just been Fiorella's anxious imagination, she was certain that it trembled slightly in her hand, like a baby bird curled up in a ball.

"All right now! Watch me!" Bonnie instructed, as she balanced herself terrifyingly on her bare feet. Fiorella gasped as the girl bent her knees rhythmically, like a diver on the end of a diving board. A sickening feeling rose in her stomach as she realized that this insane child meant to jump from that enormous height. Indeed, as Fiorella screamed in horror, the girl leaped from the branch, her blue skirt and red hair streaming behind her as she fell.

Fiorella closed her eyes instinctively, waiting for the horrible crash she knew would come as the girl's body met picnic tables and paving stones. But no crash followed. In fact, the only sound was a soft swoosh like a small gust of wind. Fiorella opened her eyes to see Bonnie's shadow passing over her, causing her to squeal again and duck behind a bench.

"Up here!" Bonnie cried and Fiorella looked up to the roof of the concession stand where she was perched above an empty, iron frame of an awning, her dark, violet wings extended as far as she could stretch them. Like a monkey, she slid down the frame of the awning, hanging for a moment from the end, before dropping the last couple of feet to the ground. Fiorella retreated several panicked steps as Bonnie drew closer.

"Don't be scared!" Bonnie scolded her but Fiorella's eyes were vacillating frantically from the tree, to the roof, to Bonnie's taloned feet, pointed ears, and hyperactive tail. She backed away, until she found herself pressed against a picnic table.

Bonnie sighed with a look of genuine disappointment.

"I didn't think you'd be so scared of me," she admitted, perhaps a little sadly, 'Why do human kids always have to be scared of us? Just because we're stronger and we can glide? Well, I can only spin circles to the ground, because I haven't grown into my wings yet, but still!"

Bonnie gave a frustrated pout and Fiorella was surprised to feel a bit of sympathy for her.

She was reminded of another conversation she'd overheard in a bathroom.

"I don't wanna play with her," a girl called Isabella Sansoucie had said to the other girls in Fiorella's class, "She's a Draconi! If she gets angry at me, she'll tell her papa and then the Draconis will come after MY papa!" Fiorella recalled the sick feeling she'd had in the pit of her stomach. The other kids at her school were never particularly unkind to her. Rather, they always rushed to treat her with cold respect. But neither would anyone risk getting close to her either. Even the teacher seemed to live in genuine fear that one of the temperamental girl's crying fits would one day result in her getting a late night visit from the mafia. Fiorella knew how isolating it was to be feared without reason. Her older brothers said she should consider herself lucky because no one would ever mess with her at school. But she didn't feel lucky. She felt lonely. Now she realized that this gargoyle child was feeling the same way as she gazed at Fiorella with disappointment and clutched a small, winged doll under her chin for comfort.

Fiorella got an idea. She pulled off her pink backpack, and from within, she pulled out a fashion doll with long waves of brown curls and impossibly enormous, sparkling eyes. Silently, she held the doll out to show the little hatchling, who smiled at it curiously.

"Hi!" she greeted as she held out her own doll, "I'm Bonnie's friend and I'm a great warrior. I like your pretty dress!"

Fiorella smiled at Friend's funny voice and smoothed out her own doll's dress and hairdo.

"Hi," she answered in a whisper almost too soft to hear.

Bonnie smiled excitedly.

"What is your friend's name?" Friend asked Fiorella's doll and only a little bit louder and more confident, she replied,

"Fiori."

"Well, my friend wants to get back to her clan," Bonnie continued, "But first she has to find an emerald necklace, like a queen would wear. But she doesn't know where it is or what it looks like. Do you know where the emerald necklace is?"

Fiorella stopped to consider this question, when suddenly her eyes grew wide. Vehemently, she nodded, shaking the doll's head with her own. Bonnie clapped her claws hopefully.

"You know how to find the emerald necklace?" she squealed, "Where is it?"

Fiorella stuffed her doll back into her backpack and put it on her shoulder. She then beckoned for Bonnie to follow her.

"Wait a minute!" Bonnie replied. She closed her eyes tight, and the next moment, she had changed from a gargoyle, back into a human girl.

"What about my shoes?" she asked.

Fiorella looked down at her own hand in surprise. The shoe she had been holding had disappeared! She spun around, scanning the ground for the missing slipper, but even the other shoe, left behind on the table, had mysteriously vanished.

Bonnie giggled and Fiorella looked up at her questioningly.

"Missing something?" she asked with a laugh. She raised her foot to show that the shoes had returned to her feet.

"Told you they were magic!" Bonnie declared triumphantly. For a moment, Fiorella's face scrunched up as if she was unsure if a gargoyle child with magical shoes made for the best companion, but finally, Fiorella pulled on the sleeve ofBonnie's hoodie, and beckoned for her to follow.

The two girls made their way through the darkness and across a grassy lawn to a parking lot on the other side of the park. On the far end of the abandoned lot was a bus stop. The transit authority had determined that this park was touristy enough to merit a steel, heated bus stop booth with new benches. A large woman in a heavy coat lay sleeping on one of the benches, under the warmth of the heat lamp. Bonnie couldn't tell if the woman was a vagrant seeking shelter from the cold, or simply an exhausted late shift worker dozing off as she waited for her bus. Either way, they tiptoed past the snoring bundle and Fiorella pointed proudly to one of the colorful advertisements posted inside the booth.

Bonnie gasped in excitement. The poster prominently featured a photo of an enormous, illuminated jewel of bright green.

"The emerald necklace!" Bonnie squealed, forgetting the occupant on the bench behind them. With a snort, the woman woke and groaned in an irritable voice. She opened her bloodshot eyes and gazed at the two children who froze anxiously, as if they hoped that if they didn't move a muscle, she would not see them. She did see them though, and said, "What are you two babies doing out here this time of night?"

Bonnie looked at Fiorella expectantly, but Fiorella shrugged.

"Where's your mama at?" the woman asked crankily, glancing around the booth, "And where's your coat, girl?"

"Uhhhm…" Bonnie replied hesitantly, trying to think of a reasonable story, but the woman was already taking out her phone.

"You just hold on a second," the lady commanded, "I'm gonna get you some help!"

Bonnie's eyes widened with concern and Fiorella grabbed her arm. The two girls bolted, running down the sidewalk toward a large, stone building in the distance. Bonnie was gasping for air by the time they found shelter in the bushes near a marble stairway that ascended to one of the side doors. The cold air burned her human lungs as she panted and she had to cough to catch her breath.

"That was it!" she squealed breathlessly, "That was the emerald necklace in that picture! But where is it? How do we find it?"

Fiorella gave her a confident smile and pointed to the building beside them.

"It's in here?" Bonnie asked incredulously and Fiorella nodded with a huge, confident smile.

Bonnie took a step back to examine the massive building. It looked like a palace to her.

"What is this place?" she wondered out loud.

The stairs led up to a romanesque portico, with grand pillars outlining an elaborate iron door in the streetlights. A huge blue banner hung above the door.

"F-I-E-L-D…" Bonnie spelled out the lettering, but since she couldn't read yet, she couldn't guess what they might mean. As she pondered this great fortress, she was started by a loud bang, followed by some yelling. The beam of a flashlight was shining erratically from beneath a covered staircase that descended below the building. Two loud employees had emerged and were so engrossed in their loud discussion, they didn't even notice the two very small girls, standing in the dark.

"Hmmm," Bonnie hummed thoughtfully, still studying the massive building. Finally, with a look of determination, she pulled Fiorella toward the underground entrance.

"Come on!" she urged, "I gotta find that necklace!"