“Mavericks and terrorists,” the Mage said. “No sense of community, no common goals. Half of them using their magic to wash the dishes, half of them living like debauched sultans.

  “I blame the vernacular. Wholly unstable! Too much in flux! Their dialect is like a river stripped of its natural bends and shallows—their spells expire before they ever master them.

  “My heart is always with the rebels, Simon, in any struggle. But America is a failed experiment. A chaos country where mages have lost all sense of themselves. Where they live off the Normals like parasites—like dark creatures.”

  He’d flip if he knew I came here. If he were alive to know it.

  That goat devil had his hands in Baz’s back pockets. As soon as the badger took his eyes off me, I finished the goat with Baz’s wand. (Maybe I’d have had more luck with my own wand if I’d wielded it this way.) Anyway, I think I finished him off. I don’t know if goat devils have windpipes.

  Baz went for the badger that was holding Penny. That should have been the end of the badger—Baz could have cracked it in half like a Kit Kat. But for some reason, he didn’t.

  I’m ready to do it for him when something else jumps on my back. A womanish monster with hot hands. We’re properly brawling now, which was always the only way out of this. I’m flying above the red-handed thing, slapping her with my tail. Wishing I had something to swing at her.

  I can’t see Penny—where’d she go?

  And why hasn’t something shot us yet? Even toddlers in America have access to guns. Surely more of these dark creatures are armed.

  I hear an engine start and spare a glance over my shoulder—it’s the silver truck. The Normal must be making a run for it. Baz is chasing after him. Let him go, Baz, we have bigger problems.

  I kick Hot Hands in the teeth. I wish I was wearing steel-toed boots. I look around for Penny—

  Oh. There’s the gunfire I was expecting.

  29

  PENELOPE

  “Hey! Witch girl.”

  Baz had just pulled that skunk off me, and I was still lying on the ground. I thought I might be bleeding—I’d hit the gravel hard.

  “You, in the plaid skirt!”

  I lifted my head and spotted the Normal, crouched behind a rock and hissing at me. “Come on!”

  I looked back at Baz, still wrestling with the skunk, and Simon, fighting some sort of fire fiend, and crawled over to the Normal.

  He put his hand on my shoulder and whispered, “We’re going to my truck, all right?”

  “I can’t,” I said. “My friends—”

  “Are very tough customers. They’ll catch up with us. Our only job here is not to get shot.”

  “How do I know this isn’t all part of your trap?”

  “Come with me or not. I’m getting out of here.”

  He ran towards his truck, staying low, and I followed him. (Because he was the least of at least six evils.) Fortunately the creatures weren’t paying attention to us; Baz and Simon are sufficiently distracting, in nearly every scenario.

  The Normal started his truck, then we both yelled at Baz, who seemed to immediately get the drift. An animal of some sort was trying to open my door, but Baz tore it off—while running alongside the truck. Baz is truly frightening when he’s not pretending he’s not a vampire.

  He’s in the back of the truck now, calling for Simon—calling over the gunfire, when did that start? The Normal is hunching over the steering wheel, and I’m practically squatting on the floor. I crawl up to my window to look for Simon: He’s back at the monument, still flying over the creatures. There are at least half a dozen waving guns at him.

  I roll down the window and scream, “Simon!” as loud as I can, worried that he still won’t hear me—but his head whips around, and then he’s streaming our way, climbing higher and higher in the sky.

  “Go, go, go!” I shout at the Normal, even though he’s already going. The truck crunches back onto the gravel road and tears forward.

  “They’ll follow us,” I say.

  “They’ll try.” The Normal is grinning.

  “What’d you do?”

  “Slashed their tyres.”

  “You didn’t!”

  “I did. They were totally focused on you guys. I don’t smell like anything interesting.”

  “That’s … a bit good,” I concede.

  “I mean, they could catch up,” he says. “They’ve still got magic. But the treaties work both ways. They can’t touch you when you’re back in Speaker territory. And most of the country belongs to the magicians, not the creatures.”

  “When will we get our magic back?”

  “The far side of Nebraska. An hour or so.”

  Baz is tapping on the back window. I make eye contact with him. His eyebrow is raised. I nod to tell him I’m okay.

  The Normal unlatches the window and slides it open.

  I reach through. “Simon?”

  Baz takes my hand. “Keeping up.”

  “Hang on back there,” the Normal says.

  Baz looks at the Normal. And then at me. And I think Baz is asking me if we can trust him. I don’t have an answer. But we need the Normal now. He’s getting us out of this mess—even if he’s getting us into another one.

  BAZ

  I lean back against the cab of the truck, looking up.

  Simon is flying just above the clouds. I want him to land, I don’t want to lose track of him.

  I hope he isn’t hurt.

  I am, I think.… Hurt.

  I don’t want to look away from Simon, so I rub my fingers along the pockmarks in my chest. They sting, but they seem to have already stopped bleeding. I still don’t know what kills vampires—but I suppose I can rule out a chestful of buckshot.

  There are still no headlights behind us. Maybe the dark creatures don’t need headlights. Maybe they don’t need cars.

  Bunce’s face is in the window again. “We’re trying to put some distance between us!” she shouts. “He slashed their tyres!”

  Who did, the Normal? That was clever. Still doesn’t mean we can trust him. Did he purposely herd us off the motorway? Right into their paws? What’s his angle now?

  There’s a heavy thud.

  Snow has landed in the truck bed, crouching, his fingertips down, his wings half folded behind his neck. He looks up at me. “Baz.”

  Simon. I reach out and pull him up to me, next to me, onto me. I’m checking him for holes and wet spots. “Are you hurt?”

  “I’m fine,” he says. “Penny—”

  “She’s fine.”

  “And you—” His hands are on my shoulders. His mouth is over mine.

  “I’m fine,” I say, while he kisses me.

  Crowley, if this is what it takes to keep Simon in my arms—gunshots and Quiet Zones and high-speed chases—I’m here for it. I’ll swear to it. I’ve found my vocation.

  He pulls away, petting my hair down. “Baz…”

  “Simon?”

  “You smell like a dead merwolf.”

  SIMON

  Worse than that.

  “Like goblin intestines,” I say.

  “How do you even know what a goblin’s—”

  “Lower intestines.” I cover my nose with my hand. “Eight snakes, Baz!”

  “I know, all right?” Baz shoves at my shoulder. “I have enhanced senses.”

  “It’s making me cry,” I say. “I can taste it.”

  “You can get off me, Snow. Nothing’s stopping you.”

  “No, I’m fine. I’m good.”

  Wild horses couldn’t drag me.

  30

  PENELOPE

  My magic comes back in an hour. I’ve been murmuring spells to myself since we got back on the road—tapping my ring on my leg. Suddenly a “Clean as a whistle!” takes hold and scrapes along my skin and scalp, scrubbing me clean. I’ve got my hand at the Normal’s throat before the spell’s done.

  He flinches, but that’s it. I think he was expecting this. “I guess we’re out of the Quiet Zone,” he says.

  I push my thumb into his throat. “Is this a dagger which I see before me!”

  A pocketknife falls out of his jacket, but the Normal doesn’t twitch or glow.

  I try another spell to reveal his intentions—“True colours!”

  The Normal glows a little purple, and I’m almost disappointed. Blue is safe, red is danger, but purple is the most common outcome—almost everyone wants something from you.

  I hear Baz casting spells in the back of the truck. Making us hard to see, making us hard to follow. Deep magic. He’s probably already exhausted.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” the Normal says. “Or expose you.”

  “You expose us by looking at us and knowing what we are!”

  “I could help you.” He’s remarkably calm. “I could show you—”

  “You pushed us away from our magic and straight into a trap!”

  “That was an accident!”

  “Was it?” My teeth are bared. “You knew we’d run out of magic.”

  The Normal looks guilty. I still have my hand at his throat. His skin is a few shades darker than mine, and he’s wearing a thin gold chain around his neck. “I was just following you,” he says, sounding a bit more urgent. (Good, he should feel urgent.) “I thought you were leading me off the interstate. How was I to know you didn’t know what you were doing?”

  “Why would you follow three monsters leading you away from civilization?”

  He shrugs. “Curiosity?”

  I blow air through my teeth. My grip tightens. “If it was all an accident, then how did the dark creatures know to find us there?”

  “You weren’t exactly lying low,” the Normal says, glancing over at me. “You cast a dozen spells and killed seven vampires at a Ren Faire. Out in the open! Those places are crawling with magickal types.”

  “Why would anyone with magic want to go to that place?” I demand. “It’s a complete farce—it was insulting!”

  The Normal starts to laugh. I can feel it under my thumb.

  I feel ridiculous. This whole situation is ridiculous. This whole country. I let go of him and sit back in my seat.

  Simon’s face is in the window behind me. He’s clinging to Baz. “Where are we going?”

  “There’s a town ahead,” the Normal says. “Scottsbluff.”

  “They’ll expect us to stop there,” Simon says.

  The Normal’s looking at Simon in the rearview mirror. He raises his voice to be heard: “Maybe. But we’re safer in plain sight. On the road. In towns.”

  “All right,” Simon says, “but we need to pull over for a second.” He turns to me. “Baz…”

  “Pull over,” I order.

  “There’s a rest stop in five minutes,” the Normal says. “Sanctuary.”

  SIMON

  It’s too loud to talk in the back of the truck.

  I huddle close to Baz, half in his lap, while the shock of still being alive passes. He holds me there, a little too tightly. Usually I forget Baz is so much stronger than me. He doesn’t carry himself like he’s that strong. He doesn’t touch me that way. He never pulls or pushes me, not like that. Not any harder than I can push back.

  I push in a little closer.

  His voice is thick, strained. “You should be wearing your cross.”

  “We’ve been through this—I’d rather risk a bite.”

  His arms tighten. It’s a bit hard for me to breathe.

  “I would never,” he says.

  “I know.”

  After a few minutes, we pull over at some roadside services. Baz gets out to hunt, and I get out to piss. Penny charms a vending machine—it takes her a few tries—and I grab armfuls of crisps and cheese biscuits.

  She leans, headfirst, against the glass. “I’m running on empty. I couldn’t cast a truism right now.”

  I nod. “Baz’s the same. He dumped all his magic on cloaking us. Can we trust Shepard?”

  Penny pushes away from the vending machine, shaking her head. “My magic says yes, but my gut says no. Simon, he knows too much—how does he know so much? We should leave him here and steal his truck.”

  That feels harsh. “He did save us. And we don’t even know where we’re going.”

  “Fine,” she says. “But we lose him at the next stop. Steal someone else’s car, spell him stupid.”

  I lick my lips and nod.

  * * *

  Baz is steadier when he climbs back into the truck. But he still looks a shambles. His hair is as wild as I’ve seen it, and his fancy blouse is shredded and stained with blood. He looks like some sort of disgraced angel. (I suppose that’d be a demon.)

  He drops down next to me, and I rap my knuckles on the back window. We roll out. The engine was already running.

  I hand Baz some crisps. “All right?”

  “I’ve had better holidays, Snow.”

  I sneak my arm around him—the mood has changed, and I’m not sure this is still okay. “Have you?” I say.

  Baz casts his eyes down and smiles—girlishly, I would have said, but on him it’s not girlish. It’s, I don’t know, vulnerable. He leans in, so I can hear him, his mouth at my ear. “Does Bunce have a plan?”

  I nod. “Get to Colorado, lose the Normal, regroup.”

  “We need to rest,” he says.

  “We can rest first.”

  “Maybe we should go home.”

  I feel Baz’s back under my arm. I feel his shoulder in my palm. “Yeah,” I say. “Probably.”

  PENELOPE

  “How many hours to Denver?”

  The Normal sneaks a look at me. He’s been very eyes-on-the-road, lips-sealed since the rest stop. “Three.”

  “And we’re clear of the … Quiet Zone?”

  “Yeah. There’s not that much of it. There aren’t many places left without people, even around here.”

  “Who…” I think about what I want to ask him, and whether I want to encourage more conversation. “Who makes the rules?”

  He looks over again and smiles. I wouldn’t say it’s a nice smile, but there’s nothing obviously evil about it. I think of a few more defensive spells I could cast on him, but I don’t have the magic in me. Simon used to ask me how that felt—to be empty. When Simon had magic, he never ran low.

  It’s like losing your voice, I’d tell him. Like knowing you only have a few words left until it gives out completely. The only way to get it back is to rest. And to wait.

  Some mages never cast big spells unless they absolutely need them. That’s what the Mage taught us: Save your magic for defence.

  But my mother taught me to cast big spells every day. To be bold with my magic. “Build up your lungs,” she’d say. “Dig a deeper well for your reserves. Train your body to hold more magic and carry it.”

  Today would have exhausted even a powerful mage. I threw everything I had at those vampires, then everything I didn’t have on our Stonehenge getaway. (I did ask the Normal about the standing-stone cars. He said it was folk art. A roadside attraction.)

  Anyway, the most I could do to him at the moment is irritate him.

  “Tell you what,” he says with his not-evil, but also not-working-on-me smile. “I’ll trade you—question for a question.”

  “Tell you what,” I say. “You answer my questions, and I won’t turn you into a newt.”

  “That’ll work, too.” He shifts in his seat, making himself more comfortable. Now that we’re not in immediate, apparent danger, I realize I haven’t taken a good look at him. He’s tall. At least as tall as Baz. And lanky. The black guys at Watford all shaved their hair close, but his is longer, taller, with tight, dense curls on top.

  His clothes are a bit odd. I wonder if he was in costume for the Renaissance Festival. He’s wearing green, wide-wale corduroy trousers, worn down to just stripes at the knees, and a denim jacket with a dozen different enamel pins and badges. He’s got a long, lanky face, too—can a face be lanky?—and gold-rimmed John Lennon glasses. He’s still covered in dust.

  “I mean, I don’t know everything,” he says. “But, from what I can tell, the Quiet Zones happen naturally. No people? No spells. Some of these magickal creatures were the first immigrants. They had plenty to get away from back home, right? So they came to the Great Plains, and, yeah, there were native Speakers and creatures here already, but there was also a hell of a lot of room. It wasn’t till the Irish and the German Speakers showed up that there was real trouble. At some point, everyone agreed to mostly stay out of each other’s hair. The Quiet Zones were left to the creatures. The Speakers didn’t want them anyway; they stayed close to the Talkers.”

  “What’s a Talker?” I ask.

  “What you’d call a Normal. Me.”

  “Right. So … we need to stay in well-populated areas?”

  “As a rule, yeah. I mean there are magickal creatures everywhere these days; there are too few quiet places left to contain them. But that’s good news for you. Western Nebraska is the only Quiet Zone east of the Rockies. There are a few more between here and California.” He looks at me. “Is that where you’re headed? West?”

  I don’t answer.

  “I know you’re not really on holiday. Is this a mission—is it a quest?”

  “If it were a mission, we’d be better prepared.”

  “Are you on the run?”

  “We are now,” I snap.

  He leans forward, hanging on to the steering wheel. “I could help you. It’s not just the Quiet Zones you have to worry about. Like I said, there are only a few of those. But the magickal rules change every five miles around here. And the bosses. You could piss off somebody much worse than Jeff Arnold.”

  “Who’s Jeff Arnold?”

  “That were-skunk.”

  “His name is Jeff?”

  “What’d you think his name was—Flower?”