“Yeah, yeah,” Simon whispers. “You’re well fierce.”

  Baz glances back, frowning. “I am.”

  It’s darker here. We’re pushing through evergreen branches—and there’s a fog hanging at our knees. I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me that even trees would be different in America. Simon and I have spent plenty of time wandering around in woods back home. But never woods like these.

  Baz stops. He’s caught a scent.

  He runs forward, faster than Simon and I can keep up, and more graceful than we could dream. When we do catch up, Baz is kneeling at the edge of the stream, a horned sheep dead in his lap, both of them blanketed in mist. I think he’s broken its neck.

  “All right,” he says. “Give me a minute.”

  I look down. The fog is up to my chest, and it’s so dark. I hold up my ring.

  “Poaching…” someone says. It sounds like a woman. And it feels like she’s saying it inside of me. The darkness has risen up over my chin. “Bloodeater poaching on my very back.” The voice—I swear it’s in my head—sounds English. Northern.

  “We can explain!” Baz calls out. He must hear it, too.

  “We didn’t know!” I shout.

  Simon takes my hand. “We’re not from around here!”

  “No,” the voice says. “Can see that. Can smell that.… You are something different. Not just bloodeaters. Something much more foul…”

  I close my eyes and cast into the murk—“Come out, come out, wherever you are!”

  “Mages,” the voice says, scornfully.

  And then the darkness swallows me.

  35

  BAZ

  I can’t move.

  I try again—I can’t move. My arms are tied.

  I can’t sit up. My legs are tied.

  My face hurts. I’m lying on a rock.

  I can’t move.

  I can’t breathe!

  No—I can. I can. My mouth is gagged, but I can still breathe.

  I can’t move. I can’t see—

  I open my eyes.…

  I’m lying on my shoulder near a campfire. There’s a woman sitting on the other side. An older woman—or perhaps a younger woman with long white hair. She’s holding her hands out over the fire. There are gold rings on every finger and gold bands around her wrists. She’s watching me.

  “Urrrghhff.” Simon is struggling, somewhere close to me—thrashing around by the sound of it. I wish I could tell him to calm down. I grunt, so that he knows I’m here.

  He thrashes harder.

  “Should send you back to sleep,” the woman says. Her mouth doesn’t move. Her voice is inside my head. “All of you. Don’t need you awake to sort you out.”

  She stands and walks over to me. She is old, I think, though she moves like a young person. She’s wearing worn jeans and a beaded red shawl that glints in the firelight. Her eyes are pale, that shade of green you only see on cats. She lifts my chin with the tip of her grey cowboy boot. “Heard about you,” she says. “Didn’t think they’d manage it, but here you are. You smell like blood and magic, boy. Both gone rancid.” Her lip curls. “Not. On. My. Mountain.” She kicks me in the stomach.

  Fuck.

  I try to shout, but choke instead. My chest still burns from the gunshots. I need to eat. I need to drink. I am under every sort of weather.

  Simon is tossing around again. The woman turns to look at him. “Fool kitten. Gone and made a dangerous friend. You’ll suffer for it.”

  What is she? A fairy? An elf? Does America still have those? Are these the Undying Lands? My mother would know. She could name every sort of magickal being and creature, even the lost and the dead.

  The woman lifts her head. She smells something.

  I smell it, too—something human. A Normal.

  “Shepard!” the woman says out loud. She’s smiling.

  “Margaret!” It’s the Normal we left in Denver. I can’t yet see him, but I recognize his voice and his scent. He must have been working with this woman all along.

  The Normal steps over me, and the old woman holds out her arms, ready to embrace him.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d be awake,” he says, hugging her.

  “Too warm.” She’s petulant. “Can’t sleep. Too warm all the time now.” She’s butting her head against his shoulder. Down his arm. “You’ve brought me something. Can smell it.”

  He laughs and holds out his palm.

  She grabs whatever he has in it—rings—and slides them on her already crowded fingers. “Too good to me, Shepard. Good boy. Good man.”

  “I see you’ve met my friends,” he says.

  The woman frowns and steps away from him. “Not your friends. Now and Next.”

  “I thought so, too,” Shepard says. “First spotted them back in Omaha. But they can’t be part of the Next, Margaret. I watched these three slay half a dozen vampires in cold blood.”

  “No! How cold?”

  “Frigid.”

  I can’t believe the Normal’s defending us. I can’t even believe he recognizes us—Bunce spelled him so hard, he shouldn’t recognize his own reflection.

  “Have turned against their own kind, maybe.” The woman looks down at me, nudging my hip with her boot. “This one is their work. Finally come. The hybrid.”

  “Is he?” Shepard goggles at me for a second. “I wondered if—” He shakes his head. “I don’t know … I really think it’s a coincidence, Maggie. I think they’re just tourists.”

  She spits. It lands, hot, on my cheek. “Tourists?!”

  “They don’t know any of the rules,” he says. “They drove right into the Quiet Zone just to see Carhenge.”

  “Supposed to be spectacular,” she says. Begrudgingly. “Seen photos.”

  “I agreed to be their guide. We were just getting to know each other when a posse tried to round us up.”

  The woman crouches to look at me, stroking her chin. She has six rings on her pinkie finger. One of them is Penelope’s.

  “Mages,” she sneers. “Reckless kittens, hybrids. Next Blood trouble and trash … Poachers, Shepard. This one killed my ram.”

  “He was probably thirsty,” Shepard says. “I drank from your stream once, remember? Before we met?”

  She stands up and frowns at him some more. “But you are a good boy—an innocent. Not a knight. Not a mage. Not a bloodeater.”

  “Let’s hear what they have to say,” Shepard says. “If you don’t like it, you can still eat them.”

  “Wouldn’t eat him,” she says, glaring at me. “Rancid.”

  * * *

  Shepard ungags Simon first. “Thank you,” I hear Simon say. “I owe you one.”

  “Friend,” Shepard says, “you owe me so many, we need to draw up a contract.”

  He unties my gag next and helps me sit. “No spells,” he says softly. “She can shut you down from a distance.”

  I nod.

  “Found this on him,” the woman says, holding up my wand. “Probably stolen. Heffalump tusk. Extinct.” She tosses it over her shoulder.

  Bunce starts making demands before her gag is even off: “Who are these NowNext people? What are they up to? They have our friend!”

  “Now we’re talking,” Shepard says, helping her sit up.

  “Unhand me!” Bunce shouts. He does. She falls over. “You have to tell us—our friend is in danger!”

  The white-haired woman (is she a woman?) sits down again on the other side of the fire. “Needn’t must. You will do the telling.”

  “Anything,” I say. “Anything you want to know.” I look over at Simon. He nods at me, like he’s all right. His hands are still tied. And his ankles. And his wings. But he’s fine.

  “Tell Maggie why you’re here,” Shepard says, sitting down next to the woman by the fire.

  I try to take charge; I’m the only one of the three of us with any tact. “We’re on holiday,” I say. “We are tourists.”

  “What about this friend?” Margaret demands.

  “We were coming to see her—”

  Bunce interrupts me: “We wanted to check on her, we were worried about her—and then she left a message for us yesterday saying she was with the NowNext. They’re going to extract her. You have to tell us—”

  Snow has his chin thrust out. “Who are you?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, willing them both to shut up. “You don’t have to tell us anything. We’ll go. We won’t come back.”

  “You are the Next Blood,” she says to me, matter-of-factly.

  “No. My blood is ancient. I’m from a very old family.”

  She isn’t listening. “You. Are the hybrid.”

  The Normal leans forward. I hate the way he looks at me, like I’m a safe he’s going to crack. “The NowNext,” he says, “some people call them the Next Blood—they’re trying to teach vampires to Speak.…”

  “They’re doing what?” I’m flabbergasted.

  “That’s an abomination!” Bunce says.

  “Yes,” Margaret says, pointing at me. “You are an abomination!”

  “I’m not—that,” I say. “I’m a mage! I was bitten by a vampire as a baby!”

  “Aha!” Shepard says, snapping his fingers like he’s just solved a riddle.

  “No.” The woman looks repulsed by the idea. “Would have cast you out, would have fed you to dragons. This is mage law.”

  “Yes, well, my mother was killed. The vampires killed her. There was no one strong enough to cast me out.”

  “Not too late,” the woman says. “Dragons are still hungry.”

  “He’s not a bad vampire,” Simon cuts in. “He doesn’t bite people. Just rats and deer and sheep—”

  “Poacher!” she says.

  “I’m sorry!” I plead. “I didn’t know the sheep belonged to anyone!”

  “He’s sorry,” Shepard says. “I believe him.”

  “Expects us to believe he is not the hybrid? When the whole world knows bloodeaters are mixing blood and magic?”

  “How?” Penny asks.

  The woman glares at us over the fire. “Don’t know. Nothing good. Darkness.”

  “If the vampires can get magic,” Shepard says, “nothing will stop them. They’ll be the top of the food chain.”

  The woman hisses.

  “Look”—Bunce is uncowed, even trussed up like a hog on Solstice—“I know this looks bad. But we’re not part of that vampire business. And if our friend is caught up in it, she’s in trouble and needs our help. You have to let us go.”

  The woman rolls her fingers, clacking her rings together. “What is your judgment, Shepard?”

  “I believe them,” he says.

  “Soft,” she says. “Believe everyone.”

  “I spent two days with them, and the only things they harmed were those vampires.”

  “And my ram.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” I say again.

  She waves one hand. “Let them go, bloodeater and mage. The kitten stays with me.”

  “What?” everyone but her says.

  “Does she mean me?” Simon asks. “I’m not a kitten!”

  She sighs. “Fool kitten. Lost hatchling.”

  The Normal is looking at Simon, as if Simon has replaced me as the best riddle. “No.…”

  The woman walks over to Simon, to get a closer look at him. “Orphan. Must be. Flying with mages and bloodeaters—the shame of it.”

  “I’m not an orphan!” Simon objects. “I mean, I am. But I didn’t hatch from anything.”

  “I thought he was a demon,” Shepard marvels.

  “Pfffff.” The woman is circling Simon. “Red wings. Sharp tail. From the north like me. Precious hatchling. Lost.”

  “No, no, NOOO,” Simon says, realizing what she means.

  “Croowww-ley,” I swear.

  Penny goes for: “Fuck. Me.”

  “I’m not a DRAGON!” Simon shouts.

  “Not yet.” She pets his wing. “Are kitten. Someday dragon. Someday ferocious.”

  “He’s not a dragon!” I say. “Those wings were spelled on.”

  “This one is not a dragon, and that one is not a vampire. Am blind, am I? Am foolish?” She’s snarling at me again.

  “No,” I say. “It’s not you. It’s us. We’re very confusing.”

  “I’m just a Normal with wings!” Simon insists.

  “Dragon wings.” She nods. “Great Red.”

  “Look closer,” he begs.

  “Smell him!” Bunce says. “Does he smell like a dragon?”

  The woman frowns at Bunce. Then she reaches for the ropes around Simon’s chest and pulls him to his feet. She leans in to his neck to smell him. He raises his chin. She walks behind him and presses her face into his tied-up wings.

  “Smells like dragon … but also smells like iron. Another abomination!”

  “It was just a spell,” Penny says.

  “Whose magic?” Margaret yanks at the ropes, heaving Simon back.

  “M-mine,” he stammers. “I was a magician. I cast the spell.”

  “Why!”

  “I wanted wings,” he says. “I wanted to fly.”

  “Why tail?”

  “I wanted to be free!”

  She steps away from Simon, and he falls back to the ground. She watches him try to sit up. “Yessss. Am free,” she says in our heads. “Is better than this. Is best.”

  She walks back to the fire.

  “Do you believe us?” Bunce asks.

  Margaret shrugs. “Believe you are malformed outcast tourist trash.”

  She’s not wrong there. “So,” I say carefully, “we can go?”

  “You will go to the Next Blood? Fight them?”

  “Yes!” Simon yells.

  “Go,” she says. “Tell the Next Blood they will never be top. Are the top! Am. Next Blood will burn, up when we wake. Up when we wake at the top.”

  The woman—the dragon?—takes the Normal’s hand. “Take them away, Shepard. Don’t let them hurt you. Let them hurt bloodeaters.” She squeezes his hand, then walks away from us and the fire.

  “Wait!” Bunce calls out. “My ring. I need my ring.”

  The woman turns abruptly, as if Penny has attacked her, and holds up a clenched fist. She must be wearing thirty rings and a dozen gold bracelets. “Is mine now!” she thunders in our heads.

  Penny sounds tearful. “Please. I can’t do magic without it. I can’t help my friend. Or hurt bloodeaters.”

  The dragon—she must be—walks back to Penny and glares down at her. She brings her heavy hand to her mouth and closes her teeth around Penny’s ring. Then she spits something—the purple stone from its centre—into the dirt.

  And then she leaves.

  We’re still alive. And she’s gone.

  36

  SIMON

  Shepard unties me first, then I free Baz. “Are you okay?”

  “I’ve felt better, to be honest,” he says. Which makes me think he must be nearly dead.

  I help him stand. “We’ll get you out of here and get you something to drink. More cats. A cow. Something.”

  My wings are flapping around, half out of control. It hurt so badly to have them tied down—I think I might have sprained something. I hope it isn’t a break. It’s not like I can pop in to a veterinary clinic and have it set.

  Penny doesn’t wait to be untied before she starts hammering Shepard with questions: “Where are these vampires? How do we find them? Where’s our car?”

  “The truck you stole?” He’s working on the knots around her ankles. “Down the mountain, where you parked it.”

  “We need to leave,” she says.

  “You need to take a breath. You just barely lived through that.”

  “Was that really a dragon?” I ask him. My wings are convulsing. Shepard hands me a water bottle.

  “Yeah.” His eyes are shining. “Isn’t she magnificent?”

  “That depends,” Baz says. “Is she listening?”

  “Definitely,” Shepard says. “She hears everything on this mountain.”

  “How?”

  He grins. “Because she is the mountain.”

  We all look down at the ground.

  “Dragons,” he whispers. “A herd of them. Asleep since God knows when.”

  “We need to leave,” Baz says. There’s a low spinning sound, like a boomerang, and a pair of trousers hits him in the face.

  Shepard looks confused. “What the—”

  “Thank Crowley,” Baz says, pulling the jeans free of his neck. “My kingdom for fresh pants as well.”

  Penny’s still staring at Shepard. “The mountains are dragons?”

  Shepard nods. “Isn’t it incredible? Most of them are native. Margaret settled here a few hundred years ago, I guess. That’s why she wakes up; she’s used to a colder climate. But she says the others are stirring now. She’s excited to meet them—and nervous, I think.” His voice drops. “Don’t tell her I said that.”

  “But she looks like a woman.”

  “That’s just her public persona,” he says. “Sort of a magickal envoy.”

  Penny’s free of the ropes. She folds her arms. “Take us to our car.”

  Shepard steps back. “So you can wipe my brain again?”

  “Why didn’t it work the first time?”

  He shrugs. “Maybe I’ve been given too much pixie dust over the years. Memory magic doesn’t seem to stick anymore.”

  Penny holds out her fist—I reach out to stop her, but she’s already casting. “That doesn’t ring a bell!”

  Shepard lurches backwards, like he’s been decked in the jaw. He shakes his head and lifts it, his eyes clear and unglazed. “I mean, it doesn’t feel good.”

  Her hand drops.

  “I don’t understand why you don’t trust me,” he says. “I’ve saved your skin twice now. I’m still your only safe way off this mountain—why can’t we be friends?”

  “You don’t want to be friends,” Penny says. “It’s not like we all hit it off at a pub. You’re only helping us because you want information.”

  “And that’s fine,” Baz says. We all look at him. He looks at Penny. “We can’t rescue Wellbelove on our own. We couldn’t even rescue ourselves. We need a guide.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” Shepard says.