Baz looks at him. “If it’s knowledge you want, you can have it. You help us find our friend, and we’ll let you travel with us. We’ll answer some of your questions. But you can’t share that knowledge with anyone else.”

  Shepard nods immediately. “All right.”

  “What’s all right?” Baz asks.

  “I won’t tell anyone what I learn. I’ll keep it to myself.”

  “Shake on it,” Baz says.

  Shepard holds out his hand. Baz holds his own palm out to Penny. She drops her purple stone into it. Then he takes Shepard’s hand, pressing the stone between them. “Cross your heart, and hope to die!” Baz casts. Their hands light up.

  Shepard’s eyes get big. But he doesn’t try to pull away. “I keep my promises.”

  “You’ll keep this one,” Baz says. “Or you’ll drop dead.” He slumps to the ground, exhausted from the spell. “Now, where’s my wand?”

  * * *

  We all want to go help Agatha immediately, but Penny and Baz are literally spelled out. Baz looks like one of the bloodless carcasses he leaves behind. When we get to the next town, I steal a dog for him. It’s not my finest moment. But it’s not any of our finest moments.

  We break into another hotel, and Baz and Penny collapse on the beds. Shepard offers to go get pizza. Penny gives him a weak thumbs-up.

  Before he leaves, he stands in the doorway—“If you all want to leave while I’m gone, that’s fine. I won’t follow you this time. Just don’t count on me to bail you out of your next mess.”

  None of us try to argue or reassure him. I’m too shagged out to care.

  When the door closes behind him, Penny sits up. “We give him ten minutes, then we leave.”

  Baz throws a pillow at her. “Stand down, Bunce. We need help. And I need a shower.” He looks a bit better since drinking the dog, but his hair is bushy and matted, and there’s fresh blood on his already stained and shredded shirt. Huh. It’s not like him to spill blood when he’s drinking.…

  “Baz—” He’s walking past me on his way to the bathroom. I catch his arm. “Are you bleeding?”

  “No.”

  “You are so,” I say. I start to unbutton his shirt.

  Baz looks away from me. “Snow,” he says, his voice quiet but stern, “please don’t—”

  “Baz.” His chest is covered in raised, round bumps. The skin is broken in places, and bloody. I touch him—the bumps feel like pebbles. A couple of them break open under my fingers, and little pieces of black metal push through his pale skin. “What happened?”

  “Buckshot,” he says. “From last night. My body seems to be rejecting it.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Not really.”

  I look up at his face, my fingertips still on his breast. His eyes are narrow and shadowed—it does hurt. I move my face closer to his. I want to comfort him, but I don’t know how.

  “Simon…” he says.

  “Yes.”

  There’s a soft thrum in his breath. “You should really wash your hands.”

  “Oh.” I pull my hand away. Covered in vampire blood. “Right.”

  * * *

  When Baz gets out of the shower, he’s wearing his fresh jeans and no shirt. His chest is covered with blotches and cuts, and there’s a dark grey bruise on his side.

  Shepard is back with the pizza, and even though he says it’s the cheapest possible, it’s better than any pizza I’ve had back home.

  He was surprised when he came back to the hotel room and we were still here. But he doesn’t ask us any more questions, and none of us bother keeping watch tonight. Penny and Baz take one bed, and Shepard takes the other. I take the extra pillow and a bedspread, and fall asleep on the floor.

  37

  BAZ

  I know that I heal faster than other people. (More proof that I’m not a person.) But I’ve never really tested my limits. No one’s ever emptied a shotgun into my chest or kicked me in the gut with steel-toed cowboy boots.…

  The worst I’ve been injured before this was when the numpties took me. I think my leg healed right away even then—but it healed wrong because I was stuck in that coffin.

  Before that, there were fights with Simon. A few black eyes over the years, a split lip. I healed fast from those injuries, but so did he. I think Simon’s magic used to heal him, even when he couldn’t cast the spells to heal himself.

  Not anymore—there’s something wrong with his wing, it won’t close all the way. I’m going to try to spell it better as soon as he gets up.

  I woke up before everyone else, feeling livelier than I have in days. The rest of the buckshot scrubbed out last night in the shower, and my chest has completely stopped burning. It’s covered in glossy white scars now—but those will heal, too, I think. All my other scars have.

  * * *

  Breakfast is cold pizza.

  We pool our money on the bed. We have a few hundred dollars between us. I have my credit card, but I’m still nervous about using it.

  “This isn’t even enough for gas,” Shepard says, looking at the pile.

  “We’ll cast spells for gas,” Bunce says. “And we’ll make this stretch.” She holds her ring over the bills. “A penny saved is a penny earned!” The pile doubles. Bunce smiles. “I’ve always wanted to try that.…”

  Shepard’s mouth drops open. “You can make money?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “You can’t keep casting American phrases,” I say to her. “It’s too unpredictable.”

  “Needs must.” Bunce shrugs. “We need food and clothes. And this one”—she points at Shepard—“needs to tell us where we’ll find the NowNext.”

  “I don’t know exactly,” he says.

  Simon is eating the last of the pizza. “Tell us what you do know.”

  Shepard pushes up his glasses. “That they’re a new group of vampires. Any vamps we get around here tend to be loners. Or part of a family that keeps to their own. But the Next Blood … they’re not a family. They’re more like corporate raiders. They don’t sneak around, snagging spare Normals—they just take what they want. And they’re ambitious. Even I know they’re trying to obtain magic.”

  “What about the magicians?” Bunce says. “How are they letting this happen?”

  Magicians don’t tolerate vampires. The fact that the Mage made a deal with the vampires was the biggest hit to his reputation back home. It’s the reason he was buried without a marker. Even the Mage’s Men, his little band of minions, spit on his memory now.

  “The magicians could probably stop them,” Shepard says, “but they’d have to get organized. I don’t know what it’s like where you come from, but Speakers over here don’t really … talk to each other.”

  I don’t feel like volunteering anything about where we come from. “You said these vampires were trying to learn how to speak with magic,” I say. “They can’t. You’re either born a magician or you’re not.”

  Simon clears his throat.

  “Is it genetic then?” Shepard asks. “I’ve always wondered.… Does that mean, if I married a Speaker, we could have a magickal baby?”

  Bunce guffaws.

  “How do you know that these new vampires want magic?” I ask. “If you know so little about them?”

  “They’ve sent out feelers all over the country, looking for tricks and lore. They’ve contacted some of the magic enthusiasts in my network.”

  “This is why!” Bunce points at him. “This is why we keep secrets! Are you going to share what you learn from us with upstart vampires?”

  “No!” Shepard is adamant. “I’ve already sworn on my life.”

  “Where are they?” I ask.

  “I don’t know where the Next Blood is,” he says. “But I know where most of America’s vampires are. Vegas.”

  “Las Vegas…” Bunce looks vaguely disapproving.

  I look over at Snow. He’s grinning.

  * * *

  Before we leave, Simon decides we should try calling Agatha.

  “But what if the NowNext track the call back to us?” Bunce worries.

  “If they find us,” he says, “we won’t have to find them.”

  “Let’s call,” I say, “just in case Wellbelove picks up and tells us she’s at a wellness camp, having her pores extracted.”

  “You don’t really believe that,” Bunce says.

  She’s right. I don’t.

  Bunce and I spell her phone secret, or try, and call Agatha’s number. It goes straight to an automated voicemail. Agatha’s never recorded a personal message. (I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been, “Penelope, stop calling me.”) Bunce immediately hangs up.

  “Right,” Simon says after a moment. “We press on.”

  When we open the hotel room door to leave, most of my socks and three of my shirts fly in. I’m so happy, I actually hug them. (I was going to have to magick up a shirt. Or let Shepard run into a Walmart to buy me something. Without a shirt, I wouldn’t even be allowed into a Walmart.) One of my socks is covered in feathers, but the shirts are clean. I put one on straightaway—a good print, aubergine with navy leaves—and tuck the rest into a plastic bag. (I regret leaving my suitcase in that creek, but there’s no going back for it now.)

  Bunce has spelled Simon’s wings away again. He insists I squeeze into the cab of the truck with Penny, instead of riding in back with him. “You’re already sunburnt,” he says. “And you know what the wind does to your hair.”

  Shepard tells Simon he has to lie down in the truck bed; apparently riding back there is dangerous and illegal. “Both my middle names,” Simon says.

  “You don’t have a middle name,” I say. Which seems to hurt his feelings, which I immediately regret. I’m just worried about him. I grab his hand, trying to make up for it. “Just be careful,” I say. “Plenty of time for derring-do when we’re fighting vampires.”

  “What’s ‘derring-do’?” he asks.

  “Your middle name.”

  He tugs on my hand. Crowley, we’re bad at this. I can’t ever tell what Simon wants. Does that tug mean “I like you”? Or is it “Take care”? Or “Give me my hand back”? I swear what it feels most like is “I’m sorry.” We can’t even hold hands without exchanging apologies. If we knew how to talk to each other, it’d be over, wouldn’t it? If either of us ever found the words …

  “Basil, get in.” Penelope’s holding the door open. She’s making me sit between her and Shepard.

  I squeeze Simon’s hand, then do as I’m told.

  38

  SHEPARD

  Yes, yes, yes.

  I am in. I am more in than I’ve ever been in before—and I’ve midwifed a centaur foal! I’ve helped an unfairy with his taxes!

  But nobody gets to hang out with Speakers and vampires. Speakers don’t hang out with anyone! And if they do, they don’t let on. I’ve heard that sometimes Speakers marry Talkers and still never tell them about their magic.

  It’ll be hard keeping all this a secret. I’d love to drop it on the message boards. It’s the get of all gets. But I’ve kept secrets before—I never told anyone about Maggie until yesterday. (She told them first, I think.)

  Knowing is better than telling.

  And maybe, if I help these three get their friend back, they’ll keep me around. I could be their Normal friend! (Simon calls himself a Normal—but he has dragon wings.)

  “I feel like we still haven’t really met,” I say, when we’re back on the highway. “You know that I’m Shepard.… And you’re Baz, right?”

  The vampire nods.

  “And you’re Penelope?”

  “I suppose,” Penelope says. The first time I saw her, her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. Now it’s mostly falling out of a ponytail, hanging in wild and frizzy brown curls around her face. She doesn’t seem to care. She hasn’t complained about her clothes either, though she’s been wearing the same plaid skirt and knee socks since we met. I like her shoes—shiny black Doc Martens Mary Janes with silver buckles.

  My pickup isn’t really meant for three passengers; Baz and I are elbow to elbow.

  “You really don’t bite people?” I ask.

  “Not yet,” he says.

  “I didn’t think you could help it.”

  He glances over at me without turning his head, then rolls his eyes.

  “Then why don’t more vampires do that?” I ask him. “Not bite people?”

  “I’m not sure.…” he says. “But I suspect it’s because people taste really good.”

  Penelope huffs and leans around him to look at me. “Do you even know where we’re going?”

  “Well, I figured we’d head to Vegas—”

  “And then what? ‘Excuse me, sir or madam, could you direct us to the vampires? Not the old, bad vampires. The new, worse ones.’”

  “We can cast a spell to find them, if we’re close enough.” Baz has turned to her, closing me off.

  “I’ve got a friend in the area,” I throw in. I need them to keep on needing me. “She’s got connections. She’ll help us if she can.”

  39

  SIMON

  You’ve never seen sky so blue.

  I’m lying on my back in the bed of the truck, using Shepard’s sleeping bag for a pillow. Baz fixed my wing up with magic. He bought me a pair of knock-off Ray-Bans and a case of bottled water at the last service station. And every once in a while, I see him cranking his head around to check on me.

  I’m fine.

  I’m so fine.

  I can almost believe, under this sky—you’ve never seen sky so wide—that he and I will be fine, too. Him and me. We’re getting by, aren’t we? Mostly? Even with people tying us up and shooting at us.

  We’re getting by. He keeps touching me, and I keep letting him. And I haven’t felt, I don’t know, that static that I usually feel, like what’s happening between us is a building I have to run out of before it collapses on me.

  Baz is touching me, and it’s good.

  (Touching Baz is always good; it’d be easier if I could just touch him all the time. And kiss him. And not have to be kissed.) (I can’t explain how it’s different. Why kissing is easy, and being kissed is like being suffocated.) (Except it hasn’t been like that this week. It’s been fine. This sky is so big. There’s so much air.)

  Shepard stays off the big motorways. We have the road to ourselves most of the time. I sit up and lean on the side of the truck, watching the land change from green to grey to red.

  America changes every time you look away from it.

  It spills out in every direction.

  I can’t even believe that Utah is in the same country as Iowa. I can’t believe they’re on the same planet. That’s how I feel, like the first man on Mars. I’m half glad Baz isn’t out here with me, to see my mouth hanging open.

  Plus it’s too hot out here for him, too bright. And the constant wind and rattle is merciless. I feel half-baked and scrubbed raw.

  I feel fine.

  BAZ

  We’ve been in the car for four hours, and Shepard says it will be at least eight more. Bunce wants to cast spells to make the truck go faster, but I’m worried we’ll need all our reserves when we get to wherever we’re going.

  Shepard keeps trying to draw us out. To no avail. I’ve never been drawn out in my life, and Bunce especially has taken against him.

  There’s nothing to do but look out at the increasingly depressing scenery. Green isn’t green in America. We’ve driven through every kind of field, and none of them are as saturated as the fields back home.

  Presently there’s little green at all. The whole country’s gone sharp and red.

  I turn back to check on Simon. I gave him sunblock—

  He’s not there.

  “Pull over.” My hand is clenched on Shepard’s arm. “Snow is gone.”

  Bunce turns to look. “Where’d he go?”

  “He must have fallen out,” I say. “Turn back.”

  Penny unbuckles her seat belt and rolls down her window, climbing partly out to look.

  “He’s fine!” Shepard shouts. “Get back in the truck!” He elbows me. “She’s going to fall out.”

  I grab Bunce by the waist.

  “Your friend’s just there,” Shepard says, pointing through the front window. “He’s flying.”

  I see the shadow on the pavement ahead of us—Simon, with his wings spread, his arrow of a tail stretched out behind him.

  “That lunatic,” I whisper.

  40

  PENELOPE

  “I’m going to need your help with this part,” Shepard says.

  “Which part?” I say. “Why?” I have to lean around Baz to argue with the Normal, and it’s getting tiresome. We’ve been in this truck for eleven hours, at least. Simon has been in the back—or above our heads—exposed to the desert, the whole time. I’ve pumped him full of protective spells, and I know Baz has, too, but really, this is getting excessive. I want to save Agatha, but not at the cost of microwaving Simon.

  I suppose he seemed fine at the last stop. If anything, he seemed exhilarated—perhaps dangerously so. “I can’t believe we’re coming this close to the Grand Canyon and just driving by!” he lamented. “And Route 66! And Joshua Tree!”

  “We have trees back home, Snow,” Baz said. “Snap out of it.”

  Baz has fared much better on this leg of the trip, with a roof over his head. That black ash on his nose is mostly gone, though he still looks too grey for my liking.

  He drank a snake after lunch, and it left him sour and tetchy.

  “There you go,” Shepard said, when Baz got back in the truck. “A snake for breakfast, a snake for lunch, and a sensible dinner.”

  I ignored him. I’ve tried to ignore the Normal as much as possible. We’ve said he can stay with us and help us, but we didn’t promise him explanations or—entertainment.