“That’s important?”
She nodded. “It’s magic.”
“I assumed. Is that the problem? The magic stone?”
She shook her head.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“Lula,” she said. “Something’s wrong with Lula.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The ache in my shoulders was back, tightness in neck and jaw that hadn’t eased since we’d pulled ourselves out of the wreckage of Atë’s attack.
Something was wrong with Lula. I knew it too.
“We’ll figure it out,” Abbi whispered earnestly. “I have the stone. Oh! And the feather. We can call Crossroads, or the owl lady, or Valentine. Yeah! A ghost werewolf will make everything better.”
“No,” I said firmly. “That ghost werewolf doesn’t make anything better.”
“Okay, but we have friends. We have friends who can help.”
I thought about that. Did we have friends? Lula and I had been traveling the Route for so long, we’d met a lot of people.
But had we madefriends?
I supposedshehad because she’d been alive—flesh and blood. Ricky, the Crossroads, was her friend.
There were others here and there along the Route whom she visited. Not a lot of humans anymore. Most of them had passed away. But there were others she’d met and helped or charmed. People who might help us if she asked.
But I didn’t know what kind of help we needed. Could anyone help us get the book and destroy it before Atë found us again? Could anyone help us hide it away in a god-protected town? What price might they pay if they did?
Ordinary might not even be what the god and demon had told us it was. No matter how friendly they’d tried to be, I didn’t trust a single word that came out of their mouths.
Still, there might be a place—if not Ordinary,somewhere—where the book could be buried and lost for good this time.
But that wouldn’t solve the problem of us being a target for Atë or other powerful beings. Especially if they thought we were their ticket to holding the book, to casting its power.
I rubbed at the back of my neck.
Maybe that was what was on Lu’s mind. Maybe she was thinking farther ahead, beyond finding the book and dealing with it.
Maybe she was looking at our future.
Maybe she didn’t like what she saw.
Abbi tugged on my hand, urging me toward the door. “We should go. Lorde is asleep, and it’s hot outside.”
I let her lead me across the restaurant to the outside.
The temperature had cranked up, lapping off the pavement in watery tongues of heat. The parking lot shimmered with a mirage of black and grey.
I paused in the relatively cool shade of the doorway to remind my lungs how to inflate.
Abbi let go of my hand and skipped off to our truck, “Silver,” parked in the shade of a red cedar tree. Our fuzzy black dog lay sprawled in the bed, dripping wet from playing in the sprinkler Hado must have turned on.
I didn’t see Lu.
