Quietly, even though there was no one else in the diner, Maggie said, “I was thinking I could get something, drop it in his food, and once he’s out—”
“Are you consideringdruggingyour kid?” Ellie asked, mouth open in shock. “Do you hear yourself?”
“He’s stronger than us.” Maggie looked away. “Obviously, I don’t want to drug him, but I can’t abandon him. And I figured we needed a plan before we see your aunt.”
The waitress came back with their tea. Although the tea was sweetened just this side of something that was fit only for hummingbirds or those wanting excess dentist bills, the overall atmosphere of the diner was calming.
“I’m not good at any of this,” Ellie admitted. “I spent my life trying to avoid excitement and adventure. After Hestia vanished…”
“To there?” Maggie prompted.
Ellie nodded. “I was sure somehow that the only way to avoid going missing was to be the opposite of her. Be safe. Be boring. Be quiet.”
Maggie said nothing for several moments. She glanced at Ellie before softly saying, “I gave up everything I wanted because my husband’s opinion mattered more than mine. Craig was my one exception, my rebellion of sorts. I back-burnered my career. Hell, I wore my hair the way Leon wanted.” She took a long drink of the cavity-in-a-cup tea. “I think beingtheremade me believe that what I wanted would matter. That’s how I ended up in bed with Sondre. I propositioned him.”
Ellie was quiet, watching the waitress lift their plates of omelets and start toward them. The only sound was crooning mountain music.
“Maybe magic makes you feel free,” Ellie offered once the waitress walked away.
“Maybe feeling free or confident makes you magical,” Maggie rebutted.
Ellie chuckled. “Fair.”
“I think there are parts of what they have that are good, but I’m not going to agree to being controlled again. Not by a man or a government.” Maggie chewed a few bites of her food. “Alaska. Somewhere like that, where it’s wilder and freer. That’s where I’m going. We don’t needto stay together, though. Maybe it’s better if we don’t. That way if they find one of us, they aren’t going to find both of us.”
Ellie looked away. Maybe it was selfish, but she wanted to have someone at her side if the Crenshaw witches came after them. Ellie wasn’t sure she could defend herself. A memory of Prospero saying she’d spent “lifetimes” learning martial arts made Ellie feel both a familiar flicker of longing and a less familiar flicker of fear.
“Together,” Ellie said. “Alaska is good.”
As she looked up again, her gaze caught on the television. More specifically, it caught on a picture of Maggie.
“Mags…” Ellie hoped the waitress and the cook weren’t looking in the same direction. “Drop cash on the table. We need to go. Now.”
“Wh—?”
“Picture. Television. You.” Ellie tried to keep calm, even as her magic pulsed against her body like a pressure was building. “We need to go.”
Maggie turned and looked at the television, horror washing over her expression. As a man spoke, Craig at his side, Maggie’s horror wavered into rage. The tea in her cup started to bubble, and Ellie realized her friend had become angry enough that she was literally boiling the contents of her cup.
“No magic!” Ellie grabbed Maggie’s wrist. “Stop.”
Maggie flinched away. “Fuck.”
She scrambled out of the booth and ran toward the door, Ellie following close behind. A shimmer of something that Ellie already identified as magic built in the diner, and Ellie froze. “Go!”
There, standing like everything Ellie wanted and feared, was Prospero.
“Go!” Ellie yelled at Maggie again. She paused and stared at Prospero. “Don’t come any closer. You lied. Craig’s alive. You lied about everything, and I was stupid enough to fall for it.” Ellie was shaking. “Seriously. Just let us go. Tell them you erased our minds. Tell them you killed us. You lie well enough to pull it off.”
“Ellie.” Prospero took a step closer. “I’m relieved to find you.”
“No.” Ellie raised a hand, and the floor lifted up like the asphaltserpents and the forest serpents once had. This time, though, Ellie had better control of it. It was no illusion. No accident. She stared at the woman she’d been falling in love with, and Ellie willed that black-tiled floor into a cage. She willed the silvered barstools into steel bars around those.
Doubly caged, Prospero stared at Ellie. “You’re making a mistake.”
“Let me go. Don’t pursue us,” Ellie half begged half demanded, and then she ran out the door and jumped into the waiting car.
With one last burst of magic, she shifted the car into a sleek Bugatti Chiron, reputedly the fastest sports car available according to a research paper she’d helped a library patron with last year. It looked like it was meant to carve the very air, an arrow-like form that would make speed easier than magic.
