“They’re fine,” Maggie said quietly, but not whispering now. “Change of guards is soon. That’s what I was waiting for.”
Ellie didn’t ask how she knew that.Sondre.The headmaster had made this escape possible, and even if Ellie wasn’t sure why, she was grateful for it. She shouldered her bag again and stood. “Let’s get out of here.”
They stayed away from the bound guards as they hurried to what looked like a shimmering space in the air. Ellie knew without asking that it was the marker of a well-crafted illusion. She’d learned as much in Lord Scylla’s class.
Both women took a deep breath and stepped forward.
“Look,” Ellie said, gesturing at the space behind them. On this side, it looked like solid rock, like a cliff face. There was no doubt that this was the work of the head of House Scylla.
“Come on.” Maggie strode forward to another shimmery rock. “There’s a truck here. Keys under the mat.”
Ellie shook her head. There was a necessary arrogance to hide a truckwith keysbehind a bit of illusion, but according to their class, only witches could see the gleam in the air that said there was an illusion present.
Inside the cab of the truck, Maggie was in the driver’s seat. “More gears than anything I’ve driven. Fucking hell, I’m not sure I can drive—”
“Then we drive in low gear.” Ellie adopted a calm voice, hoping it worked. “No magic now, Mags. No going back. Your son needs you, so woman up, and grind the gears if necessary.”
That was precisely what she did. The truck’s transmission objected with awful grating sounds more than once, and they lurched awkwardly more than a few times, but within the hour, they were in a tiny town.
“Any idea how to boost a car?” Maggie said as they pulled into a shopping plaza. “He said to ditch the truck.”
“No.” Ellie pulled out her wallet of cash she hadn’t expected to everuse since she’d been trapped in a magical world. “But I have this. If we find someone who we can pay for a ride…”
“That works.”
They went inside, and Ellie found herself scanning the crowds as if Prospero, or the chief witch, or some robed stranger would appear. She wasn’t foolish enough to think there were no consequences to what they’d done. They hadn’t hurt anyone, but witches weren’t allowed to be in this world—not that Ellie would reveal Crenshaw if she got caught. The reality, of course, was that people weren’t quick to believe in magic even if she did tell them.
Times have changed.
There was no harm in living here with magic as long as they didn’t use it. Just in case, she whispered to Maggie, “No magic.”
Maggie nodded.
They paced around for a good ten minutes, long enough that Ellie was going from nervous toward panic. Then she saw a young college-aged woman and pointed her out to Maggie.
“Let me talk to her,” Maggie suggested.
Ellie shrugged, and they approached the twenty-or-so-year-old woman.
“Excuse me.” Maggie stopped her. “Are you busy the next few hours?”
The young woman looked suspicious. “Why?”
“My friend is on the run from an abusive ex,” Maggie said. “If we use our credit cards or she travels under her name, we’ll be caught, and she’ll be dead.”
“What does that have to do with me?” The woman looked sympathetic, but wary.
“I need to get us as far south as possible. Fast. All we need is a ride.” Maggie smiled warmly, kindly, hopefully.
Ellie held up the six hundred dollars in her hand. “We can pay you.”
The woman sighed. “My car isn’t worth much more than that, to be honest. If you had another hundred, I’d just sell it to you.”
Maggie reached into her pocket. “Diamond ring?”
“There’s a pawnshop here,” the woman suggested.
“Let’s go.” Maggie gestured her forward, and in about fifteen minutes, the pawnshop had offered a mere $680.
