Because it’s exactly what I wish were there.
I was supposed to be at Burning Lad this weekend. Ginger and I had been planning it for months. A weeklong festival in the middle of the desert. A pop-up city. A celebration of life and death in a place where nothing lives, and even death has slim pickings.
I bought body paint, and sewed feathers onto my bikini. I was going to wear it on the last day—to the Grand Parade, the climax of the festival.
I’d pictured it so many times:
All that skin and fire snaking through the desert. I imagined how it would feel toshinelike that. To be a small, spangled part of something so magickal, without anyone using any magic at all.
I see it now, on the horizon.
That glittering snake.
A mirage, surely. A trick of the sun and the sand.
I’d swear it’s getting closer.…
I see the line of moving parts, of dancing bodies. I see the figure at their head—a large wooden boy, in flames.
I see it.…
It’s not a mirage! It’s real!
It’s here!
And my first thought is,It’s coming for me!
That’s how accustomed I am to being rescued; I see a parade of people coming over the hill, and I assume they’re coming to saveme.
They’re not.
They wouldn’t even hear me if I could scream.
Which I can’t.
And yet…
And yet!
I was wrong about Burning Lad! It’sfullof magic. Fifty thousand Normals. The third-largest city in Nevada, for one week of the year.
A pop-up city heading my way!
The line on the horizon gets thicker, but the Normals are still so far.…
That’s okay. I don’t need much of their magic for this spell. It’s the only one I can cast without a wand, without even moving my lips.
PENELOPE
I’m worried that they won’t kill us. Promptly.
That our bodies might holdyearsof useful information.
The vampires will find what they’re looking for, I suspect. Magic is genetic, after all—it must be coded into mages in away that can be decoded. We should have been the ones to figure it out first.
Mum would call that heresy. Trying toexplainmagic.
But isn’t that just… science?
