“Of course.”
Penelope sits back in the seat and gently touches Agatha’s face. I can’t hear the spell.
Baz drinks a cow.
Simon’s still asleep.
Agatha hasn’t said a word.
It’s a ten-hour drive to San Diego. Baz moves up front with me, casting spells on the car, I think. He looks like he took a bloodbath. I run into a Target in Reno to buy him fresh clothes. He cleans up in a gas station bathroom and comes out looking pale and affordable.
I’m nervous about being pulled over, even with his spells. “Will we dump the car? I’m sure we’ve been clocked somewhere.”
“We’re going to destroy this car,” Agatha says, speaking up for the first time. “And anyone who asks about it.”
Baz sighs. “Two thousand and eighteen. G-Class. Jade Green Metallic.”
I keep waiting for them to dump me, too. (I hope they wouldn’t destroy me at this point, after everything we’ve been through together. Then again, that’s probablywhythey’d destroy me.)
But when we finally get to Agatha’s apartment, and I’m standing down on the sidewalk wondering how I’m going to get back to Vegas, Baz holds the door open for me.
PROLOGUE
BAZ
We’re leaving for the airport in an hour—I should probably get out of the shower. I stretch, and what I hope is the last of the bullets breaks through the skin on my shoulder and clanks against the bottom of the bath.
I never,everwant to feel this way again. I don’t want to test the limits of this body, even if it might give me a better understanding of what I am.
We’ve spent the last day sleeping and eating and casting spells on each other. Agatha’s stuck to Penny like a little girl clinging to her mother on the tube. She’s coming back with us. Agatha. “Just to get my wand,” she says. “It doesn’t mean I’m staying.”
When I get out of the bathroom, Agatha’s friend Ginger is here to pick up her dog, that ridiculous little spaniel I stole back in London. Apparently Ginger is the one who introduced Wellbelove to the NowNext vampires, and she’s in a full pout that she hasn’t heard from them.
“Josh isn’t even replying to my texts,” Ginger says.
“Would you want him to? He abandoned you in Rancho Santa Fe.”
“So did you, Agatha!”
Bunce is standing behind Ginger, holding up her purple stone and silently offering to magickally befuddle her.
Agatha is shaking her head at both of them. “Ginger, I told you it was a drag! And I left as soon as I realized you weren’t there.”
Ginger looks tearful. She’s got a ring of red above her top lip, and it takes me a second to realize she’s drinking beetroot juice. “I thought they were going to let me level up,” she moans. “And they didn’t even invite me to their after-party!”
“They couldn’t have invited you,” Agatha says, rubbing the girl’s arm. “You’re too good. You would have seen what they’re really about, and made them all feel like hypocrites.”
Ginger hangs her head. “I guess.…”
“Don’t talk to Josh anymore,” Agatha says, “even if he calls.”
I’m fairly certain he won’t.
Ginger sniffs. “I’ll think about it.”
I look around the living room. “Where’s Snow?”
“He walked down to the beach a while ago,” Bunce says.
