He looks up at me, his eyes urgent. “Switch places with me, Snow. I’m about to drain her dry.”
Penelope sits up—not as urgently as she should, I reckon—and Baz extricates himself from her arms and her hair and the booth.
He shakes his head, trying to clear it. “I think I’ll step outside. For a moment.” He’s white as a sheet, though his cheeks and nose look sort of flushed with black. He wheels around and heads for the exit, dipping towards the hostess on his way out, then backing out the door.
I sit down next to Penny and pull my plate over. “I know you don’t eat beef,” I say, “but this burger tastes like America.”
She takes one of my chips.
I put my arm around her. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she says.
“I feel like this is my fault.”
“Did you introduce Micah to a girl named Erin?”
“No, but I—” My voice drops, I’m embarrassed to say this. “—I know you stayed in England, for university, because of me.”
“Don’t be stupid,” she says.
“I’mnot.” I look in her brown eyes. “Penny, I’m not stupid.”
She looks right back at me. “Simon, I think I would have come to America for university if I really wanted to. I could have brought you with me.”
“Would you have?”
“No. Baz would never have allowed it.” She looks down at her plate. “Anyway. I was happy. The way things were with Micah. Apart. It was enough for me.”
16
BAZ
It’s still broad daylight, but I can’t wait anymore—I have to kill something. Or find something dead.…
I wander around to the back of the mall, behind some skips. I have no idea what sort of wildlife can be found in West Des Moines. Rats, probably—but I’d need a boatload of them at this point.
There are some houses over the hill. I hate to use this spell unless I’m desperate, but I am desperate. I crouch low and hold my wand out over the ground, pouring in as much magic as I have available.
“Here, kitty-kitty!”
When I get back to our booth, the waitress is putting three monstrous slices of cheesecake on the table.
Simon’s sitting next to Penny, and I’m flushed with warm feelings for both of them. (A side effect of being flushed withthe blood of nine cats, probably.) I go to their side of the booth—“Scoot over”—and pick up a fork.
Simon points at the plates of cheesecake: “This one’s Outrageous, this one’s Ultimate, and this one’s Extreme.”
“No,thisone’s Extreme,” Bunce says, taking a giant bite. “With the Oreos.”
I take a bite of the same piece and cover my mouth. “Oof, thas good.”
“It is The CheesecakeFactory,” Simon says. “Does what it says on the tin.”
After dinner, we’re all shattered. We’d meant to keep pushing on through Iowa, but we’re jetlagged and full of cream cheese, and Bunce still looks like someone blew out her pilot light.
We end up at an inn near the motorway. It’s cheap, but the room is huge with two big beds. Bunce falls onto one. I nudge her foot. “Plug in your mobile.”
Snow and I are still holding our bags. Wecouldtake the other bed. We’ve shared a bed before. A few times. We’ve…
