“Give it a moment to set in,” Baz says.
We wait for the truck to stop or turn. We pass two crossroads, then three. At the fourth, I abruptly turn from a two-lane motorway onto a gravel road. The tyres grind on the gravel, and we can feel rocks battering the undercarriage.
Baz and Penny watch the darkness behind us. I stare at the mirror.
The headlights appear again.
“Fuck,” Baz says.
Penny spits out another spell—“Freeze!”Nothing happens. She spreads her fingers—
“No!” Baz says. “You’ll wear yourself out.”
“It could be vampires!” she says.
“It could be anything!” I say. A wraith, a leach, a ghoul. Something specifically American: a gun demon, a prairie mog, one of those sirens who live in wells. Can coyotes drive cars? I know they can play poker, the Mage told me.
“Know your enemy before he knows you”was one of the Mage’s favourite lessons. He drilled me on every potential threat, no matter how improbable. He told me to avoid America at all costs:“Every kind of magician and magickal creature has made its way there. There’s old magic and new. Hybrids and twists you can’t anticipate. It’s the most dangerous place in the world.”I was 13 and thought America mostly sounded really cool. Every kind of magic, every kind of spell, all in one place.
“Stop at the next town,” Baz says. “We’re safer with an audience.”
But there is no next town.
I turn from one gravel road to another. The headlights follow.
Baz never sets down his wand. Penny watches the headlights for a while, then sinks down below the seat, so that whatever she’s been watching can’t watch her back. The gravel bangs against all the car’s metal parts.
Thirty minutes pass like this.
I shout over my shoulder to Penny: “Do you still have to pee?”
“Yes!” she says.
“Should I stop?”
“No!”
There’s no next town. There are no lights. I can only see the road a few feet ahead of us and a few feet behind us. Baz and Penny are shadows.
The truck tailing us slips in and out of view.
I tell Penny to find a town on her phone. But she doesn’t have any bars.
The lights in the rearview mirror flash off, then on again.
“What’s that supposed to mean?!” Penny shouts.
“Pull over,” I say.
Baz turns to me. “Don’t you dare!”
The lights flash on, then off. It’s slow. Deliberate.
“Is it Morse code?” Penny asks, huddled between our seats.
“I think it’s basic code for ‘Pull over,’” I say.
“Don’t!” Baz says again.
