We hear tyres on gravel, and for a second, I think Shepard has decided to leave without us. We all look back.
There’s a new set of headlights turning off the road. Two sets. Now three.
“Who’s that?” Penny asks.
Baz shakes his head. “No one good.”
27
BAZ
One, two, three trucks turn off the road and creep towards us, pinning us against Shepard’s truck with their headlights.
We don’t try to run. Simon could. He could have escaped already.
I elbow him. “Fly away, Snow. Now.”
“No.”
“You could get help.”
“From who?”
Doors open and close. There’s someone coming towards us, but with the headlights in my eyes, I can’t see them.
It’s something like a man…Like.
There’s a clicking noise, and then a gunshot. And then whatever-it-is finally gets close enough for us to see—
It’s a man-sized polecat holding a shotgun.
Black and white stripes. Beady eyes. Blue jeans. He opens the corner of his maw and shoots a stream of brown liquid at my feet. It smells like pipe tobacco.
“So the rumours are true,” he says. “We got some trespassers.”
Another something floats over the polecat’s shoulder—a thick grey mist. With arms. It curls around Penny, hissing, “Speakers.” Its hand brushes through my cheek, but I can’t feel it. “And vampires.”
“Are you all armed?” The polecat looks over his shoulder. “Search ’em.”
A third thing steps out of the glare. Another manlike creature. This one’s huge, wearing camouflage trousers and a flannel shirt, and he’s got a head like a goat’s—not one of Ebb’s goats, something fiercer, with horns that curve back over his ears then twist forward again. He reaches out to me with fleshy human fingers.
“Don’t even think about it,” I say.
The black-and-white polecat cocks his shotgun. “Look here, son. We don’t want any of your trouble. They might put up with you deviants wherever you come from, but this is Nebraska.” (He could mean literally anything by “deviants.” Magicians, vampires, bird boys, queers…) “You knew what you were getting yourself into when you entered the Quiet Zone.”
The goat-man is patting Bunce down, looking for a wand, no doubt. She’s lucky with that ring of hers; Normals and creatures don’t even realize it’s magic. My own wand is safe for the moment—coiled in Simon’s tail and hidden behind his back.
Bunce is staring up at the goat’s face, like she recognizes him from a film. “Are you one of theFomorians?”
He sneers at her.
“Youare,aren’t you.” She’s so curious, she’s forgotten to be scared. “Chaos demon,” she says excitedly to Simon and me. “Droughts, blight, deaths at sea.” She turns back to him. He’s patting down her knee socks. In a non-pervy way, fortunately. “What are you doing out of Ireland?”
“I’m anAmerican,” the goat-man says. “Fourth generation. My family came here to get away from the likes of you.”
“Magicians?” she asks.
“Indians?” Snow says.
