Page 28 of Queen of Nothing

No, I can’t do that.

I can’t live in these clustered, rusty metal shacks against a barren horizon.

There is more of them after the highway splinters off onto a few, narrower roads, and Serena takes the narrower one, the lonelier road.

The map we picked up from the filling station comes out. I spread it over my side of the dash, but that’s all I do, because already Serena has marked the route with a red pen.

It leads us through a sun-bleached town.

We pass a woman sitting on a plastic chair outside of a shop, rolling tobacco, a few food stands, a bunch of kids that run onto the road, chasing a scuffed football.

Then the town thins out, the road stretches on. Barren fields and harsh terrain replace houses, and the brightness of the sun is starting to fade.

Serena drives through the night for as long as she can before she has to pull over.

On the side of the never-ending road that unfurls into the horizon, with no other cars around, she’s sick.

Hunched over a shrub, she throws up everything in her stomach.

I hide from the smell of it.

I stay in the car.

Still, I hear it.

Can’t escape the noise.

I throw the spine of the seat down into the backseat. As close to a bed as I can get.

Serena—once she’s done out there—does the same with hers. And in the cold of the night, we get some hours of sleep. Just a handful.

Not nearly enough.

It’s around noon when we are driving through a town with buildings shaped like white sandy cubes, and windows without glass cut into them.

Serena tells me, “She lives not far from here.”

“Who is she?” I ask, and now that we’re apparently so close, she might actually answer. “How did you meet her?”

This place is so remote that I doubt they just bumped into each other on a stroll, or at a Michelin restaurant.

“Her name is Sofía.” Serena’s hands grip tighter on the steering wheel, as though nerves are starting to get to her. “She is Isabella’s cousin.”

My mind takes too long to understand.

But when it does connect, I throw her a startled look. “Isabella Paredes?” I echo, disbelief hitching my voice. “Desmond’s wife?”

Again, she nods. Faint, curt, her expression focused as she turns off a road, and we are leaving the town behind.

“Don’t let the familial bond fool you,” Serena warns me. “Sofía and I obviously have something in common—the need to be free of the Videralli—but she is a witch for sale.”

Meaning she only cares about money.

She isn’t helping Serena out of the goodness of her heart. Cash talks, and that is Sofía’s language.

Disbelief relaxes me on the seat. “How did you meet her?”

It’s not like rogues are invited to family dinners and Rugby Sundays and coven vacations.