by Kim Harrison
I could reach right out and smack him if I wanted. I hadn’t liked his quiet disdain of my mom’s car. So it didn’t have a six-speaker system or power doors or windows. It wasn’t shiny, and the blue color didn’t do anything for me, either. But I could do ten miles an hour more in my old-lady car than in my shiny red car and never get noticed. It had lots of cup holders, too.
Tucking a wayward curl behind an ear, I eyed his sunglasses in envy, just sitting on the dash while he slept. I bet they’d look better on me than on him. The sun was giving me a headache, and I almost reached for them—until I noticed that Trent’s hands were clenched, even in sleep. Okay, maybe he wasn’t as comfortable with this as he wanted me to believe. Still, it said something that he’d even fallen asleep.
Looking back to the flat landscape we’d been in for the last hour or so, I wondered if I’d be able to fall asleep with Trent driving. This was weird, and not just because a witch, an elf, and a pixy were on the Great American Road Trip. I still owed Trent that “freed familiar” curse, and guilt was tugging at me.
Bothered, I glanced at my shoulder bag where his curse was, then back to the road. A quick look at the rearview mirror assured me that Jenks was still sleeping, soaking in the sun like a tiny winged cat in the back window. Sighing, I returned my attention to the landscape. I’d never driven like this, and the open spaces were getting to me. The road had been built pre-Turn, and it was creepy driving past town after town that had been abandoned during the plague the Turn had been born of. The trees growing through the roofs of abandoned buildings and the tall yellow M’s and old gas station signs high above new forests made me positively uncomfortable.
The mix of vegetation covering the old destruction was reminiscent of the ever-after, and curious, I brought up my second sight. My scalp tingled, the sensation shifting over my skull to make me shiver as the red-tinted ever-after swam up, coating everything in a sheen of red. The sun seemed to cast two shadows, but apart from the road, which now looked broken and covered with weeds, everything looked pretty much the same. A sun-baked field of nothing but grass stretched from horizon to horizon. Demons congregated where the ley lines were, living under them in the ground where nothing changed much.
According to Al, the ever-after was a broken reality, unable to stand on its own, and was being dragged along behind ours, connected to and kept alive by the ley lines. Energy flowed like tides between them, preventing the ever-after from vanishing and giving the alternate reality a broken visage. It was a reflection of reality but shattered. So if Cincinnati put up a new building, a new one would show up in the ever-after, but would begin to fall apart even before it was completed. That’s why demons lived underground. We didn’t construct much below a certain level, so nothing changed there but what the demons fashioned for themselves. They used gargoyles like familiars, pulling ley-line energy deep into the earth to where they could use it.
But here, out in the spaces between big conglomerations of ley lines where the cities were, there was a whole lot of red-sheened nothing: trees, grass, bushes. You’d think that being an earth witch I’d like nature, but I didn’t. Not like this anyway. It felt broken. It didn’t help that the ever-after looked almost normal out here. Except for the black parts…
Squinting, I tried to figure out what they were. I’d never seen them in Cincinnati’s version of the ever-after, and they glinted silver under the red-tinted sun, like a heat mirage or something, reflecting…nothing.
Still using my second sight, I looked over the trees to St. Louis, feeling better with the tall buildings, even if they looked broken with the overlay of my second sight. We were close, and I dropped my second sight and twisted in my seat to pull my phone out of my back pocket. I’d gotten a text from Ivy earlier when she’d boarded her plane, then again when she’d landed. We were going to meet at the arch. I should give her a call.
“What were you just doing?” Trent said suddenly, and I jerked, dropping my phone.
“Jeez, Trent!” I yelped. “How long have you been watching me?” I flushed, glancing in the back to see Jenks’s wings shift and spill a silver dust as he slept on. “I’m calling Ivy.”
Trent sat up, rubbing his right bicep where his familiar mark was, before he bent almost double to get my phone from under my feet. “You forgot I was here,” he said as he handed it to me, smiling as if it pleased him. “What were you doing? Before, I mean. You were looking at something, and it wasn’t the view. Your aura had a shadow on it. I’ve never seen that.”
Great. He’d been watching me. Grimacing, I focused on the road. The traffic was starting to thicken as we approached the city. “Really?” I said shortly. Jenks had said the same thing to me once when I was doing some high magic. I didn’t like that my “aura shadow” showed up when I was using my second sight. Smiling as if nothing was wrong, I tossed my phone to him, and he deftly caught it. “Will you call Ivy for me? Tell her where we are?”
He tossed it back, and it thumped onto my lap. “I’m not your secretary.”
Dude, that was just rude, I thought, intentionally swerving from the right lane to the left as I flipped the phone open.
Trent clutched the door and the dash, and from the backseat Jenks shrilled, “Hey! Rache! What the Disney blasted hell are you doing?”
I was smiling my prettiest as Trent growled, “Give me the phone.”
“Thank you,” I all but sang, dropping it into his hand and rolling up the window so he could hear better. He seemed harmless in his jeans and shirt, and I wondered how much of his charisma came from his wardrobe. Jenks apparently appreciated the drop in wind, and he flew back to the front, looking rumpled and sleepy as he yawned and sat on the rearview mirror.
“Where are we?” he asked, rubbing a hand over his wings to check for tears.
“Still on I-70,” I said as Trent scrolled through my call list, eyebrows going high when he found the mayor’s number. Yeah, we had talked. Got that little misunderstanding about her son a few years ago taken care of. “We’ll be crossing the Mississippi in a minute,” I added.
Rubbing his arm again, Trent hit a button and put the phone to his ear. I wondered if he knew he was doing it, rubbing his familiar mark. “One of these days your smart-ass attitude is going to get you killed,” he said softly.
“Not today,” I said, then watched Jenks peer behind us.
“Huh,” the pixy said, not sounding at all worried. “They’re still there.”
Nodding, I flicked my gaze to the mirror, seeing a gold Cadillac a way back. “Yup.”
Phone to his ear, Trent turned to look. “We’re being followed?”
“Relax, cookie maker,” Jenks said as he continued to work over his wings. “They’ve been there since Terre Haute.”
A knot of worry started to tighten. Was it me they were following or Trent?
There was a faint hail on the tiny speaker, and Trent continued to watch the car behind us through the side mirror. “Ms. Tamwood,” he said, and I marveled at his voice. “Rachel would like to talk to you,” he added as I held out my hand.
“Hey, hi,” I said as I wrangled the phone to my ear. “We’re almost across the Mississippi. How was your flight?”
“Lousy.” Ivy sounded tired, but she’d been up longer than I had. “I’m at the arch,” she continued. “Stay on I-70, then take the South Memorial Drive exit just after the bridge.”
“Thanks, I already looked at the map,” I said, mildly peeved. The woman had not only laminated the map, but she’d used a marker to star where we could stop for Jenks.
“Follow Memorial Drive all the way down to Washington,” she continued, as if I’d said nothing. “There’re signs everywhere to the parking structure.”
“Okay, thanks,” I said, exasperated, but Jenks was laughing as he landed on my shoulder.
“Rache, those guys are getting closer,” he said, pitching his voice so Ivy could hear him.
“What guys?” Ivy asked, her concern clear through the tiny speaker
.
I fluffed my hair to make Jenks take off. Thanks a hell of a lot, Jenks.
“Someone’s tailing us,” I said casually.
“For how long?” she said, loud enough for Trent to hear.
“Long enough,” I said. “They aren’t that close. Quarter mile.”
“Two hundred feet, Ivy,” Jenks said loudly, back on the rearview mirror and knowing her superior vamp hearing would pick it up. “Three guys unless someone’s taking a nap.”
The good news being that if they were that close, the car probably wasn’t bugged.
“Maybe we should drive straight through. Where’s the map?” Jenks said, taking off in a burst of sparkles and vanishing in the backseat.
Trent stiffened, his gaze sharp on mine. “We need to stop.”
“I don’t need a map, Jenks,” I said, paying more attention to the road. We’d picked up a dump truck somewhere, and the road was getting crowded with semis and SUVs.
“If you’re being followed, just keep going,” Ivy said. “I’ve got a rental car, and I’ll catch up, okay? Ram them or something.”
“We are going to stop,” Trent said again, looking militantly adamant. Maybe he needed to use the little boy’s room after his nappies.
From the backseat, Jenks chimed, “I found it! Trent, be a pal and open it for me, huh?”
I jiggled the phone to my other ear, and the car swerved. Ram them? Was she serious?
“Rachel?” came Ivy’s voice, and I put my attention back on the road.
“You’re not going to ram them,” I said, and Trent rubbed his forehead as if in pain. “And we aren’t going to drive through. We are coming in. I’d rather meet up now than later, even if they are watching. They probably already know you’re waiting for us.”
Jenks darted up from the backseat, his hands on his hips. “Trent, I could use some help here. You just going to sit there like a pile of fairy crap the entire way?”
“We don’t need the map,” I said, starting to get mad. “And we are not driving through. We are stopping for Ivy!”
From my phone, Ivy was protesting, “There’s a bunch of kids here. You really want to risk a fight with the coven?”
“The coven wouldn’t dare,” I said as I started to wonder. “Not with innocents around. We can have an ice cream or something. Make bunny-eared kisses at them from across the park.”
“I suppose,” she agreed, sounding doubtful. “Call me when you park, okay?”
Making a murmur of agreement, I closed the phone and dropped it onto my lap.
“Good plan,” Trent said breathily, and a single warning flag went up, as smooth and sure as ice is cold. I don’t know why, because he was agreeing with me, but his attitude—the overwhelming relief he was trying to hide—was at complete odds with what he should be feeling with someone tailing us. Frowning, I thought back to whose idea it was to stop in St. Louis in the first place. Ivy’s, I think. She’d bought a flight going there.
The tires hummed as we found the bridge, and the world seemed to shift as we headed right for the city. The arch was huge. Word was that it pinned down one of the city’s ley lines, which I thought suspect. Why would anyone do anything so stupid?
“You need the Memorial Drive exit,” Trent said intently. “It goes right past the park.”
“Thanks, Trent,” I said, my eyes narrowed suspiciously.
“You’re in the wrong lane,” he added, and clenching my teeth, I wondered what he’d do if I just drove past the exit. Watching his body language, I shifted even farther to the left to get around a black car. Sure enough, he tensed.
Interesting, I mused, and then, checking the rearview to see that the gold car had done the same, I slid back to the right-hand lane, making the motion far too fast. Jenks yelped, taking to the air as the steering wheel spun. Trent clutched the dash, glaring at me as we rocked to a halt, but saying little else as his sunglasses slid off the dash and to my feet. Another warning flag went up. That should have gotten me more than a dirty look.
“You’re going to have to do a lot more than that to lose them,” Jenks said, misreading my motion, and I eyed the semi that roared up behind me, aggressively making his brakes flatulate in an effort to get me to move faster. Faster. That might be a good idea, seeing as that gold Cadillac was a car length away. Three guys. All blonds. Elves? Not the coven, then.
My phone hummed, and I ignored it. Trent jerked, his eyes showing a new alarm as he turned to me. “We need to get off this road. Now.”
“Like how?” I snarled. “Our exit isn’t for another two miles.”
“Well, do something!” Trent exclaimed. “Someone is prepping a spell.”
My eyes flicked behind us, seeing the three heads clustered together. The shoulder was on one side and that truck on the other as he tried to pass me. A little VW bug was ahead of me, full of people. “Are you nuts? No one would make a hit on the expressway. Too many people could get hurt. And besides, I don’t feel—”
“Look out!” Jenks shrilled, and I gasped, jerking the wheel as a reddish-gold ball of something blossomed from the car behind us. Our tires hit the shoulder, gravel kicking up underneath as I struggled to maintain control at a suddenly too-fast sixty-five miles per hour.
The spell hit the VW bug ahead of us, and I watched in horror as it turned sideways and spun, right into the path of the truck barreling down on it. Sparks flew inside the small car, and the truck hit its brakes, the tires hopping on the pavement as three lanes of traffic became five, everyone trying to get out of the way. The little car spun into a roll, a protection bubble snapping into place, and I stiffened my arms, looking for an out. The truck was going to jackknife, and the rear of it was two feet away, coming closer, almost shoving us.
Behind us were the ugly sounds of screeching tires and plastic crunching. I didn’t dare look as we sped ahead, the truck now taking up three lanes as it slowly began to topple over. The little VW had hit the wall, and I swerved into the path of the truck to avoid it. There was a huge crash, and the sound of scraping metal. I looked back to see the truck on its side, cars piling up behind it. Three cars had made it through: us, a station wagon with a white-faced woman driving it, and that gold Cadillac. My God. What had they done?
“Go, go, go!” Jenks shrilled, plastered to the back window. “They got through! Go!”
I floored it, weaving through the cars ahead of us, most of them just now noticing the truck sliding to a stop and taking up the entire road. Brake lights were going on, and my grip on the wheel became sweaty. How had they gotten through? I wondered, seeing that they had lost a fender but were still moving. The VW had become small in the rearview mirror, and feeling sick, I pulled my attention back to the road ahead of us. No one does a hit on a busy road. No one. Who the hell did these people think they were? Or perhaps my question should be, who the hell did these people think we were that they would do such a thing?
“We need to get off this road!” Trent exclaimed as I sped past a slow-moving Jag.
“Gee, you think?” I said, seeing the Cadillac clip another car as it tried to catch up.
“Where’s the map,” Trent muttered, leaning over the backseat to find it.
Jenks looked scared, having moved to the front where he could stand on the rearview mirror and hold on to the stem for dear life. “Go right!” he shouted, and I jerked the wheel, looking back to see yet another ball of who-knew-what headed for us.
Trent yelped as the car swerved, his butt smacking into me and a raised foot hitting the wheel. “Trent!” I shouted, shoving him off. “Sit down, will you? I’m trying not to get pasted here, and your ass in my face isn’t helping!”
The orange blob hit the pavement behind us, the Jag I’d just gone around running right into it. The car flipped, and I started to get really scared. What the hell were they using to throw their magic? A grenade launcher? We were going over ninety!
Oblivious to it, Trent slid back into his seat with a huff, the map in his hand.
“Jenks, you got any ideas?” I asked as Trent buckled himself back in, and Jenks’s wings stilled even as a green dust began spilling from him.
“Maybe Trent should have married the bitch,” he warbled, and I shifted into the far-left lane to get around a bus. Sure enough, they stuck with me, and my heart pounded. I couldn’t do magic and drive at the same time! Where the hell was Pierce when I needed him? No-o-o-o, the one time I have nonunion assassins behind us, I have a businessman riding shotgun trying to find answers in a friggin’ map!
“That’s our exit,” Trent said, trying to look cool, but his grip on the map was too tight. “We’re sitting ducks on the expressway.”
“Oh, thank you very much for that observation, Kalamack,” I said sarcastically. “You think we should get off the road. And then what?”
“Just take South Memorial,” he said, his eyes on the map as he swayed to my swerving through traffic, earning beeps and flashing lights. “We can lose them on the surface roads more easily than on the expressway. Do what I say, and we’ll be fine.” But he was sweating. I couldn’t make a bubble—we’d drive right through it.
Jenks darted down to land on the map in Trent’s hand as we flashed past the sign. “That’s the one you want, Rachel. Right lane. Right lane!”
There was a big truck ahead of me in the far-right lane. If I slowed down to take the exit, the Cadillac would hit us. My fingers clenched and relaxed. Behind us, a new glow was starting in the car. I had to time this perfectly. “‘Do what I say, and we’ll be fine,’” I muttered through clenched teeth. “Surface streets mean we put the entire city in danger. We’re going to lose them right now.”
“Rachel…,” Trent said, his voice tinged with anger and fear. “What are you doing?”
“Getting onto Memorial,” I said, licking my lips. The engine roared as I pressed the accelerator, and my mom’s car leapt ahead. My heart pounded, and I darted around a white car on the right, then a blue on the right. Crap, this was going to be close. There was a weird prickling through me, but I daren’t look at Trent. It was wild magic, but I didn’t think it was from him. It was like the tracers that the earth sends up to the cloud before the lightning follows it down. The next hit wouldn’t miss. “Hold on!” I shouted, eyes wide.