Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(31)

“Don’t crush it!” Simon says. “Let’s see!” He opens her fist, and the firefly flies out and lands in his hair. Simon freezes, a smile hanging off the edge of his lips, the light blinking slowly on and off over his ear.

I move in to kiss him, trying not to startle the firefly. I can do it, I’m vampire-stealthy. Snow sees me coming and doesn’t move. But when my lips brush his, he pulls his face to the side. The firefly takes off.

Back to this then. Whatever was making him bold earlier has burned away.

“Come on,” he says. He’s still smiling, at least.

I want to take his hand and keep him here with me, in the weeds. “Are you still mine?” I’d ask him. “Do you still want this?”

But I don’t.

Because I don’t want to hear him say no.



* * *



We do see actual pixies an hour later. Spinning in a tall field, a dozen in a circle, with clouds of fireflies in their hair. “Those are magic,” I say.

All Simon can see are the lights.





25





SIMON


I notice the silver truck about an hour before I really notice it.

The same pair of headlights lingering in the rearview mirror. The same smiling silver grille. Never passing us, never getting off the motorway. I suppose there’s not much to get off for out here, is there?

The truck should have passed us when we stopped to catch fireflies. Or when we stopped to watch the pixie circle. (I couldn’t quite see the pixies. Because I’m Normal again, obviously, though no one will just say so.) But it’s still behind us.

I suppose it could be a different silver truck. Or maybe it’s the same truck, and they made a stop, too, and they’re just now, coincidentally, catching up with us.

Maybe.

I get off at the next exit. Baz raises an eyebrow at me, but doesn’t say anything.

“We’re not stopping for any more pixies!” Penny shouts. “Unless they’re running a hotel. I’m tired, and my bladder is bursting!”

I watch the mirror. After a minute, I see the same pair of wide-set lights. I turn down the radio. “We’re being followed.”

“What?” Penny shouts back. “By who?!”

“Don’t look!” I say.

She turns to look. Baz looks at the mirror instead. “For how long?” he asks.

“At least an hour, closer to two. Before the fireflies.”

He pulls out his wand.

I’ve been followed before. Ambushed. By goblins. By werewolves. By down-on-their-luck magicians with a grudge against the Mage. But I was armed then. I had a legendary sword and a belly full of magic. I was never good with a wand, but my magic would annihilate anything that came too close to killing me.

I’ve got nothing now.

But two very powerful friends.

Penny unbuckles and leans between us. “I’ll spell them!”

Baz puts his hand on her ring arm. “Don’t hurt anyone!”

“I’m more worried about them hurting us!” I shout. We’re all shouting over the wind.

Baz is still holding Penny’s arm. “We can’t spell every Normal who looks at us wrong!”

She shrugs him off. “It’s not like we can get into any more trouble!”

“That isn’t the point, Bonnie and Clyde!”

Penny has already turned away from us. She’s kneeling against the back seat, her short skirt flying up in the wind. She holds her right hand out and shouts, “Get lost!”

The headlights don’t waver.

“Give it a moment to set in,” Baz says.

We wait for the truck to stop or turn. We pass two cross roads, 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.