Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(53)

BAZ


We’ve been in the car for four hours, and Shepard says it will be at least eight more. Bunce wants to cast spells to make the truck go faster, but I’m worried we’ll need all our reserves when we get to wherever we’re going.

Shepard keeps trying to draw us out. To no avail. I’ve never been drawn out in my life, and Bunce especially has taken against him.

There’s nothing to do but look out at the increasingly depressing scenery. Green isn’t green in America. We’ve driven through every kind of field, and none of them are as saturated as the fields back home.

Presently there’s little green at all. The whole country’s gone sharp and red.

I turn back to check on Simon. I gave him sunblock—

He’s not there.

“Pull over.” My hand is clenched on Shepard’s arm. “Snow is gone.”

Bunce turns to look. “Where’d he go?”

“He must have fallen out,” I say. “Turn back.”

Penny unbuckles her seat belt and rolls down her window, climbing partly out to look.

“He’s fine!” Shepard shouts. “Get back in the truck!” He elbows me. “She’s going to fall out.”

I grab Bunce by the waist.

“Your friend’s just there,” Shepard says, pointing through the front window. “He’s flying.”

I see the shadow on the pavement ahead of us—Simon, with his wings spread, his arrow of a tail stretched out behind him.

“That lunatic,” I whisper.





40





PENELOPE


“I’m going to need your help with this part,” Shepard says.

“Which part?” I say. “Why?” I have to lean around Baz to argue with the Normal, and it’s getting tiresome. We’ve been in this truck for eleven hours, at least. Simon has been in the back—or above our heads—exposed to the desert, the whole time. I’ve pumped him full of protective spells, and I know Baz has, too, but really, this is getting excessive. I want to save Agatha, but not at the cost of microwaving Simon.

I suppose he seemed fine at the last stop. If anything, he seemed exhilarated—perhaps dangerously so. “I can’t believe we’re coming this close to the Grand Canyon and just driving by!” he lamented. “And Route 66! And Joshua Tree!”

“We have trees back home, Snow,” Baz said. “Snap out of it.”

Baz has fared much better on this leg of the trip, with a roof over his head. That black ash on his nose is mostly gone, though he still looks too grey for my liking.

He drank a snake after lunch, and it left him sour and tetchy.

“There you go,” Shepard said, when Baz got back in the truck. “A snake for breakfast, a snake for lunch, and a sensible dinner.”

I ignored him. I’ve tried to ignore the Normal as much as possible. We’ve said he can stay with us and help us, but we didn’t promise him explanations or—entertainment.

But he never stops trying. He never stops talking.

When we don’t answer his questions about our families, he tells us all about his own. His mother, a teacher; his older sister, a journalist. His parents are divorced, and his dad, a flight attendant, lives in Atlanta, and that’s all right, because it’s someplace warm to visit at Christmastime, and sometimes Shepard gets to fly for free—and for the love of magic, I even know that he played football in primary school, but now he prefers role-playing games. There’s really nothing too small for him to mention.

What he really loves to talk about is magic. It’s almost as if he thinks telling us about all the magickal creatures he’s met will tempt us to reply in kind.

It doesn’t. Besides, magicians don’t fraternize with magickal creatures, even the non-evil variety. We went to school with a few pixies and brownies, there was a centaur the year ahead of us—but they were all at least part magician. (How does a magician fall in love with a centaur? What do they even have in common?) (“The top half,” Simon said, when I tried to discuss this with him.)

Shepard, however, has never met a magickal creature he didn’t strike up a friendship with. If he can be believed.

“You have not gone backpacking with a sasquatch,” I said after five or six hours of this nonsense.

“Well, I told you, he doesn’t carry a backpack. He’s got this pouch, and all that’s in it is a comb and a carving knife. I gave him my toothbrush, and he was pleased as punch with it. I need to get back up there, get him another toothbrush.…”

“How could you even have time for all these adventures? You’re no older than us. Don’t you have university?”

“I’m twenty-two. How old are you?”

“None of your business.”

“Right, well, I put off school for a while. I’m going to go back when I know what I want to study. In the meantime, the road is my teacher.”

“The road. The road is your distraction, I’d wager. You’d learn more from the world if you knew more about the world.”

“Ha, that’s what my mom says.”

“Your mum is clearly cleverer than you.”

“No argument here. What’s your mom like?”

“Pfft.”