Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(87)

Baz nods. “I’ll wait.” He snags her hand. “Come here, Bunce.”

“I’m right as rain, Baz.”

“Don’t make me climb over Simon.”

Penelope sighs, leaning over the seat, and Baz holds his wand to her mouth. “Kiss it better!”

“Basil, that’s a family spell!”

“Hush,” he says, kissing her cheek. He wipes the blood from her mouth with his sleeve. His arm is shaking. “You okay?”

She’s tearful. She nods.

“Do you have anything left for Agatha?”

“Of course.”

Penelope sits back in the seat and gently touches Agatha’s face. I can’t hear the spell.



* * *



Baz drinks a cow.

Simon’s still asleep.

Agatha hasn’t said a word.



* * *



It’s a ten-hour drive to San Diego. Baz moves up front with me, casting spells on the car, I think. He looks like he took a bloodbath. I run into a Target in Reno to buy him fresh clothes. He cleans up in a gas station bathroom and comes out looking pale and affordable.

I’m nervous about being pulled over, even with his spells. “Will we dump the car? I’m sure we’ve been clocked somewhere.”

“We’re going to destroy this car,” Agatha says, speaking up for the first time. “And anyone who asks about it.”

Baz sighs. “Two thousand and eighteen. G-Class. Jade Green Metallic.”

I keep waiting for them to dump me, too. (I hope they wouldn’t destroy me at this point, after everything we’ve been through together. Then again, that’s probably why they’d destroy me.)

But when we finally get to Agatha’s apartment, and I’m standing down on the sidewalk wondering how I’m going to get back to Vegas, Baz holds the door open for me.





PROLOGUE





BAZ


We’re leaving for the airport in an hour—I should probably get out of the shower. I stretch, and what I hope is the last of the bullets breaks through the skin on my shoulder and clanks against the bottom of the bath.

I never, ever want to feel this way again. I don’t want to test the limits of this body, even if it might give me a better understanding of what I am.

We’ve spent the last day sleeping and eating and casting spells on each other. Agatha’s stuck to Penny like a little girl clinging to her mother on the tube. She’s coming back with us. Agatha. “Just to get my wand,” she says. “It doesn’t mean I’m staying.”

When I get out of the bathroom, Agatha’s friend Ginger is here to pick up her dog, that ridiculous little spaniel I stole back in London. Apparently Ginger is the one who introduced Wellbelove to the NowNext vampires, and she’s in a full pout that she hasn’t heard from them.

“Josh isn’t even replying to my texts,” Ginger says.

“Would you want him to? He abandoned you in Rancho Santa Fe.”

“So did you, Agatha!”

Bunce is standing behind Ginger, holding up her purple stone and silently offering to magickally befuddle her.

Agatha is shaking her head at both of them. “Ginger, I told you it was a drag! And I left as soon as I realized you weren’t there.”

Ginger looks tearful. She’s got a ring of red above her top lip, and it takes me a second to realize she’s drinking beetroot juice. “I thought they were going to let me level up,” she moans. “And they didn’t even invite me to their after-party!”

“They couldn’t have invited you,” Agatha says, rubbing the girl’s arm. “You’re too good. You would have seen what they’re really about, and made them all feel like hypocrites.”

Ginger hangs her head. “I guess.…”

“Don’t talk to Josh anymore,” Agatha says, “even if he calls.”

I’m fairly certain he won’t.

Ginger sniffs. “I’ll think about it.”

I look around the living room. “Where’s Snow?”

“He walked down to the beach a while ago,” Bunce says.

“I’ll go get him,” I say. “We need to go.”

“Freshen up his…” She flaps her elbows. “If he needs it.”

I nod, touching my wand. It’s under my shirt, tucked inside the waistband of my (cheap, horrible) jeans. I’m lucky to still have it. And my mobile. Everything else is gone.

None of us have called home yet. But we’ll have to talk to our parents eventually about what happened—about the Next Blood, at least. Lamb said there were more of them. And Agatha thinks they really do have a lab in the desert.

It’s telling that not one of us suggested we go and find it. Not even Simon.

He slept all the way to San Diego. I think he had internal injuries after the battle. Bunce thinks she’s fixed him, but we’re taking him to see Dr. Wellbelove as soon as we get home, just in case.





PENELOPE


Agatha’s friend Ginger is crying because she missed her chance to become a douchebag vampire, and Agatha’s being nicer than I’ve ever seen her be to anyone. Is this why she doesn’t reply to my texts? Because they’re not idiotic enough?