“Find some demons while laying low,” Vulture said. It was his way of conceding.
“The more we know about magic, the more equipped we’ll be to handle whatever comes at us,” Doomsday said.
“So both?” I asked. “How the hell will we do both?”
“Magic,” Vulture said, grinning.
Brynn, probably delirious, laughed with her whole body, her heels banging on the window glass.
“Shut the fuck up,” Thursday mumbled from inside the car. At least, that’s what I think he said. It’s what I would have said.
Thursday would have driven the whole way if we’d have let him, but his protestations were scarcely audible as we helped him up into the backseat. I took his place behind the wheel, Brynn took shotgun, and we ran away from the encroaching day.
* * *
I’ve spent most of my life in the flyover states, and their beauty is largely unmatched through the rest of the country. But sometimes the endless expanse is too endless.
I spent the full day driving. Vulture was nocturnal by choice, and he snored softly with his face against the glass. Thursday was wiped out. Doomsday was wanted for murder—more actively than the rest of us—and wasn’t excited about being the one who would get ID’d if we were pulled over.
Brynn could have taken a turn. I’m sure of it. But I didn’t want her to. She looked happy, sitting there in the passenger seat. She put her hand on my arm and left it there for a long time, and that settled that: I wanted to be the driver.
I drove all day.
I used to think I was going to end up a trucker. When I first started hitchhiking ten years back, I’d been eighteen and I’d fallen in love with basically every lady trucker I’d met. Even when that thing happened when I was nineteen where I had to stab a man trucker in the hand, even after that I’d assumed I’d wind up a trucker.
Open road, solitude, books on tape, decent pay. Who wouldn’t want to be a trucker?
By the time I was old enough for the job, I didn’t want it. Mostly because I didn’t want any job. I’d found my niche as a wanderer, and driving on some company’s schedule just wasn’t going to suit me.
Still, I was pretty sure I was one hell of a long-haul driver.
* * *
We crossed into Montana and I kept driving. Glacier National Park is probably the single most beautiful place in the country and I figured we’d get to sleep there—blend in with the tourists at some campground—if I just kept at it.
We made it halfway across the state. I was on a side highway, avoiding the interstate because the occasional small-town speed trap seemed like a better bet than the highway patrol, who might have had an all-points to look for us.
Some British man was narrating a fantasy book at us from the stereo—Vulture’s doing—and the sun was just starting to get low. Brynn was asleep. Everyone in the backseat was quiet, hadn’t said a word in an hour. The sun was just starting to look a little low on the horizon.
I nodded off.
I came to, halfway into the oncoming lane, and corrected. There was no traffic to run into, just an endless stretch of Montana highway. I slapped myself—it’s usually good for ten minutes or so—and made a mental note to pull off at the next exit, switch drivers.
I nodded off again.
I’d never crashed a car in my life.
When I came to probably half a second later, I was in the wrong lane again. Fully this time. Startled, I corrected, fast, and saw myself headed real quick toward running off the right side of the road. So I corrected again. Still wasn’t thinking. Way too fast. The car went up on two wheels, and my vision got choppy.
Blackness.
The sunset streaming through the window, with the road where the sky should be.
Blackness.
Maybe I screamed. Maybe someone else screamed.
Where’s the reset button? Like I was a kid again, playing Nintendo. Just hit the reset button. Start over from the last save.
No, it’s actually happening.
Blackness.
Then it was over. We were twenty feet off the left-hand side of the road. The car was upright again—we’d spun a full 360. The windshield was fucked. A beautiful spiderweb of fucked, with trees in the distance that I could see through the kaleidoscope of fucked.
Guess the car didn’t have air bags. What year did air bags get to be standard?
Thursday’s voice cut through the white noise that I hadn’t even noticed. “Doomsday?”
“Yeah.”
“Vulture?”
“I’m fine.”
“Brynn?”
“Alive.”
I freaked out. Just started gasping for air.
“Danielle?”
I’d rolled the car.
I’d almost killed Brynn.
“Danielle?”
“Fine.” I answered because I wanted to be left alone and answering seemed like the fastest way to accomplish that. I took off my seat belt—thank fuck we’d all been wearing seat belts. Even the people sleeping—even the other people sleeping—had been wearing seat belts. I opened the door and tried to stand, but my legs gave out and I collapsed in on myself.
“Danielle,” Brynn said. She was next to me, crouching, her arm around me.
“I fucked up,” I said, fighting for air. “I don’t need anything. I’m the one who . . .” I gave up trying to talk. I got my head between my knees and I retched out gasps. No tears, though. Not yet.
Vulture knelt down on the other side of me, put his arm around me too. I lifted my head up to see him. Wet blood smeared across his brown skin.
“You’re bleeding,” I said.
“I’m fine. Just cut up my arm a little, nothing deep.”
“I fell asleep.”
“We’re alive.”
Vulture pulled aside the shoulder strap of my tank top. “Hey,” he said, “my stitches held!”
“Got to get this thing away from the road before anyone drives by,” Thursday said. “Into the trees.”
Vulture glared at his friend, but Thursday was right. We didn’t want to deal with cops or ambulances or any of that shit.
Brynn tried to help me up, but I shook her
