Pushing a fucking car, though. That I could do. Vulture and I were tied for being the smallest, but no one made any suggestion that I should get back behind the wheel. Doomsday got in and steered while the rest of us pushed, and we got it into what was probably a tree farm. The trees were in those unnaturally perfect rows and I was sure the car wasn’t completely hidden, but with any luck we’d gotten it far enough from the road that it looked like it was supposed to be there. A few cars went by while we were doing it, but none of them slowed down.
“What’s next?” Doomsday asked, getting out.
“Get the VIN numbers off,” Thursday said.
“It’s just VIN,” Vulture corrected. “Vehicle Identification Number. Like ATM machine or PIN number or whatever.”
“Fuck off.”
“There’ll be a plate on the dash, that’s easy,” I said, cutting in. “But it’ll also be stamped into the frame a few places. We’d need a pretty serious file to get it out, even if we can get to all the VIN numbers without taking the thing apart.”
They talked it over for a moment, then Thursday pried the metal tag off the dash while Vulture and Brynn took off the plates. Close enough for government work, I guess.
Me, I leaned against the back of the car. I tried not to take stock of what condition the car was in, but the windows were all busted out and the roof was caved in on the back corner.
“You alright?”
It was Doomsday. Probably the least emotional of the five of us. Strangely, that helped.
I put my hand on the massive dent on the roof. “If we’d landed anywhere else . . .” I said.
“We didn’t.” Doomsday pulled out a cigarette, lit it, took a drag.
“You smoke?” I asked.
“Not usually,” she said. “Used to more. Still keep a pack around. But . . . I could use a cigarette. You did almost just kill us all.”
“I’m not going to say ‘don’t remind me.’”
“I probably won’t again. You know what you did, and you’ll mostly get over it, and there isn’t one of us who’s anywhere near as mad at you as you are.”
“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t smoke either. “Can I have a cigarette?”
“I don’t bum cigarettes out to nonsmokers.”
* * *
It’s hard to hitchhike with five people. Under normal circumstances, the thing to do would have been to split up into two groups. But these obviously weren’t normal circumstances.
To make things even more fun, we had to get a ride before the cops stopped us and ran our names. None of us had any idea if there were warrants out for us yet, but none of us wanted to find out the hard way.
Five people and luggage. Brynn, Vulture, and I had travel packs. The Days had decent-sized suitcases. All of them were covered in glass, and Vulture’s yellow pack was now replete with bloodstains.
“Alright,” Doomsday said, dropping her cigarette from her lips, letting it fall to the ground where she stomped it out with a heeled boot. “Gather ’round. Hold hands. Got a ritual for this hitchhiking shit.”
We were still in the woods, hidden from the road. I took Vulture’s hand and Brynn’s hand, and the five of us formed a little pentagon.
“You say what I say,” Doomsday said, “but like, in a round. I’ll say a line, then Thursday, you say that line while I say the next one. Then Brynn, Danielle, Vulture. You say the line the person on your left said the last time. After I say the fifth line, you all go on without me, until Vulture says the last line alone. Anyone fucks it up, we just start over. First time I tried this method, I fucked up every line once. It’s not a big deal. Got it?”
“Got it,” we said back. We began.
“We ask for good strangers.”
“We ask for the barrow to send what it may.”
“We ask that ill eyes pass us over.”
“We ask for the dead to guard us.”
“We ask that sorrow be held at bay.”
It took us about four rounds to get it right. It’s hard to listen to what someone is saying while you’re talking, but not as hard as I would have thought. I’m glad I was never the one to fuck up—I don’t know how well I could have handled any more failure.
I felt the energy pass between our hands. A subtle thing. The kind of thing I might have felt before I’d seen magic. But after Vulture said the last line, a silence fell over us and a wind picked up. A gyre spun itself between us, the same direction as our ritual, then spun outward through the trees.
Then that silence.
“So . . .” I asked at last. “The fuck did we just do?”
“It’s nothing,” Doomsday said. “Just a spell for good luck with strangers, keeping people who would hurt us away.”
“And all that shit about the barrow and the dead?”
“I don’t know the spell too well. I think Barrow is the name of the endless spirit it appeals to. He’s a death spirit, I guess, but that’s not what the ritual is about.”
“Yeah, great. What could go wrong?”
* * *
An SUV picked us up, not ten minutes after we’d been waiting. For those keeping score at home, neither being picked up by an SUV nor so quickly is common. I mean, both have happened to me before, but usually not while hitching with five people, two of them being people of color and men besides. Oh, and Brynn had that face tattoo. And Doomsday was a bona fide cop-killing, husband-killing murderer.
I actually can’t blame anyone who drove past the five of us though, no matter what their car. No one wants to be outnumbered by strangers in their own
