Finally, Max turned off the ignition.
As soon as he did, I unbuckled my seatbelt so quickly I could have given myself whiplash. I jumped out of the car.
“Slow down,” he snapped as he got out, closed the door, locked the car, and joined me on the pavement. He was frowning. Of course he was frowning – when did Max smile? Oh, when he wanted to melt my heart. But that was criminally infrequent.
I kept pushing up onto my tippy-toes, trying to spy more of the buildings around me. I pointed to them. “Where the heck are we?”
“Across town.”
I frowned. Boy did I frown. My lips could have cut lines across my chin. I looked at him sharply. “But we’re only 10 minutes from the hospital. And I may not be too familiar with Bane City, but I know that hospital. You may be a fairy,” I let my voice drop, “but your car isn’t.” I reached out a hand and patted the hood. “So I’m going to ask once more – how the heck did we get here so fast?”
“Weren’t paying attention during the drive, were you?” he commented, eyes narrowing.
Blushing, I decided to give in and shrugged my shoulders. “Nope, I was a little distracted by—” I stopped myself before I could say a Scottish moorland. I shrugged. “I was thinking of Fagan,” I lied.
This thawed Max off a little, and he tipped his head low. “If you had been paying attention, you would have seen that when I turned down Nation Street, I went through the tunnel.” His voice twisted on the word tunnel.
“And?”
“You really weren’t paying attention, were you?” he admonished as he went with his go-to move, crossed his arms, and leaned against the car.
Had I been so distracted by that glorious sunshine that I’d missed our car transporting from one side of the city to the other?
I let my shoulders cave. “Okay, just tell me – what did I miss?”
“Nothing,” he said, a broad smile spreading across his cheeks.
Crap – had Max been playing with me?
As a scandalized expression spread across my face, Max unhooked his arms and nodded forward. “With the right kind of car and sufficient knowledge of magic, you can use the tunnel to transport anywhere in Bane City.”
I blinked rather frantically. “You can? Isn’t that… I don’t know, kind of magically expensive?” I let my voice drop all the way down low as I said the word magically.
“It’s okay, Chi,” Max leaned in, matching my conspiratorial tone, “most of the people along this street are witches.”
I stiffened as he said that – because he said the word witches with an entirely normal pitch, his usually loud brogue reverberating down the street.
There were two older women walking with shopping baskets in their hands, and they were well within earshot. They did not, however, turn on their feet and call Max a madman.
They ignored him completely.
My eyebrows locked together. I didn’t know that much about magic, but I knew that it was mostly secret. You got into trouble if you spread news about it, too. From what I’d read in my grandmother’s journals, you got into the kind of trouble that knocked on your door at night and didn’t stop knocking until it broke your kneecaps.
The magical races of the world required their anonymity to continue to live freely. If they lost that anonymity because some stupid upstart started wagging her tongue about witches and clairvoyants – they’d get their retribution. Violently, quickly, and with a few magical crackles for good measure.
I pressed closer to Max. Was it my imagination, or did his pupils dilate just a fraction?
I cleared my throat. “You better not be playing with me, Max. Are all the people around here honestly witches?” I ticked my head from left-to-right, letting my gaze sweep across the street.
It locked on a young boy walking along with his hands in his pockets. I pointed him out with a flourish of my hand. “Ha – he can’t be a witch. He’s a boy!”
“You know nothing,” he admonished. “Yes, he’s a witch. It’s not only women who are witches.”
My nose scrunched up. “It isn’t?”
He just shook his head and looked disappointed in me, even if his expression looked half faked and mostly for fun.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and shrugged me forward. “This way. We are running out of time,” he said, his tone and mood changing completely.
A second ago he’d been playing with me, goading me, pretending I was pathetic for knowing nothing about the magical world. Now? Now he reminded me exactly why I was here.
My heart sank, my hands became sweaty as I locked them into tight fists behind me, and I hurried along after him.
I couldn’t say this street looked any different to any other street in any other city I’d ever seen. It was wide, there were parked cars along the curb, and there were buildings with shops and cafés and businesses. And the people? They looked pretty normal. Though most of them appeared to be wearing more jewelry than you usually saw, that was the only distinguishing feature. And hey, maybe there’d been a fantastic jewelry sale at a local store. Having more bling was not incriminating evidence when it came to distinguishing the magical world.
I scurried after my fairy down the street until he hooked a right into a café. Even from the outside, I could tell it was funky. Instead of the standard metal tables and chairs, there were old retro recliners, and the tables were made out of packing crates that had been tied together with rope.
The clientele was equally edgy, and I caught sight of the menu as I shifted past. It was a fusion of health food and taste.
I
