last night,” she continued. “The Witches’ Duel. They were part of the trap.”
Asa and I glanced at each other. The thieves. For a moment I expected Asa to disappear again, leave me like he had in Elysium. But this time, he stood his ground.
“Were you?” Judith demanded. “Is that why that old cowboy came and left that bag you got?”
Mr. Jameson. They’d seen him leave the rations for me and wanted them for themselves.
“Look,” I said. “We were part of the plan, but we’ve been exiled now. We’re not part of that anymore, and I promise if you let us go you’ll never—”
“We were victims of circumstance!” Asa said. “Pawns in a cruel game! Gifted witches thrust out of Elysium when all we intended was to make things better. And look where it has gotten us! Please, ladies…” (“Ladies,” Judith chuckled.) “Do not give us your judgment. Give us your help!”
They looked at us.
“Frisk them,” said Zo.
Judith started with me. “I’ll be taking this,” she said, yanking the bag of rations out of my hands. She rifled through it as Zo held one gun on me and one on Asa. “Salt pork, biscuits, water. You think this is safe, Zo?”
“Better not risk it,” Zo said, a dark, cautious tone in her voice.
Judith shrugged; then she slammed the bag of rations on the ground and when the water from the burst rations leaked into the dust, I nearly cried. The one nice thing, the only thing I had.
She patted me down roughly. Then, one by one, she opened the pouches and looked in.
“Just a buncha dust and feathers,” she muttered.
“It’s one of those witch belts,” Zo said, holding her gun on Asa. “Take it anyway.”
My stomach lurched. Without that belt I was defenseless, and I knew they had magic too. Mr. Jameson had said so. I’d seen it. But how could I defend myself now with my hands over my head?
Judith took my belt and wrapped it around her chest like a bandolier. “What about this?” Judith said, pulling the Booke out of my pocket and holding it into the light.
“I dunno, see what it is,” said Zo.
Judith opened it and skimmed through it. My breath caught in my throat. Oh no, I thought. Not that. That book is my only hope out here.
“Some Russian book or something,” she said.
“You can keep that one,” said Zo.
The Booke is written in plain English… isn’t it? I wondered as she slipped it back into my pocket. Before I could think about that too much, though, she was finished with me, and Zo’s gun was in my face as Judith moved on to Asa.
She patted him down completely, even looking inside his hat, and as she did so, an elongated black tooth slipped down over his lip. I raised my eyebrows at him; he twitched and it was gone again.
“Well, what’ve we got here?” Judith had pulled something from his pocket that I’d never seen before: a piece of paper—no, a photograph with something written on the back of it. She left Asa standing there, arms still up, and showed the photograph to Zo.
“Tie them together and let’s get going,” she said, her eyes on Asa. “With the trap and now this, there’s no way the boss isn’t going to want to see them.”
Asa and I exchanged looks. With Zo’s guns on us and my belt gone, we had no choice but to stand as they tied our hands together with a length of rope from Judith’s pack. Then Zo put her guns to our backs and marched us out into the desert, leaving the ruined rations behind. But as we marched, I kept quiet. We were heading straight in the direction my penny had pointed.
They walked us all day and into the night, stopping once for food. This ended up being a giant grasshopper, which Zo shot through one huge, faceted eye and out the other. (“Surprisingly nutty,” Asa said with his mouth full. I had to close my eyes and pretend to be somewhere else to choke it down.) Judith, however, ate what looked like hardtack, and avoided the grasshopper altogether.
“I’m a vegetarian,” Judith said when Asa offered her a grasshopper leg. “Thanks, though. You’re pretty polite for a prisoner.”
Polite or not, as it turned out, Asa was surprisingly bad at traveling. He drank more than his share of water, ate quite a lot of food, and he had the tendency to quietly mimic the things the girls did. He didn’t mean