out the window.
In a perfect world, I’d have hit something. This isn’t a perfect world. The shoe flew wild, landing on the sidewalk. “Damn it. Give me something else.”
May interrupted, shouting, “Toby, the sign says ‘stop’!”
“Don’t stop!”
“But the sign—”
“If you stop, I will kill you myself!” I shouted, flinging several empty soda cans and Connor’s other shoe into the street. May gave me a panicked look, but didn’t slow down. The kids saw what I was doing and cheered. Then they rolled down the back windows, starting to throw anything that wasn’t nailed down out of the car. This wasn’t the sort of thing I would’ve normally encouraged, at least in part because it would have caused their parents to kill me, but these were definitely special circumstances. A little lifesaving misbehavior seemed like exactly what we needed.
Spike hissed and fled to the front seat when an overenthusiastic child tried to pull it out of Jessica’s lap, having sensibly recognized the rose goblin as something that would cause a lot of damage if thrown. Jessica glared at the kid, removed her one remaining shoe, and pitched it out the window. That was promising; it was the first real action I’d seen her take since we got out of Blind Michael’s lands.
Maybe it was the combination of our speed and the objects flying out of the car, or maybe it was just sheer, dumb luck. Whatever the reason, we made it through the intersection just ahead of a turning Metro bus. So did the first Rider. The second Rider didn’t. The sound of crashing metal has never been that sweet.
The last Rider was still behind us, and we were running out of things to throw; we needed to lose him. To make matters worse, the excitement was starting to wear off for the children, and it was being replaced by fear. I could hear whimpers starting under their continued giggles. Kids get upset easily. They also recover fast, but that doesn’t make it a fair trade.
I threw the last of the cans out the window, demanding, “How are we supposed to get rid of this guy?”
“I don’t know!” snapped Connor.
“Then what good are you?” I threw a bad paperback romance out the window, followed by my trash bag from the week before.
“Toby? Toby?”
“Shut up, May!”
“Um . . .”
I turned toward her, glaring. “What is it?”
She had time to whimper, “Hill,” and then we were going down, fast. Very, very fast. I looked in the rearview mirror and saw the last Rider pulling his steed to a halt at the top of the hill, staring. He wasn’t dumb enough to follow. Lucky us, we were already committed.
“Turn! Turn!” I shouted. The kids weren’t whimpering anymore—most of them were cheering like wild things. The few that had the sense to be scared were screaming, but the screams were almost indistinguishable from the cheers.
San Francisco was built on a series of hills. I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. Some of them are steep enough that sane people won’t drive down them even at a normal pace; they go around instead, using the side streets with gentler inclines. Yet here we were, plummeting down one of the tallest hills in the city at a speed so ludicrous that I was willing to bet we were close to breaking a record. Slowing down would have been suicide. The brakes weren’t good enough, and parts of the car simply wouldn’t stop.
“Turn where?” wailed May. Connor was staring at the street as it unspooled ahead of us, all the blood drained from his cheeks. He looked terrified. I couldn’t blame him.
“Find a smaller hill! Turn!” We could lose some speed by turning. The car probably wasn’t going to recover—the damage to the engine had been done—but we might still be able to save ourselves if we could slow down enough.
May wrenched us hard to the left, and this time the car did lift up onto two wheels before dropping back to the ground with a bone-jarring thud. The shocks weren’t going to like that. The brakes probably weren’t too happy about it either.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” said an unhappy voice from the back.
Privately, I agreed. Out loud I said, “Try to wait, okay? Let us stop the car first.”
“How do I stop the car?” May demanded.
“Start slowing down!” The hill was tapering off, and we’d stopped gaining speed; there was a chance that we’d be able to decelerate enough to keep