the gearshift for a second, then reached over and put the car in park for him.
“The highway almost killed us both,” Mox said. “You’re not allowed to pass out again.”
“Sorry, was that inconvenient for you?”
Mox was smiling as he opened the car door. He climbed out stiffly, likely sore from the metal rod Edda had hit him with. Sloane followed him. She felt tired but no longer dizzy.
Mox passed her a handful of coins, and she went to the main office to get them a room while he searched out a vending machine. It wouldn’t be safe to stay long with the car parked in plain sight, but they could get a few hours’ rest before leaving. She waited outside until Mox showed up with two bottles of water and a pile of snacks cradled against his stomach, and together they walked along the row of rooms to the one on the end.
The room was dark, thanks to few windows and the wood paneling on the walls, ceiling, and floor that made her feel like she was inside her own coffin. The bed was wide, with a dip in the middle. Sloane grimaced, went to the bed, and ripped the floral coverlet off. She stuffed it in the corner. Mox raised an eyebrow at her. Beneath the coverlet were white sheets that looked reassuringly starched.
“What?” she said. “They never wash the comforter, it’s disgusting. Don’t walk around barefoot either. Oh! And the phone—don’t touch the phone.”
He laughed. “I live in a warehouse and sleep on a pile of old blankets, remember?”
“Right,” she said. “Speaking of which. Why don’t you just . . . leave Chicago? Leave the country entirely?”
Mox dumped the food in a pile on the little table in the corner and drew the curtains closed. A whistle had all the lights in the room aglow.
“Before I learned to raise the army,” he said, opening one of the water bottles and taking a long drink from it, “I tried to leave. He followed me. And everyone I had spoken to—everyone who helped me—” He made a strangled noise and stopped talking.
“Oh.” Sloane crossed the room and set a hand, lightly, between his shoulder blades. “Is your back all right?”
“Don’t know,” he said.
She knew the smart thing would be to pull away. To refuse to play nurse, as she had in the beginning—unsuccessfully. But she couldn’t bear it. Her hands dropped to the hem of his shirt and she smoothed it up, exposing an expanse of pale skin, the bumps of his spine, the faint lines of his musculature. Very solid, she thought again.
“I should tell you—” he started, and then she saw it, the metal plates stark against his fair skin and climbing up his back. Their color was warm, something between copper and gold. It was a siphon.
Her cheeks were hot, and she was glad he couldn’t see them. She tried to focus. Nero had told her something about spine siphons. That people didn’t use them. She didn’t remember why, but she didn’t want to ask Mox to explain it—
“He placed it there. Nero,” Mox said, his voice low. “It means that when I’m near him, he has control over my magic. And only he can remove it.”
His skin was already discoloring where Edda’s metal rod had struck him high across his shoulders. But it hadn’t broken the skin. Sloane laid her hand on top of the siphon, the set of interlocking plates that imitated the shape and curvature of his vertebrae. They were flat, almost flush with his back, so they would be undetectable under clothing. The metal was warmed by his skin, and now hers.
“I was young. Barely more than a child,” Mox went on. “It can’t be placed without consent. But he told me it would help me—like a set of training wheels for my magic, to make it less overwhelming until I was ready for it—”
“I’m going to kill him,” she said evenly, and she stepped back, letting his shirt fall.
Mox looked over his shoulder at her. Her entire body was hot now, and burning, like acid was eating away at her chest. For Mox, this was when magic would come and level the little motel room even if he didn’t want it to. But Sloane had not felt this way in a long time, had always subsumed anger into some other emotion because the anger itself was too much to handle. She breathed in through her nose.