engine a little faster. When he took the same turn, the vehicle was still in view, the gunmetal-gray paint shining in the mid-morning sunlight a little more than a block ahead of us.
I let out my breath, and it snagged in my throat on my next inhale at a flash of color in the side mirror. Craning my neck, I spotted that baby blue compact taking the turn after us. Uneasiness itched at me. “I think someone might be tracking us.”
Thorn glanced back, his lips slanting into a deeper frown. “It appears to be just a driver, no passengers. I could deal with them if need be.”
I squinted at the figure, but between the light reflecting off the windshield and the pale hood pulled low over the driver’s forehead, I couldn’t even tell whether it was a man or a woman. “It only took one person to bring a whole squad down on us last night,” I reminded him.
“Let’s not jump to any conclusions yet,” Ruse suggested. The minivan veered right, and several seconds later he copied the maneuver. I exhaled slowly—and here came that blue car, following us again.
The incubus’s mouth twisted. “Okay, maybe we should start jumping now.”
“We can’t keep following the van with someone else following us,” I said. “No one’s seen who we are yet, but the more obvious it becomes what we’re doing, the more likely they’ll sound the alarm.”
Ruse gave the wheel another beat of his fingers and made a pleased sound at the sight of the van’s turn signal going on. We were coming up on a major throughway, four lanes with plenty of traffic as commuters headed to work. The incubus ignored the left turn lane the minivan had pulled into and drove straight ahead.
Thorn grunted in dismay. “What are you doing?”
“Just watch. Ah, here he comes.”
The blue car stayed on our tail. Ruse sailed through the intersection and halfway down the next block, and then swerved with a jerk of the wheel into a gas station.
“Ooof.” My chest jarred against the seatbelt I thankfully had on this time. Not that my ribs were thanking it.
I clutched the edge of the seat as Ruse tore through the gas station between the rows of pumps and out onto a different street. The engine roaring now, he careened into the next right, cut across the parking lot outside a print shop, and flung us around through a couple more hasty turns. Then, with one final squeak of the tires, we flew out onto the large street the minivan had turned onto.
And wouldn’t you know it, there was the damned thing still only a block ahead.
Ruse chuckled. “Thank the dark for rush-hour traffic. Any sign of our hanger-on?”
I studied the view beyond the back window for several seconds as we cruised after the minivan. The baby blue sheen should have stood out in the sea of black and silver, but I didn’t spot it. A weird choice for a stealth mission, really. Knitting my brow, I swiveled toward the front again.
“You lost them—but maybe they just happened to be taking the same route and weren’t after us anyway. They didn’t seem all that on the ball.”
“Doesn’t really matter as long as they’re not behind us now. Let’s see where Meriden is off to.”
We skirted the edge of downtown, coming within ten blocks of the apartment building we’d crashed in—and then crashed through—not long ago. The minivan took a few more turns before ending up in the docklands, where aging factories loomed on either side of the streets and the smell of algae seeped into the air conditioning. The river that wove through the east end of town used to be a major shipping route before the manufacturing industries had started moving overseas.
With much less traffic on these streets, Ruse had dropped back to a couple of blocks behind the minivan. I stirred restlessly in my seat. How long a road trip were we on, exactly? And why hadn’t I brought more snacks to—
The minivan jerked to a halt by the curb. A skinny figure topped with gleaming black hair scrambled out and darted out of sight between two of the buildings.
Thorn cursed. “Go! We have to see where he went.”
The second the minivan had pulled away, Ruse hit the gas. We jolted back in our seats as he sped over. When he passed the last side-street before the drop-off spot, Thorn vanished, presumably rushing off through the shadows to track the man where the car