Wayward Son - Rainbow Rowell Page 0,91
him. He’s got his hand fisted in Baz’s bloody shirt.
“It’s all right,” I say, “we’re all going to the same place.” Simon still won’t let go. Penelope and I half drag the two of them to the car. We get Baz in first, in the middle seat, and he hauls Simon in by the waist. Simon loses consciousness as soon as he’s off his feet. “We can go straight to the hospital,” I say.
Baz sneers at me. “Are you kidding? We’ll fix him with magic. We’ll fix it all with magic. Just get us out of here if you can.”
I can. The key fob is sitting in the console. And the car’s equipped with satellite navigation. I run around and get in the front seat. “How were you guys casting spells at all? In a Quiet Zone?”
“There were Normals in the desert,” Penelope says. “Not close—but close enough.”
Their magic comes back full force almost immediately. That Quiet Zone was small. The vampires knew exactly what they were doing when they brought us there.
Penelope heals Simon first, leaning over the seat and clutching his wing.
“Where’s your gem?” Baz asks.
“I’ve got it.” She closes her eyes. “Good as new!”
Simon groans, stretching the wing, inadvertently knocking Penelope back into her seat.
She casts the spell three more times—on his head, his heart, his stomach.
I watch them in the rearview mirror. I know I should focus on the road, but this is spectacular.
Penelope reaches for Baz next, but he shrugs her off. “I’m full of lead,” he says. “I don’t know what will happen. I just need a drink.”
“We’ll be in cattle country soon,” I call back.
Baz nods. “I’ll wait.” He snags her hand. “Come here, Bunce.”
“I’m right as rain, Baz.”
“Don’t make me climb over Simon.”
Penelope sighs, leaning over the seat, and Baz holds his wand to her mouth. “Kiss it better!”
“Basil, that’s a family spell!”
“Hush,” he says, kissing her cheek. He wipes the blood from her mouth with his sleeve. His arm is shaking. “You okay?”
She’s tearful. She nods.
“Do you have anything left for Agatha?”
“Of course.”
Penelope sits back in the seat and gently touches Agatha’s face. I can’t hear the spell.
* * *
Baz drinks a cow.
Simon’s still asleep.
Agatha hasn’t said a word.
* * *
It’s a ten-hour drive to San Diego. Baz moves up front with me, casting spells on the car, I think. He looks like he took a bloodbath. I run into a Target in Reno to buy him fresh clothes. He cleans up in a gas station bathroom and comes out looking pale and affordable.
I’m nervous about being pulled over, even with his spells. “Will we dump the car? I’m sure we’ve been clocked somewhere.”
“We’re going to destroy this car,” Agatha says, speaking up for the first time. “And anyone who asks about it.”
Baz sighs. “Two thousand and eighteen. G-Class. Jade Green Metallic.”
I keep waiting for them to dump me, too. (I hope they wouldn’t destroy me at this point, after everything we’ve been through together. Then again, that’s probably why they’d destroy me.)
But when we finally get to Agatha’s apartment, and I’m standing down on the sidewalk wondering how I’m going to get back to Vegas, Baz holds the door open for me.
PROLOGUE
BAZ
We’re leaving for the airport in an hour—I should probably get out of the shower. I stretch, and what I hope is the last of the bullets breaks through the skin on my shoulder and clanks against the bottom of the bath.
I never, ever want to feel this way again. I don’t want to test the limits of this body, even if it might give me a better understanding of what I am.
We’ve spent the last day sleeping and eating and casting spells on each other. Agatha’s stuck to Penny like a little girl clinging to her mother on the tube. She’s coming back with us. Agatha. “Just to get my wand,” she says. “It doesn’t mean I’m staying.”
When I get out of the bathroom, Agatha’s friend Ginger is here to pick up her dog, that ridiculous little spaniel I stole back in London. Apparently Ginger is the one who introduced Wellbelove to the NowNext vampires, and she’s in a full pout that she hasn’t heard from them.
“Josh isn’t even replying to my texts,” Ginger says.
“Would you want him to? He abandoned you in Rancho Santa Fe.”
“So did you, Agatha!”
Bunce is standing behind Ginger, holding up her purple stone and silently offering to magickally befuddle her.
Agatha is shaking her head at both of them. “Ginger, I told you it