“Right. I, uh —” Call reached down and grabbed Miri out of the sheath on his belt. Metal had earth magic properties. “Sorry,” he said, and plunged the knife into ghostly Rufus.
Rufus disappeared with a pop, like a burst bubble.
Tamara screamed.
“I didn’t kill him, did I?” Call said, looking around at everyone’s shocked faces. Only Havoc seemed unmoved. He’d gone back to sleep.
“No,” Jasper said. “It’s just, most people just use the earth power to shut down the connection. But I guess that’s a lot of restraint to expect from you, weirdo.”
“I am not a weirdo,” Call grumbled, sheathing his blade.
“You’re a little weird,” Aaron said.
“Oh, yeah, well, who lost their protective rock?” Call demanded. “Who forgot to transfer it to their new clothes?”
Tamara groaned in frustration. “That’s how the mages found us! Jasper, did you?”
Jasper held up his hands, flummoxed. “That’s what that rock was? No one told me!”
“Now isn’t the time to worry about this,” Aaron insisted. “We made some mistakes. The important thing is that we hide from the mages as best we can.”
Call went to pull the car back onto the main road, when he realized the engine had stalled out.
Aaron had to spark the wires all over again, while they held their collective breaths, since there were no more cars to take if the Morris conked out on them. A few moments later, though, Aaron had it running once more.
Tamara didn’t have any more stones, so they took turns passing around the ones they had, so the mages might not scry the right person at the right time.
Call drove for the rest of the day and through the night, with the other kids sleeping in shifts. Call didn’t sleep, though. At each rest stop, he acquired more and more coffee until he felt as though his head was going to spin around like a top and then pop right off.
The landscape had changed, becoming more mountainous. The air was cooler, and pine trees took the place of mulberry and dogwood.
“I could drive for a while,” Tamara offered, coming out of a Gas and Grub in Maine. Dawn was breaking by then and Call had been caught at least once driving with a single eye open.
Aaron had bought a Butterfinger and a Honey Bun and was mashing the candy bar into the pastry to make a bizarre sugar hot dog. Call approved. Jasper ate pretzels and stared.
“No,” Call said, taking a swig from his coffee. One of his eyes twitched a little, but he ignored it. “I’ve got this.”
Tamara shrugged and handed the directions to Jasper. It was his turn to navigate.
“I refuse,” Jasper said, taking a long look at Call. “You need to sleep. You’re going to drive into a ditch and we’re going to die, all because you won’t take a nap. So take a nap!”
“I’ll set an alarm,” Tamara offered.
“I could stretch my legs,” said Aaron. “Go ahead. Lie down in the backseat.”
Now that they mentioned it, Call was feeling kind of fuzzy-headed. “Okay,” he said, yawning. “But just for twenty minutes. Dad used to say that that was the ideal amount of time for a nap.”
“We’ll take Havoc for a real walk,” Tamara said. “See you in twenty.”
Call climbed into the backseat. But when he closed his eyes, what he saw was Master Rufus, his eyes going wide as Call drew Miri and stabbed the image of him. His expression had reminded Call of the way his father had looked, right before Call used magic to slam him against a wall.
Despite being exhausted, Call couldn’t stop his brain from showing him those images over and over again.