Wayward Son (Simon Snow, #2)(10)

“Room for your wings,” Baz comments.

“Oh, speaking of,” Penny says. “Let me freshen you up.” She holds up her ring hand. She’s got a bell hanging from her middle finger. “Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings!” she casts. Then she spins her hand around, ringing the bell and hissing, “I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it!”

I hear Baz take a sharp breath just as the magic hits me—with a much bigger oomph than it had back in our flat, when Penny tried this spell on me the first time. An icy feeling blooms between my shoulders.

“Great snakes, Bunce, that’s genius.” Baz’s eyebrows are at maximum up and down positions.

Penny shakes out her hand. “That was far more powerful than back home,” she says excitedly. “Do you think it’s because the phrases are of American origin? This could affect our whole vocabulary!”

“Does the second spell work as a blanket reversal?” Baz wants to know.

“I’m not sure yet,” she says. “It’s a pop song, so it’s unstable.”

“I can’t believe you tested an unstable spell on your best friend.…”

“Simon said I could!”

“… and I can’t believe he was angelic enough for it to work!”

“He’s sufficiently angelic for the purposes of the spell,” Penny says. “Magic understands metaphor.”

“Thank you, Bunce, I also completed first-year Magickal Theory.”

They keep talking, but I ignore them. Too busy pretending I’m Steve McQueen. I generally don’t go around thinking about how cool I look (I’m not Baz), but I feel like I must look very cool right now.

Penny is fiddling with the windscreen. “Watch!” She reaches over me to flip a switch on the dashboard. An engine whines, and the top of the car folds out of sight. “Magic,” she grins.

I’m grinning right back. This is brilliant. If I were by myself, I’d be making vroom, vroom noises.

Baz puts our bags in the boot, then comes around to the driver’s side; he’s the only one of us who can drive. “Shotgun,” I say, making my way into the passenger seat. I’ll get carsick if I ride in the back.

Penny practically crawls over me to get to the back seat, and Baz settles in, clicking his seat belt.

“Come on, Snow. Let’s see America.”



* * *



If I thought I looked cool behind the wheel, I wasn’t prepared for Baz.

I wouldn’t be able to look away from him, if there wasn’t so much else to take in. We’re headed out to the Chicago suburbs, where Micah lives. Nothing here is like anything I’ve ever seen before.

The roads are staggering—five lanes across, and full of massive vehicles. Everyone in America seems to drive a military transport. And there’s advertising everywhere, giant posters along the road, for just about everything. Pizza and lawyers and hair-growth supplements.

Baz acts like he does this every day. He’s completely relaxed, with one long, pale hand resting on the steering wheel and the other firmly managing the gear stick. He’s wearing light grey trousers, a white shirt cuffed just below his elbows, and a pair of sunglasses I’ve never seen before. His hair has got longer since we left school, and the wind is bringing it to life.

I still feel manky from the plane. I know I sweated through my T-shirt (sour, sitting-still sweat), and my jeans are too hot for Chicago in June. My hair’s longer these days, too, but only because I haven’t cared enough to get a haircut. I’m exactly the sort of thing Baz doesn’t bother with.

Penny climbs up between our seats to fuss with the radio. “Where’s the plug?”

Baz tries to elbow her back. “Put on your seat belt!”

“But I made a road trip playlist!”

“Are you trying to kill us all before we can listen to it?”

I turn on the stereo. It looks like it came with the car. “I think it’s just got a radio,” I say, fiddling with the dial. It makes a staticky wow-wow sound, just like in the movies. Maybe everything in America is just like in the movies.

“Can’t I plug in?” She’s still hanging between us.

“I don’t think so. I’ll try to find some music.” It takes me a second—you have to turn the dial really slowly and kind of trap the signal. I twist past people talking about politics and baseball, and find a station playing classic rock. “I think this is the best I can do.”

Penny sighs and flops back into her seat.

“Fasten your seat belt!” Baz shouts. He’s changing lanes now, and it’s a whole complicated dance—twisting in his seat, changing gears, and pumping one of the pedals. I’m glad we haven’t broken up yet, because then I never would have got to see it.





10





PENELOPE


We’ll be at Micah’s house soon.

I told him I was coming.

I called him last week—I said I was worried about Agatha and that Simon needed a holiday. And I told him that I miss him. “We’ll stop in Chicago first,” I said. “On the way.”

And then Micah said that probably wasn’t a good idea. That we should talk about it more.