A Maze of Glass, Chapter Twenty One, Pt. 1
Jill and her remaining family—Karen and Dimitri Woeser and Eliot and Niveah Tims-Briar—entered Zoe’s latest rental vehicle—an SUV—at six in the morning. They’d exited the school through the rear and had crossed three suburban lawns before reaching the rendezvous. Zoe drove a small circuit through the immediate vicinity to search for spotters. She didn’t notice any, which didn’t necessarily mean they weren’t present.
From there, they took the fastest route out of Salem and west into wilder Massachusetts, making three planned detours along the way. At the first, barely speaking, the three harrow-eyed kids, ages eight, ten, and thirteen respectively, ate a cafe breakfast while the adults loaded up on carbs and coffee. They shared the meal in intense silence, the sort of quiet that festered through any haven that a stray word might destroy.
Zoe didn’t want to hear the questions echoing around in those skulls. She didn’t have answers for them any more than Leo had had an answer for her.
(I wish I had an answer to give you)
Chewing a piece of toast, Jill glared at Zoe across the breakfast table with a heat behind her gaze that jolted Zoe. It smacked her. Why didn’t we do this sooner? Jill glanced away, saying nothing, but Zoe heard the question. Jill wasn’t psychic, not even the way Darnell had been, but Zoe heard the question anyway. Maybe she’d read it in the burst capillaries fracturing Jill’s sclera. Maybe she’d felt it somehow in her stimulant-enhanced sixth sense. Either way, it echoed around inside of her unforgettably.
Why?
Because we had to disable the tracking and scrying spells. Because we had to sabotage the covens responsible. Because they’d charged the closest thing to a Death Curse that exists, anymore, and we had to know the target. Because…
Were those reasons, or just justifications?
Because we could only extract five people and I didn’t have the courage to make the call, myself. She left a hundred bucks on the table and went outside to wait for everyone else.
She wore a baseball cap, sunglasses, her armored leather jacket too damaged to consider ‘armored,’ anymore, ditto the pants, and worker’s boots. She stood out. Smoking a clove outside of a small restaurant that early in the morning, she stood out more.
Jill emerged from the restaurant as Zoe considered a second cigarette. Without speaking, she wrapped her arms over Zoe’s shoulders, around her neck, and pulled their bodies close. “Thank you,” she whispered. Zoe embraced her sister in return, her hug clumsier for the lighter and cigarette occupying her hands. They held on tight. “I know everything’s fucked but…thank you.”
Zoe nodded, her throat closed up by something she could not name.
When Jill pulled away, she wiped at bright red, tearless eyes and sniffled. “We should’ve listened to you and just…we shouldn’t have done the funeral.”
“It’s not wrong to want to bury someone.”
“Why do they care about this?” the hug drifted apart, Jill stepping back. “Why…us?”
“I don’t know.”
“No matter what happens next, no matter what happens with you and me and…” Jill swallowed, turning away. “You’ll make sure the kids are okay, right?”
“I vow it. May the secret and sacred energies connect us always.”
Jill smiled. It was a sad smile, but a smile nonetheless. “As above, so below.”
“As above, so below.” Zoe leaned back against the facade of the cafe and lit her second cigarette.
“Make sure you put that out before the kids see you.”
“I will.”
“They’re getting the check, now. I’m going to…wait in the car, I guess.”
“See you there.”
Jill wandered over to their spot in the parking lot and climbed inside. Zoe puffed through half of the clove before dashing the cherry against the side of the building. Only afterward did she notice the ‘No Smoking’ placard and the CCTV camera next to it. Shrugging, she followed Jill into the parking lot. Karen Woeser and the children left the cafe moments later.
Pulling away from their first stop, an animal impulse rattled through Zoe’s sixth sense—a prey reflex that told her a hunter lurked nearby. She picked out their tail easily in the early morning traffic; a gray, nondescript sedan with tinted windows followed them three car lengths behind. A second sensation hummed beneath the first. In the passenger seat, Jill seemed to understand that one better—lips pursed, she glanced sideways at Zoe and dipped her chin.
A spell, then.
Zoe figured they’d use a proper tracking ritual, something that allowed a coven to follow them closely over long distances. Jill had already warded everyone from the school against such spells, so the crew casting it would have to target either Zoe or the car. Or, if that tasked proved too resource-intensive, a particularly clever or tech-savvy coven might just hack the on-board GPS unit and trace them that way. Regardless, time became a factor.
Niveah Tims-Briar either had a naturally powerful sixth sense or a surprisingly well-trained one. While the younger children watched the windows and whispered to each other, Niveah fidgeted with her hands in her lap, wary eyes flicking up to watch Zoe and Jill or to glance at the rearview before flicking away again. She plucked at her skin. Zoe hoped the younger kids wrapped themselves tightly enough in their own anxieties not to notice the more accurate disquiet of their sister. She hoped they didn’t notice for long enough, at least.
Karen reached out a saffron-hued hand and wrapped Niveah’s. She nodded to the teenager. The teenager’s jaw clenched in response.
The tail followed them all the way to their next stop, a gas station just under a mile from where Zoe had killed the Belgian’s entire on-site team. Zoe pulled up to a pump and turned off the engine. The gray sedan rolled down the street, slowing down. They stopped at a sign at the end of the block, waiting. Climbing out to pump the gas, Zoe could imagine the frantic, whispered conversation inside the vehicle. They’d know they’d been made, by now. They’d have to decide whether to engage or retreat, report to other covens for backup or just call the police. In the meantime, the tracking spell tightened around them.
Zoe refilled the tank. She swiped a dead woman’s credit card and entered a dead woman’s pin number. Climbing back inside, she watched the gray sedan. She pulled up to the gas station exit with her hood angled as if to turn right.
A gap opened up in the growing traffic and Zoe gunned it, turning left.
“Is that them!?” one of the boys yelled from the back.
“Hold on tight!” Zoe shouted back. “The next five minutes are going to get bumpy!”
She swung right, tires whimpering on asphalt, the rear of the vehicle swinging wide. They rumbled over a hill of potholes already breaking the speed limit and still accelerating. The SUV bounced and shook. People getting ready for work ignored or shouted at them. A four-way-stop intersection appeared on the hilltop and Zoe spun the wheel again. Blowing through the stop sign, they came within a foot of hitting a sedan as they curved broadly left.
Elsewhere in the tight maze of suburban sidestreets, car horns blared.
Their tail was trying to catch up to them.
Turn Back
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