Wayward Son Read online

  “Surely, that’s tan.”

  * * *

  We never would have found the house again if Penny weren’t sitting out on the kerb in front of it. She stands up when she sees us and climbs into the car before we’ve fully stopped or opened the door, falling flat into the back seat.

  “Sorry, Bunce. Snow was driving in circles.”

  “All the streets in this neighbourhood are circles!”

  Penny’s covering her face. “Let’s go.”

  I crank around in my seat. “But I want to meet Micah!”

  “You’ve met Micah.”

  “Also I have to use the loo.”

  “Just drive, Simon!”

  “I should probably drive,” Baz says.

  He gets out, and I crawl over, leaning into the back seat to look at Penny. “Are you okay?”

  She rolls onto her stomach.

  “I’m sorry we left you sitting outside,” I say. “Was he not there?”

  Her voice is muffled. “I don’t want to talk about it, Simon.”

  Baz drives us out of the cul-de-sac. “Let’s talk about where we’re going instead.”

  “To the loo,” I say.

  “San Diego,” Penny says.

  * * *

  Baz takes me to a Starbucks to use the facilities, and when I come out—with a massive rainbow-striped Frappuccino—he’s shouting at Penny: “Thirty-one hours to San Diego?!”

  “That can’t be right,” Penny says. “That’s like driving from London to Moscow. Let me see.” Baz has been looking at her phone, and she takes it back. “But it’s the same country,” she says.

  “I thought we wanted a road trip,” I say, getting in the car.

  “Three hours is a road trip,” Baz says. “With a nice picnic break in the middle. This is three days of driving—and we only have seven days left before we fly home.” He sneers at Penny. “‘We’ll just stop in Chicago on the way to San Diego,’ she said.”

  Penny is still looking at her phone. “How was I to know that all these middle states are each the size of France? I’ve never even heard of Nebraska.”

  “Well, we’re going to spend a full day there,” Baz says, “so you’ll know it now.”

  Three days on the road doesn’t sound so bad to me. These trips always take a long time in films—time for people to have adventures along the way. You can’t have an adventure in three hours. (I mean, I have. But I’m a pretty extreme case.)

  Baz has stopped glaring at Penelope and started glaring at me. “What on earth are you drinking, Snow?”

  “A Unicorn Frappuccino.”

  He frowns. “Why’s it called that—does it taste like lavender?”

  “It tastes like strawberry Dip Dab,” I say.

  Penny’s grimacing at Baz. “For heaven’s snakes, Basil, I can’t believe you know what unicorns taste like.”

  “Shut up, Bunce, it was sustainably farmed.”

  “Unicorns can talk!”

  “They’re only capable of small talk; it’s not like eating a dolphin.”

  Baz takes my Frappuccino and sucks down a huge gulp. “Disgusting.” He hands it back to me. “Not like unicorn at all.”

  He pushes up his sunglasses to rub his eyes. They look sunken and shadowed.

  “Are you thirsty?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I’ll run in and get a cup of tea.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant. But I’m not going hunting in the suburbs at midday.”

  “We could get a sandwich,” I say.

  “I’m fine, Snow.”

  “All right, but I’d still like a sandwich.”

  * * *

  Baz says it’s safe for me to drive on the motorway. “It’s easier than driving in town.” He’s right—though merging into traffic at fifty miles per hour is fairly terrifying, and I do something that makes the engine whine like a dog.

  But then we’re out on the road, and it’s cracking. With the top down, driving feels almost like flying, warm wind in our hair and against our skin. My T-shirt is flapping, and Baz’s black hair whips around his face like a flame.

  Penelope is still lying across the back seat. I can tell something’s wrong and also that she doesn’t want to talk about it. She hasn’t touched her sandwich. I can only guess that she and Micah got into a row.

  14

  BAZ

  Something is very wrong with Bunce. She’s collapsed in the back seat like a dead rabbit. But I can’t really focus on it because of the sun and also the wind and because I’m very busy making a list.

  Things I hate, a list:

  1. The sun.

  2. The wind.

  3. Penelope Bunce, when she hasn’t got a plan.

  4. American sandwiches.

  5. America.

  6. The band, America. Which I didn’t know about an hour ago.

  7. Kansas, also a band I’ve recently become acquainted with.

  8. Kansas, the state. Which isn’t that far from Illinois, so it must be wretched.

  9. The State of Illinois, for fucking certain.

  10. The sun. In my eyes.

  11. The wind in my hair.

  12. Convertible automobiles.

  13. Myself, most of all.

  14. My soft heart.

  15. My foolish optimism.

  16. The words “road” and “trip,” when said together with any enthusiasm.

  17. Being a vampire, if we’re being honest.

  18. Being a vampire in a fucking convertible.

  19. A deliriously thirsty vampire in a convertible at midday. In Illinois, which is apparently the brightest place on the planet.

  20. The sun. Which hangs miles closer to Minooka, Illinois, than it does over London blessed England.

  21. Minooka, Illinois. Which seems dreadful.

  22. These sunglasses. Rubbish.

  23. The fucking sun! We get it—you’re very fucking bright!

  24. Penelope Bunce, who came up with this idea. An idea not accompanied by a plan. Because all she cared about was seeing her rubbish boyfriend, who clearly cocked it all up. Which we all should have expected from someone from Illinois, land of the damned—a place that manages to be both hot and humid at the same time. You might well expect hell to be hot, but you don’t expect it to also be humid. That’s what makes it hell, the surprise twist! The devil is clever!

  25. Penelope “Girl Genius” Bunce.

  26. And all of her stupid ideas. “Good for us all,” she said; all I heard was “good for Simon.” Crowley … Maybe she was right … Look at him. He’s as happy as a pig in mud. As happy as someone who’s suffering under the “A pig in mud” spell—which I’ve considered casting on him numerous times over the last six months. Because I’m just so tired, and I don’t how to—I mean, there’s nothing— There’s no fixing him.

  27. The Mage. May he rest in pain.

  28. Penelope—for maybe being right, about Simon. And America. And this wretched convertible. Because just look at him.…

  Off the sofa, out of the flat. Over the ocean, under the sun.

  Simon Snow, it hurts to look at you when you’re this happy.

  And it hurts to look at you when you’re depressed.

  There’s no safe time for me to see you, nothing about you that doesn’t tear my heart from my chest and leave it breakable outside my body.

  * * *

  Simon looks over at me. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I say.

  “What?!” he shouts. He can’t hear a thing I’m saying over the wind and the engine and the classic rock.

  “I hate this fucking car!” I shout back. “The sun is burning me! I might actually catch fire, at any moment!”

  The wind is blowing Simon’s hair straight, and he’s squinting—from the sun and from all the smiling. “What!” he shouts at me again.

  “You’re so beautiful!” I shout back.

  He turns the radio down, so now there’s just the wind and
the engine noise to shout over. “What’d you say?!”

  “Nothing!”

  “Are you okay? You look peaky!”

  “I’m fine, Snow—watch the road!”

  “Do you want me to put the top up?!”

  “No!”

  “I’m putting the top up!” He reaches for the lever.

  “Wait!”

  There’s a metallic creak. I look back—the convertible hood has risen about six inches, then stopped.

  “We’ll do it manually!” Simon shouts. “When we pull over!”

  * * *

  The top of the car is well and truly stuck.

  Simon is kneeling in the back seat, yanking at it, and it won’t budge.

  “I don’t think you’re supposed to raise it while you’re driving,” I say.

  “But they always do it in music videos”—he yanks at the other side—“and Bond films.”

  I’m exhausted and sunburnt and starving. And about to walk into a shopping mall full of potential blood donors. One single upside of the convertible is that I can’t really smell Simon and Penny when we’re on the road.…

  Though I’m well accustomed to how they both smell when I’m thirsty. Simon smells like the kitchen after you pop popcorn and melt butter. There’s a singe to it, with a round, yellow, fatty feeling that sticks to the roof of your mouth. Bunce is sharper and sweeter—vinegar and treacle. She skinned her knee once, and my sinuses burned for hours.

  They probably wouldn’t like it if they knew I’ve thought about how they’d taste, but I just really believe I’m doing them service enough by not actually draining them. By not actually draining anyone. I am so thirsty right now, but I can’t do any hunting till the sun sets. So instead I’ll go and have dinner in a shopping mall, and everyone will live.

  “Come on, Snow,” I say. “The cheesecake awaits.” Bunce is already inside. She went straight into the restaurant, as soon as we parked the car.

  “We can’t just leave the top down,” he says. “Can you magic it up?”

  “Sure, I’ve got a dozen convertible-repair spells.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m joking. There’s not a spell for everything—did you forget them mentioning that every day at Watford?”

  Simon climbs out of the car. “Yeah, I really wish I would’ve paid more attention at magic school—maybe I could have been somebody.” I can hear the resentment in his voice, but when he turns to me, he starts to laugh.

  “What.”

  He looks away from me, covering his mouth.

  “What are you laughing at.”

  He looks down, but waves his hand at me. “You—your—”

  I refuse to look down at myself. “My what, Snow?”

  “Your hair.”

  I refuse to touch my hair.

  “You look like that guy, with the wig—” He mimes playing the piano. “Duh, duh, duh, duhhh.”

  “Beethoven?”

  “I don’t know his name. With the big wig. There was a film about him.”

  “Mozart. You’re saying I look like Mozart.”

  “You’ve got to look, Baz, it’s a scream.”

  I will not look. I turn towards the mall. I assume Snow follows.

  * * *

  I look like Mozart. I look like I’m in one of those hair metal bands. (I also look deeply, strangely sunburnt, but I don’t want to risk making that worse with magic.) I point my wand at my hair and cast, “Tidy up!” When that doesn’t do it, I dip my head in the sink.

  Fortunately I have the Cheesecake Factory men’s room to myself.

  I’d wanted to find a real restaurant for dinner. Surely, Des Moines, Iowa, has real restaurants. But Simon wanted something he’d heard of, something “famously American.” Once he spotted the Cheesecake Factory sign, there was no more discussion.

  By the time I leave the loo, I still look like I’m in an ’80s band—but something less metal. Bucks Fizz or Wham!. (My mum was a fiend for Wham!.)

  I find Snow and Bunce in a giant vinyl booth. Simon is hogging the breadbasket and paging through a menu so lengthy, it’s spiral-bound. Penny is sitting across from him; I’ve seen zombies with more spirit.

  “This menu’s staggering,” Simon says. “There’s a whole page of taco salads. They’ve got macaroni and cheese, regular or fried. And every kind of chicken—look, orange chicken.”

  I sit next to him. “What’s orange chicken?”

  “Does what it says on the tin, I assume.”

  When the waitress comes, I order a steak as raw as they’ll allow it. Snow orders the “American Burger.” Bunce says she’ll have “what they’re having.”

  “The burger or the steak?” the waitress asks.

  “Penny,” Simon says, “you don’t eat beef.”

  “Oh,” she says. “Then I’ll have the … I’ll have whatever people have.”

  “People like the Buffalo Blasts,” the waitress says.

  “Isn’t buffalo still beef?” Simon asks me.

  I shrug. I don’t know the first thing about buffalo.

  “They’re chicken,” the waitress says. “With buffalo sauce.”

  “Fine,” Penny agrees.

  “I suppose she can skip the sauce.…” Simon mutters after the waitress has walked away.

  I get that Bunce is in a catatonic state, but we really need to talk about our plan now. I need the old Bunce back. With the chalkboards and the diagrams. “So, about tonight,” I say, “I assume we don’t have a place to sleep.”

  Snow and I wait for her to answer. She’s staring at a spot between the breadbasket and Simon’s shoulder.

  “Right,” I say. “Hand over your mobile, Bunce, I’ll find us a hotel.… Bunce?… Penelope.” She looks up. “Your phone?”

  “It died in the car,” she says. “And I couldn’t charge it.”

  “Where’s your phone?” Simon asks me.

  “It doesn’t work out of the country.”

  “Why didn’t you switch it over?”

  Because I’m on my parents’ plan, and I didn’t want them to know I was leaving the country, which I don’t want to tell Simon. “Did you switch yours?” I say instead.

  “No. I figured you and Penny would.”

  Bunce is staring at her lap now.

  “Penelope?” Simon asks. “Are you okay?”

  “Clearly not,” I whisper.

  “Penelope?”

  “I want to go home,” she says abruptly.

  Simon sits back. “What?”

  “This was a mistake.” She’s looking more like her usual bold self, but with a manic edge I don’t like. “I didn’t think this through. I’m sorry.”

  “Can we do that?” I ask. “Our tickets—”

  “There’s got to be a spell to change them,” she says.

  “There isn’t a spell for everything,” Simon says unpleasantly.

  She shrugs. “Then we’ll buy new tickets.”

  I huff. “We already stole these!”

  Bunce won’t be discouraged: “Then you can buy us new ones, Baz—you’re rich.”

  It’s not like her to throw my money in my face. “I’m on an allowance,” I say, “and I can’t use my Visa. My parents don’t even know I’m here.”

  “Well,” she says, “my parents don’t know I’m here.”

  Simon looks hurt. “Why didn’t you guys tell your parents?”

  “Because this was a terrible idea, Simon”—Penny’s voice is breaking—“and they would have said no!”

  Simon drops his elbows on the table and his forehead on his hands. “Can we even pay for dinner?”

  “I’ll pay for dinner,” I say. “But I can’t pay for airline tickets. And we can’t just keep stealing. A youthful indiscretion is one thing—the Coven might overlook that. This is turning into a crime spree.”

  “It isn’t a crime spree!” Penny retorts. “We’re not robbing banks and murdering people.”

  “Yet!” I say.

  “I just—” Her c
hin is wobbling now. “I really thought this would work out. I thought—” She closes her eyes and opens her mouth, taking a deep breath, then sucks in her lips and exhales through her nose. It takes me a second to realize she’s trying not to cry. “I thought it would be different if I talked to him face-to-face. And it was. It was so different.”

  “You mean Micah?” Snow asks.

  “Of course she means Micah,” I say.

  Simon keeps prodding at her. “Did he break up with you?”

  “Uh, no.” Bunce’s voice is thready. “Apparently he’d already done that. And I just hadn’t got the message.”

  “Damn,” Simon whispers. We’ve both leaned back in the booth, like we’re trying to back away from the horror of this news. Like Bunce is suddenly contagious.

  And I know this makes me a shit, but my first thought is that Simon and I have been given a reprieve. Like the Grim Relationship Reaper came and accidentally took Penelope and Micah instead of us.

  15

  SIMON

  Penelope and Micah are going to get married, and Penny’s going to move to America and leave me alone—I’ve been bracing for it since sixth year.

  Penelope and Micah are sure of each other.

  I’ve never heard Penelope worry over whether Micah still loved her or loved her in the right way. I’ve never seen her crying about him in the hallway with her girlfriends. (Penny doesn’t really have girlfriends. She has Agatha, sort of. And her mum. She has me.…) Penelope and Micah never fight. He never forgets their anniversary. I don’t think Penny cares about anniversaries.

  When Penelope talks about Micah, she seems stronger, more rooted to the ground. She doesn’t blink. She doesn’t doubt. I’ve never heard her snipe at him, the way people do, for saying something harmless. I’ve never heard her say, “What does that mean?” Or “Why are you using that tone of voice?” I’ve never seen her roll her eyes when he’s talking—or breathe passive-aggressively, that breathing that means, “I’m so tired of you. Shut up shut up shut up.”

  I suppose I haven’t actually seen them together since fourth year. And they weren’t really in love then, they were just kids. Micah was a massive swot. All he wanted to do was study and talk about video games. Penelope liked him immediately—which is unheard of. I don’t think Penny liked me immediately. It was more like she took charge of me immediately. Like I was an easy mark. Maybe Micah was an easy mark, too. He followed Penny around Watford, practising spells and catching Pokémon and eating sesame seed sweets that his mum got from Puerto Rico and sent from Illinois. (They weren’t bad. Chewy.)