“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?”