The man landed a fist on the back bumper, making the car fishtail as we sped away. Then he ran alongside us, almost keeping pace for a second or two, before we finally pulled ahead and left him in the middle of the road, doused in the faded red of our lights.

15

“It’s time for some bloody answers,” Tyler demanded as I put my shoes back on. I couldn’t disagree with him. “My love,” he said, holding my now-unconscious sister’s face in his hands. “You must wake up. You’ve got some explaining to do.”

“Would you let her rest?” Vivi said.

“No! I just saw my girlfriend murder a woman with a scalpel. And that man—that thing—its skin was scabby and rotting. No more excuses.”

“I don’t think being unconscious is an excuse, you twat.”

“Nor do I! So wake up!”

I turned around from where I sat in the front seat. “Let’s just calm down and debrief for a minute.”

“Oh, you want to debrief? You want to debrief? A murderous bull just crushed my esophagus, Little Hollow. I am not okay—and I am still not convinced this isn’t all an elaborate ploy to ruin my life,” Tyler said to a still-unconscious Grey. “Do you hear that, darling? I know what you’re up to.”

I sighed and turned back around. “Where are you taking us?” I asked the driver as he pulled onto the highway, heading north. He stared, dead-eyed, out the windshield, but he was under Grey’s spell, not mine, and had no interest in me. The inside of the car smelled like honey wine on the verge of turning to vinegar. The air was close, thick with blood and some invisible magic. I cracked a window to let in some fresh air and clear my heavy head.

How long would it be before someone realized our driver was missing? The Uber app was open on his phone. In the glove compartment was an assortment of things no doubt shoved in there before his shift started: three colored pencils, a pair of women’s sunglasses, a charging cable, and one pink and one purple hair bobble, each with fine blond hairs caught in the elastic.

“What if one of us has to pee?” Vivi asked. “Is he going to just . . . keep driving?”

“Now might be a bad time to mention that the hospital cafeteria sandwiches seem to be disagreeing with me,” Tyler said.

I thought about messaging my mother—but what would I say to her?

We’re driving north but I don’t know to where.

I don’t know how long we’ll be gone for.

A masked man is trying to kill us all.

Don’t stress.

In the end, my phone died in my hand before I could send anything. Maybe it was better that way. Cate would be sleeping in her lonely room in London, dreaming of a time before her children disappeared.

Peeing didn’t end up being a problem. We ran out of fuel less than two hours after our escape, not far past Northampton. The car rolled to a sputtering stop on a quiet street next to a field hemmed by a low fence. It was the early hours of the morning. No one else was around. The driver, still under Grey’s spell, got out of the car, left the lights on and his door open, and started walking along the side of the road.

“Hey!” I shouted as I ran after him. “Hey, where are you going? Are you just going to leave us here?” Even when I grabbed his arm and tried to stop him, the man kept his pace. Mouth slightly open, eyes unfocused. I let him go, let him sink into the waiting dark.

“Excuse me, I’m going to go and shit in the woods like an animal,” Tyler said as he hopped over the fence and wandered into the field.

“Charming,” Vivi said. “You can really see why Grey dated him.”

“I heard that!” Tyler called.

“You were supposed to!” Vivi shouted back.

We waited. One minute stretched to five stretched to ten. I kept wandering around the car, waiting for another vehicle to pass us by. Vivi kept holding her phone high like they do in horror movies when they’re looking for a signal. Like that ever worked.

I wondered if the driver would continue on foot all the way to the destination Grey had given him. I wondered how far that might be and if the man would stop at all along the way. Would he walk until his feet bled, until his stomach growled and his joints ached? Would he break for food and water, or would he walk until he died? Did we have the terrible power to do that to people?

“Iris, come here,” Vivi said as I paced. I went to where she had trained the beam of her phone flashlight, by the open door of the car. Vivi stepped aside to reveal Grey’s waxy face, her eyes rolled back in her head, her skin tight and slippery with fever sweat.

“Oh my God. She looks terrible.” I crouched and put my palm on her forehead. “She’s burning up. What do we do?”

“Take her to the hospital again?” Vivi suggested.

“Because that worked out so well the first time.”

“Well, shit, I don’t know. What if she’s dying? We can’t do nothing.”

“We could call Cate,” I suggested, wondering if our mother would be willing to provide urgent medical care to the daughter she had thrown out of her house.

“Even if I had a damn signal, I’m sure Cate would be super enthusiastic about helping.”

We found a half-empty bottle of water and a gym towel in the trunk, then soaked it through and mopped Grey’s forehead, trying to bring her fever down. Tyler came back, holding his stomach. “Now that that’s out of the way . . . what’s going on?” he asked.

“You didn’t notice that she was as hot as an oven, you incompetent dunce?” Vivi snapped.

A noise then, from the darkness: footfalls on gravel and a sloshing sound.

“Who’s there?” I asked, but it was only the spelled driver, now carrying a large red jerry can. “Oh, thank goodness.”