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“Magic is created with ingredients that are much worse than bugs.”
“Which I don’t carry around in my backpack.”
“You wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a backpack. Still, if you’re such a mighty magician, why aren’t you packing more magical equipment?”
“It’s in the trunk,” he muttered, then urged me through doors at the end of the car, to the dining car that swayed as the train exited the yard and started picking up speed.
I stopped at the board where the menu prices were posted. I dug my heels in while he pushed against me.
“What are we doing?” he asked, in my ear, and for a second the shock of having my vulnerable back available to Percival the Diabolical made me break out into a cold sweat.
“This is a bad idea,” I said, suddenly realizing exactly what was going on, like me pretending to be like Percival, no to out-Percival Percival, when I had absolutely no possibility of pulling anything off of this magnitude. “I can’t walk in heels. I can’t eat a steak that costs over a hundred dollars. What kind of magical beast is it? Would it give me wings? I don’t want wings, or heels, or to meet the unconscionable rake who took advantage of my mother and then discarded her without a word. I don’t wear dresses.”
“Fine. Wear a tuxedo then, just walk into the car. One step at a time. Come on, Red. Pretend that it’s the side of the building under my window and just go for it. It’s not like you to overthink things.”
“That’s not true. I have a lot of things that I overthink, like my whole life and lack of talent and focus in particular, but realizing my folly before I begin isn’t overthinking. How can someone overthink when they’ve done absolutely no thinking in the first place? They can’t, that’s how.” I whirled around, and found myself pressed against his chest, staring up into his slate-colored eyes.
“Fine. I’ll take you to the sleeping car, and you can freak out in private while I go get us dinner. I won’t tell you how expensive it is.”
I winced. “But I’ll know.”
“Fine, I’ll steal it from the kitchen. Is that better?” He rolled his eyes and grabbed my hand, dragging me out of the dining car and through the train past countless well-dressed passengers until we reached the sleeping cars. Wait, a sleeping car? How many beds were in it? Two. There were two beds stacked on one side, with a couch and a small table on the other.
“Stay here. Washroom is through there, so there is no reason for you to wander around. Don’t forget that there’s a demon that thinks that he knows your blood.”
I flinched. “Did you have to say that?”
“Sit down. Put your head between your knees, or your backpack over your head, but probably not with the bugs. Getting bugs out of your hair would be too time-consuming for your grooming tomorrow.” He shut me in alone with my panic.
I pulled out my phone and texted Rynne with shaky fingers.
I can’t make the dinner shift tonight. I’m going to meet my dad. Keep an eye on my mom, okay?
I was actually on a train headed out of the city with Percival, trying to find my dad. I took a shaky breath and put my head between my legs like Percival the Bully had suggested. He was right about the bugs. Seriously, though, this wasn’t a good idea to jump on a train and go meet some stranger, except that I was turning to stone. I should have asked Earl about it, because he was a really experienced healer and had seen almost everything, so he’d know if I should go to a hospital or get an appointment with a sorcerer that specialized in transmorphing. Or I could just meet my dad and go home again without ever thinking about him again. I pulled the spell book out of my backpack and tried to read it. I read the same line twelve times before it made sense. The gist was that you had to look closely and then look closer, which they could have said much more clearly. Were they trying to be mysterious, or did they think that made them sound smart?
I was like that when Percival came in with a cart wafting delicious scents.
“I stole the whole thing from the kitchen,” he said, wheeling it over to the bench. “The perks of that are obvious: free food with a shorter delivery time. The negative is that it might be nothing you like. Do you have any allergies?”
“Other than you? No.”
His lips twitched. “You’re trying to get me to keep playing along with your game, Red.”
“Am I?” I asked as he raised a silver lid and I got a face of buttery mushroom steam. It was good steam, and it had been a long time since my borrowed breakfast.
He nodded towards my still open book. “How far did you get?”
“I’m still on the first page.”
“That’s always the hardest, you know, to prove your virtue and persistence before it opens its doors of knowledge and understanding to you.”
“If you had to prove virtue before you could learn magic, you wouldn’t know anything,” I said with a sniff and then cut into the steak. It was definitely the hundred bucks steak. Definitely. And I had to admit that if I could afford it, I’d totally pay for it, because it was just that good. I sighed and ate in silence, for a moment forgetting about all my troubles and the miserable company I found myself in. Not that he was terrible when he wasn’t talking. It’s not like he wasn’t pleasant enough to look at if I could do so objectively, and when he wasn’t sneering or insulting me, I could manage objectivity.
After I’d eaten enough that the world looked less bleak, I folded my hands in my lap and gave him a smile. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you. Food tastes better when it’s stolen, maybe from the added adrenaline of the chase, maybe because immorality always triggers endorphins.”
I squinted at him. “You actually stole it?”
