“I feel like my head’s full of bees.”
“What happened?” Poppy said. “Why did we—”
“The barrier,” I said.
“Butwhy?”
“I don’t know.” I spotted Berron and pulled over.
He pulled open the passenger door and slid into the third row, leaving Poppy her space to recover. “You ladies scared me,” he said, leaning over to peer at Poppy and Mom in turn. “Do we need a hospital? I think the nearest one is—”
“I don’t need a hospital, I need an airplane,” Mom said.
“Mom, you passed out. I’m not putting you on a plane.”
“I’ll befine. I got a little dizzy, that’s all.”
“Youcan’tleave—that’s what I’m trying to tell you. If I take you back through that tunnel, you’ll pass out all over again.”
“Why would it happen again?”
“You know how I told you that the Gentry and the Blessed can’t leave Manhattan? Because of the spell Grandma helped put in place to keep the peace?”
“Yes…”
I shrugged, as if to say,there you have it.
“But I don’t want to stay in New York! I want to gohome, Zelda. No offense,” she added, politeness coming back online as she became more and more with it.
“You can’t. Not now. Not until we figure out what’s going on.”
“Oh, no,” Poppy said. In the rear-view mirror, her eyes widened. “What if it wasn’t just us?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if it’sallthe witches?”
Everyone got quiet. I pictured witches on trains, buses; in taxis; passing out with no one to ferry them back. Or, God forbid, what if they weredriving? “Get ahold of Azure,” I said. “Start a phone chain or something.”
Poppy pulled out her phone and began frantically texting.
Meanwhile, my mother was muttering to herself. “Can’t stay here. Even the sunrise isn’t normal.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Well, just look at it! You said it’s supposed to be in perfect alignment with the street grid. But there it is, drifting off to the north!”
I slowed to a stop at the next light. “No, it’s still in alignment, we’re just coming at it from a different angle because we’re not on the same street.”
“Not there,” Mom said. She leaned over and pointed toward the driver’s side window. “There.”
I turned. Saw asecondorange-gold glow.
And thetoo bright, too loud, came back with a vengeance, honking horns hitting my eyes with waves of pain. Everything jangled—the sound of traffic, the sunlight hitting the Midtown windows—until suddenly the jangling resolved into something lighter, harmonic, musical.
Bells.
19
