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Finally, I found Imogen. She was standing beside a boxy brown car. Because it didn’t have any signs or markings, it didn’t appear to be a cab.
“Hey.” She waved me over. “I got us a Whirl. It’s like a rental, but someone else drives for us, and we only book for one trek at a time.”
Sounded like a cab.
“Very helpful, thank you.” I gestured to our bags.
“Oh, right, I appreciate you picking mine up, too.”
The trunk popped open. Imogen took her bag and stepped ahead of me to get it stowed. Something white moved from within the trunk.
Imogen shrieked.
I reconsidered my earlier assessment. The sound was not banshee meets fire alarm. It was more the spawn of fork-on-ceramic-plate and wailing infant.
I grabbed Imogen’s arm and put myself between her and the threat. Whatever was in there, I was the better equipped of the two of us to handle it.
A large white shape bounded out of the surprisingly deep trunk—a harmless, fluffy cloud with legs—a sheep. It bleated, shook itself off, and meandered away. If the driver cared that his sheep was escaping, he made no move to chase after it.
With a slow, measured breath, I turned to Imogen.
“What?” She thrust her hands over her head. “It tried to kill me.”
“Okay.”
“It did! You saw the way it looked at me, the way it dove from the trunk with murder in its soulless black eyes.”
She couldn’t be serious, could she? “We’re talking about a barnyard animal, the kind toddlers hug at the petting zoo.”
“Youare judgingmeand bringing upchildrenafter….” She trailed off and stopped speaking.
“What’s that supposed to mean? Finish your sentence, Imogen.”
“Nothing, never mind.” A crazed smile crossed her face. “I’m sorry if I startled you. I’m overreacting. Everything’s great.”
She popped her bag into the trunk, then left the door open for me as she scooted across the back seat of the car. I deposited my bag into the trunk and followed her into the cab. The interior was musty but free of debris.
Imogen folded her hands in her lap and showed no outward signs of discomfort or stress. Her expression was relaxed, and weirdly normal. She’d flipped a switch and turned back into the content and enthusiastic Imogen I was used to seeing. Was she uncomfortable with confrontation? Or was she hiding something?
If she wanted to continue our journey pretending everything was fine, I was happy to do the same. Hoping he spoke English, I told the driver, “We’re headed to Inorog. How long will the drive take?”
If he didn’t know English, I’d try Romanian next, then Hungarian, and German. My Hungarian was rustiest, so maybe I’d try German before it.
“About two hours,” he said, in perfect English.
We still had almost four hours before Silas would arrive in Inorog by portal, which meant there was plenty of time to survey the town and still arrive at the tavern before him. Sure, it may not be enough time to complete the entire mission, but it was plenty to give me the upper hand.
“Take us for a quick tour of the town and surrounding area, please, driver,” I said.
“The name’s Noah,” the driver said, making no move to put the vehicle into motion.
“All right,” I said. “Show us your town,Noah.”
“Usually people ask to go to a specific place,” he said, shifting in his seat. “Not sure what to punch in if you don’t have an address in mind.”
Imogen looked from me to Noah and back again. “We’d like to go to Tawdry Tavern,” she said. “But take the most roundabout route possible.”
Noah laughed. “Yeah, okay. You got it.”
