The girls didn’t protest the lack of car seats as they had before. They didn’t talk. They didn’t play with the buttons in the limo. They didn’t even cry. They just sat quietly in their seats, staring dully out the window. Marley felt like she should address their fears, but her brain was full of sparks that flared and quickly died. She didn’t know what to say. She barely knew who she was. She tried to focus on suppressing the curse, so the limo didn’t have a catastrophic failure, and she could feel the suppression draining her. Penny’s house looked utterly normal outside. Branwyn’s car was parked beside Penny’s, and the shades were drawn against the coming afternoon sun. Penny’s neighborhood showed more signs of life than the street where she’d found Corbin, although most people remained indoors to avoid the smoke. The fires were so far down the mountain now that she couldn’t see much of the orange line, just the black ashes marking where the flames had been.
