The truck belonged to Faith, the café owner. She’d given Daniel and Sam jobs and a good bargain on the trailer and had generally been kind and decent to them, and Daniel stole her truck because they needed a more reliable vehicle than their own limping junker. He’d left three thousand crowns in the café’s till from Gabriel Argent’s funds and insisted it was not theft, but merely an involuntary trade. This was Daniel, in his own way, acknowledging he’d done something awful. But not apologizing for it. And Sam saw it was necessary. This was definitely a bug-out situation—the visit from the water mage, the news about Otis and his collaborators and the patchwork dragon, and their intention to use Sam as the osteomantic engine to drive it. Obviously, they needed to flee their home on the Salton Sea, such as it was. Obviously, they needed a new truck. Obviously, Daniel had to wipe Valerie’s memories of Sam, before she acquired too many. But Sam was still furious with him. And he hated being angry at Daniel, because it always left him feeling teen-angsty and sullen.
