From the backseat Romola screams, “The kitty!” and Tyson grabs it one-handed, dives into the passenger seat, and pulls the door closed. As I drive, the cat snarls, scratches him, and makes a beeline for the gas and brake pedals. I scuffle my feet at it until it scrabbles under the seat. “What the hell?” Ty shouts at me. “Later,” I say, my voice surprisingly quiet and firm. There are some things magick can control and some it can’t. That’s why, as I grip the steering wheel and drive a cautious three miles over the speed limit, I comb my memory for everything I touched in Gladys’s house. I peeled out of there like a drag racer, and who knows whether the neighbors saw us, noted our looks or the license plate? I was able to do a very quick read of the immediate area, and picked up only mere traces of activity. It’s a Sunday morning, so maybe people are at church or synagogue or brunch. Maybe the traces were just pets. There was one, however, two doors down, that was pretty powerful—a man, I think, surprised but not afraid of the explosion.
