Arianna had fallen asleep curled up against Zephyr, and even though his arm had soon been beset by pins and needles, he had stayed in that position for as long as he could. She'd drifted off as easily as Cat always had and he envied the both of them for it. He'd never been very good at falling asleep.

  She hadn’t questioned his request to leave the bedside light on after she’d turned it off. She’d simply switched it back on and with a curious inflection replied, “sure.”

  He hadn’t explained, he’d simply replied, “thanks”, and although he’d seen the question in her eyes, she hadn’t pushed. He’d tell her all about his past and his fears at some point, but he wasn’t ready for that quite yet.

  She’d provided him an easy distraction when she’d lain down beside him and recited incey wincey spider as she’d walked her fingers up his thigh. He doubted he’d ever look at that song the same way again.

  When he awoke the next morning, he felt as if he were being watched. He cracked open an eye and then smiled when he saw her looking at him. She made no attempt to hide the fact that she’d been watching him sleep. He didn’t mind. He’d basically been doing the same thing after she’d fallen asleep.

  “Were you watching me sleep? You freak,” he asked good-naturedly.

  “Yup,” she replied proudly. Then she kissed him.

  Before she could escape, Zephyr reached out and pulled her on top of him for a repeat of last night’s performance.

  “Come on sleepyhead.” Falco poked Indi.

  Indi opened one eye half way and then pulled herself deeper under the bedsheets.

  “Come on. Do you want breakfast or not?” Falco said again.

  “I could eat it in the car,” Indi replied without opening a single eye.

  “I don’t know if Cat will let you.”

  “She shall or she shall be subjected to my complaints of hunger.”

  “I suppose that’s one argument,” Falco said as he sat on the edge of the bed, completely out of ideas for how to get Indi up.

  Indi opened one eye again. It was hard to sleep and have a conversation at the same time, besides, a new idea had just popped into her head. “Do you think she’d let me drive one of the cars?”

  Falco gave a laugh. “I think you’d have better luck with eating in the car.”

  Indi pulled herself upright and looked at him. “But why not?”

  “Err, because of the dragons,” Falco replied in a tone that suggested he thought it was obvious.

  “From my observations yesterday, it seems like the driving fast doesn’t really help that much. And I can shield,” Indi insisted.

  “Why don’t you ask Cat?” Falco said, thinking that Cat would take the hard job of saying no to Indi away from him.

  Indi bounced out of bed with enthusiasm. “Alright, I will.”

  To Falco’s surprise, Cat did not say no. Although he managed to miss the actual conversation.

  “No,” Cat said.

  “But why not?” Indi asked before sticking her last forkful of pancake in her mouth.

  Cat looked at her with an expression that said the answer should be obvious.

  To the surprise of everyone present, Kass came to Indi’s rescue. “I don’t think there are as many dragons in this area, and we do have Amanda plus Indi’s shield.”

  “And you,” Cat replied almost immediately.

  Kass looked surprised and a little wary. That was understandable. Cat didn’t give many compliments.

  “Well, you did take one out, and you didn’t run off the side of the road.” Cat glanced off to the side. She was still angry at herself for that but it hadn’t escaped her attention that Kass had managed to make the corner.

  She glanced back toward Kass and for a full couple of seconds their eyes stayed locked, before Kass looked down with a blush and the twitch of a smile.

  Everything that woman did was so bloody understated, Cat thought.

  Kass looked up again. “Anyway, I think Indi will be fine to drive. She always whips our butts in that car racing game.”

  “That is not the same,” Cat pointed out.

  “Depends on the setup,” Zephyr said

  Cat glared at him. He and Arianna had been whispering amongst themselves and making doe eyes at each other all morning. Barely paying any attention to anyone else.

  She looked around at the rest of the table. Apart from Zephyr and Arianna, there was only Kass and Indi and herself still at breakfast, and not a single other voice seemed to want to argue against Indi driving. Cat wondered if that had been intentional on Indi’s part. She’d voiced her question not long after Amanda, Sirius, and Lily had left, and Falco had gone to the bathroom. Cat decided she didn’t really care either way. She was too tired to argue it, and Kass had made a good point.

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  “Fine,” she grumbled.

  “Really?!” Indi’s eyes lit up like fireworks and Cat hoped she wouldn’t regret it later.

  “You’re letting her drive?” Zephyr asked in surprise.

  “You got a problem with that?” Cat asked, deciding if he did she was definitely going to double down on Indi driving.

  But Zephyr just shrugged. “Maybe I could drive the other one, he mused.”

  Cat narrowed her eyes. “You had your chance,” she replied brusquely, knowing she had no reason to be mad at Zephyr or any desire to get back together with him. It made no sense for her to be mad at him, and yet she was.

  Her anger seemed lost on Zephyr, who, a few seconds later appeared completely distracted by Arianna again.

  For a moment, Cat felt guilty, but the feeling vanished as she watched an excited Indi rush off to ‘tell the others’.

  “What’d I miss?” Falco asked as he returned from the bathroom.

  “Oh, nothing much,” Cat replied, gaining some satisfaction from the small almost undetectable smile she saw grace Kass’s lips Kass stayed quiet and didn’t spill the secret, like a good little mouse.

  Wolf sat in the back seat of one car, looking impatient as he waited for the others to finish their breakfast.

  Amanda, who had been up early and already eaten and put bags in the car, slid in beside him and held out one of two bottles. “Breakfast beer?”

  “Hair of the dog today is it?” he asked, but he gratefully took one and had a swig.

  Amanda shrugged. After a few moments silence, she asked, “What’s up with you?”

  “What do you mean what’s up with me?”

  “You’ve been quiet.”

  Wolf didn’t reply at first, then without much humor in his tone he said, “Can’t a man be ponderous?”

  “Come on, Wolf. This is me you’re talking to. I’ve known you since before high school. You can’t lie to me. Something’s bothering you?”

  This time when he didn’t reply, she nudged him.

  “Mmm.”

  “Out with it. What is it?”

  Wolf took another swig. “I think I’m the reason Cat got arrested.”

  Whatever Amanda had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “What do you mean you’re the reason Cat got arrested? Unless you’re the one who killed the guy?”

  Wolf shook his head.

  “So what then? Whatever Cat did, she did on her own. You didn’t force her hand.”

  “But I did point her at the guy.” Wolf wouldn’t meet Amanda’s gaze.

  “How?”

  “I left a newspaper article about him on bench where I knew she’d see it.”

  Amanda laughed. “That’s it?”

  Wolf nodded, then he shook his head. “ I basically pointed to him and said ‘sic em’.”

  “Cat ain’t a dog, Wolf. She’s a grown adult responsible for her own actions.”

  “I could have gone to the police instead,” he grumbled in a sorry sounding voice.

  “Yeah but you didn’t and now you gotta get over it.” Amanda wouldn’t have said it if it wasn’t what she thought Wolf needed to hear. She’d known him awhile though, and as she studied him she knew he’d be fine. All he’d needed was to tell someone what he’d done. To distract him, she asked, “How hard is it gonna be to replace those books you lost to the dragon?”

  When he finally met her gaze, his posture did seem a little lighter. “I have full duplicates of a couple. Others I have backups of, but not all of them. I haven’t even gone through more than an eighth of my total collection. There’s just too many. The important ones I have, the ones I travel with, and which aren’t enchanted to prevent copying.”

  “Why don’t you travel with the backups instead?” Amanda asked, knowing that for many of the books, it wasn’t just about what was inside that made them valuable.”

  “Because a good book should be used,” Wolf replied. “It’s just, there was one in particular that I wanted to study while on this trip. It had a ritual in it that I thought I could maybe adapt. And time is of the essence, you know. If I had just grabbed that one book...” He shook his head.

  Indi stuck her head into the car. “Guess what, guys! I get to drive.” Then with a frown, she asked, “What book?”

  “What?” Amanda asked as she followed Indi back out of the car.

  “Cat said I could drive.”

  Catching, sight of Cat, who was just coming out of the diner, Amanda gave her a questioning look.

  Cat shrugged “It’s not like there’s many dragons this side of the mountains, and we’re not that far from Witchaven.”

  “What book?” Indi asked again.

  “Just one of the ones that got burned,” Wolf explained. “I didn’t have a backup and there was a spell I wanted to study.”

  “Naughty, naughty,” Indi chided. “Which book was it.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Wolf grumbled.

  “Which book?” Indi insisted.

  “Practical Preservation. The one you were hogging during the drive here, with the blue cover and silver title.”

  Indi’s eyes went wide. “Oh, I read that one! I remember it. I can transcribe it for you.”

  Wolf frowned. “It wasn’t in English.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I was trying to decode it so I looked at a lot of the pages and committed them to memory so I didn’t have to keep flicking back to check the word frequency. I may not know what the symbols all mean but I can recreate a good deal of that book.”

  “Really?” Wolf asked, suddenly looking a lot happier than he had in days.

  Indi nodded.

  “Does that mean you’re not driving?” Cat asked.

  Indi looked like a deer in the headlights.

  “It’s fine,” Wolf said with a wave of the hand and even a smile. “We’re what, two hours from Witchaven?”

  Cat nodded.

  “You can do it when we get there, assuming you won’t forget it all before then?”

  “I won’t,” Indi promised with a grin

  Cat narrowed her eyes at Wolf. “What’s gotten into you?”

  “Nothing,” he said.

  Amanda smiled and regretted it a moment later when she also drew Cat’s attention.

  Cat narrowed her eyes. “Are you drinking beer for breakfast?”

  Amanda shrugged. “I’m not driving.”

  Kass came out of the diner, followed not far behind, by Falco.

  In a bout of infectious happiness, and having just noticed where Amanda had set down the rest of the six pack, Wolf grabbed two beers and offered them one each. “Beer?”

  “Oi! No beer for the backup drivers,” Cat chided.

  “Backup drivers?” Falco frowned. “Kass isn’t driving.”

  “Indi’s driving,” Cat replied completely deadpan.

  Indi beamed.

  Kass handed her the keys.

  Falco just stood there, opening and closing his mouth several times like a goldfish.

  Before, he could regather his senses, Sirius and Lily rejoined them. After breakfast, Lily had wanted to explore, so Amanda had sent Sirius off on a walk up and down the street with the girl, while Amanda had popped into the liquor store next door for the beer. She wasn’t hiding it from him. It was just easier to buy it when he wasn’t looking at her.

  “Everybody ready to go?” Sirius asked.

  “Oooh I need another coffee!” Indi declared.

  “Where’s Zeph and Arianna?” Amanda asked.

  “They’re just paying,” Kass replied, right as the two in question walked out of the diner.

  Cat gave Indi an incredulous look as the latter headed toward the diner doors. “How many coffees have you had today, Indi?”

  Indi stopped and started counting on both hands. At Cat’s look in response, she laughed. “Just kidding, I’ve only had two so far.” She spun on her heels and entered the diner.

  Cat’s expression didn’t change. “Only two?!” she mumbled in bewilderment as the diner door swung shut behind Indi.