The band of wizards had almost reached the truck, and my necklace buzzed to the point that it was painful. “They’re using magic,” I said.
“I know. I’m deflecting it.”
Then they veered off to the side, and I let myself relax. Maybe they’d given up. But then a car roared around the corner of the square, heading toward us.
“Oh great, now they’ve got a car,” I said, tapping my fingers on the steering wheel in worry and impatience. “I can’t run the light.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Well, in about fifteen seconds they’re going to rear-end us unless we find another way to get out of here.”
J ust then, the light turned green. A car on the other road screeched to a stop, and the car following rear-ended it. I winced, but this was no time to stop and play good Samaritan. I floored the truck and made the turn onto the main road as fast as I could without losing control, since the old truck didn’t turn on a dime. Then I made the mistake of looking in the rearview mirror. They were still behind us, having squeaked through the light just as it abruptly turned red, skipping the entire yellow stage.
Something told me the light wasn’t exactly on its normal cycle.
My truck could barely get up to highway speed, while they were driving a new sports car. That meant I wasn’t going to be able to outrun them in a typical high-speed car chase. I did, however, have other advantages. I’d grown up in this town and knew its streets like the back of my hand. I turned sharply onto a side street, then made another quick turn. They roared past down the first street, and I turned again, cutting across the neighborhood and back to one of the main cross streets.
“I think someone else is following us,” Owen said in the freakishly calm voice he got in tense situations. I was impressed with the way he didn’t try to apply nonexistent brakes on his side of the cab when I made those fast turns. You’d have thought he was in car chases every day.
“They must have called in backup,” I said, turning sharply onto another side street. And then I had to slam on the brakes as an old lady with a walker made her way slowly across the road to her mailbox.
The bad guys were right behind us and closing in fast.
As soon as the lady was more than halfway across the street, I swerved to the wrong side of the road to go around her and continue down the street. Owen turned in his seat, muttering something in a foreign language, and my necklace nearly jumped off my neck. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“A little diversion,” he said in his calm crisis tone.
I chanced a glance in the rearview mirror and saw the lady still standing at her mailbox. The car following us screeched to a halt, though, and one of the guys jumped out and ran to kneel in front of the car. The lady looked at him for a moment, then shrugged and made her way slowly back across the street. “Let me guess, they think they hit her,” I said.
“Maybe it’ll teach them a lesson about safe driving.”
I turned back onto the main highway, hoping we might be able to get home now without being followed. Unfortunately, one of the pursuing cars turned onto the highway from a different road and resumed the chase. Soon, the other car was right behind them, and then a third car joined in.
“Where’s Burt Reynolds when you need him?” I asked as I tried to think of something else to do. My repertoire of driving tricks was rather limited, especially in the old truck that could barely hit fifty and cornered like the Titanic .
“Rocky and Rollo would really come in handy right now,” he said, referring to the two crazy gargoyles who sometimes worked as drivers for MSI. They had a tag-team method of driving that could be alarming, especially in Manhattan traffic. “Brake!” he shouted. I laughed, remembering the crazy drive we’d once taken with them and the way they called signals out to each other. “No, I mean it, brake!” he said.
I slammed on the brakes without even looking at what he was talking about, then after we’d come to a stop I saw an enormous old Cadillac whip onto the road. It looked like a ghost vehicle with no one behind the wheel, until I noticed a pair of eyes peering through the steering wheel and a bubble of bluish-white hair sticking up from behind the wheel. “Oh great, we had to run into Mrs. Gray’s weekly grocery trip. They usually send out bulletins to clear the road while she’s on it. She doesn’t acknowledge the possibility of any other cars being on the road.” In spite of the speed at which she pulled out in front of us, she proceeded to drive at about twenty miles an hour, turn signal still blinking furiously. That meant our pursuers were right on us.