“Question,” Ryder says to the silent car a moment later.

  “Hmm?” is Nancy’s reply, glancing over her shoulder.

  “Why don’t we follow the monsters?”

  The red swarms over the purple map half a second later. Unlike us, they seem to know exactly where to go, and it’s nowhere near where we are by the Costco. We might be limited by what my compass is able to show us, but the monsters go by natural instinct. I nod, the movement ricocheting through my head. I press a hand to my temple.

  “That is a very good idea,” Nancy says, carefully pulling out of the parking spot. She turns toward the exit of the lot.

  The wave of red dots on the map move as one, shifting direction. They head further away, across the highway that is behind the store.

  “No time!” Savannah says, leaning forward between the seats. She points to the side, almost whacking Ryder in the face. “Go straight through!”

  Ryder tries to lean forward too, and ends up ducking down and looking under Savannah’s arm. “They’re moving fast! Step on it, Nancy!”

  Nancy lets out a little squeak, her hands fluttering over the steering wheel. “But the highway—”

  “Is a parking lot,” Beaker offers, seeming totally chill in the back beside the bouncing Savannah and Ryder.

  I wonder, a little, at how excited the timid woman usually is, and how excited she seems now.

  “But I can’t—”

  “Yeah, you totally can. No one’s going to stop you.” Beaker, behind the driver’s seat, finally leans forward and lowers his voice, speaking almost directly into Nancy’s eat. “Do it, Nancy. Drive recklessly.”

  I chuckle, still pressing my hand into my temple, half-turned in the seat to watch the three behind us.

  But Nancy, after another squeak, tightens her grip on the wheel and narrows her eyes. She whips the wheel to the side, making all of us fly to the other side of our seats, and peels around a corner to head straight to the back of the Costco.

  There’s a wide, grassy incline between the edge of the parking lot and the highway beyond, a chain-link fence running along the middle of it.

  “Wait, the fence!” Savannah calls out.

  “Ram it, ram it!” Ryder chants.

  “Straight through, Nancy!” Beaker adds, more excited about the stunt driving than the surge.

  Nancy lets out a small shriek and guns the engine. We go over the curb of the parking lot,across the grass, and crash into the chain link fence. It collapses, the front piece sticking to the front of the Volvo as she pressed harder on the gas and we climb the incline.

  I swear we get air as the piece of chain link dislodges, gets left behind, and the Volvo drives perpendicularly across the highway.

  Everyone’s either cheering or shrieking or laughing, and I’m trying to hold it in but I’m laughing too, even though the pounding in my head is ramping up again. There’s a dip as Nancy drives across the grassy median of the highway, and across the northbound highway, going way faster than is safe on the uneven terrain, but I have no ability to try to backseat drive. I’m bouncing in my seat like a trampoline.

  We skid off the highway, through some low foliage, and onto a wide expanse of farmland. It’s relatively flat, making it an easier drive than the previous moment, but it also means visibility is clear.

  And if the red amassing on my map wasn’t telling enough, I can see it in the animals that are collecting.

  “Oh god,” I say, taking note of the multiple—multiple—large animals that join the monster herd.

  A small whimper escapes Nancy. “I wondered when we’d start to face…”

  “Monster horses,” Ryder says, his seatbelt off and his body almost smack between me and Nancy.

  I shove him back. “Seatbelt when driving,” I spit out, though the words are hard to form. And, you know, his comment terrifies me.

  Because there are, genuinely, multiple horses in the mass of monsters, rearing up and stomping down on the smaller creatures around them.

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  I know that we’ve been so very lucky up until this point that all we’ve faced are small critters, the occasional pet, and one plucky chicken. I also knew that at some point, we’d end up facing more of the working animals. There are lots of farms around here! Cattle, horses, sheep, goats. Imagine a head butting goat with ramped up aggro from the magic! No bueno.

  Nancy slows down as we get a little closer to the animals. They don’t pay us any attention, so focused on each other and moving through the fields of calf-high hay. Though their fighting has started, they’re still moving, still following some instinct about where the magic will coalesce that my compass isn’t telling me.

  “Keep following, but keep your distance,” I instruct Nancy. I hope I’m not going to have to fight these monsters with this headache. That’ll be very unhelpful. Hopefully, once the purple haze starts to shrink and solidify, the headache will finally abate enough that I can join the fray.

  But no need to jump in until we absolutely have to. Even if I want to kill as many of the monsters as I can, to make sure that we absorb enough of the magical ash to get Rank Tokens.

  No. Must maintain my humanity. Must remember that the point of killing the monsters isn’t for killing’s sake.

  “Do you usually just… stand off to the side and watch?” Savannah asks.

  Nancy answers. “No.” She pauses. “There’s a few things about this particular surge that are a little abnormal.”

  “Is it us?” Beaker asks. It’s a valid question—they’re the only things that have changed in our lives.

  “No,” I say, being the one to answer. “I don’t know why, but it’s not you.”

  “There’s no reason for it to be you,” Nancy clarifies.

  We lapse back into silence.

  It’s like watching a really bad action movie. I haven’t spent a lot of time watching the monsters fight without being in the thick of it, and it’s fascinating to watch how they react as a mass. At one point, something thunks onto the roof of the Volvo and leaps off, a fluffy red fox tail joining the fray. They really don’t seem to care about us being here at all.

  Mostly I watch the horses, since they’re what scare me the most. They don’t seem to have any magic—not any that I can discern from here, at least—but they stomp down with their front hooves, unhinge their jaw to chomp down, and bodycheck the other animals until they’re literally squished to death. When we do join the fight, eventually, I’m going to have to go right for them, take them out quickly. They’ll be formidable opponents.

  A few of the other, smaller critters do seem to have magic. I saw a flash of lightning which reminded me of the lightning hawks from the Montessori school battle—that one makes sense to me. A bird sitting on a telephone wire when the initial surge went off, taking the power from the wires. But I’m sure there are other magics in there, things we haven’t seen yet, and we have to be careful about them.

  I look beside me, taking note of Nancy, chewing on the cuff of her sweater and staring out at the battle happening in front of us. “Hey,” I say. She turns her head toward me but her eyes linger on the mass of monsters, until the very last second. They flick to me and then right back out.

  “Hmm?”

  “You have a weapon?” I ask. “Something sharp, to protect yourself? We’re going to need you out there with us, just in case.”

  She nods, producing a smaller knife out of thin air. “I took one.”

  “You have a weapons inventory?” I ask, thinking about how Ryder said he didn’t because his class is magic base. As a healer, I didn’t think they’d give Nancy one.

  She shakes her head. “No, I pulled it out of my regular inventory.”

  “Don’t put it back,” I say. “You can’t use your regular inventory once we’ve joined the battle.”

  “Right.” Nancy pauses, then turns back to me. “You’re talking in full sentences again. Does that mean the headache’s gone?”

  “No,” I reply, but then I take stock of my own state. “But it’s definitely gone down.”

  “And the map?”

  I study it. “The expanse of if hasn’t changed, and neither has the colour. But if the headache’s going away and the monsters are all targeting the same spot…”

  “Then it’s coming.” Nancy glances over at me again. “We should get over there, then, just to be sure we don’t miss it.”

  “I don’t disagree.”

  “Wait really?!” Ryder says, once again pushing in between the front seats. I suppose since the car’s in park and we’re not really moving anywhere, he can be without his seatbelt. “It’s time?” He turns back to the two newcomers in the back. “I’m so excited for you guys!”

  “Glad one of us is,” Savannah mutters.

  I rotate in the seat, facing those in the back. “Don’t put yourself into unnecessary danger. Hopefully we’ll get a better idea of where the epicentre of the surge will be the closer it gets, and then you’re going to want to get in and get your hands in the dirt. We don’t know if that really makes a difference, but it hasn’t hurt us yet.”

  “Just a fox or two,” Ryder adds, entirely unhelpful. I try not to roll my eyes.

  “The monsters have magic, and if they don’t, it means they’ve evolved to be either smarter or physically stronger. Don’t underestimate any of them, even the tiniest mouse.”

  “I remember the one at the Town Hall, who could shoot out versions of its tail,” Beaker says.

  I nod, remembering it too. “We can’t use our inventories once we’ve entered a battle, so if you have something you want to use as a weapon or a shield, you’ll have to pull it out first. Make sure you have a weapon. Even one of my baseball bats, if you’re not comfortable with one of our new blades.”

  Savannah nods, and looks down at the knife in her hands.

  “If you get hurt, get to Nancy. But try to not let the fighting get too close to her. She can’t heal herself, so we need to make sure she stays safe the old fashioned way.”

  “I feel like I should be taking notes,” Beaker says, smirking, glancing over at Savannah.

  “Don’t joke,” I snap at him. “This is literally a life-or-death situation. These creatures will be coming straight at you, full force, teeth and claws and magic blazing. You can’t think, you can’t plan, you can’t stop to smell the fucking flowers.”

  “Language,” Ryder says, but he’s whispering and I think, considering how distracted he sounds, that it’s an instinctive response at this point.

  Beaker’s smile has dropped.

  I put on a big smile instead. “Which is why you have us here.” I unbuckle my seatbelt. “All right, team, let’s get out there. Try not to die.”