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His eyes skimmed me over from head to foot. He gave a shake of his head and took the two pieces of identification from me. He spent several seconds reading over the plastic card. “How thehelldid you get a license?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but he put a hand up. “You know what—I don’t even want to know.” He handed them back to me.

I scratched my arm absently, right where I cut it earlier. The wound had begun to itch.

“Jame Asher, you worry too much. And you ask too many questions.”

Asher gave me an indulgent look. “Oh, to be an Infernarus.”

Asher

Thanks to Lana’sforged passport, which she’d been hiding God knows where this whole time, we made it across the border without much hassle.

Okay, so Infernari were cleverer than I thought.

We got the green light at Mexican customs—a good thing, since a vehicle search would have turned up the small arsenal I was carrying—and then we were back on the road. Maybe Lana was right, maybe I did worry too much.

That night we stayed in the town of Soto la Marina, about three hours south of the border, where I bought her jeans, shirts, a sweater, and a Mexican knockoff of Vans tennis shoes so she could at least look like a tourist rather than a cosplay character.

Then it was back on the road, with Highway 180 taking us along the coast overlooking the Gulf of Mexico.

Lana leaned over me to see the view, her hair spilling into my lap and blocking my sight. I swerved and leaned around her. “Seatbelt, Lana... seatbelt!”

With a huff, she collapsed back in her seat, where she shifted and shimmied in vain to get comfortable, tugging at her new denim jeans. “Ugh, these are sotight.”

I glanced at my phone. We were making good time.

Next to me, Lana tugged at her crotch again. “It keepsrubbingme.”

I hadn’t bothered mentioning the fact that humans had invented a thing called underwear, so she was going commando. Explaining thongs and g-strings to her could have gotten a bit dicey.

“Oh, come on, tell me those aren’t more comfortable than that animal hide you were wearing before.”

“That wasskin,” she said. “Skin on skin feels good. Skin on this scratchy, stiff,horriblefabric feels awful. It’s like that time I got sand in my clothes.”

“Mmm.” I suppressed a smirk at the image. “I told you to go with a skirt, didn’t I?”

“And walk around with my private parts exposed? I don’t think so, Jame Asher.”

I glanced sideways at her. Seeing her dressed like a normalhumangirl messed with my head; she was even more distracting than usual. Now her exoticness was tempered by this new girl-next-door look; when she looked like this, Lana was a lethal package.

She stopped fidgeting and stared at me, her gaze taking in my torso. “Why can’t I wear what you’re wearing? You lookcomfortable.” She said it like an insult.

“Because you’d freeze your ass off.”

Though I’d stripped down to a wifebeater, Bermuda shorts, and flip-flops to weather the arid hundred-degree heat, she was still shivering in her sweater. It made me nervous.

“How’d you stay warm until now, anyway?” I asked. “It’s hotter here than it was in Virginia.”

“I’m fine,” she said, fighting another shiver. “I’m not cold.” She readjusted her position, holding her left arm gingerly.

Thirty minutes later, her shivering had ratcheted up, enough to make me consider turning on the heater again. I glanced over at her. Her hair had stopped moving, and her usual exuberance was gone. We hadn’t stopped once for her to relieve her pea-sized bladder.

“There’s another rest stop coming up in ten minutes,” I said, now eager to get her to act like herself.

She ignored me, gazing blankly out the window.

“Alright, Lana, what’s going on?” I said. “Normally I’m pulling over every five minutes because you need to take a piss. Today you haven’t once mentioned it.”