Blezor chased after me in his monster truck while two other cars that didn’t care a lick about the rules of the road fired guns at my trunk. They were gaining on me! Stupid car. Lily would have dusted them easily. This awful Cutlass dragged like it was pulling a boat anchor behind it.

“Come on, come on, come on!” I urged as I felt around the passenger seat and in the grooves around the seat as well. “Wand, need a wand.”

I didn’t mind throwing magic around on the dock without a wand because there weren’t a lot of buildings or pedestrians around, but after I turned onto the street, there were other cars and people that would be severely demolished if I let magic fly wildly everywhere. On top of all that, I was amped up and full of adrenaline, so my power would be even greater and harder to control. I definitely needed a focusing agent. We couldn’t all be as careless as Blezor’s cronies.

“Please, come on,” I said to myself.

Then, a pen presented itself in my field of vision. “Will this work?” I heard from the back seat. I glanced back to find a demon girl in the back seat with big, green eyes and a disarming smile. “Hello?”

“Uhhh,” I replied. “Who are you?”

“Anjelica, with a J. That’s not a mistake. That’s just how it’s spelled.” Her finger pointed to the windshield. “You should really keep your eyes on the road.”

I had drifted into oncoming traffic, and a Mack truck was bearing down on me, blaring its horn. I screamed and swerved back into my lane. When I was steady again, I looked at the girl through the rearview mirror.

“Who are you, and what are you doing in this car? Are you working for those demon toadies? Do I need to kill you?”

“Um…okay. Like I said, I’m Anjelica, with a J and a C. I was kidnapped by those demon toadies, so I’m not working for them. In fact, I kind of hate them.” She stopped for a second. “And for the last question, why would anyone say yes?”

“Touché,” I said. “If you were kidnapped, then why aren’t you tied up?”

“I was. I gnawed through it like a beaver and then burrowed through the back seat. If you look next to me, you’ll see that there’s a big frigging hole in it. Why would I rip a big hole in a car if I wasn’t trying to escape?”

She was right. There was a roughly demon-girl-sized hole in the back seat. “I suppose I believe you.”

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“Good,” Anjelica said, holding up the pen. “Because it’s the truth. Now, you’re looking for a wand. Will this work?”

I grabbed it from her. “In a pinch. Can you drive?”

“Kind of? I mean, I passed driver’s ed but—”

“Then take the wheel.”

I didn’t wait for Anjelica to leap forward and snatch the wheel before I rolled down the window and aimed the improvised wand at the cars chasing me.

“Nodwydd!”

A thousand little needles shot from the end of the pen and popped the tire of the blue car in the lead, sending it careening into the white car that pursued me. Both cars crashed into the end median in a fiery crash. The monster truck drove right over them like it was nothing, crushing whoever was inside into a little flat pancake.

I fell back into the car and took the wheel again from Anjelica. “Thanks.”

She grinned. “We definitely didn’t learn that in driver’s ed.”

Bullets ricocheted off the car again. Blezor was firing a submachine gun out of his driver’s side window.

“We have to lose him.”

I spun the wheel of the car and hit the brakes, turning the car into a sideways skid before gunning it up the street. A monster truck could never take that turn, and I watched Blezor speed through the intersection. Halfway up the street, I spun up into an alley.

I pointed the pen out of the window. “Trawsnewid!” A green spark shot out and created a portal in front of us big enough for the car to drive through. “Hang on!” I shouted.

“What are you doing?” Anjelica asked, her eyes darting from the portal and back to me.

“Trust me,” I said.

“No!” she yelped, covering her face.

The car glided through the portal. When it emerged on the other side, it was no longer a car, but an ice cream truck with a big ice cream cone on the top of it, playing Christmas melodies, as they often did for some unknown reason. Seriously, there were all sorts of public domain music; why Christmas music?

I slowed the truck to a stop at the end of the alleyway then looked in the back for Anjelica. She kicked her way out of a metal chest, holding a chocolate ice cream cone.

“This is so weird, and I am so cold.”

“Just get down, okay?” I said, turning onto the street. “He should be going the other way on this road right about now.”

Sure enough, I watched Blezor’s monster truck race the other way down the road, missing us completely. We had avoided him, at least for the moment, and now I could figure out what the story was with my little stowaway.

“Phew,” I said as I threw my car in park and caught my breath.

Anjelica peeled open the ice cream cone and nibbled at it. Her audacity made me chuckle. “You really thought of everything with this transformation.”

“How is it?”

“Good.” She smacked her lips and shrugged. “Not great, but good.”

“That’s what you get with a five-second spell cast under duress.” I turned to her. “Now that the insanity’s over, who are you again?”

She must have been starving because I heard her stomach grumble from the other side of the truck. “Can we do this over food? I haven’t eaten all day.”

“You are literally eating an ice cream cone.”

Anjelica rolled her eyes. “Ice cream isn’t food. It just slides down.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s basic science. So, can we get some real food? Like a dozen hamburgers?”

“Sure, kid.”