Jackie Nossinger had a lot of regrets in her life, but trusting the tall college girl from Rallsburg wasn't one of them.

  Her battered old squad car actually managed to survive the chaos in Rallsburg relatively intact. The windows were shattered, and there was an odd noise coming from the engine, but it ran.

  She'd always loved that car. It had followed almost her entire career, even as a detective when she could've gotten something more normal. She'd even persuaded her superiors in Seattle to let her keep it when she transferred out, and it followed her all the way to Rallsburg—repainted to suit the town, but otherwise the exact same car she'd always driven. It had seen thrilling chases and endless stakeouts, and it had carried many of the worst Seattle had to offer in the back seat at one time or another.

  Today, it was one of three vehicles in a convoy, ferrying away the survivors of Rallsburg.

  The strange grey-eyed girl everyone tended to avoid, the Silverdale girl who couldn't talk, and the Winscombe girl had apparently cleared out the roadblock leading back toward Olympia. The Silverdale couple rode in the last vehicle with their daughter and the new kid in town. They were to take that truck into Tacoma somewhere, drop the kid off, then their daughter would destroy it down to the last scrap of metal. It was Robert Harrison's old truck, which they'd recovered from his lodge outside town. Jackie figured he'd probably miss it, if he were still alive. Sucks to him.

  Boris drove just ahead of them in his own truck. The old Ruskie kept his ride far outside town, sparing it from the magnet storm—or whatever the hell Rachel had called it. Dan Rhodes, Hector Peraza, and Julian Black were packed in with him, off to Canada. Boris had recommended it as a solid option for a getaway, but he didn't get any volunteers from the rest of the group. Jackie certainly didn't feel like roughing it, even if it meant a greater chance of discovery. If she knew those four, they'd be splitting up the moment they crossed the border.

  Boris had a bit of bonus cargo in his trailer. Jackie's overeager but competent deputy and his impossible sister were hanging out in the back, along with the creepy cult leader with the crazy voice and her red-haired sidekick. Apparently, the two grey-robed kids were keeping the convoy totally invisible as they drove, to make sure they didn't show up on any satellites or aerial feeds. Jackie didn't understand how in the slightest, but she didn't doubt it anymore—not after the week she'd had. The Bowmans would be heading off to Canada as well, while the two Greycloaks were only sticking with them for the first leg. They'd find their own way back.

  Jackie glanced over at Rachel in her passenger seat, who had finally fallen asleep. The tall girl was barely visible from the glow of the instrument panel. She really felt for the kid. Rachel was still young, even if the world called her an adult. Folks might make fun of the current generation for being the 'adult at thirty club', but when the hell did someone really become an adult anyway? Jackie had worked with plenty of officers way less mature than Rachel DuValle.

  She wished she could have done more for Rachel, but Jackie still felt totally in over her head. She hated that feeling. It was the reason she'd eventually driven away from Seattle and never gone back. Jackie handled her cases just fine, with or without a parade of partners good and bad, but the city just kept piling them on. She started taking shortcuts and accepting the easy answers even when she had doubts, because it was just too much for her to cross every i and dot every t—or whatever she was supposed to do. It got so bad that Jackie eventually just marched into her captain's office, cited her stellar record, and demanded she get sent out to the loneliest, quietest post she could find.

  Sure, sometimes she missed the loud bustle and excitement of the city life, but Rallsburg was worth the loss ten times over. She'd finally felt at peace, right up until her nice quiet town had—quite literally—exploded.

  Jackie still didn't regret it, but she'd always regret not having more to offer Rachel. The best she could do was this one last gift. Jackie would make sure she got home safe to her parents, who were waiting for her under assumed names in Issaquah. Rachel's parents were the only outsiders who knew about what had happened in Rallsburg, and though a few had protested the discrepancy, they'd been vehemently shouted down by Rachel's friends. She'd earned the indiscretion. Jackie would brook no arguments.

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  They'd have a few stops on the way through their long night drive. In the back seat of her cruiser sat the fiery-haired professor, and her identical twin that Jackie had never heard of. She still didn't get how that was possible, but hey, rich people, right? Those two didn't concern her. The Laushire fortune was vast, so they'd be fine even if they were caught out. Money could buy their way out of any jam. Jackie was most concerned with the last, littlest one in her car.

  Natalie was laying down with her head on Lily's lap, straining her seat-belt and sleeping through the drive as best she could given the hard plastic seats in the rear. The uneven roads out of Rallsburg didn't help much either. Jackie tried to avoid the larger bumps in the road, but she could tell Natalie was waking up hard every time she managed to get a few minutes of rest.

  Jackie couldn't imagine how miserable the girl felt. Her father was a mass-murderer. Her friends were dead or missing. She was being taken away from the only home she'd ever known. Hell, she hadn't even been allowed to bring her pets. All she had were the things they'd collected from her house, stuffed into Kendra's magic bag. Yeah, Jackie didn't blame Rachel for telling her to leave them behind. They couldn't exactly take a goddamn wolf through Tacoma with them. But seeing the heartbreak on Natalie's face as she said goodbye to Gwen? Jackie wanted to drink herself into a stupor after that one.

  She was shocked Natalie didn't even try to protest though. Anything the Laushires or Jackie asked, they got the typical tween attitude—but Rachel? She seemed to take anything Rachel said as a direct order without question. It was total deference Jackie rarely saw even in the actual chain of command she used to work in.

  Natalie was allowed to keep her hawk though, so there were some small mercies left in the world. Jackie reluctantly let it into the car with them, expecting it to wreak havoc on the interior as soon as they took any sharp turns or hard bumps—but Natalie only had to speak a few strange words to it, and it was calm as could be. It found the best perch it could under the circumstances and kept mostly to itself while Natalie tried to sleep.

  Time dragged on as they drove through the night. Jackie had to keep it slow so they could keep their invisibility cloak in place, and combined with the winding path out of the hills, it was a long drive. They took a while to emerge from the vast Olympic forests and re-enter civilization. Kendra and Lily had both fallen asleep along with their soon-to-be "adopted" daughter, leaving Jackie and the hawk as the lone riders burning the midnight oil.

  Jackie didn't mind, though. She was used to working alone well into the night, and she enjoyed rolling around empty streets this late at night. What she didn't expect was the voice from her passenger seat an hour or so later.

  "I never thanked you," Rachel said quietly, just audible above the breeze through the broken windows.

  "Shouldn't you be sleepin'?" Jackie asked as they went around a gentle curve in the highway.

  "I only need to sleep an hour every night. Part of the magic."

  "Well isn't that somethin'. Pretty sure you did thank me though. Not that I did much."

  "I have a perfect memory," Rachel pointed out. "You helped us out so much and I never even thanked you once."

  "Rachel, I was homicide in the biggest city in the Northwest. I'm used to it."

  She sighed. "Thank you, Jackie."

  "I should be thankin' you." Jackie slowed them to a stop at a red light—the first one she'd seen in almost a year, since her last vacation. "I'm sorry you're not gettin' anything you deserve, after all the shit you had to get us through."

  "I'm going home. That's something," Rachel said. She twisted back around in her seat to look out the window as they started moving again, the light detecting their car and swapping to green. "I get to see Will and my parents again. I thought I was going to die, and I made it out alive. That's something."

  "You deserve more though."

  "It's enough," she murmured.

  They didn't speak the rest of the way to Olympia. As they reached the outskirts of the town, the convoy slowed to a crawl and pulled off to the side of the road.

  There was one final thing to do as a group before they split up for their separate destinations. Jackie got out and stared at the city lights in the distance, the glow blotting out the stars they'd been able to see so clearly back home. The two Greycloaks and the Winscombe girl joined Rachel and Jackie, while the rest of the convoy stayed with the trucks.

  They'd be back soon. Hopefully.

  "Here we go again," Jackie muttered.