Hellfire and brimstone.
Footsteps started pounding up the stairwell, coming at us full-clip.
Zelda regained her senses first. Reaching into the deep folds of her billowing caftan, she pulled out a tiny, purse-sized pistol. It looked like a toy in her hand, but I had no doubt its bullets would feel very real embedded in your flesh. My eyes were wide as dinner plates as she checked the chamber for a bullet and clicked off the safety.
“Um, Zelda—”
“Out the back,” she snapped, gesturing toward the dingy dining area with the gun. She was still breathing hard from our catfight. “The window beside the stove. There’s a fire escape. Use it.”
“What about you—”
“Go!Before I change my mind!”
We went.
Flo and I raced into the narrow galley kitchen, which was painted a sallow mustard hue and piled high with dirty dishes on every surface. We stepped over a mountain of moldering takeout boxes and shoved the grime-coated window upward. The pane was practically fused shut from layers of old paint along with lack of use, but after a few seconds of brute force, it finally lurched open.
Florence exited first, slipping through the gap with admirable grace. I could hear Hecate behind us, swooping around the living room, shrieking at top volume —“The devil doesn’t bargain!”— as I straddled the sill and shimmied my way out onto the rusty spiral staircase bolted to the back of the house. Flo was already halfway down. I stared at the top of her head, glossy brown hair flying behind her like a flag, as I began to follow her.
A splintering sound of another door being kicked in boomed from the open window, followed by the pulse-spiking report of a gun firing — once, twice, three times. Zelda’s unhinged cackles of laughter chased me the rest of the way down the spiral staircase. Goddess above, she was enjoying the shoot-out. I’d always known the woman had a few screws loose; I’d failed to realize she was genuinely insane.
“For the record,” Flo said when I reached the ground, reaching out to grab my hand. “I was wrong about this secret mission being anticlimactic.”
“Noted.”
Fingers tightly intertwined, we took off across the overgrown lawn, our boots crunching on fallen leaves from several large maple trees. The property had a sizable yard that wrapped all the way around the margins of the house. We ran until we hit the street, never pausing long enough to catch our breath. By the time we reached the Thunderbird, both of us were winded. I could hear Flo panting behind me as I rounded the hood, headed for the driver’s side.
I was so focused on getting the hell out of dodge, I didn’t notice the dark SUV careening down the dead-end street until it slammed to a halt ahead of us, angled diagonally at the curb. The windows were tinted so darkly, I couldn’t see who was inside — and I didn’t feel the need to stick around and find out for myself.
“Now who the hell is that?” Flo yelled, staring at the SUV with eyes that were just as wide, if not wider, than mine.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” I fired back, fumbling for my door handle, tearing it open. “Let’s motor!”
I didn’t need to tell Flo twice. She strapped herself into the passenger seat as I folded in behind the wheel. I was shaking head to toe, my bloodstream a rush of pure adrenaline as I shoved the key in the ignition and turned over the engine. It thundered to life with a throaty growl. My hand froze on the shifter when Flo’s startled whisper filled the cab.
“Oh my god.”
She was staring through the windshield, mouth gaping. My gaze followed suit, just in time to take in the sight of two dark-haired men alighting from the SUV. One sprinted directly into the house, too fast to get a real look at him. All I saw was a flash of black leather and a blur of motion. But the second man began to advance on us, closing the distance between the SUV and the Thunderbird with long legged strides. It was not lost on me that there was a gun gripped casually in his hand.
“Go, go, go!” Flo shrieked, spotting the gun at the same time I did. “Give it some gas! Peel out! Before he shoots us!”
Regrettably, it wasn’t really possible topeel outin the Thunderbird, seeing as it had the turning radius of a Panzer tank and we were parked on an extremely narrow dead-end street with an SUV angled inconveniently in our path. Thus, I had no choice but to execute not a three or even a four but aneight-point turn, my cheeks growing redder and redder in embarrassment as I shifted from forward to reverse again and again, slowly maneuvering the beast of a car away from the curb, back the way we came.
Throughout this rather humiliating process, the gun-toting guy stood by the curb, arms crossed over his chest, face an unreadable mask as he watched us execute our escape. His gun was, in a small stroke of fortune, now holstered. He appeared not to want to shoot us.
“Could you beanyslower?” Flo cried as I reversed for what seemed the thousandth time.
“Probably,” I snapped back, spinning the wheel and slamming the shifter violently into forward gear. “If I really tried.”
Flo leaned forward in her seat, trying to get a better look at the guy on the curb. “He’s just… staring at us.”
“Yes, thanks, I can see that.”
“What do you think he wants?”
I pawed the shifter again, gears crunching as I reversed a few inches. Almost there. “How the heck am I supposed to know, Flo? Would you just let me focus?”
“Oh, please! I’m not the one who can’t make a simple u-turn!”