“Yes.”
“Okay,” he says slowly. “Was it fire this time?”
“Was what fire?” I ask, confused.
“Did you read a fire? Or was it the raven? Or what?”
I watch him to see if he’s being sarcastic. He’s not. He’s just trying to get me to talk. “I’d rather not discuss it,” I say finally.
“Juneau, you can tell me. I’m not going to laugh at you,” he says.
Frankie said I have to tell him the truth. But in this case, I just can’t. “You wouldn’t understand anyway,” I snap, hoping that will shut him up.
It does. He bites his lip and reaches over to turn the radio up. Good. That conversation’s over.
I turn my thoughts back to the three prophecies I received last night. The one about Whit was clear enough. But when my next step was revealed, it might as well have been spoken in Chinese. I didn’t understand a word of it.
Prophecies are usually cryptic, but I don’t even know how to approach decrypting this one. I pick up Miles’s notebook, jot the words down from memory, and study them one by one.
Finally, Miles turns down the radio and asks, “Do we have time to stop for lunch?” His voice is back to normal—he’s gotten over the insult I used to shut him up. Good.
I close the notebook and tuck it under my seat. My head hurts from thinking so hard, and the puzzle remains unsolved. “Let’s just make sandwiches,” I suggest.
We pull into a tiny town called Unity and dig Cokes, chips, and sandwich stuff out of the trunk. “We can eat in the car,” I say, but Miles frowns and gestures toward a lone picnic table sitting nearby under a tree. “Can we sit outside and eat? I’m getting sick of the car.”
My instincts say to keep going. But Miles looks tired. Discouraged.
“Hopefully they fell for our ruse in Spray and are headed toward the Pacific Ocean now,” I concede. “I don’t see why we can’t stop for fifteen minutes.”
Relief floods his face. We spread the food out on a table, and he begins to eat standing up. “My butt fell asleep back near Canyon City,” he explains, brushing crumbs from his mouth as he bounces on his toes.
“How long do we have until we hook up to the main highway?” I ask.
Miles jogs to the car and comes back with the atlas and a pencil. “Another hour and a half and we meet back up with 84 at the border of Idaho,” he says, making a dot on where we are and tracing lightly to the edge of Oregon.
We’re reconnecting with the road we started on. But Frankie’s directions were vague—go southeast—and I have no idea what comes next. Damn cryptic prophecy, I think.
And then I’m struck by an idea. I touch Miles’s arm. “Will you try something with me? I’m going to say a sentence, and you tell me the first thing that comes to your mind.”
Miles furrows his brow. “Okay,” he says hesitantly.
I pronounce the words of the prophecy carefully: “Follow the serpent toward the city by the water that cannot be drunk.”
Miles looks confused. “That means absolutely nothing to me,” he says. “What is it?”
“It’s our directions,” I admit.
“This was one of the signs you got last night?”
“Yes,” I say uncomfortably. Don’t tell him any more, I think. I take a swig of root beer and let the bubbles fizz on my tongue before swallowing.
“You heard those actual words?” He sounds incredulous.
I nod. DON’T TELL HIM, my inner voice is now shouting. I have to tell him, I think. If I don’t follow the rules in the prophecies, I might as well give up now.
He scratches his head and looks suspicious. “How’d you manage that?”
“I used an oracle,” I say.
He huffs in amusement. “Did you convince Poe to talk?”
I take another sip of root beer and shake my head. I feel guilt rolling off me in waves and am surprised that Miles can’t sense it. I look away from him, and by the time I look back a dark cloud has stretched across his face.
“You didn’t,” he says.
I nod meekly, but reminding myself that rules don’t count in a state of war, I lift my chin and watch as he gathers together his memories of last night, flips through them, and then arrives at the answer. “What was in that tea you gave me in the tent?” His voice is flat. Dead.
“Something we grow in Alaska that’s a bit like brugmansia.”
“What the hell is brugmansia?” he says, and his face is crimson. His eyes dark.
“Angel’s trumpets,” I respond, knowing full well he has no idea what that means either.
“WHAT DOES IT DO?” Miles’s words are like four small daggers stabbing my skull. My hand rises to my forehead. Don’t think of him as a boy. He is your driver. Your oracle. That is all. I force my hand back down to my side and raise my chin. I had to use him—I had no other choice.