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Marla nodded. “I hope she doesn’t try to cast it again, too, but for somewhat different<br />
reasons.”<br />
“Mother of God,” Cole said, staring out the windshield.<br />
Marla looked. A jetliner was rising into the sky at a steep angle. “Oh, right,” she said.<br />
“No commercial air travel when you were last up and about, huh?”<br />
“Those things are common?” Cole said, craning his neck to watch the plane ascend.<br />
“Oh, yeah. Hundreds of flights every day. Maybe thousands.”<br />
“Is it safe?”<br />
“Safer than driving, from what I understand,” Marla said, and whipped the car over into<br />
the lane marked “Arrivals,” forcing a BMW into scraping the guardrails in the process.<br />
“Indeed,” Cole said. “Do we know where we’re going?”<br />
“Right there,” Marla said, spotting Ch’ang Hao at the curb. He was dressed in a<br />
shapeless brown overcoat, and he sat on what appeared to be an antique steamer trunk,<br />
his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands.<br />
Marla parked the stolen minivan at the curb and climbed out. “Ch’ang Hao!” she said.<br />
“Sorry you had to wait. Rondeau got kidnapped, and I was in another universe.”<br />
Ch’ang Hao stood up and nodded. “Normally I would doubt such excuses, but I trust<br />
you would not lie to me. There need be no lies between us. I would have made my way<br />
to you on foot, but…” He looked around, at the parking garage, the spiraling concrete<br />
ramps, and shrugged. “I could not get my bearings. I do not like being surrounded by so<br />
much concrete. And I did not enjoy flying.”<br />
“I don’t blame you,” Marla said. “Still, better than centuries of bondage at the hands of<br />
the Celestial, right?”<br />
“Ultimately,” Ch’ang Hao said. “Though there were moments, jammed into the tiny<br />
seats, when I thought back fondly on the spaciousness of my prison. The spell you cast<br />
enabled me to pass through security unmolested, though I had none of these passports<br />
they desired, and their machines beeped at the nails on my harness.”<br />
“Did you…have any trouble? Once you arrived?”<br />
“I found the serpent,” Ch’ang Hao said. He shook his head. “The jungles are being cut<br />
and burned. It is shameful.” He looked her in the eye. “It makes me look forward to the<br />
extinction of man.”<br />
“I don’t blame you. And you brought the snake back?”<br />
“I did. It is in this trunk, sleeping, dreaming of food and warmth. I did not wish it to be<br />
afraid in its last hours of life.”
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