THE SUN WAS BARELY UP, and the Ghosts had already been on the road for an hour, inching their way down the two-lane highway. The choice of pace wasn’t theirs to make; Mother Nature had made it for them. Weather, war, and neglect had combined to both erode and bury the concrete surface in more places than not. The damage had been minimal at first—barely noticeable the previous day, when they had set out. But today, on reaching the foothills below the Cascades and the first of the passes edging along the banks of the Columbia River, conditions had changed dramatically. Slides blocked whole sections of the road, potholes and fissures left huge gaps, and limbs and debris littered what remained. None of it would have deterred the Lightning, but the hay wagon was another matter. Unsteady and difficult to maneuver under the best of circumstances, it was virtually unmanageable now.

“This is like riding the rooftops in Pioneer Square during one of the quakes!” Chalk declared, giving Fixit a worried look as the wagon swayed and bounced beneath them, a platform threatening to overturn with every new obstacle encountered.

Fixit didn’t like the way the wagon rode, either, but he was more confident than his friend that they were safe enough if they avoided dropping a wheel into one of the holes in the road surface. Still, he hung on to the bedding stakes just as tightly as the other boy, gritting his teeth against the rough ride. By midday, the road had worsened sufficiently that they were forced to stop and clear the way repeatedly in order to get through. Hawk walked point with Panther, the two of them choosing the path of least resistance when conditions demanded it, which was increasingly more often. The others still rode, save Catalya, who seemed uncomfortable with anything that didn’t involve walking. With Rabbit hopping along next to her, she strayed from one side to the other, studying the countryside, looking this way and that as if searching for something hidden in the landscape that only she would be able to see. Which was probably a good way of putting it, Fixit thought more than once, watching her from atop the wagon. She seemed more attuned to the larger world, to all that was out there, much of it concealed, much of it dangerous. She was always on guard, always keeping watch, never taking anything at face value. He liked it that she was that way. You could never keep watch too carefully, take your safety for granted. You could never afford to relax.

He was thinking about that when they stopped for the night, close within the shadow of the mountains but still miles away from the larger peaks and the destination that Hawk had told them lay beyond.