Bracken opened his mouth, paused, and then closed it.
"Don't be shy," Vanessa teased, prodding his chest with her finger. "It really is the end of the world. Time to unbottle those hidden feelings. People make such a fuss about age discrepancies. Your attraction to Kendra is kind of like me having a crush on a newborn infant. Perfectly natural."
Bracken reddened. "I think your imagination is running away with you. I'm very fond of Kendra, but not in the way you're describing."
"You're right," Vanessa chuckled. "My mistake. It isn't quite like I described. After all, Kendra looks much more mature than an infant."
Trask cleared his throat noisily. "Enough with the blix-unicorn rivalry. I'm afraid we have larger concerns."
"Seth has a letter from Patton Burgess outlining our present objectives," Vanessa said. "I already have the key to the lighthouse. We blixes have our uses."
"There isn't much to do until tonight," Seth agreed.
Warren rubbed his hands together. "Anybody know where we can score some quality crab cakes?"
***
Less than a mile from the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, Kendra sat in a rented SUV with Trask. Overhead, twinkling stars passed in and out of view as patchy clouds shifted. She unrolled the top of a bag of pretzels and popped one in her mouth, chewing without relish. After a shrimp quesadilla for dinner complemented by half a crab cake sandwich, she wasn't hungry, just fidgety. She checked her watch: twenty minutes to midnight.
Awkwardness had plagued Kendra the entire evening. Vanessa's accusations on the beach had left her profoundly embarrassed. Not only had Vanessa put Bracken on the spot about his feelings, she had publicly pointed out the age gap that separated him from Kendra. What made everything so much worse was that Kendra was developing a genuine attachment to Bracken. He was cute, brave, protective, smart, sweet, and, maybe best of all, she knew he was for real.
All night she hadn't known what to say to him, how to look at him. In the end, she had ignored Bracken, concentrating on Seth. Her brother had been through a lot since she had last seen him. He seemed sadder, more brooding.
Kendra rolled up the pretzel bag. What if Vanessa was right? What if Bracken liked her? It was one thing to harbor a crush on an unattainable guy, but quite another to consider him actually returning her affection. Even without Vanessa stressing the point, she knew he was a unicorn, and centuries old. But most things about him seemed so human! So normal! Well, handsomer than normal. Despite the reality of his true identity, in practice, Bracken seemed like a good-looking guy only a couple of years her senior.
Of course, in those moments after Bracken had reclaimed his second horn, he had come across as otherworldly. But once the crisis was behind them, he had quickly reverted to his old self. He still couldn't assume his horse shape without his third horn. For all practical purposes he was human. And even if he was a little otherworldly, Kendra sometimes wondered whether she were entirely human herself anymore. After becoming fairykind, she could hardly view herself as a regular teenage girl.
Kendra leaned her head against the window. Was she really sitting here worrying about how Bracken felt about her when the world was about to end? How simple was she? What if he read her mind? She would be mortified!
"Can I have a pretzel?" Trask asked.
The question made Kendra jump a little. "Sure," she said, handing him the bag. "Are we just going to abandon the rental car?"
"They'll figure it out," Trask said. "We'll compensate them financially. The Knights of the Dawn always pay their debts, and a little extra. We do it anonymously because too often we'd get arrested otherwise, but we do it. Naturally, if the world ends, I think everyone will have more pressing issues to complain about."
"True," Kendra said.
She had grilled Trask about her parents and grandparents, but he had been kept in isolation at Living Mirage. She had asked Vanessa as well. The narcoblix had traveled into Tanu's body along with some of the others, but they were kept in separate cells, locked up day and night, so she had learned nothing except that they remained in the dungeon.
Having parked where they could observe the main road, Kendra and Trask sat up as a huge pickup truck approached at high speed. The truck zoomed past their SUV; then the taillights flashed brighter and the truck turned around. Headlights glaring, the truck came to a stop facing them, and Hugo vaulted out of the back.
Kendra and Trask got out of the SUV as Newel and Doren hopped down from the truck. "Told you!" Doren said, swatting Newel with the back of his hand. "Trust the golem."
Newel cracked his knuckles. "We were heading to the rendezvous when Hugo started to sense you guys. He led us here."
"We're two hours early," Doren said proudly.
"Seth," Hugo rumbled, pointing toward the lighthouse.
"He's fine," Kendra said. "He's just calling our ride. Warren, Bracken, and Vanessa are with him."
"You boys must have disregarded some speed limits to get here," Trask said.
Newel laughed. "That truck can move! We rarely went less than twice the speed limit."
"It was exhilarating," Doren gushed.
"Did you hit any speed traps?" Kendra asked.
"Twice," Newel said. "We pulled over politely. Both times the officer looked shocked to find a goat at the wheel without a human in sight."
"They searched the cat both times," Doren said. "It was easy to prick them with one of the darts Vanessa left us. They went to sleep, we put them back in their car, and no trouble ever caught up with us."
"I'm sure other officers responded when they stopped calling in," Trask said. "But they probably dismissed the report of a truck driven by goats as a hallucination."
"Vanessa had five spare sets of plates with corresponding registrations," Newel explained. "We swapped them after any trouble."
Trask chuckled. "That may have helped as well. We did some speeding to get here ourselves, but had better luck with speed traps."
Kendra regarded the satyrs. "You guys are really going to come to Zzyzx with us?"
"We've come this far," Doren said.
"Seth promised us our own flat-screen TV with a generator," Newel explained. "Besides, having front-row seats to the end of the world beats waiting for the disaster back at Fablehaven with the centaurs in charge."
"Seth told me about the centaurs," Kendra said.
"There will be a reckoning if we can survive the demons," Trask vowed.