“The fuck?”
“No, the Daisy.” She smiled at him. “Like the flower, you know?”
“Cassie—”
“We’re in the Badlands,” I told him breathlessly, which made no sense because this version of me didn’t need to breathe. But it was one of those moments. “And we need to get out—”
“We’re where?” His head twisted around to try to see me, because I was clinging to his back.
“In the Badlands. And a bunch of predatory ghosts are on the other side of that wall. We have to get out!”
“I— we just— Don’t you ever take a day off?”
“Will people stop saying that?”
“Maybe I would, if I ever woke up to find you making pancakes or something!”
“Pancakes,” Daisy said longingly. “I used to love pancakes.”
“Who the hell is she?”
“She’s a package deal with D—with Roger Palmer,” I said while the damn man glared at me from the corner.
“Roger who?”
“Palmer,” Dad and I said together, and Billy’s eyes got big.
“Palmer? The Roger Palmer, like Roger Palmer, your—”
I clapped my hand over his mouth, and look.
It did work.
“Can we just get out of here?” I asked. “Please?”
“I have no idea,” Billy said as Rosier’s body thump, thumped through him again. “Nobody goes to the Badlands. Nobody sane, anyway. I sure as hell have never—”
“I can help you,” Daisy said brightly. “It’s easy. Look, I’ll show you—”
“No!” everybody screamed as she started for the wall.
“What?”
“There’s thousands of ravenous ghosts out there!” I told her, incredulous.
“There are?” Her eyes got big. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?”
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Rosier said, running my body like a hamster on a wheel, in order to keep up with the barrel rolls. “We can shift out of this, but only out there”—he nodded at the wall—“in the midst of a bunch of predatory ghosts who plan to eat us?”
“Yes.”
“And our ride doesn’t even know how this process works, because he’s never been here before?”
“Yes.”
“And the only one who has experience is her.” He hiked my thumb at Daisy. “Who is quite possibly mad?”
“I’m not mad,” she said. “But you could have said something. I might have been killed!”