She shrugs, and I shrug, too. We don’t know for sure and probably never will. Anyway, there’s no difference between life and magic, not to living things like us.
Without discussion, we return to the mansion, go upstairs, and sort through the fake passports with Max’s image, the bottled water, the maps. I start counting the cash while Amparo stares out the window, paling with dawn.
‘We should dump the gasoline and burn this place down,’ she says.
‘Why?’
‘Our fingerprints. We could get arrested.’
‘For what?’
‘Murder?’
‘Hmm.’ I’m trying to keep the numbers straight in my head. Max said he gave me the ring because he was low on cash; there’s a lot of cash here. Another lie. I find a leather backpack under the chair and fill it with the money. ‘A thousand people have left ten thousand f
