Of course they'd end up in the same roadside diner as a rowdy team of high-schoolers celebrating their latest football victory. Of course.Adam had a grinding headache from the six hours he'd just spent driving in the glare of high summer without sunglasses; the triumphant whoops and bellows made him flinch and press his sweating glass of soda to one temple.He was less worried about the pain, though, than he was about Maggie. Her Legacies had started to manifest in the last few weeks, but otherworldly powers didn't mix well with a girl who was shy and high-strung and always, always afraid. Her control was jittery at best, dangerous at worst, and they'd had a few near misses with flying objects. And some hits, he thought with amusement, glancing at the bruise on the side of Ivan's face. His brother--it felt oddly not-odd to think of him that way, after six months on the road together--was rarely anything other than stone-faced. Now, though, surrounded by the cheerful, deafening machismo of a crowd of teenage boys, he seemed... not happy, really, but not angry for once. Wistful, maybe. Probably reminded him of his asshole friends, such as they were, from combat training.Sitting next to Ivan, pressed into the side of the booth closest to the wall, Maggie didn't look wistful at all. She looked pale and anxious, too small for the empty space of the seat around her, like she hoped the worn red booth cushions would fold up and hide her from view. Her glass kept scooting around on the table in tiny, spastic movements, turning the water rings it left behind into trails. They needed to get out of here, Adam knew, right now. It would be, to say the least, bad if Maggie lost it here. But he was so fucking tired, and his head hurt so fucking much, and it was so hard to even think about getting back in the damn car.One of the footballers bumped his hip into their table as he went by, apparently on purpose. "Ayyy," he said, grinning at Maggie from under his douchey crewcut as he leaned too far over the table in her direction. The glass jerked wildly, once, twice, slopping water down the side.Deer, meet headlights. Panic, meet Maggie. Diner, meet disaster.Definitely time to go, thought Adam.As he started to signal so to the other two, however, Ivan sat up straighter in his booth and scooted toward Maggie. His expression was stony, and his glare and intimidating size were all it took to send Crouchecut backing away, hands in the air.Adam glanced quickly at Maggie, even more worried now. Surely some dumbass jock couldn't be more intimidating than Ivan; he might be two or three years younger than any of them, but he'd charged her once with knife in hand, back at her London apartment, before they'd pretty much kidnapped him. But she seemed strangely comforted by the presence of a sullen stone wall of a boy, so huge that he blocked out the light and hid her in soft, encompassing shadow. The hunted look slowly receded from her face, replaced by something like gratefulness. The glass finally went still, and she eventually calmed down enough to eat some of the fries from the edge of Ivan's plate (amazingly, he let her, even though he normally put away food like a garbage disposal).Watching the two of them, head throbbing to the hoots and cheers of the football team, Adam wondered if maybe those six months on the road had made a difference after all.