"This sucks ass," I grumbled.

"Language, young lady," Mom snapped back, without even glancing at me. Her gaze was focused intently on the jack in front of her as she struggled to pump the handle.

I groaned and sat down on the hard, barely-paved road. The boulder I was leaning against dug into my back, but I didn't have any other option. I picked at the frayed threads on the inseam of my jeans.

Alex looked over her shoulder up the road. "This will all be worth it once we get to the top of the mountain and can see the entire night sky. Just think of this as a very minor inconvenience." She tapped her foot and looked back towards Mom.

"Quit moving the light!" Mom barked.

Alex steadied the two phones in her hands. "Sorry. Just try to hurry up."

I leaned back and squinted up at the night sky. "I can hardly see any stars. Seriously, you guys picked the absolute worst night to be doing this. There's literally a storm on the way." As if to prove my point, a bolt of lightning in the distance illuminated the forested mountainside. An unusually cold gust of wind sent shivers down my spine.

They ignored me and continued to stare at the tire like it was about to tell them all the secrets of life.

"Please just call somebody." I tied my hair back with the spare ponytail in my pocket and pulled out my phone. I had a solid three bars, plenty to call a cab.

Alex looked over her shoulder at me and snapped, "We don't need anybody! This is easy to fix."

Mom pushed the hair out of her eyes and gave the jack a final pump. Picking up the wrench, she started struggling with the lugnuts of the flat tire. Considering that tire looked like it had been on there since the Reagan administration, I had a feeling it was going to take a while.

It seemed that my bad luck had finally caught up with us. The past week had been way too fun and worry-free to last forever. Now, we were stranded in the Romanian mountains in the middle of the night with a storm coming. I shouldn't have let them talk me into going 'stargazing'; we could have already been cozied up inside a nice hotel room.

"Get over here, Iulia!" Mom called.

I went to her side and helped her shimmy off the old tire. It dropped onto the road next to me, narrowly missing my foot, and I watched as it spun for a few seconds before coming to a rest. Next, we put the just-as-old spare tire on.

Mom was much quicker when it came to tightening the lugnuts and soon enough we were back in the car. Alex, always vigilant, made sure to claim shotgun, leaving me stuck in the backseat with all the excess luggage.

As we pulled out back onto the empty road, I noticed the car shaking more than normal. "Hey," I piped up, "I think we should just call it a night. This road is shit and I doubt the spare is going to hold us all the way to the top."

"We're fine." Alex glanced back at me and flashed a grin. I knew her well enough to notice that the corners of her lips didn't reach her ears like normal. Her fingers tapped against the middle console faster than a piano player's, something they only did when she was nervous.

Mom was a little better about hiding her anxiety. She focused mainly on the road, but every few minutes I caught her eyes flicking to the sideview mirror. The only times she was ever this quiet was when she was either mad or anxious. If it hadn't have been for Alex's odd behavior putting me on high alert, I wouldn't have even noticed.

Something was definitely wrong; I just couldn't put my finger on what.

We hadn't been driving for very long when I noticed the car. After we passed a pullout along one of the curves, a sleek black sedan pulled out. The headlights blocked me from seeing a driver, but I didn't need to see them to know that they had been waiting for us. My stomach dropped.

"Guys," I said, tapping Alex's shoulder. "Someone's following us."

Mom didn't swear too often, but she let out a solid shit when she looked in the side view mirror. Her already reckless speed doubled in a span of a few seconds, and before I knew it, we were hurtling along the winding road at the speed of a NASCAR driver with nothing to lose.

I grabbed my seatbelt with one hand and the 'oh shit' handle with the other. "Please slow down," I whimpered. Speaking was a challenge; every bump we hit threatened to make me bite my tongue off.

"We don't have as much time as we hoped," Mom said, looking at Alex. "We're going to have to call the rain before we get there."

"Do you need the spell?"

"Yeah, and you're going to have to steer while I work on it."

Alex whipped around and snatched my backpack off the floor between my legs. She started digging through it and muttering under her breath.

"What the hell is going on?" My brain had reached the point where it was refusing to accept any new information without processing what was currently happening. I had no clue what the fuck Alex was doing, why Mom was driving like a bat out of hell, or why some car was tailing us. Everyone else seemed to be part of something I knew nothing about.

"Everything is fine, sweetie." Mom gritted her teeth, her fingers wrapped so tight around the steering wheel that her knuckles turned white. "Everything is just fine."

Alex growled in frustration and flipped on the overhead light. She continued to riffle through my pack. Finally, she found whatever she was looking for: a lighter and a crumbled-up sheet of paper. She handed them both to Mom.

The car was getting closer to us. They were so far up our ass that I couldn't even see the headlights. Both of us had to be topping seventy miles an hour; a normal speed for the highway, but downright terrifying when going up a mountain.

Mom took the paper and lighter, and Alex leaned over and grabbed the wheel. The car drifted dangerously close to the edge as they both adjusted.

"What are you doing?" I cried out to Mom as she lit the lighter.

She was silent for a second as she read over the paper. When she spoke, it wasn't directed to me. The words were undoubtedly foreign, though I had no clue what language. She muttered them under her breath at first, but the incantation grew louder and stronger the longer she went. Her eyes closed and she entered into a trance. The flame was held near her lips, but didn't go out when she breathed on it.

Just as she finished speaking, the car rammed us from behind. We all screamed, and Alex jerked the wheel to the right. Mom saved us from plummeting off the cliff by grabbing the wheel and pulling it in the other direction.

I was terrified, but the other two treated it like it was only a minor problem.

"Are we almost there?" Alex asked.

"Soon," was the hurried response. "Just a few more miles and we'll be there."

I glanced back at the car still glued to our rear; something told me that pulling over to trade insurances wouldn't be the smartest idea. "Where the hell are we going?"

"You'll see when we get there." Alex zipped up my backpack and tossed it back to me. "Make sure you have everything with you and be ready to run when we stop the car."

Tears welled up in my chest alongside panic. I rubbed my eyes, desperate to not start crying like a little baby, and made sure I had everything gathered up into my pack.

The spare tire, not used to being pushed to such high speeds, caused the car to shake violently. I was concerned it was about to come off, but Mom and Alex didn't even bat an eyelash.

We rounded a final bend and, up ahead, I saw a dirt road that broke off from the main one we were on. Calling it a road was generous—it was barely more than a hiking trail—but that didn't stop Mom from turning onto it at break-neck speeds.

Had it not been for my seat belt, I would have knocked myself unconscious hitting the ceiling. The road was littered with potholes and roots that jutted out of the ground; tree branches slapped all the windows.

"What the hell are you doing, Mom?" I screamed out one last time.

She turned to face me, and her lips were pursed and tight. "Watch your fucking mouth!" The overhead light cast deep shadows across her face, highlighting the wild gleam in her eyes.

The mysterious car hit us again, pushing us into a rut in the ground and causing Mom to temporarily lose control of the wheel. I knew this feeling from back in Florida, when I would have to drive down muddy dirt roads. It always made my stomach drop just a little when I felt the tires start to slide and the wheel go slack. She regained control.

By now, the rain had really started to pour. In the span of a few seconds, it seemed, the heavens had opened up and released enough water to flood the earth. The car headlights did jack shit when we couldn't even see past all the rain on the windshield. I had no clue how the hell Mom was managing not to drive into a tree.

Just like I had predicted, the tire didn't last long. It gave out, quite loudly, while we were rounding a tight corner. The popping noise almost made me shit myself, but thankfully I was too busy being distracted by the feeling of my body being slammed against the side of the car to ruin my pants.

As I pulled myself off the floor, I was surprised to find a tree branch where my head had been only a few seconds ago. Shattered glass littered the floor, and I wanted to vomit as I stared at a piece sticking out of my bare forearm. I was so shocked at the site of my own blood that at first I wasn't able to comprehend the fact that we just t-boned a tree.