“That’s the one.” Bo wrapped his hand around Lorde’s leg. The power that rolled through him, through us, was a zing of sound and color andgold, gold, gold.
“I might have a town you should go to, a rabbit you should find. Well, as much a rabbit as anything else. You’ll know her when you see her.” He petted Lorde’s head again, running his fingers up her ears.
Then he stood and planted his fists on his hips. “How’s that sound?”
Lorde walked over to us, tail wagging, her black tongue happy. No limp. Not even a slight hesitation in her gait.
I nodded, squeezing Lu’s hand as she scrubbed Lorde’s fuzzy head. “That sounds like a good start.”
And it was.
Epilogue
Lu wanted me.
It was in the sparkle of her eyes as she walked backward from the truck door, the keys dangling on one finger in front of her, as if those keys were what drew me to her, as if that truck, that ridiculous silver pile of junk, was what I wanted.
“I’ll let you drive,” she crooned as she ran one hand along the length of the truck, pausing to cup the fuel cap before dragging her full palm against the long bed.
“Damn right, I’ll drive,” I growled.
Back, back, back, she walked, slowly, as if hypnotized. Her pupils were already blown, her breathing fast.
I was in no better shape, breathing too hard, heart pumping like an engine, sweat—actual sweat—prickling at the back of my neck, at my temples, cooling under the lick of a breeze.
I followed her, step-for-step, as if we were built in the rhythm of each other, as if we were locked into the metronometick, tick, tickof fate, of love.
“You like the truck,” she teased, her fingers dancing across the corner of the tailgate. “You might even love it a little.”
“Not even a little,” I said, closing the distance, easing closer to her, so close she had to press her shoulder blades to the tailgate and lean back.
We were not touching, not yet.
The ache, the torture of it, burned sublime.
We’d watched the god ride away on his motorcycle. Stared after him as he faded in the distance, moving north, down Route 66.
The ties between us were there, but less noticeable, the intensity of the connection easing.
We couldn’t hear his thoughts, feel his emotions, or sense his power around us.
If not for Lorde’s healed leg and my return to physicality, it might have been as if the god of connections and destruction had never waited for us on a dirt pullout north of Lawndale, the Kickapoo Creek slinking quiet and green beneath the Mother Road.
Since the god had driven north, Lu turned the truck south, one hand locked on top of mine resting upon her thigh.
We didn’t speak.
We didn’t turn on the radio.
We drove. Lincoln, Broadwell, Elkhart, Williamsville, Sherman. The rumble of the truck beneath us, Lorde sticking her head out the passenger window to warm her face in the sun and sniff the summer breeze.
Lu turned the truck down a road gone to grass and weeds, bright yellow coneflowers on either side of the lane, random as tossed confetti. The brush grew taller. White oak and ash trees gave glimpses of sky between branches as they lined then crowded the road.
We’d been here by the Sangamon River before, Lu and I. This little forgotten turnoff hidden in the parkland where old trees offered shade and the drone and click of insects flickering in the tall grass was its own music.
Here, the highway was gone, all sounds of the modern world swallowed up.
“Since you don’t like this truck,” Lu said, as I pinned her in place by locking my arms on either side of her shoulders, “not even a little, I’m thinking we’d better go find us a hotel room somewhere. Some soft bed. Shouldn’t take more than an hour or two to find one not so filled with ghosts it would drive you out of your mind.”
