“Lick up your own whisky.” Ayaz let out a howl as the song reached a crescendo.
The longer we drove, the less I thought about Dante. Tonight wasn’t about the past. We drove along the shoreline, where waves crashed against the breakwater, sending up pillars of froth and foam. I rolled down the window and breathed in the frigid air. The taste of freedom.
My fears slipped away as I embraced the present moment – each second precious because we lived it fully, the way teenagers were supposed to. Driving at top speed with the wind in my hair, I felt like a real teenager for the first time in… maybe the first time ever.
This is what it’s like to be normal.
Right, normal.With three boyfriends who are children of a cosmic god, cruising down the freeway to steal a hundred k. Totally normal.
Fuck.
In the back of the car, we found blankets. They smelled musty, but who cared? Trey pulled up in a parking lot overlooking the ocean. The only other vehicle was an abandoned food truck covered in graffiti. Quinn and Ayaz folded down the seats and all four of us crowded in back with our sigil (and it was a squash – even Trey’s four-seater Porsche had precious little room), wrapped in the blankets while Metallica’s ‘Wherever I May Roam’ pounded through the speakers.
I watched Ayaz light up a joint. “Ms. West could be a problem.”
Smoke swirled around Ayaz’s head as he took a long drag before he passed it to Trey. “Agreed. She’s not going to be happy when she finds out we took away her immortality. How do you know the god won’t tell her our plan? You said he didn’t know how to lie.”
“He doesn’t. I told him to go silent. He isn’t speaking a word to her at all.” I breathed the weed deep into my lungs, letting a wave of calm wash over me. “I think that’s what’s got her in such a state. She’s not used to the silence. It’s making her nervous. She can’t do anything now, not when it could risk her plan falling through. But if she discovers the missing sigils or decides to jump in at the last second and ruin things, I don’t have a plan to deal with it. I guess we just wait and see.”
“Can you ask the shadows to deal with her?”
I shook my head. “They’re part of the god. They’ll be in the spaceship with him.”
“What about your little army of plague-carriers?” Quinn piped up.
“The rats? I’m not sure I can command them to do anything. But I can ask.”
My phone beeped. It was Zehra. Ayaz read over my shoulder, but Zehra hadn’t written anything, only dropped a link to a newspaper article.
“Some family in upstate New York had their assets seized by the IRS,” I read aloud. “Apparently, they haven’t paid taxes in fifteen years, and now they’re going to lose everything.”
“The Montagues? That’s Nancy’s family,” Trey looked at Ayaz with an astonished expression on his face. “Your sister did this?”
“She’s something else.” Ayaz’s eyes beamed with pride as he grabbed the phone and read through the article. “I just hope she stays safe out there. The Eldritch Club won’t let this stand.”
We talked and smoked and kissed until the sun rose over the water – the first sunrise my Kings had seen outside the school in twenty years. The clock on the dashboard counted down the minutes until the nearest bank opened.
Beside me, Trey snored. Grinning, Quinn dug his fingers into Trey’s pocket and fished out the keys. Trey woke just as Quinn gunned the engine.
“You fucker.” Trey kicked the back of the seat. “Get out of my car.”
“No can do.” Quinn whooped as he tore off, ramming the car into the nearest speed bump. Trey winced as something on the underbelly of the car scraped over concrete. Quinn bumped and ground his way along the freeway to the next small town. He didn’t have nearly as much skill behind the wheel as Trey – I guess that was why he had a truck, so he could flatten any obstacle in his path.
“Stop,” Trey ordered as Quinn ground the gears and we turned onto the main street.
I glanced across the road at the tiny provincial bank. “Here?”
“It’s as good a place as any.”
Quinn narrowly avoided scraping the Porsche along another car as he parallel parked. He and Ayaz waited in the car while Trey and I pulled on the wigs and hats and long coats we’d dug out of the costume department. My eyes flicked to the security cameras over the bank entrance.Please don’t let Vincent be watching.
Trey stepped into the teller and slid his black card across the counter. “I require a cash advance,” he said.
“Certainly sir. For how much money?”
“All of it.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
