Jack braced for collision. With an animal, a tree, a pedestrian,a passing motorist. There was no way this would end well. The knowledge dug at him like a knife into bone, flinching and dragging. Whoever—or whatever—was in that sedan didn’t want to talk to them. Would find a way to avoid them, even if it meant taking a sharp turn at high speed. Already, some of its maneuvers seemed impossible. Jack was no experienced driver, but he’d watched enough traffic go by to understand what cars could and could not do, and this one defied physics.
Carla’s speedometer indicated they’d reached ninety miles per hour, and still, they couldn’t catch up. The sedan careened around another corner, gliding past a large oak tree and a picket fence.
At that speed, a normal car would’ve spun out. There was no way that this was anything other than supernatural.
“Carla!” Jack shouted over the blaring horn.
No response. The convertible rocketed forward.
“Carla!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. The force of it burned his throat, sent spit soaring. Droplets landed on the dashboard.
“What?” she snarled, turning to glare at him.
“Slow down!”
“I know what I’m doing! This bastard isn’t getting away!”
“He will if we crash!”
“We’re not gonna fucking crash!”
They came upon the bend. Jack braced for impact. Prayed that if he died, it would be quick. That the loop hadn’t ended, that he might come back and live another day, away from Carla and her fucking convertible.
Exhilaration ran from the base of his spine up to his skull. His stomach dropped. For one brief moment, he felt like he was actually flying. Like he was on a ride at an amusement park and not about to be decapitated by a white picket fence or wrapped around a tree.
Tires squealed. Dirt and debris slapped against the sides of the car. A cloud of dust erupted as the convertible turned acorner, wheels scuffing the side of the road, where a ditch waited below, hungry and muddy.
Teeth gritted, hands clutching the seatbelt for dear life, Jack waited for death.
They only narrowly missed the oak tree.
“Fuck!” Carla cried, voice melding with the screech of the tires against asphalt.
The road before them cut straight ahead through the trees for miles. The dark sedan was already a distant pinprick.
Jack blinked, and it vanished entirely.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
“There’s no way,”Carla groaned for the third time that night.
Jack reached for the open bottle of wine and topped off her glass.
“Getting me drunk isn’t going to help,” she chastised, but reached for the glass anyway.
“It’s helpingme,” said Jack, who had finally managed to forget the way his stomach plunged straight to the asphalt when the sedan disappeared. “Being drunk, I mean.”
Jack drove them back to the castle on the cliff. White-knuckled it the whole way, stomach twisting into ever more complicated knots. Carla sat in stunned silence, staring blankly at the road in front of them. When they arrived at the house, she began pacing, shouting, waving her arms as she made laps around the basement. For his part, Jack listened to her rant and kept watch for any nosy servants. Finally, when she started to cry, he went and selected a bottle of wine from the shelf and uncorked it with the gusto of an inexperienced and overly enthusiastic waiter. She laughed when it spilled down his shirt and all over the carpet, told him not to worry about cleaning up.
“It’s not like it’s going to matter,” she said.
“Which is why I picked the most expensive-looking blend,” said Jack, grinning conspiratorially.
She rolled her eyes and took a swig directly from the bottle. “Blends aren’t expensive, dummy."
They spent the next hour watching comedy skits and getting progressively drunker, until Carla remembered why she was upset and started pacing again.
