“Slow down below eighty,” I say. “Or I’ll start talking about genitalia again. Specifics. Details. Maybe I’ll flash mine.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Uterus,” I say. “Breast tissue.” I smile. “Mammogram.”
“What on earth is a mammogram?”
“There’s this machine that flattens a woman’s mammary glands, the tissue on the front of our body that exists so we can feed our young, and they press that between these two plates so?—”
“That’s enough!” I notice he’s slowed down.
I can’t help giggling just a little. A death demon who’s scared of me talking about boobs? Really? I’m keeping this info in my back pocket, right by my butt. Oh, man, I’m really corny, even in my own thoughts.
“What’s so humorous?”
I sigh. “Oh, just the inconsistencies of a death deity who knows nothing about human life or the creation of it.”
“I know plenty,” he says. “But it’s the antithesis of what I am and what I do, so it makes me uncomfortable.”
Interesting.
“We have arrived.” He tosses his head, and I see a sign for the Battle Mountain Super 8.
“Nothing but the best when traveling with a death god, I guess.” Only then do I realize that we have no money—we can’t even afford this dump.
The trouble with the cop was minor compared to what’s going to happen when we approach the hotel and demand they give us a free room. I groan.
“What now?” He pulls into the hotel parking lot, apparently understanding what a hotel is and also, surprisingly, how to park a car. “You want to know how I know what a hotel is.”
My head snaps sideways. “You can read my mind?”
“Not very well.” He frowns. “Or at least, only when you’re broadcasting loudly, for some reason.”
“How do you know what a hotel is?”
“I’ve had generals in every age. Contrary to your belief, humans aren’t that complex, and their needs are even simpler. Eat. Sleep. Reproduce. Dress nicer and be better than everyone else in a larger and more comfortable residence. That about covers it.”
“Well, in this day and age, when you want to sleep in someone else’s place, in a hotel, you have to shell out money, and seeing as you split open the mountain, and I sprang onto your back without any of my belongings, I have no wallet or purse. We just stole all that stuff from the convenience store after you—” I cough, so I don’t have to say that he murdered the two attendants. “But I would rather not get a hotel room the same way.”
He kills the engine—something I don’t object to him killing for a change—and turns toward me. “What do you propose we do, then? You’re exhausted—more so because you’ve had to use my energy to heal your wounds, and the traveling we’ve done has put more stress on an already stressed mortal body.”
That explains why I feel like I haven’t slept in a week. “What did you do about currency in the past?”
He shrugs. “Kill anyone who demanded it.”
I should have expected that, I guess. “Okay, well, give me a second to think of a plan B.” Only, my poor tired brain isn’t complying. I’m flogging it and coming up short.
Who in their right mind would just hand us a hotel room? Then I think of the car. It’s not a very ethical thing to do, but. . . I pull the paperwork in the glove compartment out and tear it up. “Give me the keys.”
Xolotl doesn’t argue. That surprises me. Then he follows me, my saddle bags draped over my shoulder, toward the front desk. I toss the paperwork in the trashcan just outside the lobby. It’s pretty late now—past two in the morning—so no one else is around. The guy at the front looks like the pimply-faced teenager I expect to have the graveyard shift.
Now that I’m thinking about it, we have a lot of stupidly grotesque phrases in the English language. I hope it doesn’t really turn into a graveyard shift.
“Hey there.” I force a bright smile. “This is going to seem strange, but we need something.”
He frowns.
I need to sell this, or Doofus here is getting dead. “Okay, so my ex-boyfriend was a real jerk, a dangerous jerk.” I toss my head. “This guy here has been helping me to get away from him.”
