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“You have a favorite dildo?” Victor wondered aloud.
“Uhm, no, Carlos is my favorite, as I just said, so he gets a name. And you, Fancy Fangs . . . you don’t have a favorite dick? Pfft. What am I saying? Of course you don’t. The only thing up your ass is that thousand-year-old stick.” Zee knelt and unzipped a bag. “Boooring. Clearly, Daddy Spice’s bag.” He opened a second, revealing an array of colorful fabric. “Adam . . .” He drew my name out on a long sigh. “Not only is Carlos not in here, but there aren’t any sex toys at all.”
In my rush to save their lives, I hadn’t been thinking about bringing his collection of bouncy multicolored vibrating dicks. “Oh, I . . .” I shrugged. “We’ll buy some on the road. Let’s go.”
“Now?” Victor asked. His dark eyebrows began to creep closer. I had three seconds before they met in a frown, and then he wouldn’t let this happen without some kind of reasonable explanation—that I didn’t have.
Zee stood, bag in hand. “Vacation, here we come. It’s about fuckin’ time. We deserve it. Are we going somewhere tropical? Did you pack my mankini?”
“No, and uh . . . no.” I grabbed Victor’s bag and offered it to him.
“You’re terrible at packing,” Zee was saying. “You should have let me do it.”
“Then we’d have only dildos,” Victor remarked.
Zee slung his bag over his shoulder. “And we’d be guaranteed a great time.”
Victor eyed his bag dangling from my grip, then looked up at my face. I couldn’t tell him why this was happening. Not yet. We needed to get far, far away. Then I’d tell him—tell them both. When we were all safe. Please don’t ask.
He couldn’t read minds, we’d established that, but he was very good at reading expressions, and the frown he wore as he took his bag from my hand meant he knew this wasn’t right or normal, but he wasn’t going to ask—not yet. He would, though, and soon.
“Great.” I picked up my bag, told Madame Matase we’d be out of town for a few days, then quickly turned away before she asked where we were going. It was better for everyone if nobody knew. If they didn’t know, then the information couldn’t be coerced out of them.
The rusty pink rental minivan waited out front, basking under the weak early-morning sunlight. It had clearly had a few scrapes in its long life, but it was cheap. And it had been the only vehicle left at the rental company at short notice.
Victor stood in the shade on the porch, squinting down at me.
“I know. I’m . . . sorry.” I hauled open the minivan’s sliding door and flung my bag into the back after Zee had loaded his. When I looked back, Victor’s glare had turned icy. Please don’t ask, I silently begged again.
“The back windows are blacked out . . . for vampires,” I said, hoping it might help defuse some of his scowl.
“Very well.” He dashed from the porch into the back of the van in a blur.
Zee called shotgun and poofed into the front passenger seat, then jabbed at the old-style radio, searching for a station. I climbed behind the wheel, turned the key, and the van’s engine grumbled to life. A puff of black smoke filled the mirrors.
Hands on the wheel, I hesitated, looking up at the porch and what I could see of the hotel from the driver’s window.
It was going to be okay.
This was the best solution for everyone.
The hotel was too important . . . and so was Zee, already mumbling about the heat, and Victor, silently stewing in the back, trusting and supporting me without question like always.
“Road trip!” Zee announced, as I pulled the van from the curb and watched the hotel shrink in the rearview mirror, my heart sinking
The SOS Hotel would always be our home, and we’d see it again. I had to believe that. I needed it to be safe.
On the plus side, Zee had been right. We did deserve a vacation. Stopping Gideon Cain, Sebastien, and Daisy had not been easy, and a few days away would do us good. So it wasn’t all bad. Kill two frogs with one stone, wasn’t that how the saying went?
If only my older brother were as easy to kill.
But I wasn’t thinking about him, or that.
Only about getting away.
“So, where we goin’?” Zee asked, shuffling down into his seat, getting comfortable for the long drive ahead.
“North.” That was all I was prepared to say, mostly because I had no idea. But north seemed accessible. Just drive right up the I-5 and keep on going, maybe even cross the border into Canada?
