quarter-pounders.
He woke up again when they pulled to the side of the road twenty miles outside Cumberland. The right-rear tire had gone flat. That shouldn’t have slowed them down too much, and Mercedes Benz used full-size spares, so they wouldn’t even have to drive on a donut. The problem was the jack. It was missing. The lug wrench was where it should be, but no jack.
They could have worked around that if she’d had more guards with her. José and Carson could lift the rear of the car, but José wasn’t sure they could hold it up long enough for Lily to change the tire. Lily might have talked him into trying if she hadn’t started seeing little birds. Dozens and dozens of them. Each was the size of a gypsy moth and the bright turquoise blue of a swimming pool, and they circled her head like in an old-time cartoon. The air was so thick with little blue birds that she couldn’t see the damn car.
The hallucination didn’t last long. Nor did the headache it triggered. But it convinced José it was not safe for her to change the tire, and he refused to lift the car so she could try, which made her regret telling him about the damn blue birds. They waited a full forty-five minutes for roadside assistance to arrive, leaving them barely enough time to make it to Whistle by six . . . if they kept to the speed limit. So they didn’t. They didn’t dare push their speed too much—getting stopped would slow them down even more—but Lily wanted some margin of error in case the park proved hard to find.
Normally she would have spent some of the drive-time learning more about the case she was headed to. Normally she’d spend time just thinking about the case, too, lining up the questions she needed to find answers to, maybe talking to Rule about it. Normally he’d be with her.
He wasn’t. And this wasn’t a case.
She hadn’t realized how often she checked on Rule’s whereabouts, how habitual that had become. She kept doing it without thinking and getting back that he was alive and a thousand miles to the west. Or sitting on the hood of the car. Or several miles due north. Or floating a dozen feet overhead. Every time that happened, it derailed whatever train of thought she’d been pursuing.
She tried to keep her mind busy. She had no idea why she was needed in the hamlet of Whistle—founded in 1821, with a population of 1,356 as of the last census. She did learn that much by cruising the Internet. She also learned that the town adjoined the Crown City Wildlife Area, a state-managed tract of over eleven thousand acres, almost half of it forested, with ponds for fishing and “both game and non-game wildlife,” according to the state of Ohio.
Whistle was roughly equidistant from Portsmouth, Gallipolis, and Jackson, so she looked up newspapers in those cities. She read about a meth bust, a car fire, and a lecture at the Madding Center for Welsh Studies. A man’s body had been found in the Ohio River. The Jacksonville City Council was considering revising statutes concerning dilapidated or condemned houses. Three Lawrence County correction officers had been arrested for inappropriate treatment of a prisoner, and the annual River Days Festival was only a month away.
Lily read the piece about the correction officers closely because there was little she hated as much as bad cops of whatever stripe. She read what she could find about the body, too, but there wasn’t much. It had been in the river feeding the fishes awhile, so no ID yet. No cause of death yet, either, but a source “close to the investigation”—probably a cop with a big mouth—said there were no obvious signs of foul play.
She texted Rule a couple times. She did not pass out. She hadn’t expected to, not once Charles joined them. She had no idea why the Lady wanted Charles to accompany her, but it seemed unlikely she’d send him along if the mate bond was going to make the separation impossible. The bond was of the Lady, so she could
He woke up again when they pulled to the side of the road twenty miles outside Cumberland. The right-rear tire had gone flat. That shouldn’t have slowed them down too much, and Mercedes Benz used full-size spares, so they wouldn’t even have to drive on a donut. The problem was the jack. It was missing. The lug wrench was where it should be, but no jack.
They could have worked around that if she’d had more guards with her. José and Carson could lift the rear of the car, but José wasn’t sure they could hold it up long enough for Lily to change the tire. Lily might have talked him into trying if she hadn’t started seeing little birds. Dozens and dozens of them. Each was the size of a gypsy moth and the bright turquoise blue of a swimming pool, and they circled her head like in an old-time cartoon. The air was so thick with little blue birds that she couldn’t see the damn car.
The hallucination didn’t last long. Nor did the headache it triggered. But it convinced José it was not safe for her to change the tire, and he refused to lift the car so she could try, which made her regret telling him about the damn blue birds. They waited a full forty-five minutes for roadside assistance to arrive, leaving them barely enough time to make it to Whistle by six . . . if they kept to the speed limit. So they didn’t. They didn’t dare push their speed too much—getting stopped would slow them down even more—but Lily wanted some margin of error in case the park proved hard to find.
Normally she would have spent some of the drive-time learning more about the case she was headed to. Normally she’d spend time just thinking about the case, too, lining up the questions she needed to find answers to, maybe talking to Rule about it. Normally he’d be with her.
He wasn’t. And this wasn’t a case.
She hadn’t realized how often she checked on Rule’s whereabouts, how habitual that had become. She kept doing it without thinking and getting back that he was alive and a thousand miles to the west. Or sitting on the hood of the car. Or several miles due north. Or floating a dozen feet overhead. Every time that happened, it derailed whatever train of thought she’d been pursuing.
She tried to keep her mind busy. She had no idea why she was needed in the hamlet of Whistle—founded in 1821, with a population of 1,356 as of the last census. She did learn that much by cruising the Internet. She also learned that the town adjoined the Crown City Wildlife Area, a state-managed tract of over eleven thousand acres, almost half of it forested, with ponds for fishing and “both game and non-game wildlife,” according to the state of Ohio.
Whistle was roughly equidistant from Portsmouth, Gallipolis, and Jackson, so she looked up newspapers in those cities. She read about a meth bust, a car fire, and a lecture at the Madding Center for Welsh Studies. A man’s body had been found in the Ohio River. The Jacksonville City Council was considering revising statutes concerning dilapidated or condemned houses. Three Lawrence County correction officers had been arrested for inappropriate treatment of a prisoner, and the annual River Days Festival was only a month away.
Lily read the piece about the correction officers closely because there was little she hated as much as bad cops of whatever stripe. She read what she could find about the body, too, but there wasn’t much. It had been in the river feeding the fishes awhile, so no ID yet. No cause of death yet, either, but a source “close to the investigation”—probably a cop with a big mouth—said there were no obvious signs of foul play.
She texted Rule a couple times. She did not pass out. She hadn’t expected to, not once Charles joined them. She had no idea why the Lady wanted Charles to accompany her, but it seemed unlikely she’d send him along if the mate bond was going to make the separation impossible. The bond was of the Lady, so she could
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