remembered my T-shirt. “Not particularly. How about you?”
“No.” She shook her head and her braids undulated with the motion.
Another beat of silence.
“I just figured with your shirt, and taking this round-about route just to look at Stromwell stadium…” she trailed off.
I flinched at the name. The Stromwells had once been the biggest werebeast hunters in the world, and had earned a pretty penny for their supposed extermination of the wolves and bears. That money had funded the stadium to my right, built around the turn of the century in a classical style, as if to mock the werebeast emperors of Rome who had once pitted rebellious humans against werewolf warriors in gladiatorial games. To be fair, records show that any human who could actually defeat a werewolf in single combat without the use of silver could join the wolves in the ruling warrior class. But only a couple ever had. Most died.
Now I pictured the Astroturf of the base-ball stadium, neat and even. Sans the pitcher’s mound and the bases, I imagined it didn’t look all that different from a cemetery. There were no official memorials for the death of my kind. Monsters didn’t get marked graves.
“No,” I said. “The T-shirt was just on sale, and I like this route as it tends to avoid traffic.”
“Oh,” she said, and didn’t comment on the bumper-to-bumper jam we found ourselves in at the moment. Through the curtain of her braids, her golden matemark shimmered on the back of her neck, the hairs long as freshly cut summer grass. “Well, what do you love?”
I opened my mouth, ready with the stock answers of “saving lives” or “old movies.” Both of those were true, but I liked them. I didn’t love them.
“I’m not sure I know,” I admitted. “I spend a lot of time working, and I enjoy that, but…”
“But you don’t love it,” she finished. “I get you. My job isn’t exactly my favorite thing either. To be honest, I moved here to get into publishing, but no one hired me, and I didn’t want to take any money from my mamma so I got a job as a secretary to make rent.” She laughed at herself. “Huh, I guess that’s a problem of mine. Going for what’s available instead of what I really want.”
“You love stories,” I prompted, checking my rearview mirror. Behind us a puzzles of cars shifted, and I swore I caught a glimpse of a Humvee, one of a similar model that I’d noticed when I pulled up to the restaurant. There was a non-zero possibility Lonan was following us. When I looked over my shoulder, it had taken a right turn. I made a note of the license plate, “GARCIA.”
“Yeah,” she added. “It’s not like I’ve had a bad life, but I love reading about other places and people. I love to escape. Sometimes I feel the freest curled up in a corner surrounded by books.”
“Well, let’s get you lots of books then,” I said.
She giggled. “I like the sound of that. Although I hear it’s kind of forward, buying a girl books on the first date.”
I liked the sound of her. I wanted to make sure that she kept making that little giggle. Exhaling through my nose, I found an answer. “I don’t love my job. But I need to do it. Helping other people calms me.”
“So you want to save the world?” Her hand crept toward the divider between the passenger seat and mine.
It took all my willpower not to snatch her by the wrist and zoom right out of this city. “That’s what I say when most people ask.”
“But the truth is?”
“The truth is I want to save myself.” The emotion cracking at the corners of my words startled me. “I didn’t have an easy adolescence. I…”
Broken bones. Broken bars. Scars screaming. Needles in my arms. Silver in my veins.
“We have a problem! He’s breaking out.”
The taste of warm blood in my mouth and soft flesh parting under my fangs and bright lights and walking naked in the highway and blood in my mouth and blood still in my mouth and blood I can taste right
Candice Fox
Lucinda Brant
Rebekah Weatherspoon
Jane Austen, Vivien Jones, Tony Tanner
Dan Abnett, Nik Vincent
Nancy Springer
Stephanie Laurens
Edna Ferber
Terri Farley
Catherine Gayle