All the Inside Howling (Hollow Folk #2)(109)
“What happened while I was gone?”
“Just call him,” Becca said, arms folded tight across her chest, glaring at Emmett.
Emmett cocked his head at her, but he dragged his phone out, made the call, and turned on the speaker. The tinny, digital ring sounded like we were trying to call China instead of Wyoming, but I figured, in terms of relative distance, maybe that wasn’t so far off the mark. A moment later, Austin’s voice came on.
“You’re with them,” he said. “Wherever the three of you are, you’re together.”
Emmett flashed me a look, but I didn’t know what to say, so I spread my hands.
“Austin,” Emmett said, “it’s kind of complicated—”
“Yeah? I’ll make it simple, and then you guys go back to having fun.” The phone beeped as he disconnected the call.
Scooping up the phone, Emmett gave me another calculating look. “Well, did that make any sense to you?”
“Let’s get in the car,” I said, pulling on socks and shoes. “We need to get home. And don’t make a single fucking comment about Austin. Not a word.”
“The tweaker doesn’t know how to say thank you,” Emmett muttered as I brushed past him, out the door and down the stairs. I was working on something snarky to say back, but when I got to the parking lot, I forgot about Emmett. For a moment, at least. I hadn’t expected the Porsche. I knew it would take time—and God only knew how much money—to repair. But I had expected . . . well, something different than this.
Calling the pretzel of metal and glass that sat in front of me a car would be like calling a melted G. I. Joe action figure Michelangelo’s David. If you expanded those respective categories to their most inclusive, then maybe these two items actually did have some relation. For example, the vehicle in front of me did have, technically, a windshield. It was split by two jagged horizontal cracks, and a yellowing strip of police caution tape had been used at some point in a vain effort to patch the glass. And, just to continue with the example, the vehicle in front of me did have four wheels, although it looked like the front right one was at least an inch higher than the other three and had, in silver spraypaint, the words God is Good running around the inside. At some point, this car had been in an accident. The front bumper was missing, the hood was crumpled so that it only extended three-quarters of its normal length, and a bungee cord strained to hold it in place. This was how we were going to get home to Vehpese. I wanted to laugh. We’d be lucky if we made it out of the parking lot without this car spontaneously combusting.
“’AND BACK,” Becca read from the strip of police caution tape. “Good advice.”
“God is good,” Emmett said, kicking the slightly elevated tire. It wobbled and, with a nervous grin, Emmett stilled it with his sneaker.
“Yeah,” I said, hauling on the door. It resisted for a long moment and, with a squeal, jerked open by inches. “God is great.”
To say the car was a surprise would be an understatement, but the bigger surprise was that Emmett hadn’t rented it. He’d bought it. Apparently, nobody would rent cars to kids under eighteen. So Emmett, not to be stopped, had simply bought one. I guess that was how rich people thought: drop a bunch of cash on a problem, and eventually it will solve itself. It worked this time.
The ride back to Vehpese took more than six hours. A lot more. We spent the first part of that time filling Emmett in on what Becca had learned about River. When we hit seven hours, we had just passed Cheyenne. The Frankenstein car, which had at one point been some type of Cadillac and, to judge by the smear of paint on the inside of the door, had once been painted what Emmett called bloody-shit orange—an unappealing, if accurate, name—couldn’t go faster than fifty miles an hour. At forty, the shriek of metal began to fill the car. At forty-five, the Caddy developed a noticeable limp. At fifty, it began to shake like someone had decided to pick it up and rattle it around like a dice cup. Emmett, at one point, decided to test the car’s limits. At fifty-five, a noxious, blue-gray smoke streamed out of the hood, and an ominous whu-whump, whu-whump started in the engine area. After that, we drove fifty.
Austin wouldn’t pick up. He wouldn’t answer texts. He wouldn’t, for that matter, do a single goddamn thing I was hoping and praying he would do, like come to his senses and quit being so stubborn. After what might have been my thirtieth—or, if I were honest, my fortieth—try on Becca’s phone, I dropped my head back against the rest. A warped spring poked into my neck, and I groaned.
I turned to pass the phone back to Becca, only to find that—somehow—she’d fallen asleep. The back seat looked like it had been the place mat for every half-chewed piece of gum, every spilled soda, and every drunken vomit that Denver had produced for the last fifteen years, but Becca had just pulled up her hood, tucked herself into a ball, and dropped into an easy slumber.
“Let me try your phone again,” I said to Emmett.
“Try to have some dignity.”
“I’ll say it again. Let me try your fucking phone.”
A smile teased the corner of his mouth. “That was so close, but you didn’t say please.”
“Emmett—”
“Listen, I know he’s kind of your thing right now, so you feel bad, and you’re worried, and you’re trying desperately to make it right. But that’s the problem. He knows you’re desperate. He can tell you’re desperate. Christ, you’re like halfway to the moon past desperate, and he could probably tell that after the fifth phone call.” Emmett paused. “What did you do, anyway? Was it because you drove me home?”