Chapter Nineteen
It was easy to put Cassie’s last words out of her head the second they were in the car.
Mostly because Jack seemed so pleased with how much she was glowing, and how excited she was about magic, that he couldn’t seem to contain it.
It bloomed out of him, despite his best attempts at seeming unconvinced about his chances of being as ideal a man as Seth appeared to be.
“Did you notice he didn’t once try to eat a pork chop with his hands,” he said, in between sparks of gleeful amusement at her incredibly witchy state. But it wasn’t hard to be gleefully amused at him back.
“Yes, because using a fork is definitely the ultimate sign of being a worthy soulmate. And not, you know, stuff like constantly proving to Cassie that he will always put her needs first and never let her down.”
“Wait, what was that about needs? Lemme just write it down.”
“Jack, you don’t have to write that down.”
“Of course I do, you just said that’s how he does it.”
“Yeah, but I did that pointedly. Because obviously you already do that, too.”
He stopped trying to get out his notepad at that.
Glanced at her, then back to the road. Glanced at her, then back to the road.
Considering, she thought. Maybe, even, for the first time, accepting that something was true about him.
After all, it was all he ever did. He tried to be good enough, every second of every day.
And he had to know himself to understand that he would never let his soulmate down.
Even now he was thinking about how he could make sure of that.
“Well. All right. Sure. But I still need to be as not monstrous as he is.”
“Right. And I’m going to use these books and everything Cassie just told me to figure out how to make sure that happens to whatever extent you need it to. And you’re going to love everything I do, and every second of me doing it, too,” she said.
And he laughed, and shook his head as he replied.
“I have never in my life heard the word love sound so ominous.”
“Don’t lie. I can see you trying not to smile or look happy about it.”
“Hey, I can admit that I like someone caring that much. It just also makes me nervous for you,” he said, still bright about it when he did.
It was a little weird to see his face abruptly drop a moment later.
And he bristled, too. He sat back in his seat and rolled his shoulders, like something was wrong.
Then he reached up to the rearview mirror, and she knew before he added a few words on the end.
“And especially when I’m getting tailed. ”
At which point she bristled, too.
Though she tried not to read too much into it.
“What do you mean? The cops are following us?”
“No. No. Not the cops. I wish it was the cops.”
“Old man Hannigan, then. He’s still mad at you for hollering bullshit when he said the library should only stock Christian books.
Which I’m now realizing has probably more to it than you not liking oppressive religious impositions on our creative freedoms,” she said, pretty much babbling now, with just a soupcon of slowly rising fear.
But he was good enough to go with it, even as he eyed that mirror.
“JC was a good dude, he would never have ordered people not to read.”
“And by that you mean you met him. He was a real man. He existed.”
“Most stuff religion is based on actually existed in one way or another. It’s just usually weirder and better about things than a bunch of old dudes made it out to be. None of which we have time to get into right now, because we’re about to get sideswiped by a hellhound.”
“There’s a hellhound after us?”
“Not just one. A bunch—I told you that helping me was gonna get you hurt.”
“So tell me what to do. Tell me how I can help.”
“Promise not to be mad at me when I do what I’m about to.”
“Jack. Jack, what do you mean? Jack, wait, don’t you dare do somethi—”
But it was too late. He was already somehow out of the truck, even though the truck was still moving.
It was still barreling down the highway at sixty, like something she couldn’t see had simply taken his place in the driver’s seat.
Or the driver’s seat didn’t actually need anyone in it for the truck to keep going.
Which seemed like the most ridiculous option.
But was also the one most likely to be true.
After all, she’d seen it reshape itself into something new. She’d felt it catch her when she’d been about to fall. It wasn’t so far-fetched to imagine it could also do a lot of other weird things, when you least expected them.
Like driving itself. While suddenly playing cheerful music, most likely to make this seem normal and not scary.
And then slapping her hand with a seat belt when she tried to lean across and get hold of the wheel.
Just lightly, nothing, really, but then again it didn’t have to be.
It happened, and she couldn’t help her yelp of uncanny eldritch-induced horror.
And the radio abruptly crackling, then switching to the song “Please Forgive Me,” absolutely did nothing to help that.
It was worse, in fact. Now she had to reckon with the idea that the car wasn’t just some amorphous shape-shifting thing.
It was sentient enough to attempt apologies.
Though at least that meant she could try reasoning with it.
“Listen, truck, I can’t just let him be killed by devil dogs,” she said. Then goggled when the track changed to “Every Little Thing Is Gonna Be All Right.” Followed by another crackle, and then “Don’t Worry.”
She didn’t know how worrying was not supposed to happen, however, while she was trapped in a truck with a sassy personality, as Jack got murdered by monsters.
“You can play whatever you like, I’m getting out of here,” she told it.
But in answer it just played “You Need to Calm Down.” And she felt pretty sure it had just tightened her seat belt. So she made the only move she could.
She reached for her pen.
And it tried to stop her, it did.
It snatched at her hand with the handle that should have been on the side of the door.
But it missed, and now all she had to do was write.
On the air is enough , her memories told her, and she obeyed.
She scribbled words in front of her as if there was a page there.
Stop and let me out , she put in a way that seemed to make a silvery trail behind every word.
But the moment the sentence was done, that clown honk sounded. Followed by another track change, just to really rub salt in the wound. “Stupid Girl,” the radio played, and at an ever so slightly higher note and faster speed than usual. So it came out all jaunty and mocking.
“I hate you, truck,” she told it as she tried again.
This time, she went with something simple. Release me, I command you , she wrote. And for just a moment, that silvery writing lingered, it brightened. She held her breath, ready to claim victory. Then the honk blared out.
“You’re Never Gonna Get It” played, for that one.
“When I get Jack out of this, him and me are gonna have a serious talk about how sadistic you are,” she said. Much to its amusement. It piped out “Bad” by Michael Jackson as she tried to take a slow, calming breath. To really think, and focus, the way Jack had said she needed to.
The way she almost remembered doing as a kid.
Emotion. Intention. Knack, she thought. Over and over, until it was almost like a mantra.
Until it felt like she was slipping down, somehow.
Into a different way of thinking, a different way of being.
The way you used to be , some part of her said, and as it did everything seemed to go sort of quiet and still.
The music fell away.
The world went somewhere else.
It was just her and her pen. Back then, an old ballpoint she’d found in the woods.
Right now, that strange one of Jack’s, with the word on it that she almost understood now.
It was his invented place of work. The sort of imaginary, half-cobbled-together building he thought real human beings went to every day.
No wonder it sounded like something from a Stephen King story , she thought.
It probably was . Then, somehow, she just wrote.
Take me to wherever my heart is , she put.
And this time there was no honk.
There was a sound like a hurricane caught in a jar, and somehow she was spinning, hard enough that it made her stomach lurch into her sides and her back. Like Dorothy on her way to Oz , she thought, the idea so sweet she almost teared up over it. She came to a stop with her eyes stinging.
But she had no time to let that hold her up.
Her feet touched the ground, and she had about ten seconds to register that she was on the road, in what should have been sunlight but was somehow now an eerie dusk, about ten feet away from an entirely demonic Jack.
Before a lot of things happened, all at once.
He bellowed “No!” just as something sprang from somewhere behind him, aiming for her. Then, just as she jerked back, half stumbling over her own shoes, Jack lifted his hand aloft, as if reaching for something. And something appeared. It formed itself in his fist, so fast it seemed to blink there.
Though even that wasn’t fast enough. He had to swing the hammer he now held at an impossibly steep angle, just to get close. It looked like it had almost dislocated his shoulder to do it.
But it smashed into that creature all the same.
She watched the thing lifted clean off its feet, so fast and fierce she didn’t even see where it ended up. Somewhere south of the sky, it seemed like. If his swing hadn’t just obliterated the thing entirely. God, he’s amazing , she found herself thinking as she took him all in.
Those horns curving up to the heavens.
That enormous chest, the remnants of jeans over his thick thighs.