Chapter 38
TARIAN
T arian had no idea why going to a place where they sold fruit was so important, but seeing as it made Kenna’s face light up, he knew they were following through.
And then it turned out there were about twenty extra steps required to actually purchase fruit, which was highly confusing for him.
Their trek began at a gas station, where Kenna made him wait outside while she went inside to go buy him a shirt and flipflops, and her a hat, then at an assortment of other stores—one of the ones with strong smells and all the products for personal grooming—and someplace where one could procure a vehicle to drive.
This one she took him inside of, and pushed him towards the counter. “Do your thing,” she demanded, handing him Rax’s black plastic card back.
“I would like your finest vehicle. No—not that—your safest.”
And the pock-marked youth behind the counter had stuttered, “D-do you have a license?”
He did not, but Kenna glared at him, so he brought his magic to the fore.
“Of course I do,” he said, producing an imaginary card—which was enough for the youth to be brought off, and he worked behind a plastic box for some time, doing what Tarian could not say, until keys were produced, along with a number in a parking lot.
Kenna laughed once they got back outside again. “This’ll be a lot easier once I get a working phone back.”
“Will it?” he asked, and she grinned.
“Yeah,” she said, taking the keys from him and angling towards the driver side seat of the car.
They checked into a hotel that did not seem very nice so that Kenna could manage her hair—and he noticed the things she’d bought for herself were long and baggy, proclaiming her a member of some local surfing gang.
“I don’t want people looking at me in the mall,” she announced before going into the bathroom and leaving the water running for an exceptionally long time.
“Does she like being in there?” Rocky asked, like the concept of enjoying a bath was insane.
“I’m not entirely sure,” Tarian confessed.
He could feel her emotions on the bond between them, surges of sweetness and then discontent, as she considered her situation with both him and Sarah in rapid turns, and finally he couldn’t take it anymore. He knocked on the door and walked in, peeking behind the shower curtain for her.
“Hey!” she squeaked, as a gust of cooler air joined him—her hair was practically yellow from all of the unguents she’d rubbed on top of it, and she was working at the bottom half of it with a comb.
“So this is what’s been keeping you,” he said, stepping into the shower with her. He had fresh clothes of his own, recently purchased, outside—and the flipflops, which had seemed fairly foolish earlier, now made excellent footwear, seeing as it didn’t matter if they got wet.
Without asking, he plucked the comb from her hand. “Turn around.”
She huffed, but did as she was told, and he started working on untangling the bottom of her hair. The substances she’d put on it were slippery, so they helped, but there were parts that were so hopeless, he had to clip knots out with his fingernails.
“What is a mall?”
She looked over her shoulder at him. “Like—a big place. Where they sell things.”
“And . . . apples?” he questioned.
Her face lit up, and she laughed. “No. Noooo. Phones. Apple’s just a brand.”
“Ahhh,” he said, pulling his hands through her hair, making sure the rest of the knots were gone. “That makes much more sense than what I was thinking.”
She turned off the water and reached for a towel. “You know, you can just ask,” she said, blotting off her hair, and he frowned.
“I would prefer not to feel . . .”
“Like you don’t know things? Well, I don’t know shit about dragons or magic, so I’d say we’re good. And besides—when it comes to a lot of things...you know everything you need to know.”
He squinted at her. “Kenna Murillo, are you making an innuendo?”
He watched her flush, her blood rising, slightly darkening her already dark skin. “And you know what an innuendo is, see?” she said, dancing out of the tub. “You should bathe too.”
She paused once she was outside of it, looking back at him longingly.
He didn’t like the distance she’d just put between them, not when her tempting flesh was behind a rudimentary towel, but they both knew what was at stake: the safety of her friend.
He’d convinced her to wait until it was dark, for the element of surprise, but the “mall” closed soon, and they needed to get going.
“I’ll be fast,” he swore, pulling off his shirt.
When they returned that evening, Kenna had what she needed, although Tarian didn’t understand it. She’d played with the phone the entire way back to the hotel. Things on the screen kept popping up, making her mad, until she’d finally cracked what she needed to, crowing when she managed it.
“I just had to remember like twelve million passwords, but,” she announced, holding it out to face him, “this is where she’s at.”
There was a red dot, like a tiny pin, on an unfamiliar map.
“I finally got into our shared friend-finder app—that’s her,” she said, pointing to the screen. “Or at least it’s her phone.” But then the red dot moved, and she gasped. “It’s definitely her!”
Or it was definitely a trap, Tarian thought—but either way, they were going together to meet it.