Chapter 5
“Okay. Get in.” Malek gestured toward a navy blue four-door sedan. Not quite as cool as Caspar had hoped it would be, but he figured they needed to travel with discretion rather than with style. Caspar was about to slip into the passenger side when Malek shook his head.
“No, no. The back.”
“The back? Like a cop car? I’m not a criminal.”
“I know. Wasn’t trying to treat you like one. But you’re going to change out of those clothes that make you look like a criminal, and the back is easier to do that in. We guessed at your size. Looks a little big now, but get in and change.”
Caspar nodded, mumbled his thanks, and got into the backseat. He was in the middle of taking off his shirt when the car shifted into gear, shuffling him around the upholstery. Shirtless, his arms still smarting from where he’d been slammed into the seats, Caspar barked at Malek.
“Changing? While you drive?”
“Yes. I promise I won’t look.” Malek winked in the rearview mirror.
As soon as they were on the highway, the ride was smoother, and Caspar dared to take off his pants and slip on the jeans they’d found for him without worrying about bumping his head on the windows.
The T-shirt was a bit too big, that was for sure, but the pants fit him perfectly when he attached the belt.
There was also a black faux leather jacket, which Caspar thought didn’t suit him in the least, but he took it anyway since the nights were often cold.
That was still a thing, right? The nights were still cold in the spring?
Or had global warming changed everything?
When Malek caught a glance of him in the mirror, he smiled again. “Lookin’ good, stud.”
“I thought you weren’t going to peek?”
“Well, you’re done now. So you’re going to drive while I change.”
“Whoa now. Wait. I can’t drive.”
“You can. You had your licence before you were arrested.” Malek put on the four-way flashers and pulled the car off to the side of the road.
A blue sedan and a transport truck went by them.
Caspar held his breath, waiting for them to double back or call the cops, but nothing happened.
The cars drove on and more came. This was a normal day for everyone else; no one had thoughts of a convicted murderer and his djinn swapping spots in the middle of the highway.
He slid into the driver’s side seat while Malek went into the back.
Malek was already naked by the time Caspar pulled back onto the road.
If he wasn’t so scared that he’d crash the car from inexperience, he would have studied the tattoos on Malek’s skin again and again and—
“There.” Malek slipped on the loose jeans and tucked the polo shirt into his pants. He tossed the uniforms out of the car window. They got caught in the breeze and danced like forlorn flags; Caspar drove by them until they became a speck in the distance.
“You okay?” Malek asked. “Or do you want me to take over driving?”
“Um. I’m fine. I’m just… I’ve been going straight, though. Do I need to get off anywhere?”
“In my experience, it’s best not to be straight when you wanna get off on the highway.”
Caspar furrowed his brows, utterly confused, before he laughed. Oh, a sex joke. A gay sex joke. Caspar could handle something like that far easier than this whole escaping business.
“Good. Still a man of humour,” Malek said. “I was beginning to think you were more stone-faced than Katja gave you credit for.”
“Katja?”
“Hello, may I ask you some questions?” Malek mimicked her voice—the woman from the interview—perfectly. Not as a mockery, but as if Katja’s voice was coming out of his own mouth. He smiled, then spoke normally. “Remember her?”
“What? How? Yes, I mean. I’m still in shock, I think.”
“Understandable. There’s a rest stop in the next two kilometres. For werewolves mostly, but I think it’d do us some good to take a breather and stretch our legs. You gotta go to the bathroom at all?”
“Um, no… but we should stop anyway.” Caspar didn’t really have to pee, but the thought of peeing alone, without anyone watching him, made him want to try to go anyway.
Who would have thought a rest stop bathroom could seem like a luxury?
Caspar laughed and shook his head. When he saw the sign announcing the Wolf Station Stop, he turned the car without any issue at all.
After washing his hands, Caspar checked his hair in the mirror. A bit windswept, but his wavy dark brown locks framed his face nicely, and his hazel eyes beamed with his newfound freedom. He took a moment to place a hand over his chest, and waited until his heart rate calmed down.
I’m free, I’m free, I’m free. It seemed like a dream, but it was very real.
When Caspar left the bathroom, he found Malek on a park bench close to the convenience store that doubled as a gift shop for travellers.
Piles and piles of all kinds of chips and junk food were laid out in front of him.
Malek opened up a bag of Hickory Sticks and dropped a handful inside his mouth before he waved Caspar over.
“Thought you’d fallen inside. Took you long enough.”
“Nah, man. Just had to make sure all of this was real.” Caspar sat down and surveyed the snack food. So much of it he barely recognized. “Wow. You’ve been busy.”
“I have. Take your pick.”
Caspar picked up a Coffee Crisp and took a tentative bite. The flavours exploded around his tongue, and he nearly devoured the bar in two bites.
“Good, huh?”
“Yeah, man. It’s been a long time since I’ve had something like this.”
“Well, seven years is too long. Eight years, really. You ready to see the world again?”
Caspar shrugged. The weight of that statement got under his skin.
He was just talking about candy. Before that, he’d wanted to talk about grass and trees.
The new McDonald’s outside the prison. That barely constituted the world.
Caspar ate through another chocolate bar and then picked up a bag of ketchup chips, leaving the question unanswered.
Malek produced a phone from his pocket; his action was so sudden that Caspar wondered if he had one too. A quick pat down made him realize that if he did, it was probably in that damn jacket he’d left in the car.
“So, you seem to know a lot about me,” Caspar said.
“Hmm?” Malek said, barely looking up from his phone. “What do you mean?”
“You knew I had a license. I haven’t renewed that thing in years, obviously, so you saw the photo of eighteen-year-old me, too.”
“With the bowl cut and the glasses? Oh yeah.”
Caspar balked. Malek really had seen that photo. “I haven’t worn glasses in years. Got the laser surgery a week before the arrest. Suppose I should have waited and got the fifty percent discount, eh?”
When Malek didn’t laugh, Caspar wasn’t sure if it was because he didn’t know about his lack of an eye, or if he did, and he didn’t think it was funny. Caspar was simultaneously too hungry and full of junk food to care. “So what else do you know?”
“Enough. We have to.”
“We?”
“I didn’t get you out there on my own. Sure, I’m a djinn, but I’m not that powerful. So I need to rely on Jocasta—”
“J? The woman with the car?”
“Yes. She and Hayden helped to get you out of the prison.”
“Is Hayden the bus driver or the guard?”
“Guard. He was sent in to make sure some of our reports checked out. Along with Katja, and many others. You can never do too much research for these things.”
Caspar nodded, though he was already overwhelmed. These things. “So what’s going on here? How much can you tell me… and where are we going next?”
Malek smiled. “That’s a lot of questions.”
“You can’t really blame me, can you? Skepticism is good to keep around, even if I’m impressed with what’s going on so far.”
“Good. Glad you’re impressed. But it’ll probably take a while to answer everything. We shouldn’t stay here too long. I think I should—” Malek’s phone rang. He peeked at the name and then cursed.
“Something bad?”
“No. Well, yes. It’s Jocasta—or J, she goes by both.
She’s a good person, through and through, but…
I may have fucked up back there. She’s going to be mad that most of the prisoners escaped.
Hayden is probably going to need to spend most of this afternoon finding all of the ones he can and putting them back on the bus. Josie will help.”
“The bus driver? Wasn’t he—”
“She, actually. The bus driver is a dwarf, and dwarves have a different gender system.”
“Oh. Does that mean—”
“And despite everything you may have heard, dwarves are not actually little people. Little people are little people, and are not magical. Dwarf basically means hermit, and Josie is the most hermitted one of them all. It means she’s good at finding people who don’t want to be found, though, so Jocasta and Josie will have this little mix-up fixed in no time.
And if Hayden gets fired from Kingston Penitentiary, well, we’ll find a new guard for that prison. ”
When Malek started to gather his garbage, Caspar did the same.
He collected Malek’s from him and found a place to throw it out.
Malek dumped the rest of the candy into the backseat of the car, along with the other supplies he’d bought while Caspar was in the bathroom.
Before Caspar slid into the passenger side, he checked his jacket for a phone.
Sure enough, there was a flip phone. Caspar was delighted it was a phone he knew how to use, and probably one that couldn’t be traced easily.
He held it to his chest with a smile before he realized there was probably no one he could call.
“You don’t want to drive?” Malek asked.
“Oh, hell no. I’ll take being a passenger for a while.”
“Good call. I’ve got directions for the city, but your safe house isn’t set up yet. Which reminds me—don’t call anyone.”
“Seems mean to give me a phone and then say not to call someone.”
“The phone is for us to call you.”
“Ah. Well, you’re lucky. As it turns out, being in prison for eight years kills your social circle. So I wasn’t planning on calling anyone, actually.”