Chapter 8
Chapter
Eight
The DMV was only three blocks from my office.
The last time I’d been there, I cried three times.
I’d gone to have my name on my driver’s license changed back to my maiden name, which was an emotional process, so probably didn’t take much to set me off.
Still, the experience was burned into my brain as unbearably frustrating.
Cecil happily trotted alongside me. “This is a great idea, Chosen. I was slightly worried that you were going to go with the Ikea option.” He shuddered, shaking his beautiful golden fur. “We might never get out of beige Scandinavian flatpack purgatory.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you, Cecil. But, for what it's worth, I actually like flatpack furniture. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with a giant reward when you finish it.”
“Typical,” he snorted.
I moved through the foot traffic on my stilettos at a blistering pace, trying to outrun the fog in my head.
“I should have thought of the DMV first. I know for a fact that most locations are much better than they used to be, but last time I was here, I was tempted to set fire to the building. I’ll put money on the fact that it’s a whole brethren hive.
” I glanced down at Cecil, trotting beside me.
“Will I know a brethren when I see one?”
“Nope. They’re very low-magic, so there won’t be a convenient purple glow on their hands.”
“What about their horns?”
“They don’t have magnificent pointy horns like me, Chosen. They’re small and stumpy, and easily hidden by their hair.”
I huffed out a sigh. “How will I know if I’m talking to one or not?”
He thought for a second, then gave a little doggy shrug. “I was assuming you were just going to torture the DMV employees until they confessed. I’ve clearly been spending too much time with Cress.”
“Where is she, anyway?”
“Still at the therapist’s office, as far as I know. She dropped me off with you and went back to finish her session.”
I checked my watch and sighed deeply. “That was three hours ago.” I made a mental note to call Bronwyn after this and apologize for whatever Cress had said. Or for whatever Cress had done. Probably both. “So, how am I supposed to know if I’m talking to a human or to a brethren?”
Cecil bounced along beside me. “The only time they display any kind of magic is when they’re feeding. There’s a little hint of an amber glow in their eyes when they’re inhaling your emotions. And they’ll be still. Very, very still, so they don’t disturb the air around you.”
“So, I should prepare myself to get frustrated.” I clenched my fists, already feeling a little frustrated.
The bone-weary exhaustion kept rearing up whenever I lost my focus, plunging me back into a mess of scary intrusive thoughts.
Me, running away from the wardens. Me, locked in a calming room with bright fluorescent lights glaring down on me.
Why did my mind keep pulling me back to the psychiatric hospital? I was attempting to get frustrated, not to get scared out of my wits.
The lunch time traffic had thinned a little, so it was an easy walk to the building where the DMV was located.
“Brown,” Cecil snorted as we approached. “Of course. Brethren love brown.”
“Come on, buddy.” I grabbed hold of his lead. “It’s showtime. No more talking, okay? We don’t want to scare the humans. If you’ve got something to say?—”
“I’ll bite you.”
“Tap me with your paw, you asshole, and I’ll lean down so I can hear you.”
We walked through the automatic doors.
The place was packed with people. A line snaked all the way back to the entrance.
Craning my neck, I could see that it was the line for the self-service kiosk.
There was another huge line to take a ticket if you didn’t have an appointment.
A short white woman in a DMV uniform bustled between the lines, snapping at people.
Her permed blonde hair looked like a pack of dried ramen noodles.
She saw me and pointed. “No pets,” she snapped. “He’ll have to wait outside.”
“Oh, he’s a service animal,” I said patiently. “Legally?—”
She rolled her eyes and groaned loudly, cutting me off. “Lord have mercy. Y’all got papers for him?”
I bristled. “I don’t need to carry proof?—”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake. Just keep him quiet, okay? He bites someone and you’re lying, you get sued, you hear me?”
Cecil let out a little growl.
The woman glared at me. “You gotta appointment?”
“Oh, no, I?—”
She jabbed her thumb. “Join that line.” She tossed her hair, but it didn’t move. I thought I heard it crunch, though.
I moved to the side to join the line on the left, just behind an old couple having a loud argument in a foreign language.
I recognized one or two of the words, Greek, maybe, or Macedonian.
The man turned to look at me, his eyes dropped to Cecil, and he glared up at me.
The woman swatted him in the arm, berating him loudly.
I wished I knew what she was saying. Just ahead of him, a thin young man put his head in his hands.
“We’re off to a good start,” I muttered under my breath. “We’ve been here two minutes, and I’m already feeling unbelievably frustrated.”
“It’s about to get worse,” Cecil stage whispered. “The self-service kiosk is out of order. This is definitely a brethren nest.”
I tapped my toe for a minute. “This line isn’t even moving.” I breathed out a long, weary breath. “Aren’t we supposed to take a number if we don’t have an appointment?”
“The ticket machine looks like it’s out of order, too.” Cecil ducked back to my side. “The guy in the front of the line keeps pressing the button, but nothing is happening. He isn’t moving away, and nobody is doing anything about it.”
A few minutes passed, and I shuffled forward another couple of steps.
A baby started crying somewhere in the sea of miserable people.
The sound was both pitiful and overwhelmingly annoying.
I craned my neck, trying to see where the baby was—maybe there was a brethren standing very still right next to it, inhaling the rising frustration from the rest of the crowd.
I couldn’t see anything, though. There were too many people, and everyone looked totally, entirely, and depressingly human.
Time crawled on; we shuffled forward another few steps in the line.
I looked up ahead to the service desks. Out of the six stations, only two were crewed.
Four other people in DMV uniforms mingled near the back of the room around the water cooler, oblivious to the death stares of every single person in the room.
My gaze drifted back towards the station that was occupied. A big sign taped to the front of the window said Staff Member In Training.
Okay, that guy had to be brethren. I just needed to get near him. I could do this. I could wait.
A million years passed. A toddler started whining. A teenager of indeterminate gender lounging on the bench seats in the waiting area began watching a loud video.
I shifted on my feet uncomfortably. “My feet hurt.”
“Those are twelve-hundred-dollar heels, bitch,” Cecil muttered.
A man in the line next to us answered his phone.
“I’m sorry, sir, I really am. I’m still in the line.
Yes, sir, I know my lunch break finished twenty minutes ago.
Yes, sir, I realize that, but they’re only open during business hours, so to go to the DMV outside of business hours is impossi— no, sir, I’m not sassing you.
” He pinched his eyes shut. “Yes, sir. I understand.”
The Ramen-haired lady was back, charging between the two lines. “Self-service kiosk is out of order,” she barked. “Everyone, move to this line. You gotta take a number and wait for the next available service team member.”
I tried to wave her down. This was as good an opportunity as any. Maybe I could find a way to cut to the front of the line and get to the staff member in training. “Ma’am. Ma’am! I don’t think the machine?—”
She ignored me and bustled off.
I clenched my fists, wildly aware that I was in public, and I couldn’t just grab a suspected brethren staff member and strangle them.
There were no available service team members.
Only two of them were actually working, and the one guy with the training sign was staring blankly at his monitor.
The toddler’s whining kicked up a notch.
The teenager turned up the volume on their video.
The thin man put his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking.
Everyone else moved like zombies, shuffling backwards to join the line for the ticket machine.
I stifled a groan. “I don’t think we thought this through. I’m not seeing any suspicious humanoids with glowing amber eyes anywhere.”
“Oh, they’re here. I can just taste the exasperation in the air. This place is thick with it.”
After what felt like hours, a thin, gaunt man appeared with a roll of tickets and proceeded to hand out numbers to everyone in line. I checked his eyes carefully as he handed me my ticket, then turned away, looking for a seat.
“Was he a brethren?”
“I don’t think so,” Cecil whispered back. “The woman with the noodle hair, I don’t think she’s brethren either. I can’t tell.”
A fit of bitterness rushed through me. The waiting room was full; there were almost no seats left.
Grudgingly, I took the seat next to the mom with the whining toddler.
The toddler had started to kick the back of another man’s seat in front of us, causing the whole row to judder.
The kid’s mom sat in the chair, flicking through her phone, not moving, not doing anything to stop him.
I glanced down at my ticket. Number eight-hundred and forty-two.
The monitor above the service desk flashed. Calling number seven-hundred and twelve.
The older couple started bickering again; neither of them had sat down yet. Irritation swamped me. The mother could have done something to stop that kid. A vision appeared in my head—a mini-fantasy, and I dived in to escape my painful reality.