Chapter 6 Whitney #2
To describe the officer’s expression as a frown would be an understatement. “Did you know you were going a hundred and nineteen miles per hour?” He tosses his head. “And you’re doing that in a Honda.”
I snort.
“What’s wrong with a Honda?” Xolotl tosses his head. “Is your flashing, crying car faster?”
“That’s really not something you should be asking me right now.” The officer holds out his hand, palm up. “License and registration.”
“I have none.” Xolotl stares at him.
The officer looks at me, incredulous. “Is this some kind of joke?”
I shake my head. “No, he left it back at home, deep in the mountains of Utah, I guess.”
“I didn’t leave it behind,” Xolotl insists. “I never had any of that.”
I groan.
“It’s not legal for you to be driving without a valid license, insurance, and registration.” Now he’s peering into the interior of our stolen car. “I’m going to have to haul you two into town. Why don’t you exit the vehicle.”
The hardening of Xolotl’s face tells me this cop’s about to keel over.
I drop a hand on the death god’s forearm and squeeze. “Three days, remember?”
He grunts.
“You said we won’t draw attention to ourselves, because that’s what you were doing on purpose before, right? And that means you can’t do what you want to do right now.”
Another grunt.
“Look.” I peer around Xolotl. “My boyfriend here has had an awful day. Do you have a mother-in-law?”
The cop frowns.
“My mom isn’t his mother-in-law yet, but she’s close enough.
On top of that, she’s a lawyer, and she’s a little overprotective, and he just had to meet with her, and it did not go well.
He forgot his license, and he’s been literally dying to get away from my entire family.
If you can understand that at all, could you just give us a ticket?
I’ll spell his name and address for you, and you can write him up with anything and everything in the citation.
But if you haul us down to the station right now, my mom’s going to freak out, and oh, man.
I worry what might happen.” The story’s a lie, but the sentiment’s true.
I really do worry what might happen if he tries to drag us into some kind of town police station, and I feel like the officer senses the truth of that.
“Mother-in-law problems, I do understand.” His sigh’s heavy.
I spell Xolotl’s name F-r-e-d A-t-k-i-n-s, even though he tries to stop me three times to tell me that’s not right. Ancient, check. Powerful, double check. Clueless? Triple check.
“Alright, well, I’m going to have to hit you with the full speed you were driving, and I think that may be processed as a pretty serious crime. That’ll depend on the prosecutor, though.” The cop starts writing on his pad, his pen scratching away furiously.
“Hit me?” Xolotl mouths.
I shake my head. “Don’t worry,” I say back. “It’s just a turn of phrase.”
He snorts. “I’m not worried in the slightest.”
“What?” The officer looks up, his face darkening. “You should be worried.” He scowls. “You should damn well be begging me for forgiveness after driving like that, without even remembering your license or insurance information.”
“My mom told him he’s never going to be good enough for me,” I say. “Then she made fun of his car, which he bought because it was supposed to be reliable, and then she told him to break up with me or else.”
The officer whistles. “Well.” He mutters a swear word under his breath. “Fine. Fine.” He changes something, rips off the ticket, and thrusts it through the window.
Xolotl moves so fast I almost don’t see it, grabbing his wrist and flipping it over.
“Yow, what was that?” The officer’s face is bright red, and right next to Xolotl’s.
“You should thank this woman right here,” he whispers. “Get down on your knees and thank her from the bottom of your pitiful heart for keeping your miserable life.”
I pluck the ticket from the officer’s hand, meeting his bewildered eyes. “He’s not drunk,” I say. “I swear.”
The second Xolotl releases him, he falls on his butt. Then my stupid death demon-horse rolls up the window and shoots back out on the road.
“Under eighty miles per hour, please,” I say. “Unless you want to repeat that whole thing again.”
“It was unpleasant,” he says. “I’d just kill him if he flashes me again.”
I can’t help a chuckle.
“What?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“You should explain. Isn’t that what these days are about? For you to explain humans to me?”
I sigh. “Well, if you say you’re flashing someone, it isn’t usually—they aren’t—it doesn’t mean. . . It’s not about lights,” I say. “It means you’re showing them your genitalia.”
“You. . .what?” He sputters. “Why would anyone do that? Are they expressing an interest in mating? Biological demands?”
“Actually.” Now I’m smirking. “Your powers are on the other end of the spectrum, ending life. Mating is sort of on the new life side, so I’m sure it’s all confusing to you. Genitalia means human sex organs—”
“I know what it means.” He’s scowling.
“We usually keep them covered, but sometimes people who are mentally sick as you mentioned before, or who want extra attention, disobey those social norms. When they ‘flash’ their typically hidden parts, that’s called ‘flashing’ someone.”
“That’s much more than I needed to know, and it just makes my point about humans being ill.” Xolotl looks offended. His grumpy reaction’s kind of funny, really. “I request you not talk about them anymore.”
“I mean, technically, you’re the one who brought it up.”
“I did nothing of the kind.” His hands have tightened on the wheel, and I notice he’s crept back up to ninety-two miles an hour.
“Slow down below eighty,” I say. “Or I’ll start talking about genitalia again. Specifics. Details. Maybe I’ll flash mine.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Uterus,” I say. “Breast tissue.” I smile. “Mammogram.”
“What on earth is a mammogram?”
“There’s this machine that flattens a woman’s mammary glands, the tissue on the front of our body that exists so we can feed our young, and they press that between these two plates so—”
“That’s enough!” I notice he’s slowed down.
I can’t help giggling just a little. A death demon who’s scared of me talking about boobs? Really? I’m keeping this info in my back pocket, right by my butt. Oh, man, I’m really corny, even in my own thoughts.
“What’s so humorous?”
I sigh. “Oh, just the inconsistencies of a death deity who knows nothing about human life or the creation of it.”
“I know plenty,” he says. “But it’s the antithesis of what I am and what I do, so it makes me uncomfortable.”
Interesting.
“We have arrived.” He tosses his head, and I see a sign for the Battle Mountain Super 8.
“Nothing but the best when traveling with a death god, I guess.” Only then do I realize that we have no money—we can’t even afford this dump.
The trouble with the cop was minor compared to what’s going to happen when we approach the hotel and demand they give us a free room. I groan.
“What now?” He pulls into the hotel parking lot, apparently understanding what a hotel is and also, surprisingly, how to park a car. “You want to know how I know what a hotel is.”
My head snaps sideways. “You can read my mind?”
“Not very well.” He frowns. “Or at least, only when you’re broadcasting loudly, for some reason.”
“How do you know what a hotel is?”
“I’ve had generals in every age. Contrary to your belief, humans aren’t that complex, and their needs are even simpler. Eat. Sleep. Reproduce. Dress nicer and be better than everyone else in a larger and more comfortable residence. That about covers it.”
“Well, in this day and age, when you want to sleep in someone else’s place, in a hotel, you have to shell out money, and seeing as you split open the mountain, and I sprang onto your back without any of my belongings, I have no wallet or purse.
We just stole all that stuff from the convenience store after you—” I cough, so I don’t have to say that he murdered the two attendants.
“But I would rather not get a hotel room the same way.”
He kills the engine—something I don’t object to him killing for a change—and turns toward me. “What do you propose we do, then? You’re exhausted—more so because you’ve had to use my energy to heal your wounds, and the traveling we’ve done has put more stress on an already stressed mortal body.”
That explains why I feel like I haven’t slept in a week. “What did you do about currency in the past?”
He shrugs. “Kill anyone who demanded it.”
I should have expected that, I guess. “Okay, well, give me a second to think of a plan B.” Only, my poor tired brain isn’t complying. I’m flogging it and coming up short.
Who in their right mind would just hand us a hotel room? Then I think of the car. It’s not a very ethical thing to do, but. . . I pull the paperwork in the glove compartment out and tear it up. “Give me the keys.”
Xolotl doesn’t argue. That surprises me.
Then he follows me, my saddle bags draped over my shoulder, toward the front desk.
I toss the paperwork in the trashcan just outside the lobby.
It’s pretty late now—past two in the morning—so no one else is around.
The guy at the front looks like the pimply-faced teenager I expect to have the graveyard shift.
Now that I’m thinking about it, we have a lot of stupidly grotesque phrases in the English language. I hope it doesn’t really turn into a graveyard shift.
“Hey there.” I force a bright smile. “This is going to seem strange, but we need something.”
He frowns.
I need to sell this, or Doofus here is getting dead. “Okay, so my ex-boyfriend was a real jerk, a dangerous jerk.” I toss my head. “This guy here has been helping me to get away from him.”
Pimples looks leery.