Chapter 19 Disagreeable Duty #2
Cass didn’t resist. She was shaking too hard, her teeth chattering and the rest of her deeply, stupidly grateful someone else was giving orders.
* * *
Another day, another stolen car. This one was a boxy beige Chevy Tahoe, the interior only indifferently clean but the engine humming sweetly, and she rolled her window down a few inches before rolling it back up.
Did it again, listening to the changing wind-sound, staring as daylight filled the desert by degrees.
Nigel was as good as his word; she braced a plain paper cup full of drive-thru latte on her knee and he had tried to interest her in a pastry. Ed kept stealing glances in the rearview mirror, and though he tried to be calm as his commanding officer, the unease was plain.
It wasn’t so much the big kahuna screaming through a burner phone Cass was having trouble with.
If she wanted to engage in the same mental gymnastics normal people did when faced with bogeys and the unexplained, she could accuse Nigel of a particularly cruel prank, asking her to dial a number with a chilling prerecorded message.
Sure, she could ignore the fact that she knew the voice, had heard it before, and she could even go so far as to suspect the two men of simply stringing her along while their mad god played with its food.
But the flock of flashing cop cars barreling into the parking lot as they drove down a side street—circle once, Nigel had murmured, let’s see their response time—had given her a lot to think about.
Lights on but sirens off, and what were the odds they were responding to something else in that particular motel?
Roll the window up, roll it down. Bern would snap will you cut it out, Apoc would just sigh and turn up whatever audiobook he was listening to another notch. Trille would magnanimously ignore her little games. Grik would hiss make up your mind, and Steve would mutter about shitcanning her.
If the big kahuna could send cops that fast… now a few odd events on previous bogey hunts made sense. So did the plainclothes ‘detectives’ coming to juvie the day Cass lit out of the system for good, figuring survival on the streets was better than being locked in a fishbowl.
She’d just narrowly missed being collared.
Given what Apoc said about his sister, that instinctive decision might have saved Cass’s life.
And oh, God, thinking about them all hurt, because if what Nigel and Ed were saying was true—and she really had to struggle to disbelieve at this point—it wasn’t just hunting bogeys that endangered her crew.
It was Cass herself.
“At least try to eat something,” Nigel persisted. He could give Trille lessons in fussing.
If Trille were still alive, that was. If Cass closed her eyes she could see him lying in the dust, clutching his bleeding tummy. And that look on his face—perplexed, wondering, oddly young.
“I’m fine,” Cass murmured, and lifted the latte to prove it. Fortunately the liquid had cooled enough to not give her lip-blisters; caffeine, that holy legal upper, would keep her functioning.
She had to think.
“May I?” Nigel pressed his fingertips to her forehead as if gauging a fever, though not with Trille’s professionalism. “You’re immune to the Mad God, ma’am, but not to shock or—”
“For Christ’s sake,” she said, loudly, “do not call me ma’am.”
The Chevy didn’t swerve, but Ed hunched slightly in the driver’s seat. Nigel snatched his hand back, and it was funny, Cass thought grimly, how goddamn fragile guys were. The moment a woman spoke up they acted like the world was ending, and their panic more often than not turned violent.
She knew what these two could do—explode bogeys and bust right through walls, Jesus—but they were, at bottom, only men.
“My apologies.” Thankfully, Nigel left it at that, and he didn’t push the paper bag containing three muffins and two scones a little closer.
Deep breaths, Cass. If Trille was gone, why could she hear him so clearly?
Her head was full of ghosts; if this kept up she might also start reliving what happened to Sam, or to Dean, or to other bogey-hunters fallen in the line of duty.
Or hell, she might even think of her parents…
and that would lead to brooding about the cave.
No. And now she was hearing Bernadotte, his gruff get-busy tone. Try something useful, if you can.
“Okay. Fine.” Her voice shook, and she had to take another gulp of latte. Whatever was going to happen, it would be worse with caffeine withdrawal and if she couldn’t have any real meds, she was forced to over-the-counter alternatives. “I have a question. What’s sealing?”
The big clumsy vehicle—busily taking a curved onramp to yet another stretch of sagebrush-surrounded freeway—now did swerve, just a bit. Ed coughed, and she caught a burst of muted emotion from him. Embarrassment, probably, since it tasted almost like lemon drops, but with an acrid edge.
Nigel swallowed, hard, his Adam’s-apple bobbing. Neither of them had gotten coffee, or so much as a bite of muffin.
“You’ve been arguing about it since you picked me up,” she pointed out. “Maybe I should know.”
“Ah. Yes.” He shifted uneasily, strengthening mornlight picking out the creases in his new jacket, glinting on the streak at his temple and the swordhilt peeking over his shoulder. How he sat with something like that strapped to him was a mystery. “It’s rather a touchy subject, that is.”
Cass turned away. She rolled the window down, the wind-roar escalating as the Chevy accelerated onto the highway, heading east. Right now the desert was grey with indigo blurs in every hollow, night’s pockets rapidly draining.
The windshield would be full of orange-golden glare before long.
She’d spent so much of her life sitting in cars watching the sun rise, sink, spill its light across pavement arteries.
“Have some more coffee,” Nigel finally added. “It will help. Sealing has to do with the mark.”
He sounded like Bern when a complex and particularly disagreeable job loomed, resignedly searching for the right words.
Cass rolled the window up, and shifted her gaze to the front of the Chevy.
She didn’t take another sip… but she did turn the latte slightly, as if she were prepared to continue drinking.
Once he started talking, that was.