“I’ve only been kissed three times, Zack, okay?”
Zack twinged at the words, but after a moment, began to loosen. Someone seemed to have pulled the metal bolts out of his neck by the time I looked up again.
“What three?”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re being serious?”
Zack snorted. “If you don’t wanna answer. Then I’m joking. But if you’re going to answer, then I’m serious.”
“That’s not fair.”
Zack smiled sweetly. Well, evilly, but with a certain charming sweetness.
“Okay, Mama Theresa, are your lips virginal?” I asked.
Zack’s mocking smile faded. Good. I tried not to beam triumphantly—it was more of a triumphant flicker, or a victorious flash. Victorious Flash would be a great band name. Okay, Lucy Day, you need to chill out.
“Well?”
“Well,” Zack said. “I’ve kissed five girls.”
“Me too,” I said, and the look of shock he flashed me was priceless. Oh, had I a camera.
“You mean—”
“I’m kidding,” I said. “You’re cute though.”
“You don’t care?”
I rolled my eyes and snorted. “And why, exactly, would I care how many girls you kissed? You can kiss all the girls you want.”
Zack looked hurt again—for such a witty guy, he wasn’t up on his banter. Then again, I gave him a free pass—considering his surroundings.
“I just meant. I guess I thought that would bother you.”
I grinned. “And why is that?”
“Well,” Zack said, gently. “I thought it would bother you because of…our thing. The… The us thing.”
“We have a thing?” I asked.
“Don’t we?”
I cocked my head to the side. He imitated the gesture, and I snorted again.
“I thought. After the date, and the kiss…wow, the kiss. Especially the one outside of the counseling center. I mean, you freaked out and ran away after, so, certainly demerits on my end but… wow. You really knocked me out with that kiss.”
My sense of cat-and-mouse died. I had taken something from him when I kissed him that second time—something valuable. Something I couldn’t quantify. But after what Abraham had said, I knew I hadn’t stolen heat from people. I violated them. I robbed their memories.
I tucked my face into his chest.
“So I was a bad kisser...” Zack said, in mock melancholy. “I knew it. Was it fish lips? It was fish lips wasn’t it?”
I sobbed and clung to his chest, and I felt Zack’s body tighten. He tugged his arms around me and pulled me into him. After a few long moments, and after my sobs began to still, Zack leaned down and whispered into my ear.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
I looked up at him, cry-face be damned. He gave me a little sweet smile and kissed my cheek.
“What for?” I asked him.
“About the fish lips. I’ll try to practice and—”
I smacked him in the chest, hard, and he laughed softly into the top of my head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I brought up something painful. I’m not sure what I did but I’m not dumb enough to think it wasn’t something I said.”
I shrugged. “Can we just sit?”
Zack nodded. “Yeah.”
I nuzzled back into his shoulder and let the hum of the engine radiate through my body.
I tried to enjoy the moment, so naturally, Morgan turned back to me and cleared her throat.
“So you’re dead then?”
The look on her face, the tone of her voice, and the content of the question didn’t come close to matching each other. The look, controlled anger. The tone, politely curious. The question—well, it’s the question, isn’t it now?
I turned to look at Zack’s face—still. Curious, but still. A hair shy of pensive. His beautiful eyes were sending me a message I wasn’t picking up on. The little twitches of his brow spoke volumes in a language I didn’t know.
I turned back to Morgan.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“When you disappeared, what happened?” Morgan said. That same combination of pissed-off and polite.
“I told you what happened,” I said.
I felt a twinge—something like guilt. Luckily, it wasn’t very strong—I’d more than half convinced myself that I had been accosted, hit on the head, and made to suffer merely a tremendous headache and an embarrassing cop-ride home. Only a fraction of me remembered the taste of gun smoke. And even less of that fraction recalled in perfect clarity the creeping cold of massive fatal blood loss.
“People don’t go…here for a bump on the head, Lucy,” Morgan said, and turned to Puck. “Right?”
Puck looked over his shoulder, and even in profile, looked grave. He shook his head.
“Thank you,” I said with a saccharin sweet smile. Puck turned away.
“Lucy. What happened to you?”
I took a breath.
Something let out an earth-shattering CLANG. The convertible jolted and rocked and Puck slammed both of his loafers down on the Falcon’s brake. We slid and fish-tailed, and Puck swung the Falcon’s wheel around in a desperate attempt to keep us under control. Gravel sprayed, metal twisted, and everyone in the car, save Puck, let out identical screams of terror.
Puck wrestled with the old Ford, trying to bring it down. He managed the feat, and when the Falcon crept to a—final—stop, I looked behind us. The debris in the road wasn’t hard to decipher.
The engine fell out of our car.
Zack turned and looked down the long road behind us. He seemed to be making mental calculations. After a few dozen heartbeats, he spoke.
“The engine fell out of the car,” he said.
I closed my eyes and let my head slide down into my lap. Zack put a hand on my back when he saw me shaking. He removed it when he heard my first guffaws of laughter. I didn’t blame him.
The hills had crept up around us as we drove, and now that we were stopped, I couldn’t see the countryside on either side. Large swells of grey earth put the road in a narrow valley—perfect for an ambush, was my first thought.
Zack and Puck spent little less than a minute coming to the conclusion that no amount of spit, elbow grease, or can-do attitude would put the Falcon back together again.
When their inspection was finished, we grabbed our stuff, and Puck knocked one frail, gnarled fist into the trunk. The trunk yawned open with a haunted-house creak.
There wasn’t much there—a few dusty sport coats and what looked like a well-traveled red tool box. Puck handed out the coats—I took a gray wool blazer, Morgan a black pinstripe, and Zack a deep red jacket that looked like something a used car-salesman might be buried in. Then he popped open the tool box and handed Zack a half-rusted tire-iron and Morgan a dull orange monkey wrench. Zack and Morgan exchanged looks and swapped weapons.
“What do I get?” I asked.
Puck smirked and waved his hand as if to say don’t worry about it.
“Figures,” Zack murmured. “I get a wrench and Lucy gets The Force.”
Morgan grinned and tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Will these even help?”
Puck gave her that maybe,-baby hand gesture I loved so dearly.
Morgan laughed at that and set the long black tire-iron on her shoulder. It gave her a jaunty, slightly bad ass look that I immediately envied.
“I pull it off though, don’t I?” Morgan asked. I didn’t think the line of questioning stopped by our car troubles was over—but I think she had decided to postpone it for a less dangerous time. Thank God for killer extra-dimensional monsters, eh?
“Hell yes,” I said, and buttoned up my gray coat. “Shall we?”