“This house is chock-full of mysterious things,” she slurred hoarsely. “A car seems so. . . normal.”
Gavin studied her for a beat. At least some color had returned to her face. The bandage he’d wrapped around her arm seemed to have stopped most of the bleeding, but she winced when he lowered her into her seat.
“I don’t drive it much,” he admitted, slipping in next to her and fishing the keys from his pocket. “It’s not really a good idea with the whole no license or parents thing, but I figured this was kind of an emergency.”
When Delilah only nodded but didn’t argue or needle him for more details about when he’d found it, how often he drove it, and whom he thought it might belong to, Gavin knew she must really be hurting.
The keys jangled in his hands as he fit the longest of them into the ignition, and he did the mental calculation, trying to remember the last time he’d started the car. He was pretty sure it’d been a few months, and so he held his breath as he turned the key, finally breathing again when the engine roared to life all around them.
The old Buick crept slowly out of the garage, the tires crunching over gravel and fallen leaves as he started it down the narrow drive. His palms sweated where they gripped the steering wheel, and he blinked up to the rearview mirror, wondering if he would see House rise up from the ground, roots pulled from the soil as it chased after them.
The car had never been more than a hobby before, but now—since Delilah—it meant more. It meant a freedom he hadn’t known he needed.
Delilah’s voice at his side drew his eyes from the mirror, and he turned to look at her, small and fragile, legs folded and arm cradled to her chest. “My parents will find out.”
It struck Gavin that she didn’t seem particularly bothered by this, more resigned to a fact she was just saying out loud.
“Do you have your phone?” he asked as a thought suddenly occurred to him.
Delilah nodded and pulled it from the front pocket of her borrowed sweatpants.
“Can you. . . ,” he said, hesitating. He pushed his hair from his forehead and narrowed his eyes, watching the leaves that scurried across the empty street. “Can you send Dhaval a text? Ask him to meet us at Urgent Care?”
Confusion flittered across her expression. “Why?
“Because everyone will think I did this to you.” He heard her tiny gasp and the start of her rebuttal, but he stopped her. “You know they will, Lilah. Just. . . Maybe he’ll be on my side.”
“Nobody will think that. Are you kidding?”
“Just text him? Please?”
She was silent in the seat next to him, clearly unhappy with the idea of bringing Dhaval into any of this. But Gavin could see the moment she realized he might be right, and did what he asked, typing out a text for Dhaval to meet them there anyway.
Everyone would want to know what happened, and what would he say? That his house had attacked her? Because oh, by the way, it’s alive? Or would they do what he most feared and assume it was him?
But another thought in Gavin’s head seemed to be gaining weight and overshadowing everything else. Delilah had been alone in that bathroom. He was sure of it. There were no roaches and there was definitely no statue in the window, because that part of the House was his. It was.
Could Delilah. . . have done it to herself?
? ? ?