“Maybe,” she said, a crease forming between her eyebrows as she finished bagging the fifth(!) bag of Eilish’s junk food. I couldn’t tell whether she was politely choosing not to argue with me or she just knew I was full of crap and she’d been hearing the faint hiss of us talking meta low. “I guess it stopped.”
“Hmm,” I said, stringing the damned junk food bags along my arms while Eilish loaded up her own. How the hell had she managed to get all this to the counter without bags? “Welp … have a good night.”
“Damned near morning now,” Joan said as I went for the door. “Oh, you want a copy of your receipt?”
“No,” I said, “I think all this crap is plenty enough reminder for me about what I spent.” And I turned and walked out, Eilish a few steps behind me.
“I was not about to cause a scene,” Eilish hissed once the door had slammed shut behind us. Joan was still looking around at the ceiling within, as though she could locate that mysterious sound just by staring long enough.
“Harry says you were,” I said. “How would he know about it if he didn’t see it come through in a prediction?”
“He’s probably making stuff up,” Eilish said. The hatchback of the SUV popped open, and I realized Harry was opening it for us.
I dumped my bags of junk food into the back of the SUV while Eilish discarded all but one of hers, after making some strategic switches into the one she kept. Part of me wanted to look, the other part of me didn’t want to know, but I grabbed a Snickers anyway and peeled the wrapping off and started to eat it.
“Hey, that’s mine,” Eilish said.
“Technically, this is all mine,” I said, waving a hand to encompass the enormous trick-or-treat result that filled the SUV’s hatchback, “but I’ll let you steal some, don’t worry.”
Eilish made a frown, and then made her way to the door again, following behind me. “Can I at least sit up front this time?”
“No.”
She grunted and got in the back seat as I got in the front, and Harry started the engine. “There’s a Waffle House a few miles ahead,” he said. “I’m stopping for breakfast.”
Eilish was halfway into an Oatmeal Creme pie. “We’re stopping for breakfast? That would have been good to know before I bought all this!”
I rolled my eyes. “Why are you upset? You’re not even down a dollar.”
“Well, I went through the trouble of hauling all that to the counter, did you see? It was like ten trips.”
I looked back at her, and caught a glimpse of Cassidy bobbing, little wireless earbuds in her ears as she tapped away at a computer screen. I turned all the way around so I could look right at Eilish. She had a piece of brown Oatmeal Creme pie on her lip. “No thieving, you hear me?” I made my voice emphatic. “The last thing we need is to get in trouble with the law because you wanted a stick of peppermint gum, okay? If you want something, I’ll buy it.”
“With your brother’s credit card,” Eilish said softly.
“Well, I’m kind of the one who financed his venture, so … it’s sort of my money, too,” I said. I hadn’t been able to access my own money yet, really, save for a quick bank transfer to Cassidy once I’d gotten back to the States. I’d lost eighty percent of my fortune thanks to that damned Scot bitch. I still had a sizable fortune under my control in the Cayman Islands, but I didn’t know if the feds had found that money yet, and I didn’t want to transfer or make any withdrawals that might lead to me.
So, I used Reed’s money. And that was totally cool and only slightly driving me nuts.
“Next stop, Waffle House,” Harry said, pulling the car out of the parking lot as I turned around and sat back down. My stomach gave a low rumble. He looked sidelong at me. “Way to turn around your own intemperate response, by the way.”
“Thanks,” I said, the only buffer between me and a rather extreme headache being the ibuprofen he’d given me earlier. I kept from snapping at him, though. “No alcohol on Sundays? What kind of bullshit is that, Harry?”
“Uh, that’d be the law in many states,” he said. “Including your own, until recently.”
“What?” I frowned. After a moment’s reflection, I realized … yeah, that could have been true. It wasn’t like I had ever really gone out to buy booze on Sundays when I lived in Minnesota. “Maybe,” I finally conceded.
As the car pulled back out onto the highway, rolling through Ardmore, it made me think of how things had been back then, when I’d lived a normal life, unencumbered by countless law enforcement agencies hunting me, and I’d had all the power in the world.
It was almost like another life, one I could only look back on now through a dark prism I called Scotland. If everything in my world could be divided into “Before” and “After,” there was a giant black smudge in the middle marking the space between, and staining everything that had come after.
Though, really … I wasn’t sure quite where to demarcate the end of “Before.” Maybe it wasn’t in Scotland. Maybe it when I’d exploded in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, killing a whole heap ton of meta prisoners that had meant to kill me (and scared a ton of reporters out of their damned skins, turning them against me) that I’d lost my freedom. When I’d had to start running, like I was Dr. Richard Kimble, but with superhuman powers. And pretty. I thought I’d hit rock bottom after that.
But then … Scotland. Where I’d lost … everything I had left.
I put those thoughts out of my head, shaking them off. Before? After? None of it really mattered. My life was in the state it was in, and reflecting over the wreckage didn’t seem too prudent. It was liking look back at the road behind. What the hell was the point? Other than a farewell view of Ardmore—and maybe a glimpse of Cassidy now that she was peppy or Eilish as she stuffed her face with junk food—there was nothing behind me that I could change. Nothing that would make the present better.
But as I stared out at the road ahead, I had to wonder if there was anything I could change before me, either? Before, when I’d had power, the ability to influence the outcome of a situation like this was never in doubt. But now …
Was there even any hope?
Or was it all darkness, from here to the horizon, more grim surprises that would only be revealed and do further damage to my life as I came upon them?
14.
“Did you pick that gas station knowing I couldn’t buy alcohol there?” I asked once we were a little further down the road.
Harry chuckled. “Even I don’t control the blue laws of the states we’re passing through. It’s a statewide thing.”
“Yeah, but you took us through this particular state–”
“We’re actually in Tennessee now. Ardmore is on the border.”
“Whatever, you chose this entire path,” I chucked a thumb behind me, toward the service station where I couldn’t buy malt liquor at 5 AM on Sunday. “We were supposed to go through Florida and Georgia.”
He grunted. “Well, if you wanted this trip to end up with a visit to the federal pen, you should have said so.” He smiled thinly. “I thought you wanted me to get you to this bad guy you’re chasing.” He inclined his head back, indicating Cassidy. “You know—totally for her and not at all for yourself.”