Dangerous Creatures

AFTER Fade to Black

The road out of New York unrolled quickly, the same way they’d come. Except this time, Lucille Ball sat in the front seat, between the Caster and the quarter Incubus, purring.

“What is wrong with that cat? It’s like she has no idea we’re on the lam.” Ridley was annoyed.

“She doesn’t. She’s a cat.”

“Lucille Ball is as big a gossip as the Sisters,” Ridley said. “She knows everything. We’re on the run from a bunch of Caster Underground lowlifes. The apartment isn’t safe. The city is worse. Probably most of the country is full of Silas Ravenwood’s thugs. That cat should not be purring.”

Ridley was twitching enough for them both. She didn’t care if she ever saw a city again. All she knew was they had each other, and they were alive.

But for how long?

“Stop lookin’ over your shoulder,” said Link.

“I can’t help it if I don’t want to die,” said Rid. “And it feels like I’m—like we’re being watched.”

“You’re not gonna die. Well, I mean, you are. We all are. But not yet.” Link accelerated, all the same. “If Nox did his part, Silas Ravenwood has no idea where we are or where we’re headed—and the rest of the band is long gone.”

Ridley glanced out the window. She didn’t want to think about Nox and what he was or wasn’t doing. She didn’t want to think about what he’d given up by staying behind. “We can’t hide from Silas forever.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m great at hidin’. Last year, Principal Harper couldn’t find me for the better part of a semester. It’s just one a my many gifts.” Link winked. Ridley knew it was true. Plus, Link had been hiding most of his life from his own mother, long before that. By now, she figured, he was as good with invisibility as Savannah Snow was with visibility.

“Principal Harper isn’t Silas.” Ridley was doubtful. But Link was starting to calm her down, smoothing out her rough spots, like he always did.

“Maybe. But Silas also isn’t the most powerful Blood Incubus of all time. Maybe we can ditch him. Maybe we can buy ourselves some time.”

Until Abraham gets involved again, Ridley thought. Which I hope is never.

“So what now?” She looked at him. Back in the Beater once again, where everything that had to do with Link began and ended. Where Lena had met Ethan, now that she thought about it. The Beater had seen it all. It was a wonder the thing could still move.

Link looked sideways at her. “What do you mean, what now?”

“We can’t go back to New York.”

“No, ma’am. Not unless you’re fine with a permanent stop at His Garden of Perpetual Peace,” said Link. “Then we could haunt just about anywhere we felt like it. Seein’ as we’d be dead.”

“Stop joking around. I’m serious. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here. It might as well be a Caster death sentence. We’re done. And nobody will ever hire you again. Forget Sirensong. You can kiss your whole music career good-bye.” Please, she thought desperately. Please, please, kiss it good-bye.

Link tapped the wheel. “Aw, Chicken Wing.”

Ridley practically screamed. “Don’t. Call. Me. That.”

He grinned, ignoring her. “We’re only done in New York, darlin’. Weren’t you listenin’ to me all those other times? When I told you how all those bands made it big without ever settin’ foot in New York?”

She just looked at him. “You’re crazy. You know that?”

“Hey, I may not have a band, but I have you, don’t I?”

“Don’t you always?”

“You didn’t answer the question.”

Link pulled her hair back until he could see the tiny sparkling S studs in her ears. “What are those?”

“The earrings? I guess I forgot to take them off.” S for Siren. S for Sirene. From a certain Caster closet. They reminded her of dinner under the stars, on the roof of the Met.

Cinderella at the ball of the damned, she thought.

“Those real diamonds?” Link looked at her. “Don’t tell me.” He shook his head. “I can’t compete with that.”

“With what?” Ridley smoothed her hair back over her ears, self-conscious now.

“With Mr. New York City. With all the flash and the cash.”

“Mr. New York City saved our lives,” she said.

“Sure, from himself. From what he was plannin’ to do to us in the first place. If you want to get technical.”

“I don’t.”

“I’m not him. I’ll never be him.” Link fixed his eyes on the road. “I’m a Southern boy. When I get you earrings, they’re gonna come from the mall. You should know that by now.”

Something inside Ridley broke. She was overwhelmed by feelings, more than she’d ever wanted. More than she knew what to do with.

For what I have, and what I’ve lost. Who I have, and who I’ve lost.

But Ridley and Link had survived. They were together. They had now, and they had each other. That was the most important thing.

She only wished she knew how to tell him that.

Ridley looked at Link. “I don’t want you to be anyone except Wesley Lincoln, from Gatlin, South Carolina.”

“That’s sweet as sugar, Sugar. I wish I believed you, but that doesn’t make it any less sweet.”

“Link.”

“Come on. We both know Lennox Gates owns guys like me.”

Rid touched his shoulder. “I don’t care about any of that. I just want you to kiss me, you idiot.”

She realized it was true the moment she said it.

Link bit his lip, thinking. “No way. If you’re going to be with me, it’s not going to be because we made out in the alley one time and then you felt sorry for me.”

“We’re not in an alley. Now kiss me.”

“I said no. If we’re going to be in this together, it’s going to be because we both want to be. Because we respect each other, and we need each other. And we love—”

“Kiss me,” she said.

Slowly, he pulled the car over to the side of the highway.

Link walked around to the passenger side of the Beater and pulled open the door. He was down on one knee, mostly because that was the only way he could fold his supersized body compactly enough to bring his head to her level.

Ridley looked down at him from her seat. “Can I help you, Wesley Lincoln?”

“Ridley Duchannes. Is there even one stupid tiny little part of you that loves one stupid tiny little part of me?”

She looked at him, blinking back tears. She could’ve prevented all this if she had just flung her arms around him the first time he’d told her he loved her, and kissed his sweet face, and confessed that she’d always loved him, too.

They wouldn’t have fought. She wouldn’t have fled the country and, ultimately, the whole Mortal world. She wouldn’t have tried to lose herself in a stupid card game.

Suffer was the perfect name for the club where she’d almost lost it all. And it described what both of them had been doing since the moment she’d set foot in that place. But if Ridley was honest with herself, she had already been suffering for three months by the time she found her way there.

Why?

Because she couldn’t tell one stupid boy who she loved with every muscle in her stupidly broken heart that she loved him more passionately and more deeply than she’d ever loved anyone in the world?

Ridley couldn’t go back to that afternoon in the Dar-ee Keen. It hurt too much. She couldn’t walk back through any of the wrong paths she’d taken.

Instead, she closed her eyes and started to cry, really cry.

She melted into Link’s arms, burying her face in his shoulder, pressing her runny nose into his spiky hair, like he’d been waiting for her to do since that first time he said it.

Wesley Lincoln finally got his answer, even if it was wet snot on his neck. Even if Ridley Duchannes was speechless and all she could manage was a nod.

Even if it was a long time coming, longer than back-to-back Shark Weeks, longer than a whole summer vacation of E-rated video games, and even longer than Summerville’s marathon Battle of the Bad Bands.

Link would take it. He could wait for the rest, even if it took the rest of his long life.

In that moment, the longest standoff in recorded history—at least, all the history recorded between this particular Caster and this particular quarter Incubus—came to a short, sweet end.

Together they were ready to take on the world.

Or hide from it, indefinitely.

They were still working out the plan.

“Next question, darlin’.”

“You’re full of questions today, Shrinky Dink.” Ridley sat with her pink toes in his lap while he drove, and Link held on to them with his hand.

She wiggled them and he smiled.

“Only one more question, and I promise this one’ll be easier than the last.”

“All right, then,” she said.

“Should we go back to Gatlin?”

He was wrong. This wasn’t easy, either.

This one kept them talking for a hundred miles.

As much as Ridley wanted the answer to be yes—more than she’d ever thought she’d want to go back to Gatlin, to everything that meant—she knew in her heart there was no way she could risk everyone she cared about. She wouldn’t even risk telling them where she and Link were headed.

Not when Silas Ravenwood was involved. Or worse, Abraham.

“Then where do we go? If we can’t stay in New York, and we can’t go home?” Ridley hadn’t quite figured that out yet.

“Did you actually call Gatlin home?”

“Don’t avoid the question,” Ridley said, avoiding the question.

Link grinned, tapping on the steering wheel. “Where are we goin’? You and me? That’s music and magic, Babe. I got just the place. There’s only one.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. It was supposed to be chapter ten in my autobiography. You know, Carolina Icon. Did I ever tell you that one?”

Rid had to think about it. “Viva Link Vegas?”

“Nah, that’s all fake magic. Plus, that’s chapter twelve, the one with the white tigers. For when my vocal cords are shot and I’m fat from eatin’ fried peanut butter.” He winked at her.

Ridley smiled. She hadn’t known they weren’t shot now. “Where, Hot Rod? Don’t die on a toilet before you tell me.”

“Aw, come on. It’s not the worst way to go.”

Ridley didn’t know about that, but at least it wasn’t a fire or chains. She wondered what Nox’s third vision was, the last one he’d seen.

The one he wouldn’t tell her about.

Rid looked back at Link. “Cough it up. Where are we headed?”

Link was going to tell her, but then “Stairway to Heaven” came on the radio, and they had to stop talking.

It was the only rule of the Beater.

Ridley would have to wait a few minutes to find out.

She wrapped a strand of pink hair around her finger and thought about where she was going and what she was leaving behind.

Link was singing, the radio was playing, and the wind was blowing. Rid’s window was down and her hand was hanging out to feel the warmth of the sun. There were cows on one side of the highway and horses on the other. Everywhere she looked, round bales of hay sat tied up with string, like birthday presents.

Ridley felt pretty good, for someone with a banged-up heart and a bounty on her head. Her ring tapped against the side of the car, but she couldn’t see if it was glowing, and right now she didn’t care.

Which was also the reason she didn’t see the truck coming right at them.

Sugarplum—

People said the gas tank alone burned more than two stories high.

Hot Rod, don’t you leave me—

The back of the Beater? Smashed like a dropped accordion.

Stairs. Flames. The sky.

“Stairway to Heaven” kept playing right up until the radio caught fire.

To be continued…