Page 37 of Phoenix Chosen 2

“Excuse me, sir?” the officer says, cupping his hand over his eyes. “Everything alright in there?”

“U-uh, yeah!” I stammer. “Just give me a second, officer.”

I’m shirtless. My pants are unbuttoned. I’m holding a chicken.

I lean forward and hit the button to roll the window down a crack. The officer peeks through the glass, looking over the top of his Oakleys. Kalistratos stares at him silently.

“What’re you doing here, sir?”

“Oh, I’m just cuddling my chicken, officer,” I say. “It’s not a euphemism, I promise. He’s just a little cold.”

Argh, why did I say that?!

“Uh, yeah, I can see that,” the cop says. “That thing’s real?”

Kalistratos lets out a loud cluck and flutters his wings. I squeeze him tight against my chest.

“Yessir,” I say.

My heart is pounding, and after a silent pause that feels like an hour, the officer says, “Well, if you’re going to do that, then you ought to do it somewhere else. You’ve turned onto a private road. Just hop back on the freeway and head south about five miles, there’s a rest station there.”

I exhale. “Yeah, that sounds good. I’ll definitely do that.”

The officer stares again, and his forehead crinkles into a frown. “Wait a second.”

I tense.

“Let me see that bird,” he says.

Slowly, I turn Kalistratos around in my arms.

“Yeah, I thought so,” the man says. “That ain’t no chicken, son. That’s acockyou’ve got there.”

“Oh,” I say. “Um, thank you.”

“No problem. You drive safe now.”

Then the officer is gone, just about as quickly as he’d arrived. I peek over the top of the seat and see the cruiser disappearing down the road leading a billowing trail of dust. Kalistratos, back in human form, looks over the seat beside me.

“Okay,” I say. “No more unnecessary stops.”

He blows a fluffy feather off the top of my head. “Agreed.”

We keep on the southbound freeway until the fuel refill light comes on, and I pull off for the closest gas station. I hurry inside and grab a few snacks for the rest of the trip. As I’m paying, I overhear the clerks talking about a warehouse fire near a mall in Bakerville. I don’t stick around to listen to the details.

Kalistratos is waiting in the car for me, his face hidden behind sunglasses. He takes a drink of Coke and flips through the copy ofEmpiremagazine that Jeff had left in the back seat of the car.

“Hey, sexy,” I say, leaning into the open driver’s window. “How much?”

“More coin than you can afford,” he says. “I’m a prince, after all.”

I laugh and toss the bag of snacks onto his lap as I get into the car. We’re back on the highway, and halfway to the city. Kalistratos closes the magazine—it’s aStar Warsretrospective issue.

“I still can’t believe Darth Vader was the father of Luke Skywalker,” he says.

“Blew my mind when I first saw it, too,” I say.

Forty minutes later, we pass a sign marking the city limits. We’re on the outskirts now, and the landscape is changing. The hills are gone, replaced with endless strip malls and apartment buildings. Kalistratos stares out the window, then tilts his neck to look up at the sky. The fluffy white clouds have turned gray. Ahead of us, I can just make out the downtown skyline sitting behind a screen of yellow smog, and there seems to be rain on the docket. I’m white-knuckling the wheel, and I can feel Kalistratos is tense, too. Both of us are thinking about that shadow monster and the way the sky changed when it appeared.

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