Page 23 of Faerie Marked

“Sweetheart, there are better cars on the lot. I wouldn’t feel comfortable letting you drive off in the Toyota. Someone like you deserves better.”

“What’s the best you can do?” I asked again.

He finally saw I meant business. “Come into my office, little one, and we can talk.”

There were only so many cutesy pet names I could tolerate on a normal day. I’d heard them all at my internship with William’s firm. People, men in particular, thought they could sweet talk me with honeyed nicknames, nicknames with no bearing on who I was as a person, and it would help me to get my duties done faster. Or get me to do a special favor for them.

Big Dan didn’t know me from the next person on the street, and he didn’t know where I came from, which meant he couldsweetieandhoneyandbabyme until he turned blue in the face, but I wasn’t leaving without the Toyota.

There were some things money couldn’t buy, true. This wasn’t one of those times, I told myself, because I knew what I wanted.

Big Dan didn’t know what had hit him by the time I walked out. I left the small office cluttered with file cabinets two thousand dollars lighter, having managed to talk Big Dan down another five hundred off his asking price. It hadn’t taken much more than a few well-placed battings of the eyelashes along with tactics I’d picked up during my internship. And maybe a little magic.

Played.

Good, I thought. This was nothing but practice for the academy. I needed to be on my toes there.

A quick stop at a wireless phone store provided me a cheap and untraceable cell I’d use in place of the one I left behind. Who would I call? No one, I knew, but it felt familiar in my hand. And I could use the GPS system on the drive.

This was it.

The first step in the journey to my freedom. Throwing my luggage in the backseat, I finally slid behind the steering wheel and placed my hands on the cracked dashboard. The car smelled of burned microwave food and pine-scented air freshener, the seats cracked and stained. I didn’t care. It was my ticket out of here. Beautiful because it meant a shot at escape.

I thought about the stuff I’d tossed in the rear seat: everything important to me, including the empty picture frames from on top of my dresser. I thought about the money I’d taken from my skinflint uncle and hoped, if he ever noticed it was gone, maybe he could forgive me for taking it.

Forgive me for a lot of things.

Once he realizedIwas gone…no, he couldn’t get past the betrayal. What I’d done could damage relations between the Alderidge and Grimaldi packs for the foreseeable future. It would impact everyone in the packs from the alpha to the lowest omega.

I shook my head to clear it, tightening my grip on the steering wheel. Running away would be letting my pack down. For what he’d deal with, I was sorry.

Not sorry enough to stay.

The road spread out in front of me. Once I made it out of the city, I made good time. The burner phone, at least, came equipped with GPS and the mechanical voice guided me closer to the academy with each mile.

Closer to my future. Closer to my escape. And once I was out of the city past the early morning traffic, something eased inside of me, a tension I hadn’t been aware of. I thought of the vials in the backseat behind me. The vials to keep my shifter nature at bay. The rest would be up to me.

Hours passed. I grabbed fast food for lunch, with extra for dinner, and listened to the radio to pass the time. I decided to find a place to stop for the night. I hadn’t seen any road signs for a motel in a while but there should be some ahead. I’d stop at the next one I found. With autumn around the corner, the days were getting shorter, and already it was dark and I was tired.

I tapped on the steering wheel in time with the song on the radio. One step at a time, another mile closer to the academy.

In my head I was already there and figuring out my next step. But fatigue rode me hard, eyes blurring, shoulders tight. I needed to stop and get some sleep so I could rest up before orientation tomorrow morning.

Close, so close.

The car shook and sputtered, throwing me forward against the dashboard until the seatbelt bit into my neck. My wrist jolted painfully. Smoke curled from beneath the hood and the car wheezed like an old man with COPD.

“No, no! Come on, don’t do this to me. Not now.”

I managed to yank the wheel and bring the old girl over to the side of the road seconds before its final death call.

Black smoke belching, and the clock marking midnight, the car died a terrible death.

9

The immediate clench of fear in my gut at being stranded began to fade slightly the more time passed. Maybe Big Dan had been right about the car. I was stuck miles away from civilization in a broken-down heap.

The next thought was how I’d made a bad mistake in picking the worst car on the lot when I should have settled for something middle of the road for a little more money.

---