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10. THE IMMORTAL ARE BAD DRIVERS

It takes me a while before I stop shaking enough to drive, though I still bury myself deep enough into the vampire part of my mind to avoid the flood of feelings that has come with this evening. I feel a little ashamed for doing so but there is no way I could drive otherwise. Somehow, the prospect of stalling three times at an intersection doesn’t ease my nerves at all.

Mel watches me in the rear-view mirror as I adjust the seat and fumble with the height of the steering wheel – are all siren’s so short?I can feel Celeste’s gaze on me from the passenger seat.This is going to be so embarrassing.

On the upside, having to drive distracts me from how I feel, at least a little. Mel does the rest. As we roll out of the shipyard, I notice she is sitting perched in the middle of the backseat, pushed forward so she’s nearly between us, her elbows resting on the front backrests.

Of course, she’s not wearing her seatbelt. Nobody is – nobody but me, who needs it the least, being immortal.

As we drive up the suburban roads, she says, “What are you doing?”

I look nervously over the dashboard and check the mirrors. I thought I was driving exactly as I should. “What do you mean?”

She throws her hands up. “My grandmother drives faster than you and she’s practically a fish!”

Celeste chuckles. “I’m telling her you said that.”

Wincing on the inside, I speed up a little.

Mel lets her head sink against the backrest. “Poseidon have mercy.”

“If we have an accident you’ll both be dead,” I say defensively, slowing down awkwardly early for an intersection and forgetting to indicate. Being flustered certainly doesn’t help my driving.

“Pfff,” Mel scoffs. “You think the most powerful witch in the country would die in a car accident? She hexes all our cars, they couldn’t crash if they wanted to.”

I throw a sideways glance at Celeste, trying to gauge whether Mel is mocking me or not, but her face is unreadable. Indignant, I let the needle creep up a little higher.

“Left here.”

“What?” I glance at Mel in the rearview mirror and nearly miss the turn. “But Asphodel is the other way.” Too late I notice the signs to the highway.

“I can’t let this stand,” Mel says. “I’m gonna teach you how to drive the way a resident of this damned city should.”

Celeste shakes her head and sinks further into her seat.

“Come on,” Mel says, watching the dashboard. “You can go at least a little faster than that.”

I let out a frustrated huff. At least the highway is unusually quiet in this part of the city. “There’s a speed limit for a reason.”

“The reason is because humans and ghouls have terrible reaction times. You’re a vampire, you don’t need those.”

“I don’t… think that’s true.”

“C’mon,” Mel massages my shoulders from behind. “There isn’t even anyone on the road. Pleaaaase, Deni, for me? Just for a few minutes?”

Letting out a deep sigh,Ipush the speed a little higher, simultaneously burying deeper and deeper into my vampire mind. The constant low-grade dread that usually lives in my stomach is drowned out, and so is the nausea brought on by seeing that horrible man again, replaced by hyper-intense colors and an extreme awareness of my entire field of vision.

“Now we’re talking,” Mel says.

Weaving past a couple of other cars – slow-lane losers, as Mel calls them – I find myself almost smiling at the smoothness of the motion. Driving feels suited to this part of me, only acting and reacting to the car and the road. With my thoughts more quiet, it feels as if I’m experiencing the world more directly. Under Mel’s insistence, I take it up another notch, the car beginning to feel like an extension of my body. The road out this way is so quiet, it feels like we’re the only people in the world, the inside of the car a little capsule of life against the vastness of the dead city. Mel’s voice is ecstatic as she explains the language of the car, the vibrations in the steering wheel, the sound of the engine, the feedback of the pedals. Her excitement is half the fun, the other half is feeling like flying.

Celeste only rolls her eyes at Mel and watches the city fly by, smiling to herself.

Under Mel’s cheerful encouragement, I overtake a dark sedan. Moments later, the previously ordinary car suddenly lights up in red and blue. The sound of a siren cuts through the purr of the engine.

Fuck,I think.

“Fuck!” Mel says.