Page 50 of A Malicious Menagerie (Fangs & Fables #1)

“It’s getting harder and harder to do that,” Nan grumbles, making another shot of guilt arrow through me. Still, she’s quiet as I wheel her quickly through the lobby and into the night .

Before I can head for the car, Chase bounds up beside me and presses his snout, followed by something metallic, into my hand.

My palm wraps around the jagged edges of a set of keys, and I stare down at them before glancing at my wolf.

“Are we stealing a car?” He chuffs before taking off toward our car, presumably to get our bags.

Nan gasps. “Anna!”

Ignoring her disapproval as best I can after a lifetime of trying to avoid it, I click the button on the fob. Headlights flicker in an aged sedan across the lot, and I start that way. Chase is right; we won’t get far in Mathis’s car with its GPS tracker.

It takes some maneuvering, but I manage to get a fuming, worried Nan settled in the front passenger seat.

I shove her wheelchair in the trunk, using a shoelace to keep the hatch from flying up when I can’t get it to latch over the bulky frame.

I slide into the driver’s seat and close the door.

A moment later, Chase ducks into the backseat, newly dressed in my dad’s buffalo check flannel shirt and jeans.

He’s scrubbed most of the blood off his face, but he missed a single streak across his forehead.

Nan stares at his reflection in the rearview mirror, her eyes boggling again.

When Chase catches her gaze in the glass, he grimaces before managing a wan smile.

“Hello, Mrs. Paulson. It’s nice to meet you.

Sorry it’s under such… strange circumstances. ”

Nan blinks rapidly as I start the car and head for the exit. I try not to floor it and draw more attention as police sirens echo in the distance. “You’re Chase?” she says slowly, half a question and half a statement.

“I am.”

“You’re the boy from Anna’s new job.”

Chase hesitates, probably weighing what I likely told my grandmother before now. “I am.”

“And you’re… a werewolf.”

“I am,” he confirms again.

Nan’s sharp eyes fly to me, and I can feel the heat of her regard on the right side of my face. “And you’re engaged.”

“We are,” it’s my turn to say. “It’s a long story.”

“And you promised to tell me. ”

“I did,” I sigh. And, as the miles begin to tick by, I do.

* * *

While Chase was imprisoned in the menagerie, he fantasized about his escape and his dramatic return to his pack. Until I told him, he didn’t know where in the world he was being kept, but he still planned various contingencies on how he would make his way home.

“Unfortunately, none of those contingencies accounted for traveling with a woman in a wheelchair,” Chase whispers dryly as we pore over a couple of maps we picked up in a gas station off the highway.

We ditched the car back across the state line before it could lead the police to us.

Then, we hopped a couple of buses until Nan was too tired to keep her eyes open before finding a cheap motel a few sketchy blocks from the bus station.

Now, Nan is sleeping soundly on one rickety twin bed while Chase and I use the other to plot our course.

“It’s a long trip,” I note, daunted by the little scale in the corner of the map that tells me that Fairbanks is about three thousand miles away… and that’s as the crow flies. “And we had to ditch the car.”

“How much cash do you have?”

I reach into my suitcase to take out the wad I pulled from under my mattress. I grimace at what looks like a paltry amount in light of the journey ahead of us. “About five thousand dollars.”

He grimaces. “ Maybe we can find a working car for two or three thousand that won’t fall apart until we reach the border—”

“The border ?” I hiss. “Did you have your passport tucked somewhere on your naked body all this time?”

“Shit,” he says, conceding my point. “In all my plans, I walked across the border illegally. But we can’t push Nan through the woods and across a huge chunk of Canada.”

“I don’t have a passport,” I admit. “I never had a reason to need one. Plus, I wouldn’t be comfortable using it anyway. Who knows if any of Mathis’s people are looking for us and what resources they have? ”

“Okay, then we can’t cross into Canada.” He squints at the map until his bright eyes widen with an idea.

“So we don’t. We take a ferry.” He points to the top of Washington state—Bellingham, the map reads—and traces along the curve of Canada into Alaska.

“Bellingham to Whittier. You can put a car on the ferry, too, so we can drive from Whittier to Fairbanks.”

That actually sounds… possible. Hope begins to warm my chest. “All this is dependent on us finding a cheap car,” I note. “Without using ID.”

He gives me a lopsided grin, one dimple making an appearance. “How’re your acting skills?”

* * *

“Abusive boyfriend, huh?” the used car salesman says, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

I dash a crocodile tear from under my eye, drawing attention to the bruise on my cheekbone from where Smarman ground my face into the iron bars.

When the bruise showed up this morning, Chase threatened to learn necromancy so he could “bring that asshole back to life just for the pleasure of killing him again.” But the mark does add some credibility to my story.

“Yes. He threatened to kill my grandmother, and then me.” I motion to Nan beside me, who’s sitting stony-faced in her chair.

She took my story in stride, not blinking an eye at the fact that werewolves and vampires and mermaids exist. She even softened to Chase once she heard how he’d been taken from his family and forced to live in a cage.

Still, she’s not a huge fan of all the lying I’ve had to do.

“So you need a car to get away,” the salesman surmises with a nod.

He’s middle-aged, not thin but not fat, with slicked-back black hair that’s too dark compared to his gray-speckled stubble not to be dyed.

His name tag reads “Samson.” “But you can’t use your real name, ‘cause you’re scared he’ll find you. ”

“Yes,” I agree, not having to feign my relief that he seems willing to play along .

Samson makes a production of looking left and right before leaning in close enough for me to smell his cheap cologne and his morning coffee on his breath. “Between you and me, I think I can make that happen, Miss… let’s say Smith.”

Batting my eyelashes at him, I hope I’m not laying it on too thick when I gush, “Thank you, Samson. You’re my hero.”

Either I’m a better actress than I thought, or maybe he’s just into it, because he grins, revealing a chip off one upper incisor. “Not at all, Miss Smith. Always happy to help a damsel in distress.”

* * *

With its flaking red paint and worn seats, the ‘93 Grand Cherokee is an eyesore, and it tends to vibrate when it hits eighty miles per hour. Still, it runs, which is about our only qualification at this point. Any other time, I would be thrilled at the idea of taking my first cross-country road trip. But with Nan looking more haggard and pale with each passing mile, I’m more worried than excited.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, reaching across the center console to take Nan’s hand.

Chase is crashed out across the back seat, his knees tucked up awkwardly.

He took the last shift driving, and I know he hasn’t been sleeping well.

The couple of times we stopped to rest in a motel, I woke to find him staring out the window, his watchful gaze cataloging every car and wayward pedestrian.

I hope that wariness will fade once he’s home, but the truth is, I don’t know that it will ever leave him completely.

You don’t walk away from an experience like his without scars—physical and mental.

Nan shoots me a surprised look. “What for?”

“For getting us into this mess,” I reply with a sigh. “For taking that job. For lying to you about it. For everything Chase and I have had to do to get free of the menagerie.”

“For setting a wendigo loose in the city?” Nan adds wryly.

I wince. That particular fact haunts me, especially given the newspaper headlines and news bulletins we’ve glimpsed along our way. So much for his claims that he’d just go home after we freed him.

“At least he’s only killing murderers, rapists, and drug dealers,” I note weakly. Like him being a vigilante wendigo makes it so much better.

Nan sighs. “Anna, I’m not mad at you. And you have nothing to be sorry for.”

I shoot her an incredulous look. “I don’t?”

“What do you think you need forgiveness for?” she asks gently, giving my hand a feeble squeeze. “Working yourself to the bone to take care of me, sticking to your principles when asked to abandon them, or risking it all for the people you love most?”

“Well, when you put it like that,” I reply faintly. I remember when I said those words to Chase in my childhood bedroom that fateful night not too long ago. How is it that they can see these things in me that I struggle to see in myself?

“Anna, you are exactly the woman I knew you would be the first time you brought an orphaned kitten home. You are strong, compassionate. Fierce. ”

I can’t help but laugh at that. “That’s what Chase calls me, too.”

“The man has good sense,” Nan says with a nod. She shoots me a sly smile. “And good taste. So, when’s the wedding?”

“We can stop in Vegas,” Chase chimes in from the back, his deep voice rusty from sleep.

I watch in the rearview mirror as he sits up and stretches, his T-shirt riding up his stomach to give me a glimpse of his happy trail and shallow belly button.

My stomach gives a pleasurable dip at the sight.

With Nan in such close quarters, we haven’t been able to have a repeat of the other night, and I’ve been going a little crazy with how badly I want to jump him.

My thoughts must be written all over my face because Chase catches my eye in the mirror and grins suggestively.

“It’s not on the way,” I reply with a disappointed sigh. In all honesty, if it were, stopping for an impromptu wedding sounds like an amazing plan.

“Wouldn’t you want your family there?” Nan chides Chase. It’s amazing how quickly she embraced him as family. If I thought I couldn’t love this woman more than I already did, her easy acceptance of a werewolf grandson-in-law proved me wrong .

Chase’s eyes soften at the mention of his parents and sisters, turning his golden gaze molten. “Yeah,” he agrees softly. “I want them there.” He snorts. “Even though Mom is the only one who would care all that much about a wedding.”

“I’m excited to meet her,” I tell him honestly. Still, butterflies flutter in my belly with the worry that she might not like me.

As if he can hear my concern in my tone, Chase gifts me a tender grin. “She’s going to love you. Though she’ll probably ask when her grandpups are coming.”

I choke on my spit and have to work hard to keep the car in a straight line while I cough. “Chase!”

“Well?” Nan teases between my hacking coughs. “What’s the answer?”

“Never, if my so-called fiancé doesn’t find his way out of the doghouse.”

“We’ll see,” Chase retorts before flopping back down on the seat.

And if I’m thinking about crawling in that back seat with him… well. At least only his nose can tell what I’m thinking.