“Oh, big hulking suckfest,” said Jill. There was an army truck turning in at the gate, with the cobey unit logo splashed on its side.
“Pretend to ignore them,” I said. “Keep going.”
“They won’t be for us,” said Jill. “Not specifically.”
“I don’t want to find out,” I said. “Remember we’ve lost our gruuaa.”
“Yes,” said Jill. “I’m missing the sparkly shadows.”
The army vehicle had clearly seen us . . . and they wanted us to stop.
“Don’t stop unless they aim a zapper at us,” I said.
“Drog me,” said Jill. We kept rolling down the hill. The army guys didn’t quite want to turn in front of us, maybe because there wasn’t room, maybe because the Mammoth made even an army van nervous. But they went up the hill like someone who was planning on turning around and coming down again in a hurry. We got to the gate and Jill was bumping onto the main road and I was just saying, “You might turn up Rodriguez, they might not see us by the time they—” when there was a terrified scream from Clare, a shriek of overstressed brakes and . . . the sound of a large heavy metal object slamming into a cement post, like the ones that line the shelter driveway.
“Wow,” said Jill, looking in her rear view mirror.
“Did they miss him?” I said.
“What?” said Jill. She looked back at the road in front of her and finished turning. Then she turned again, down Rodriguez. Even the Mammoth knew it was carrying a load: you could feel it settle on the corners. There was the sound of scrambling in the back, but the panting wasn’t any worse. “I don’t think they’ll be following us any time soon,” Jill added.
“Go to the end of the road and stop,” I said.
“What?” said Jill again. “What do you mean, did they miss him?”
Even if some overeager army drone raced down to the gate and looked for us, they wouldn’t be able to see us sitting at the end of Rodriguez. “Just stop,” I said. “Please.”
She stopped. “You can kiss her if you want,” she said. “I won’t mind. And you’ve got a major bag of dog food for chaperone.”
“I—what?” I squeaked. I turned, but somehow I turned the wrong way. I put a hand out—just to steady myself. The dog food was trying to shove me farther into Taks’ arms. I wasn’t entirely sure Jill hadn’t given it a push from her side. My hand was on Taks’ shoulder. His arm tightened. His other hand reached across, smoothed down the back of my head, cupped my chin briefly. And then he kissed me.
Jill opened her door and got out. “I’m going to move those cans,” she said. “The clink, clink, clink is really annoying.”
This was so totally the wrong moment. Not to mention the tactical difficulties. I wound my arms around Taks’ neck (Bella gave the nearer one another lick as it slid past) and kissed him back. I unwrapped one arm so I could pull my fingers slowly through his incredibly thick hair. He moved a little, and slid one hand under me so he could lift me the rest of the way onto his lap. Fortunately the Mammoth had amazing headroom, even if not quite enough for a wolfhound. Taks’ other hand patted leisurely, delicately down my back—I shivered. He pulled me closer to him. I couldn’t get any closer.
Jonesie put his head through the gap between Taks’ headrest and the door. I could see him checking the situation for dog biscuit probability. And then I kind of lost track. I’d kissed a few boys before, but nothing like this. I had a sudden, extremely flustering memory flash of Taks’s long naked back in the bathroom mirror. . . .
There was a soft thud, and purring. Jill was just closing the rear door. I sighed, and let myself sag back a little. Taks let me go. Sitting on his lap made me seem as tall as he was: I never looked straight into his face like this. He smiled. Cheekbones to die for. How could I never have noticed?
“I’m sorry to break it up,” said Jill, “since this is obviously quality time, but if one of those army goons did get as far as to cross the street and look down Rodriguez, they would see us. Is this the him you wanted them to miss?”
I turned away from Taks, but this time I leaned against him quite comfortably. Majid, of course, was sitting in the driver’s seat and the bag of dog food was canted at an angle like an army truck had run into it from the other side. “Yes,” I said. Majid gave me a brief dazzling golden stare and then half-lidded his eyes again. I know when my life is being threatened.
“Well, he’s our hero,” said Jill, “So I guess it’s okay he’s coming with us, right? Will he eat me if I try and move him?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Wiping out a cobey truck may have put him in a good mood.” I reluctantly climbed off Taks’ lap, gently pushed Bella’s head out of the way, knelt up on what there was of the seat to lean past the dog food, heaved Majid by a kind of levering process, and spread him over Taks’ and my laps, which he nobly consented to. He purred harder. He was making my teeth rattle. “We’ll go to your place the back way,” said Jill, and started the Mammoth again. It sounded a lot like Majid.
It was at that moment there was a tiny, whispery touch against my forearm. It might have been floating cat hair—Majid was a mighty fur factory, and there was the gang behind us as well—but it wasn’t. It was a gruuaa. A—tiny? Miserable?—gruuaa. It crept up my chest and lay just below my collarbones—and, trust me, it’s not like there’s an enormous shelf there for lying on. But the gruuaa aren’t into gravity much. There was some communication going on with Hix, I thought, and I was pretty sure whatever it was was making me feel tiny and miserable too. Maybe it was just that it was too easy to be expecting bad news. Even Hix’s sweet smell seemed faded and sad.
I laced the fingers of one hand through one of Takahiro’s—the one that wasn’t petting Majid—and he kissed the top of my head. I wanted to be happy, and instead I was more frightened than ever. My old friend and brand-new boyfriend was a werewolf and the army was after him. Us. Probably. And Val . . .
I wished I could talk to the gruuaa. Well, we’d be home soon enough. Too soon. Even draped with unhappy gruuaa (and a bone-shaking megacat) I could still concentrate on Takahiro sitting next to me—sitting next to me so close I could feel him breathing. (The bag of dog food was kind of a romance wrecker, but I could live with it. I could even live with Jonesie trying to catch my eye so he could express outrage at the presence of Majid in the front seat, when he, The Jones, was in the back.) Takahiro . . . sugoi. Super-quadruple sugoi.
A brief vision of Casimir’s grin lit up my mind’s eye. The grin and the dimple. I felt a brief rush of what-might-have-been. But Taks would never mistake me for a magdag whatsit mythic super-gizmo. He was there when Mrs. Fournier hadn’t believed me that I was feeling sick and I threw up all over the floor in seventh-grade science class. He’d been first on the scene in ninth grade when I stumbled and fell spectacularly over the broken paving stone outside the high school office—where I’d been summoned to discuss my failing grade in pre-algebra. I had not only skinned both knees but cracked my forehead on the step, so there was blood everywhere—and Takahiro had been the one to pick up the test paper that had flown out of my book with the big red F on it, across which Mr. Denham had scrawled Even you are not this stupid—and had never once said a thing about it afterward. Takahiro wasn’t ever going to think I was some kind of legendary hero.