My phone rang.
I read the caller ID and answered it only because it was Zee.
“The Soul Taker is no more,” he said, sounding satisfied.
Bargains, I thought, are how you deal with the fae. If I gave Zee the Soul Taker, he agreed to destroy it. And heal me, too. It had been a good bargain.
“Got that,” I told him. “It had a few more holds on me than I thought it did.”
“Ja, it happens like that sometimes. Good that you did not pick it up. Eat something, you’ll feel better.” He paused. “I am hungry, too. I’ll bring lunch.”
“Paper or plastic cups if you bring drinks,” I told him. “No skull cups.”
“Underhill wanted the Soul Taker,” Zee said. “Tad told me what she said when she gave you the cup for me. She would have kept her bargain to keep your family safe. And a favor from Underhill is no small thing.”
“Yeah, well,” I said. “You had first dibs.”
He laughed and hung up.
When he came in twenty minutes later, he brought street tacos from our favorite food truck. He handed me a soda in a can with a little emphasis. But what we talked about was fixing cars.
When lunch was over, he stayed to help, and we were both working on a twenty-year-old Mercedes convertible when the phone rang and the bell jingled at the front desk.
“Desk or phone?” I asked.
“Pest oder Cholera—es ist ein und dasselbe,” he grumbled.
“If I go to Germany and everyone thinks I’m a grump, it will be your fault,” I said. “And since when do we compare our customers to diseases?”
“Since I sold you the garage and they became your customers,” he said. “I will get the phone.”
I was still smiling when I walked into the office—to see Warren.
“Hey,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I have a deadline,” he said. “And it occurred to me that I have a friend I can ask for help.”
Adam had given him two days to deal with whatever was making him so crabby.
“Always happy to poke my nose into your business,” I said.
Loud and muffled German leaked through the closed door to the bays. “Hey, maybe if I can fix what’s making you grumpy, we can try it out on Zee.”
Warren gave me the faint smile that deserved. “I doubt it. Leopard don’t change its spots. Come take a drive with me.” He turned and walked out the door, tension obvious in the set of his shoulders and the snap in his voice.
Eyebrows climbing at the order—I’d have thought yesterday would have cured him of talking to me like that—I stuck my head back into the bays and called out, “Test driving. Back whenever it happens.” I started for the door, then considered the new Subaru and stripped out of my greasy overalls.
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t for Warren to gesture me into the driver’s seat of his new car. I sat down on the leather and couldn’t help but smile as I adjusted the seat to fit me.
I started the car with a push of the car-starter button. A message popped up on the space-age screen in front of me that said: Driver Not Registered. Do You Wish to Register?
Warren touched the tablet-like secondary screen that lay between the driver’s and the passenger’s seats, and the message went away. I gave him a quick glance because that touch had been overly quick and the tap had been a little harder than I’d have used on a touch screen I wanted to last a few years.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Howard Amon Park,” he said, and he gripped the car door and gritted his teeth.
“Okay,” I said.
I might work on old cars most days, but we could do new cars, too. Adam’s SUV was brand-new and had all the whistles and bells. But it seemed to me that Adam’s SUV had quite a lot fewer bells than this car—in a literal sense. I hadn’t gone a block and it had beeped at me five times. Twice it was because I went over a white line, but the other three were so quick I couldn’t figure out what it thought I’d done. There were little green and red lights that were on a heads-up screen that I was unsure of, too. By the time I pulled onto the highway, I was a little tense. I also was a lot more careful to keep the car between the lines.
“Use the cruise control,” he said.
I did. Adam’s SUV didn’t try to steer for me, but I knew what automatic steering was supposed to do. As I was glancing at the cruise control buttons, the car dinged rudely, and a red banner flashed in on my dashboard and on the tablet between Warren and me: Stay Alert!!! I guessed that the second banner that the passengers could see was a courtesy to warn them that they were about to die.
I turned off the automatic steering because it was irritating having the steering wheel fight me, but after a mile I noticed it was doing it again. I turned it off a second time.
By the time I drove into Howard Amon Park, I was pretty tired of hearing all the beeps and dings. The car told me to keep my hands on the wheel when my hands were on the wheel. It told me to watch the road when I was watching the road, and also when I wasn’t watching the road—which was even more annoying.
I parked the car and asked Warren to find the owner’s manual. I took about ten minutes to skim through it and then got to work turning off all the helpful modern things designed to drive werewolves (who were control freaks one and all) batty.
“There,” I said, backing out of the parking space. “That should help.”
I hadn’t driven a mile before it was at it again.
The engine stopped while we were at a red light. I’d never driven a car that did that. It was supposed to save gas, but the mechanic in me worried about the starter. The Subaru restarted itself without warning, and both Warren and I flinched.
“I’m pretty sure that was one of the things I turned off,” I said as the car informed me I’d crossed the lane marker and my hands weren’t on the steering wheel. The tires might have touched the white paint between my lane and the shoulder, but both of my hands were on the wheel.
“Yes,” he said. “Did you think I couldn’t read an owner’s manual?”
I cleared my throat. “It has not been my experience that owners of new cars read their manuals unless their names are Kyle.” Kyle had highlighted his favorite parts—mostly having to do with safety.
A warning light flashed on.
“You are low on washer fluid,” I told him.
A message came on the car’s tablet-sized screen that said we were low on washer fluid. A moment later a red alert light came on the dash, and when I toggled it, it told me we were low on washer fluid. Warren’s phone chimed and he didn’t even look at it.
“It goes through a lot of washer fluid,” he said. “Gets the windshield real clean.”
I bit my lip and tried not to laugh.
“I’ll have an email about the washer fluid, with an explanation on how to fill it up. And a number for the dealership if I’m too stupid to follow their step-by-step instructions and want a mechanic to fill my washer fluid.” He paused. “Kyle will get the text and email, too.”
I rubbed my face and the car dinged and told me to keep my hands on the steering wheel.
“He don’t say anythin’,” Warren said. “He just buys washer fluid and sets the bottles on my side of the garage.”
“It’s not supposed to turn all of its helpful technology back on,” I offered. “I could try to troubleshoot it, but most of these kinds of programs are proprietary. Probably easier to take it in.”
“It doesn’t do it if I’m not in the car,” he said.