“What’s up with the whole pretending to be an intern thing?” I asked. “And the outfits?”
“Just playing a role. It’s better for us to fit in when we can.” She smiled at me, and I had the distinct impression of a shark eyeing its prey. Her clear, gray eyes were wide and focused. The faintest scent of smoke, or burning leaves, filled the car, and then it was gone. I felt a rash of goose bumps run up and down my arms.
“Did anyone ever tell you that you’re kind of creepy?” I said suddenly.
She burst out laughing. “Yeah. I am. Thanks for noticing.” Preening, like I’d just offered her a compliment instead of an insult, she patted her hair and air-kissed the mirror.
Uri came over to the car and got in. “Hi, Abbey.” His smile was genuine and friendly, his voice smooth like chocolate. He slammed the door shut. “Caspian.”
Caspian nodded back, and I wondered if this was it. Were they here to take me to my everlasting reward in a … “Hey, is this a Jetta?” I asked.
“Yup.” Uri kept his eyes on the road and pulled out of the driveway.
“Nice, right?” Cacey said. “Totally better than some of the other rides we’ve had. Do you have any idea how long a Volkswagen bus can continue to run? Even when the floorboards are rotting out and the dash is falling to pieces and the whole thing smells like a Sunday school nursery class?” She shuddered.
“Well, it’s no sweet chariot,” I replied, and grinned at Caspian.
He didn’t seem to get it.
Or maybe he did, because he frowned.
“Are we supposed to be impressed by your ability to remember church hymns?” Cacey asked. “Ooh, do you know one called ‘Amazing Grace’?” she deadpanned.
Heat bloomed in my ears. “No. I meant ‘swing low, sweet chariot.’ Like the song? Aren’t you guys ‘coming forth to carry me home’ and all that? Aren’t we, you know … Going? To my next destination? A long drop and a short stop?”
Cacey laughed, and it rang through the car like the clear high-pitched peal of a bell. “Dramatic much, Abbey? We’re just going to get some lunch.”
I sat back and looked morosely out the window, feeling duly chastised. Highway blacktop rushed up to meet us, and the single lane became two. I felt a slow flare of sensation in my knee and looked down. Caspian was trying to nudge it.
He gave me a sympathetic smile. “I thought it was pretty clever,” he leaned over to whisper. “The whole ‘sweet chariot’ thing.”
“Good-looking and loyal,” I whispered back. “You’re a deadly combination.”
“Deadly.” … Good going there, Abbey.
But if he noticed my poor choice of words, he didn’t let on.
“Hey, you two,” Cacey said. “This isn’t secret time. Do you want to share with the rest of the class?”
“No.” I crossed my arms.
“Fine. It’s rude, but whatever.”
Cacey was calling me rude? The same person who had drunk all of her soda in front of me just so she wouldn’t have to share any of it when I was in the hospital and practically dying of thirst, and who had a snarky reply whenever someone asked her something, was calling me rude?
I was about to launch into it, when all of a sudden Caspian leaned forward and said loudly, “So, Uri, about that Volkswagen bus …”
Instantly the tension in the car broke, and I laughed.
“Loyal, good-looking, and smart,” I said to him. “But you already knew that.”
Uri grinned and switched lanes. “It was a 1951 VW bus, and it was a beast. Already going on forty years old when we, uh, acquired it. It had some interesting history.”
“It was a crap-mobile,” Cacey said. “With pleather seats and orange shag carpeting. I swear it had to have once been a traveling sideshow circus car or something.”
“Do you remember the mummified mouse?” Uri asked her.
“Yup. Stuck between the seats.”
“What? Ew. No way,” I said.
“True story,” Cacey replied. “Someone had actually taken the time to mummify this thing.”
“How could you tell?” Caspian interrupted. “Couldn’t it just have been a really old dead mouse?”
Cacey tapped her mouth. “The lips. They were sewn shut.”
“God, Cacey!” Nausea roiled through me, and I wanted to barf at the thought of seeing some poor little mouse that way. “That’s just insane.”
“Do mice even have lips?” Caspian mused. Uri laughed, and they shared a grin.
“Moving on,” I said.
But Cacey obviously didn’t want to move on. “Its little fingers had been pushed apart. Splayed open, instead of curled shut.” She mimicked it with both hands. “And the eyeballs-”
“I’m not going to be able to eat lunch,” I warned her.
“Then there was the tooth,” she said.
“Do I even want to know about the tooth?” I groaned, and then promptly answered myself. “No. No, I do not.”
“… on a key chain,” Uri filled in.
“Lost baby tooth?” Caspian suggested. “A family memento?”
“Molar,” Cacey and Uri both said at the same time.
“Must have been pried right out of someone’s mouth with something blunt, because the ends were all damaged and jagged,” Uri supplied. “The bus came from a junkyard in West Virginia. Crazy-ass place. Who knows what happened there.”
Cacey laughed delightedly, and I shook my head at her. She saw me and stopped, but grinned at Uri. “Abbey thinks I’m creepy. She told me when she got into the car.”
Something passed between them-more than just a look-and I got the impression there were silent words being spoken. “She’s right,” he said. And then he put a hand on her knee. “You are creepy.”
Uri directed his next words to me and Caspian. “She totally gets off on this stuff. I don’t know why.” He shook his head bemusedly at her, someone who had obviously been putting up with his partner’s peculiarities for a long time and didn’t mind doing it.
“Why didn’t you just get a new car if that one was so awful?” I asked.
“Ooh! We’re here!” Cacey squealed. A restaurant called the Pink Peppercorn came into view, and we pulled into the parking lot. “First we go get a seat. Then I’ll tell you why about the car. Deal?”
I nodded, but she was already climbing out.
“Wait until I’ve stopped the car,” Uri admonished.
She did. But barely.
I got out and kept the door open long enough for Caspian to get out too. “Are we going to be okay going in?” I said softly to Uri, nodding my head at Caspian and then Cacey. “I mean, all of us?”
“It’ll be fine,” he said.
Cacey heard my question. “He doesn’t eat much, right? Because it’s going to be embarrassing trying to explain his order.”
“I don’t-,” Caspian said.
“I know! I know!” She laughed. “I’m just teasing. Lighten up. It’ll be fine. Come on.”
I glanced at Uri. “It will be fine,” he said again, ushering us to the door. “She’ll behave.”
Doubtfully, I followed behind them as Caspian brought up the rear. When we got inside, Cacey flagged down a waiter, and he seated us right away in a large booth. The interior of the restaurant was decorated in pale pinks and grays, with tiny hints of black. It had a smooth 1920s vibe to it.
“How’d you get service so fast?” I asked Cacey, settling in next to the space where Caspian was.
“It’s the mind mojo,” she said absentmindedly, poring over the menu. “Works every time.”
“Mind mojo?” I asked. “What’s that?”
She pointed to the extensive listing in front of her. “Choose what you want to eat. Then talk. When he comes back, I want to give him our order. I’m starving.”