empty?
And then it occurred to me that everyone else was really gone—except Julian, who didn’t count. If I wanted companionship from my own kind, Philip was the last boy in town. Sorry thought.
“Come with me,” he said. “Your little friend will live.”
Wade deserved to live, more than the rest of us. But what would he think upon waking? That I’d deserted him? It didn’t matter. Maybe he’d go back home and be safe.
Stopping only to pick up Maggie’s wool coat, I got up and followed Philip.
chapter 19
Do you have a car?” I asked as we stepped outside the hotel.
Instead of answering, he looked up and down the street, then walked to an early-eighties, dirty-blue Camaro and climbed in the driver’s side.
He couldn’t possibly have rented this. What a piece of junk. Hardly his style.
“You should lock your doors down here anyway,” I said. “Somebody too drunk to see might steal it.”
His answering laugh made me nervous. The interior looked even worse. Marlboro boxes, Hershey bar wrappers, and Big Gulp cups covered the backseat and floor. As I slammed my door, Philip reached up with both hands and jerked the steering column five inches out of the dash, exposing red, black, and green wires.
“What are you doing?”
“Rewiring the ignition,” he answered casually, as if we were talking about fall fashions.
Later I felt ashamed of my own reaction. “You can’t do that. It’s illegal.”
Laughing again as the engine roared, he squealed the tires while pulling into traffic. “You are too tame. Or is this your gift again, eh?”
“Philip, stop the car. If the police catch you, they’ll lock you in a cell.”
Doing seventy-five as we hit the southbound on-ramp for Seattle, he glanced at me warily. “What are police to us? They are too slow to catch us. Bullets don’t hurt us.”
“So what do you do when you get pulled over?”
“I don’t pull over unless I’m hungry.”
He started weaving through traffic, the needle peaking ninety. Steering with one hand, he fished around on the dashboard, found a crusty Black Sabbath tape, and slammed it in. Ozzy’s voice screamed out two rear-window speakers. Whoever owned this car really needed to be told what year it was. I hadn’t seen a cassette player in years.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Seattle Center. This city is new to me, but Maggie said hunting in the center was good.”
“You want to hunt now?”
“Don’t you? We just woke up.” His accent seemed to be getting worse instead of better, making me wish I spoke French.
“No, I fed last night.”
“So don’t feed.” He shrugged. “Just hunt.”
Maybe Maggie had been right about me. Maybe I hadn’t seen enough in my one hundred and eighty-six years. “You just want to kill someone?”
He took his eyes completely off the road and stared at me. “Is this for real or are you playing? What do you do all night if not hunt?”
“Take care of William, read books, settle the bank accounts, talk to my investment broker. I don’t know, just things.”
“No?” Amused, almost pleased, he pushed the needle up higher. “William is gone. You are immortal, with no need for books and investment brokers.”
That’s the first time the word “immortal” sounded absurd to me. Webster’s unabridged defines it as “not mortal; deathless; living forever.” I know. I looked it up once. What a crock. We may not get any older, but the body count hit three last night. Sounded pretty mortal to me. Maybe Philip wasn’t keeping score.
Watching him drive—his long hair flying out the window, his head bobbing to the music, his face sporting an adolescent grin—made me try to see beyond his gift. What was he besides beautiful and careless? His black Hugo Boss pants and Calvin Klein shirt suggested his taste was not only good, but up-to-date. Edward always bought Savile Row and Christian Dior, which worked on him but was sort of “older crowd”—sort of.
Philip also cared what Julian thought. Why? Why would Julian’s opinion matter?
“Turn down the Mercer/Fairview exit,” I said.
Downtown Seattle is a mass of one-way streets, confusing signs, and heavy traffic, but my too-happy companion drove as if he were on a backwoods dirt road.
“Where’d you learn to drive?”
“Paris,” he answered. That figured. He found a pay-by-the-hour parking lot near the Space Needle and jumped out. “We ditch this car now.”
“Whatever you say.” Instinct screamed that it was time to ditch golden boy. But I didn’t. Maybe he was the only true vampire among us—cold and fast and wild. Maybe Edward and I struggled too hard