asked. It’s fine.” It hadn’t, in fact, been fine at first, but Dini had insisted. “So, is your business all wrapped up?”
“It is.”
“No distractions?”
“You. You are a distraction.”
Right then, their number was called and Quin got up to bring their food: burgers and fries, a tall glass of water for him, and for Dini, Burger Boy’s proprietary orange drink.
“You know, you don’t really look like a burger girl right now.”
She dabbed a corner of her mouth with a napkin. “There’s no such thing as a dress code for burgers.”
“You just look fancy.” He touched her ring.
She picked up a fry and extended her hand, admiring both. “It’s an heirloom, handed down. See how the stone is cut? Like a heart? Kind of drifted off to the side? The design is called witch’s heart. In ancient times, it was the ubiquitous protection against the evil eye. But later a woman would wear it to summon a lover. Kind of like the gemstone equivalent of drawing a guy’s name in a heart in your notebook.”
She regaled him with neighborhood lore while they ate, and as their food dwindled, the thought of getting back behind the wheel churned in her stomach.
“We’re going to hit lunchtime traffic,” she said, folding up their empty food wrappers.
Quin took their tray inside, and when he came out he said, “Why don’t you let me drive? Really, I’m a good driver, and I hate the idea of a long ride not talking to you.”
“You don’t know where we’re going.”
“You do.”
“To be honest, I’m almost as bad at navigating as I am at driving.”
Quin took his phone out of his back pocket and steered her to the passenger side. “Then I shall take care of both.”
Dini wallowed in her passenger status as Quin drove expertly, guided by the chipper voice speaking directions from his phone, as if he’d been driving in this city all his life. She offered a few tidbits of trivia about their surroundings as they passed, but for the most part they stayed quiet until the Waze app proclaimed, “Thirty-five miles then exit right.”
“So,” Quin said, relaxing his posture and dropping one hand into his lap, “let’s talk about that ghost.”
Dini laughed. “Did you become a believer since last night?”
“No, but it was creepy.”
“I didn’t want to say anything before you read her account, but there’s an old theater trick called Pepper’s Ghost. Pretty simple, really. It’s been around since the late nineteenth century. You just need a camera, darkness, a plate of glass—”
“And susceptibility?”
“I suppose. I figured out ages ago how it would work. Of course, I don’t know exactly which room was Hedda’s …”
“She never says, does she?”
“No. But I can imagine why. I can show you when we get back, if you want. Walk you through it.”
“Tell me now.” He made a smooth move into the left lane. The fast late. The lane she never used. He’d taken his jacket off before getting into the car, and she noticed how the sunlight brought out not only the red in the hair on his arms, but the underlying carpet of faint freckles as well. He didn’t grip the steering wheel, despite the hundreds of cars hurtling down the highway at seventy miles per hour, but rested one hand on the bottom of the wheel, moving it in infinitesimal increments to keep her little Soul from colliding into the semi on the right.
“It’s not distracting?”
“Not at all.”
“Okay, then. A bit of trivia on Pepper’s Ghost. It’s how they project the dancers in the Haunted Mansion. People think it’s some sort of great big green screen special effect? But on the other side, it’s just a bunch of mannequins on a spinning platform projected on the glass.”
He made an appreciative sound and checked the mirror.
“I should have said, the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. Have you ever been?”
“Not the one in California. But the one in Florida? Yes. I, uh”—he drummed his fingers on his leg, then brought them up to take the wheel in a perfect 10 and 2 position—“I went there on my honeymoon.”
For a long moment, Dini heard nothing but the hum of all the cars around her and wondered, without merit, if she’d simply heard him wrong. Or if “honeymoon” had some other meaning in an alternate universe. The only way to know for sure was for him to repeat it, but he suddenly seemed engrossed in the road, staring straight ahead, lips set thin.
She would have to pursue clarification. “Your honeymoon?”