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“And I’m looking forward to you spending a lot of time reading instead of talking.” He gave me a hard smile and walked out the door, pulling his trunk behind him but still managing to look like someone who would never deign to do manual labor. What can I say? He was just that gifted. Disgusting, but I watched him anyway, because it was either ogle him or think about my father, the most powerful elite of the elite who might actually hurt me if he knew I existed. What if my mom hadn’t wanted him to know about us before all of this went down? He was too handsome to be a good person. I mean, look at Percival Marigold, which is what I was doing, and all of his immense pulchritude covered the deep cankering of his soul.
Still, he had good apples. I pursed my lips as I watched him walk. Seriously good apples.
When we got outside, Poe swooped down and dug his claws into my shoulder.
What are you doing with the predator?
“Hey there. We have a bigger predator we’re hunting together.”
I’ll bring you more bugs.
“No, just watch over mom, okay?”
He flew off, circling high above us while we went to the car. He’d have no trouble keeping up with us in the city traffic, but hopefully I wouldn’t have more bugs that I wouldn’t need delivered to my bed while I was sleeping. Sometimes having a pet bird wasn’t the most fun.
The car was a limousine. Did those even count as cars? A muscled man in a suit put Percival’s trunk in the trunk, leaving room for another one just as big. I stared at that trunk, thinking about climbing inside instead of going into the seated interior.
“We’re running short on time, Red,” Percival said, taking my elbow and helping me into the back seat before I could make a move towards the trunk.
“You keep saying that, but I can’t help but think that you’re rushing me towards an elaborate death.”
“When have I ever killed you? Watch your head, not that you don’t have enough hair to pad it from most things. Good thing too, considering.”
“I’m not that clumsy,” I said, sliding across the seat as far away from him as I could get. “I’ve just had a bad week.”
“A bad life. I get it, really. No, not really, but I’ll pretend. Read your book.” He pulled out a book to demonstrate the process in case I didn’t understand. I got the small spell book out and started at the beginning again, but my thoughts kept wandering from the incredibly complicated magic theory that was worlds away from my mom’s healing magic. Was I really off to find my dad? Maybe I should have talked to my gargoyle first, not that he was my gargoyle, but if he was, maybe he’d know about the upper elites that I’d been happy not to know my whole life. Or maybe he’d pick me up and fly me far away where I could turn to stone on top of a mountain, somewhere really peaceful.
“You aren’t reading.” He didn’t look up from his book, so how did he know?
I frowned and focused on the words. Perception begins the path towards understanding. To look and to see requires the knowledge of yourself as you approach the unknown. See? I’m turning to stone, a demon’s loose, I’m going to meet my dad for the first time tomorrow, and I’m supposed to focus on that kind of pretentious nonsense?
“I know, it’s better when there’s a vacuum running as background noise,” he said, then turned a page.
“How are you reading and talking to me at the same time? You aren’t reading either.”
“True. I’m planning the next two days. I’ve read this volume enough times that it’s like a vacuum cleaner in the background blocking out the unproductive worry, of which there is an endless assortment.”
“If you’re so worried, why bother at all?”
He didn’t answer, just kept scanning the pages as he read, ridiculously fast, then turned to the next. I frowned down at my book and tried again. I managed two paragraphs by the time we got to the train station. This wasn’t the usual entrance of Union Station, but the rich person entrance that bypassed the lobby, which was the only reason we made it on time. I’d barely stepped on the train steps when the massive beast lurched, pulling out of the station.
Percival pressed on my lower back, urging me up the steps and into the car with lush carpet and red velvet seats. It would be a great place for a vampire party.
“We don’t have tickets,” I hissed at him.
“I do,” he hissed back. “What do you think that I was doing for those ten minutes while I was packing?”
“I don’t know, maybe packing?”
“It’s called multi-tasking. You’re going to have to develop different levels of awareness if you’re going to learn spells.”
I snorted. “I’m going to learn spells? Did you miss the part where I have no magic? No, because otherwise you wouldn’t rub it in every chance you got.”
“We’re going to the dining car right away for dinner. We missed lunch because you were sleeping, and I can’t possibly leave you unsupervised in my room, even if you are asleep. You really have a jar of bugs in your backpack?”
I shrugged. “They’re dead.”
“And it’s so much better to be carrying around dead bugs rather than live ones.”
