“What?” I muttered, toggling the stick shift. Because unlike its owner, The Judge had never given me an ounce of trouble.
After hitting the brakes, I grabbed the key and twisted, but the car only whined, the engine refusing to turn over.
“Overdue fines and porcupines,” I cursed, glancing left and then right before checking the rearview mirror.
A lime-green Mustang pulled up behind me—but it didn’t slow down to idle in wait. Instead, the souped-up pony car veered around me, engine revving, red taillights flashing only once before the thing ripped out of sight, turning a sharp corner, its driver lost behind tinted windows.
“GRNQUEN,” the splashy, lit-up vanity plate read.
Well. So much for being a girls’ girl and helping me out…
Maybe whoever they were would have stopped if I’d put on my hazard lights. But… where was the button for those?
After locating the switch for the hazards on the steering column, I tried the engine again but stopped when a subtle rumble startedbeneath me, and a distant bright light appeared out of nowhere on my left.
“Oh,” I said, “no,” and twisted the key again.
The Judge just kept wheezing, and while it did, I trained my gaze on that approaching light, praying it didn’t belong to what I feared it did—that I’d just glimpsed a stray high beam.
But they didn’t make headlights that bright. That big.
What was more, typically, headlights came in pairs.
Only one glaring, flickering orb headed toward me now, though as it neared and the rumbling beneath me intensified, the eye-searing sphere evolved into five: one big one in the middle, two at the top of the train face, and two more flashing ones at the bottom.
“Son of a bookworm,” I hissed, hands shaking, because it was happening again.
Abandoning the key, I grabbed the latch on the seat belt just as the warning bells for the crossing kicked on, red lights flashing as the gates lowered.
I whimpered when the button stuck, the latch on the lap belt refusing to give.
“S-seat belt,” I sobbed. To no one.
When I looked up, the light blazed bright enough now to blot my vision—getting closer while the ground thundered beneath me, rattling the dash.
The train’s horn blared, loud as a scream.
I wrenched up the door lock. Then, with one hand still trying to undo the belt, I grabbed the handle and yanked. Nothing budged. Nothing moved.
Nothing except the howling train that, despite the rising screech of its brakes, wasn’t going to be able to stop in the next five seconds. Precious seconds that were bound to be my last.
I cried out, body tense, hands rushing to cover my eyes so that, at the very least, I wouldn’t see my doom coming as the engine came bearing down on me.
In my last seconds, Grim filled my mind. If he was okay and not locked away in some prison cell for wayward wraiths or tied up somewhere being metaphysically waterboarded by the paranormal police, he’d be here any second—if he wasn’t already.
Maybe this wouldn’t hurt. Maybe it would be over quick.
Maybe, from here out, I wouldn’t even know what happened until Grim took me wherever I was going.
“Take your foot off the break!” shouted a voice to my right—a dark and scary one that had become, for me, neither of those things.
As always, I did as it commanded, even if I couldn’t bring myself to lower my hands from my eyes. Not with that blazing light shooting through them, that horn booming in my brain, the car rattling beneath me, shaken by the metal dinosaur that was about to flatten—and steamroll—us both.
All three of us?
We moved, The Judge and I propelled forward in a jolt by a silent force—one strong enough to send me slamming back in my seat.
Wood snapped and cracked.
