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The driver paused for a moment, then seemed to relax. “Alright then”, the man said. He began carefully folding up his newspaper.
Newspaper…
Melody’s brow furrowed. She looked at the driver, and noticed he was the same big man as before. His suit, his jacket — even the newspaper, all of them were the same.
Her body shivered, and not from the air conditioning. Hesitantly she looked at the digital clock on the dashboard display. It was almost five-thirty.
“Ummm… Exactly how long have I been gone?”
She knew the answer before he even said it. The driver glanced calmly up at the clock, then back at her.
“About twenty-two minutes.”
All the hairs on the back of Melody’s neck stood straight up. She was chilled to the bone.
“Twenty-two minutes?”
“Give or take,” the driver said.
35
It was a tired, delirious ride back. Long, but also restful.
It began with the driver announcing their destination: he was to take them all the way back to the Blackstone. No plane, no airport — just a long, smooth ride north to where the Hallowed Order — and Xiomara — awaited their arrival.
Lucus was fascinated the whole way. At first the speed at which everything flashed by startled him, but as the miles rolled out behind them he quickly became accustomed to the ride.
“Relax,” Melody told him with a gentle smile. “We have a ways to go.”
He stared out the window for hours on end, watching the outside world whiz by like a wide-eyed child absorbing something brand new. Melody went over some things with him; cars, gasoline, the internal combustion engine… all of which he took in quietly without saying a word.
At night the streetlights came on, and those seemed to intrigue him most of all. Not the big glass buildings as they passed through cities, not even the giant trucks that rumbled alongside them. No, it was the near infinite number of lights — everywhere they looked, all night long — that seemed to make the biggest impression on Lucus.
Wait until he sees his first airplane, she thought to herself. Or footage of an astronaut walking on the moon...
There was just so much. So many things! But they would have to wait, at least for now. Bombarding him all at once with these things would probably be a bad idea. And besides, she hoped Xiomara would know what to do.
Since they were exhausted, the two of them slept for most of the trip. Melody fell asleep in Lucus’s arms, laid out comfortably in the climate-controlled luxury of the sedan’s back seat. They woke somewhere near Virginia, and noticed there had been a change of drivers. Fresh bottles of water had provided for them. Hot food, too.
“How can all of this be?” Lucus asked at one point. Melody was lying across his body, her head on his chest while playing with his hair. “How could so much have happened? So much, so quickly, and—”
She shushed him with a slender finger against his lips.
“In time, love,” she giggled. “I’ll show you everything, I promise. Everything.” She leaned in and kissed him. “Just not all at once.”
All at once…
How long had he been stuck there, Melody wondered? Trapped at Evermoore, time after time, forced to relive the same endless loop?
This is why you can’t read him, the little voice in her head told her. Imagine a thousand lifetimes, packed into a single mind.
The thought was chilling. Yet it explained everything; the fragments of repetitive thought, the never-ending stream of consciousness. Lucus’s brain had been wired to endure the same set of experiences, over and over again. With those pathways forever emblazoned — imprinted so deeply upon his mind — there was no way Melody could pick out anything else. Any other thoughts or feelings would be drowned out, like a whisper buried beneath the roar of an avalanche.
His mind would always be closed to her, his thoughts forever his own. No temptation. No slip ups.
It was everything she’d ever wanted.
They never stopped, not once while awake, but continued rolling endlessly down the main highways of the eastern seaboard. Finally, as the tall trees of upstate New York loomed on either side of them, they were at long last pulled into the shaded driveway of Blackstone Manor.
