Crindertab’s. Of course, by the time we reached the restaurant, Ruvin would be little more than a skeleton, picked clean by infant gnomes who’d already have caused irreparable damage to NASA’s connection to the cosmos.
And we’d never want to eat again. Not to mention the fact that Cole would be too tired to lift his weapon, and Vayl would probably be dead.
“Jasmine?”
I touched the reciever in my ear. “Cassandra! Are you back yet?”
“No, I… was hoping for one last vision. Do you need help?”
“I’m going to when I get back to Wirdilling. Can you shake out a few Resistance gnomes for me?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Kyphas opened her yap. “I was just going to say that I thought you people were better organized. I would’ve thought twice if I’d known I was tying myself to a bunch of hack—ow!” She stared down at the syringe waving from her arm and at my thumb, hovering over the plunger.
“I did warn you.” My thumb jerked.
“Okay! I’m sorry! Take it out!” I resheathed my supply of holy water while she rubbed at the spot. “It hurts! Did you squirt some?”
I shrugged. “Could be. It’s pretty sensitive. Not your ordinary prescription-fill. Bergman designed it for me.”
“Tell me about Bergman,” Kyphas invited.
I glared at her. “You blew your chance. If you try to take his soul again, if you hurt him, if you even bump into him hard, I will kill you.”
“Ooh, I’m so scared.”
I held her eyes. “I didn’t say how long I was going to take to do it.” Kyphas lost her yen for conversation after that and decided to spend her time gazing out the passenger window.
I didn’t realize Cole had stopped pushing until the Wheezer came to a stop in the middle of the road. I looked back. “Pop the trunk,” he instructed.
I did as he asked and got out. Which was when I heard it. The roar of an oncoming vehicle. Cole grabbed a couple of flares, fired them up, and set them in a line behind the Wheezer. Just in case the driver coming up on us at what sounded like light speed didn’t get the message in time, I pulled the animals out of the car and took them a few steps past the shoulder. I was hoping Kyphas would stay inside. I’d get a kick out of a good demon-smooshing right now. But she emerged, making sure Cole got a load of her long legs before she moved to his side.
As soon as he smiled at her I marched over and dumped Astral into her arms. “This is an extremely valuable tool. Don’t let it get broken.” Jack panted loudly in agreement.
She shook her head in confusion “I don’t—”
“Over there with the priceless robot,” I said, waving her to the shoulder. Once she’d left earshot I grabbed Cole’s arm and jerked him down so he could hear me better. “Stop being nice to the evil demon.”
“She seems okay,” he said.
“So did John Wilkes Booth. Then he killed the one guy who could’ve hammered away a big chunk of the bullshit prejudice that black Americans still have to piss with today.”
“I think she’s got some good in her,” he insisted.
“I think she’s got big boobs, and in your mind that’s the same thing.” Cole grinned. “You could be right. Although you know what else I was thinking?” As I shook my head he lit a third flare and waved it around. “I can write my name in the air with this!” Jack also thought it was cool. He kept biting at the dropping sparks, though he was at least smart enough not to go for the whole banana.
“What are you gonna do when you singe your tongue?” I asked my dog. When he let it hang out of his mouth I said, “That might work. But don’t expect any pity when you can’t eat anything but gravy for the next month.”
Jack grinned and wagged his tail, like he knew I’d never let it go that far.
Cole set the last flare in place and we waited. Lights appeared in the distance, played hide-and-seek for a while, and then came barreling down on us so fast that we evacuated the road.
But the driver stopped in time. With only a minimum of tire-screeching, she rolled her lemon-drop yellow Hyundai Accent to a stop an arm’s length from the first flare. By the time we’d reached her door, all three of her passengers had bailed, two guys and another girl, all of them giggling and staggering like they’d been partying since dawn.
“Oh goody,” Cole murmured. “We are saved.”
I snorted as I watched the driver try to herd her horde back into the vehicle.
“Hello,” said Cole, pasting on his I’m-unforgettable smile. “I’m Thor Longfellow and this is Lucille Robinson. We’re from Holly—”
“G’day, mate!” the driver sang. “Would you help me gather up this mob before they trot off into the never- never?”
She asked so cheerfully despite the relative impossibility of the task, her black ponytail dancing along with the request, that he immediately said, “Oh, uh, sure!” The other girl, a double-chinned brunette wearing jeans so tight you could see the cottage cheese below her butt cheeks rippling through them, friendlied up to Cole right away. So he had no trouble escorting her back to the car.
“Kyphas!” I called. “Get the big guy!” Leaving Astral to study her reflection in the Wheezer’s hubcaps, Kyphas went after the dude whose scars were either a sign that he kept running his face into people’s fists or that he thoroughly enjoyed his rugby. I tagged the smaller one.
“You are one luscious lady,” he told me, his breath reeking of cheap beer as he dropped an arm around my shoulders.
“And you are going to puke like a school full of flu-bitten kids. But hopefully not until your friend’s gotten you
