Chapter Twenty-One

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Cassie felt a little better once they were outside. The cool evening air helped. As did the need for vigilance. Because she had kind of thought the Jerks were no longer a concern, considering how fast they'd run and how far Seth said they had gone. And how powerful she knew she could be. But when they got to the edge of the woods, there it was. A little present from them, torn apart and shoved on a stake.

Like a warning.

"They know they can't hurt us, so they're being gross assholes instead," Seth said, when he saw it. Though she could tell by his tone that it was a little more than that. So she stayed on guard, and he stayed on guard, and they got to his place in one piece.

Then it was just a matter of coating that dilapidated old car with flying potion.

Or so it seemed to her. But as she started in on it, Seth definitely had some concerns. "You know, there's a hole in the floor on the driver's side," he said as he peered in through the grimy window. Though from what she could see, it really wasn't that bad.

As long as she kept her feet on the pedals, she'd probably not even notice it.

The family of raccoons living in the back seat, however, would be a little harder to ignore. As would the roof that peeled up just a little bit when Seth tested it. And the door on the passenger side that didn't completely close.

"You're just gonna have to make sure your seatbelt is fastened," she said as he shooed the critters away. But unfortunately the seatbelt didn't seem to be working either. It came away in her hands when she gave it an experimental tug, and then it just disintegrated into plasticky crumbles. She was forced to add, "Or make sure you hold on super tight."

But Seth wasn't listening.

He was too busy trying to wrestle a raccoon off his face. A big, pale-gray one, with a super-fat little butt, and a high-pitched chitter that sounded like words. That really, really sounded like words. In fact, it sounded so much like words that for a moment she simply stood there, unable to believe her ears.

"Holy crap, I can understand what it's saying," she said, in a hushed whisper.

Because dear god, she could. It was telling Seth off, quite clearly.

Bad hoo man, it squeaked, as it grabbed tufts of his hair in its tiny fists, and used them like a ladder. It clambered over his head, until most of its butt was in his face. Then it settled there, like it had found a particularly nice perch. And whenever Seth tried to protest, it fought him off. It slapped him, with those tiny, weirdly human hands.

While she watched, with what felt like love hearts for eyes.

In fact she knew they were, because Seth did not seem impressed.

"Cassie, no. No. Not a raccoon. Or at least not this raccoon," he huffed out around a mouthful of fur. And just as she started to ask him what he meant, she remembered something from the guidebook. Witches gain a familiar when the familiar speaks to them .

Though she couldn't quite credit it.

Or at least not until the raccoon chittered to her, while trying to squirm away from Seth's big hands. My one, help me , it said. As in, You are my witch, and so you should do this for me . And it was the damnedest thing, because she found she actually wanted to. More than anything, she wanted to. "I don't think I have a choice. I think he's chosen me," she said, wonderingly.

Much to Seth's disgruntlement.

"But he's trying to eat my face."

"He isn't. He's just mad that you heaved him out of bed."

"So he wanted a nap, and I'm his terrible father forcing him awake?" he asked, as he attempted to wrestle the thing away from his eyeballs. And she went to say something funny in return. She almost laughed.

But then she realized:

The raccoon had stopped struggling.

Now it was just looking at her. Eyes bright black stars, little face suddenly so much more than it had been before. It seemed almost human to her now. Like it had become a little person, full of its own feelings and thoughts and ideas about things.

And what it thought, right now, was about her and Seth.

This one yours? it chittered.

Because clearly, it already saw her as some kind of mother figure. And now it wanted to know if she claimed Seth, so that he could be its father figure. It wanted to know if Seth was telling the truth, she thought, then didn't know what to say. Of course she didn't. A fucking raccoon was attempting to get her to define her relationship with a man she was trying not to be horny for, while they stood together in a scrappy yard, in front of a Chevy she was going to fly.

It was kind of a ridiculous situation to be in.

She almost wanted to say get off my back, raccoon .

But then she'd have to explain to Seth what the raccoon was asking, and she couldn't. She couldn't let Seth know what any of this was about. She just had to nod, instead. And to her surprise, it worked. The second she did, that ball of fur and those tiny fingers started to climb down. It got to his shoulder, and then his chest, and then, and then, oh lord in heaven, then…

It held out one little hand to her .

And wow, tonight was really being a lot.

She didn't know how to cope with the sight of that. Or with the way it felt when the raccoon clambered into her arms, and pushed his face into her hair, and whispered that his name was Pod. It was just all very overwhelming, to the point where she couldn't help tearing up a little bit.

It was all right, though. Because when she began to explain herself to Seth—to describe the feeling of finding a familiar, of finding a raccoon familiar who could actually talk to her, like all her childhood dreams of being in some fantasy novel about a found family—she discovered she didn't have to.

He was fucking tearing up too.

"Look, I'm just very emotional at the moment, okay?" he said. "There's too much happening at once. I had my first ten orgasms in almost a decade last night, and now my buddy who I can't stop wanting to bone has a talking raccoon. Like something out of a movie, made by Amblin Entertainment."

Then he tried to pretend he wasn't wiping his eyes with his shirt.

She didn't know why he was embarrassed, however. She'd seen him cry a million times—usually over movies with plots just like this. And even if she hadn't, well. It wasn't unpleasant to see. In truth, it was very, very not unpleasant. As in tingly not unpleasant. Sexy not unpleasant.

Oh god, now I suddenly want to fuck him because he can access his emotions and express them in a heartfelt way , she groaned to herself.

As soon as she did, however, she had to wonder if that "suddenly" was accurate.

If there had never been a time before now when she'd enjoyed that about him in a more than friendly way. And though she told herself no—though she told herself that it was only weird like that between them when there was nakedness, or sexy stuff going on around them—the idea lingered and lingered.

She saw him as he had been, clutching his chest at the end of 28 Days Later , upturned face all agony and longing for things to be okay. The way he whispered, "Run, run," through the darkness to a woman onscreen who couldn't hear him. Then later on, he would always text her.

I'm still not okay after that. Are you okay after that?

And she would reply no.

But now she suspected she had meant yes.

Yes, yes I am, because you are with me. Because you feel the same way I do. Because we are the same and you're never afraid to say so.

It was just that she hadn't been able to say such sentimental words, to someone who probably would have gushed back, if he'd felt the same. Hell, he probably would have gushed first. He wore his heart on his sleeve, why wouldn't he have said if he did? So clearly he could never have felt it. Obviously he had never felt it. It absolutely had to be that he'd never felt it.

You know, it might not only be werewolf hormones that are making him act like this , her mind suddenly blurted out. And such terror gripped her when it did, she got in the car while Seth was still trying to determine if it was safe.

He tried to stop her, with dire warnings about the rear suspension.

Though after a second, he followed her anyway. He climbed into the passenger seat, and Pod scampered over her shoulder to the back, and now all that was left was doing this thing. "Okay, you ready? Here we go. Turning the engine on," she said, as she reached for the key that still somehow sat in the ignition.

And of course got a snort of near derision from Seth. "But there's no engine to turn on. I don't see why you need to do that. It should just go—" he started to say. But he got no further than that. The car cut him off the moment she turned the key. And not with an ordinary engine sound, either. Oh no, this was something else. This was a ground-shaking roar, of the sort you might hear coming out of an enormous dinosaur.

Seth actually jumped, and squeezed her leg.

She was so stunned she couldn't even react to the squeeze.

And it wasn't just the engine noise that stunned her. It was a great kaleidoscope of about five thousand wild things happening, all at once. The entire dashboard lit up in colors no dashboard would ever have been allowed to display. Purples and neon greens and bright blues washed over their faces, as brilliant as a goddamn disco.

With the soundtrack to match.

The ancient tape deck actually fired up, alongside the rest of the car. It made that weird reversing sound she remembered from her mom's old stereo, then suddenly the entire interior was full of incredibly loud music. Recognizable music. "Take on Me," she thought it was, as those weird horns piped the central tune. And sure enough, a second later, Morten Harket was singing the words.

Hell, Seth was singing them.

"I'll be coming for your love, okay," he belted out—and so exuberantly, so full of astonished laughter, that it was infectious. She found herself laughing and singing too, as she pressed her foot down on the gas.

And then they were in the sky.

Her, and Seth, and their newly adopted raccoon son.

In their flying eighties disco of a car.