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“Why’d you come along?” he asked.
“You’re all I had left,” Kate said.
The first thing Seth showed her was how to hotwire a car, some Honda thing that had probably seen it’s hey-day in the 90s. Kate didn’t know cars. Scott would have been able to tell her the make and model, if she had asked. She would have never asked.
“I like this one,” Kate had said, patting the plush seat beneath her.
Seth had snorted, already making his way round back where the car was parked, out of the view line of the windows. “Get in the passenger side and play look out,” was all he had said.
Kate had tucked herself into the ragged seat and now watched as Seth cursed and grunted his way beneath the driver’s wheel. She couldn’t see what he was doing, the bend of his legs blocking her view, but his fingers were quick and clever over the multicolored wires that had spelled out.
Like guts, Kate thought, and pressed her lips together.
“Okay, 2 Fast 2 Furious, when you’re looking for a quick getaway the last thing you want is attention, got it?” He said this all from beneath the wheel, voice muffled. “The ride was nice but it’s flashy—and on top of that we probably look like we’re playing out some scene from Lolita. This baby is gonna get us where we need to go—no muss no fuss.”
“You can’t go back to the States,” Kate pointed, mostly because it was true but she was also feeling a bit peevish. “Remember?”
Seth paused, even the sounds of plastic slapping against plastic stopped. “I’ll figure something out.”
“El Rey?”
“Considering the man who pitched the idea to me—I'm guessing he had some swampland in Florida to sell me, too. I’ll pass.” Another curse. “I miss the good old days when cars didn’t have all these security features. Almost got it. Anyone coming?”
She glanced at the gas station. “No.” Seth only grunted in reply. Kate drew her knees up to her chest, chewing on her bottom lip. “Seth?”
“Ha!” The car gave a sputtering wheeze to life, one of Seth’s hands emerging from below to give her a thumbs up.
“I killed my dad.” She had no idea why she had said it, because what did it matter? To him? But she had said it, she had wanted to tell him. She had wanted to say it. I killed my dad. To save his immortal soul, maybe, but she had still killed her dad.
I don’t think your mother’s waiting for me in Heaven, Katie-Cakes.
Very carefully Seth unfolded himself from beneath the wheel, monkeying his way into the driver’s seat. He looked at her, then quickly looked away. Then back again.
“Ah.” He said. Then, “Shit. Well. Do you—ah—wanna talk about it?”
It was easy to forget that a lot of this was his fault. His brother’s, too, but it was hard to blame Richie when he wasn’t around.
“Not really.”
Seth took a breath, and then glanced over at her. “You wanna drive?”
Kate, covered in blood and guts and gore, found herself smiling. “Definitely.”
Seth found this little hole in the wall, pay by the hour motel. Por la carretera. Whatever the fuck that meant. He’d taken remedial Spanish in high school, but since he’d flunked all his classes and proceeded to drop out altogether, translation was not his forte.
As long as it had two beds and a lock, what did it matter, anyway?
Kate immediately claimed the bathroom, closing it solidly behind her. Seth sat on the edge of the lumpy mattress that would be his bed for the duration of their stay and pretending he wasn’t listening to the sound of water running, and her muffled tears beneath it. But he was, and he might as well admit that he was carefully keeping an ear out for the sounds of her drowning herself in there.
If she ended up dying maybe he’d just climb right on top of her coffin and let the dirt do its work. He’d never handled loss well.
He should have never let her come along. Had told himself he wasn’t going to. If he had still had the damn bonds maybe he would have, just given them to her and told her to take a hike. I’m a bastard, he had thought staring into her unguarded face, the yellow sun bleeding down onto her dirt and blood crusted hair, but I’m not a fucking bastard. Except he didn’t have the bonds, and he’d pretty much gotten her entire family killed—except she’d killed her dad Jesus Christ.
So here he was. And what are you going to do, Seth? Richie was the one who had the plans, and he planned his way right out of Seth’s life and into the arms of some vampire-demon-snake-goddess. He could call up Vanessa. She had a soft spot for strays.
Except—shit. He wanted her to stay put. She was all he had left, too.
“How’d you get out anyway?” Seth wondered, when Kate exited in a mist of steam, still wearing her ratty clothes, toweling her hair. “Sex Machine help you find your brother?”
Kate shook her head. “Sex Machine tried to use me in a ritualistic sacrifice to the Nine Lords.”
“Sonuvabitch,” he came up hard off his bed, shoes slapping against the cheap carpet. “I knew I should have shot that fucker when I had the chance.”
“Ranger Gonzalez and I killed him.”
Guess the rinche wasn’t that bad, after all. He was alright, as far as the John Wayne types went. He’d always been an Eastwood man, himself.
Kate settled on her bed. Her hair was shades darker when it was wet, and clung to her shoulder, leaving wet spots on her shirt.
“I left my brother there,” she said quietly.
Seth rolled his shoulders, and then rolled to his feet. She watched him the entire time, lips pressed together. What? Was she expecting him to rail on her? How could you just leave him behind, you heartless Jezebel?
Well she had definitely come to the wrong pony show. Seth had plenty of guilt, just none to give her.
“Yeah. Me too.” He walked into the bathroom and closed the door behind him. The shower was going to wash away all the blood, but it was going to make the scars that much more visible, too.
Kate was already sleeping, or at least curled up on her side, when Seth came out of the shower smelling like the kind of cheap shampoo they had used in prison. He scrubbed a hand down his damp scalp, sending pinpoints of water splattering across the floor, and crept as quietly as he could to his bed. And he was a professional thief. He could creep pretty quietly.
With the blinds pulled all the way down, the room felt like a tomb. Even reminded him a little of the temple beneath the strip club, devoid of sunlight and the air stale and uncirculated. He was half tempted to throw the windows wide and gulp in great heaps of fresh, clean air. But Kate needed her sleep.
The cheap air conditioning had turned the room down to a mean 60 degrees. He was thankful for that, at least. He had been sweating like a whore in church for what felt like the last five years. Feeling an icy blast of air across his face was welcome as he slipped beneath his covers.
He was apparently as exhausted as Kate because the minute his head hit the crummy pillow he was out like a light.
Only be awoken by a poke in his side.
“Scoot over,” Kate muttered.
He blinked at her in the darkness, only barely about to make out her shape. Richie would probably be able to see her clearly, being all creature of the night now, but he didn’t want to think about Richie. Or anything. So he flopped onto his stomach and didn’t give her a single inch.
“You say that but all I hear is two to twenty.”
“Do you ever shut up?”
He considered it. “Not if I can help it.” The old man had hated that, in particular. Seth’s smart fuckin’ mouth. Richie had been always been quiet and solemn, with a fuse a mile long and dosed in ice water, but Seth liked to run his gums until they were bleeding.
“Just move over.”
Seth relented. Kate slid into the bed beside him, lifting his arm and dropping it onto her shoulder. Alright. If the kid wanted a snuggle who was he to tell her to beat it? Especially considering he was mostly the reason it all went down the way it did. If not for him, she and her family would probably be cooling their heels on some tourist trap beach far away from this shitty motel, and he and Richie would be no more than two names they had briefly heard on the radio until the pastor had turned it off like any good father would.
“Seth?” The top of her hair bumped against his chin. She smelled like the motel’s crappy shampoo, but underneath it all he thought he smelled fresh cotton. “Seth?”
He didn’t answer, not at first. He was more concerned with the small rebellion of his hand, which had curled around her shoulder as if it wanted to comfort her. He had definitely not told it to do that.
“What are you going to do now?”
That was a good question, wasn’t it? The plan had been Richie, El Rey, and a lifetime of peace—and he wasn’t going to think about Queen Bitch Vamp’s sucker-punch about how it would never be enough, that he wasn’t the sort who could stay static. What the fuck did she know anyway? She ate dirty bikers.
“I came here looking for blue agave,” he said at last. He turned his face and got a mouthful of her soft, damp hair. “Suppose I’ll keep lookin’. Helpfully I can find it near a beach. With lots of tequila.”
“That’s a good plan.” The curl of her hand against his shirt told him that wherever he went she was going to force him to take her with him.
Oddly enough, he wasn’t too bothered by the idea. They were all each other had now.