Page 12 of Forbidden Dark Vows

I run to catch up with him. He gives me a sideways glance, but he doesn’t stop, doesn’t even acknowledge my presence. Once he gets to the main road, he hails a cab, barely waiting for me to climb in next to him.

“What happened?” I ask.

He slides a silver hip flask from his pocket and glugs whatever liquor he filled it with earlier. His right eye looks puffy, gray-mauve bruising already seeping through the delicate skin. “Nothing I couldn’t handle. You should see the other guy.” He gives me a lopsided grin and offers me the hip flask.

I shake my head. “You wanna talk about it?”

“Nope.”

“We’ll go back to the hotel, warm up, and take a look at your eye.”

“I’m not sticking around.” He tips the flask into his mouth again, only this time he gets the dregs.

I sit back. “I checked the weather forecast. This is only the start of it. They’re expecting a blizzard overnight.”

“I’ll be in St. Louis by then.”

“What’s in St. Louis?”

“My cousin’s throwing a party. I was going to bail, but I think I’m done here.” He keeps his eyes fixed on the passenger window, peering through the slushy ice trickling down the glass and forming a narrow ridge at the bottom.

It’s early afternoon, but the world is already preparing for sleep, twilight taking over before its time. The streets are not as busy as usual. Folks are staying inside, cranking up the heating, and making hot chocolate. No one in their right mind would travel in this.

“The flights will probably be cancelled.”

“Who said anything about flying?” He looks at me then for the first time, his eyebrows dancing independently.

“Buses too.”

He shakes his head. “Don’t worry about me, Harry. I’ll get there.”

My pulse is racing. I don’t know what was in that hip flask, but he already had a couple of drinks in my hotel room before we left, so he can’t be considering driving to St. Louis. Or can he? He’s no longer buzzing with energy, but his mood is scratchy now, jerky, like there’s a rope fastened around his neck, and someone is tugging on the other end.

I pay the driver when the cab stops outside the hotel.

Alessandro is already out of the vehicle and heading straight for his neat blue Porsche parked out in the front. He opens the driver’s door and climbs in.

“Hey! What are you doing?” I barely manage to jump in and close the passenger door behind me before he starts the engine.

The wipers drag a mini mountain of snow across the windshield. He ramps up the heating to full capacity and throws the car into gear. I peer through the snow-streaked glass at the ominously gray sky, heavy with the blizzard to come. The streetlamps are on, casting puddles of eerie yellow light across the slippery sidewalks, a few people dipping in and out of the glow with their heads down.

I fasten my seatbelt as the rear wheels lose their purchase on the street. Alessandro turns the steering wheel into the spin and straightens the car inches away from careening into a lamppost.

“You can’t drive to St. Louis in this.” I’d hoped that he was joking in the cab, but my thumping heartbeat and his white knuckles on the steering wheel are telling me I was wrong. He’s doing this.

“No one asked you to come.” He hunches forward in his seat and wipes the inside of the windshield with the sleeve of his coat to clear the steam that’s forming with the heat inside the car.

I ignore his comment. “You’ve been drinking. The roads are already treacherous, and the blizzard hasn’t even started yet.”

“Anytime you want to get out, you just say the word.”

I study his profile which looks gaunt in the flickering lights trying to reach us from the storefronts and streetlamps. I wish I knew what he was thinking. He has always been the adventurous one, the guy who’d sign up to freefall from an airplane or climb amountain or go diving with sharks. But driving from Chicago to St. Louis in a blizzard to attend a party…

There’s a huge difference between being adventurous and being reckless, and I find myself gripping the sides of the passenger seat like my life depends on it.

“If I say the word, will you stop the car and walk back to the hotel with me?” He hasn’t even gone back for his clothes.

The traffic signals turn red, the glow turning the dashboard rosy, and Alessandro hits the brakes, the car spinning out of control across the road. I hear a strange guttural sound that might be me, and then the car jerks to a stop. I don’t know how.

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