Page 60 of Priest and his Anarchist

Vaden pauses outside his own, a door open and his tatted hand resting above the top. I tap my window down when his head tilts to the side, his focus clearly not moving from me. “They could kill her. You know. Maybe they’d bleach-wash her.”

Fucking Vaden. I don’t answer, revving the engine and forcing it into first. I haven’t even reached the end of the road when my pop’s name flashes over the screen.

“We’ve got a problem, son.”

I roll my eyes and glance out the side window. “What is it?” Cirque de Diavolo fades in my rearview mirror as I drop the clutch and hit one-sixty.

Tonight was the first night of a game that we’ve altered the rules for. Will it work?

“What did you find out about Luna’s whereabouts after leaving you?” At the mention of Luna, my eyes shift to the rearview mirror, expecting her to be there.

“What Dad told me.” My neck cracks when I bend it.

“And how much of that do you think was the truth?”

“Spit it out, Pops. I don’t have all night and in under five minutes, your granddaughter will be hovering around my shit like the damn police.”

He pauses again. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna like whatever he has to say.

I’ve not even held the gavel for one week, and it’s already feeling flimsy.

“She’d been going back and forth between the US and Spain, visiting with her parents, but there’s no trail of her being there.”

Trees zip past, and the light on my speedo burns through my retinas. “I know everything.”

Silence. “Everything?”

“Everything,” I repeat, my lip curling into a snarl. “Keep looking. It’s not that.”

Thirty minutes later, I pull up to the curb of my house, the engine rumbling as Halen jogs toward the car behind mine. The racing scene keeps the girls preoccupied, but War is starting to feel guilty for excluding Halen. Like I knew he would.

Someone bangs on the top, and I wind my window down to Vaden, his gaze on War’s car behind mine.

“Losing him.”

I cut the engine. “Nah. Only so far. He’s a Malum.”

Vaden lowers his attention down to me. “Wanna talk about tonight and the little doll you left out in the open for Moses?”

My lip twitches. “Not really. And besides, we’ve got someplace to be tonight, remember?”

Vaden’s eyes darken as he slides into the passenger seat and shuts us inside. “You wanna talk about whatever it is that you’re about to take me to tonight?”

Obsessing about Luna isn’t where I need my head to be, but I find myself there anyway. Her beige-blonde hair is always tied back by the silk of a ribbon. It reminds me of her. Ethereal, yet a mind twisted enough to form a knot. She’s simply my longest project yet.

With a light tap of the accelerator, we both fly into our seats as Vaden toys with the music.

“I have to show you something that I don’t even know what it is right now. But this?” I turn my arm over at Vaden. “Stays between us.”

Vaden doesn’t pat my ego. “Us…and the voice in my head, yep.”

The trip into the city feels longer than usual, and my fingers work the back of my neck to untie the tension. Vaden’s slumped over against the window, long since falling asleep. At least he’s sleeping. If I remember the tale of the curse, it went something along the lines of it stealing your soul while you sleep.

I’m hoping he doesn’t sleep too long if that's true, since there’s not much of his soul left to take.

My car stops outside two concrete gates that hide whatever mystery is behind it, the engine idling beneath me. Vaden stirs back to life, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands.

“We here?”

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