Page 55 of Lost Touch

Not that I have any problem with warlocks! This was a horrible one!

An extended pause followed that.

Finally, I received a longer message with an attachment.

I’ve sent directions. We’ll catch you at the border of our territory. Try to get him to stop the car voluntarily. If it gets totaled we’ll charge more to fix it.

While I was processing that, he sent:Are you human?

Yes, I replied, choosing not to touch his continued emphasis on fees.

Understood. We may have to knock you unconscious too, but we’ll limit the gross bodily harm.

Well, that reassured me completely. I rolled my eyes at the phone and sent a quick thanks that I wasn’t sure I meant.

I set the phone in my lap and turned to Drew. “I found someone.” I tried to keep the quaver out of my voice, but it didn’t work. “He’s only an hour away. I’ll program it into the GPS, okay? And then you just need to follow the directions.”

Drew let out a low, rumbling growl.

And nothing else.

Okay then. Careful not to make any sudden moves, I put the location Hawthorne had sent me into the car’s navigation system and hoped for the best.

***

That hour felt like years. At first, I thought the faint vibration I’d started picking up was coming from the car.

Then I realized it was Drew, growling so low in his chest I almost couldn’t hear it.

It nagged at some part of my nervous system that had probably controlled prehistoric people’s responses to saber-toothed tigers, raising the hair on the back of my neck and elevating my blood pressure to stroke-level, and I dug my fingers into the edges of my seat, gritting my teeth and telling myself over and over again to hold on, that we’d be there soon.

We’d left the flatlands behind for heavily forested, gently rolling hills, and we wound through endless tree trunks and rocks and fallen logs and bracken, illuminated in flashes by our headlights.

At last, the nav system told us to take a left in one mile.

The turn into Hawthorne’s “territory,” whatever that meant.

Drew didn’t slow down at all.

“You need to make this turn, Drew,” I said, having to bet that my talking to him wouldn’t set him off. “Turn here, and they’ll help us.”

He hit the gas a little harder, his growl growing in pitch and volume, more of a snarl. Oh, God. We wouldn’t make it. He’d crash us into a tree, fuck me while I lay there bleeding. We’d both die.

He had to still be in there, the kind, rational Drew I knew, the one who woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming he’d hurt me.

The one who’d gently carried me out of my cell, taken me home, tended to me for weeks. Comforted me when I woke up screaming. Spent time and money and effort finding foods I could tolerate, reassured me that he’d stand by me no matter what. Lain in bed with me, holding me in his strong arms and quoting along with every line ofThe Fifth Element, and then kissing my neck when I laughed.

I turned in my seat and carefully, slowly, reached out and laid my hand on his bare forearm. His skin burned furnace-hot, at least a degree or two more than his already high normal.

His claws speared the rest of the way through the steering wheel, and he let out a reverberating growling howl, not loud but at a timbre that made my spine try to crawl out of my back and slither away.

“Drew,” I said softly, squeezing his arm. The muscles felt like iron beneath his skin, he’d gone so tense. “You need to help me. You need to protect me, remember? Keep me safe. Slow down, turn left, and then stop the car. Please?”

I didn’t think it’d work.

And then he let his foot off the gas and swung the steering wheel to the left.

We careened off the little two-lane rural highway and onto gravel-speckled dirt, apparently the road to Hawthorne’s place, and jerked to a stop a few yards down it as Drew slammed on the brakes.

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