Page 57 of Road Trip with a Vampire
Peter opened the driver’s-side car door, letting in a frigid blast of air as he slid into the seat beside me. He’d insisted on pumping the gas at this stop, mumbling something about how it was his turn to pay.
I suspected he’d just wanted to get out of the car to feed, but I let it go. It had been a long day already, and we still had hours to go before we reached East Junction.
Peter sighed as he closed the door behind him. The sound of it echoed loudly through the silence. “We got too late of a start to make it to the bowling alley before it closes.”
I wasn’t surprised. By the time Peter had stopped panicking about my noninjury and the auto repair shop had finished replacing my tires, it had been nearly eleven in the morning. Since then, we’d gotten stuck in a traffic jam near Salt Lake City that had materialized out of nowhere and had stopped two more times to stretch our legs.
At the rate we were going, we’d be lucky to get to East Junction by midnight. The sun hadn’t set yet, but it was low in the sky, casting the desolate landscape in long shadows.
“Let’s stop for the night,” I suggested. “We’ll get to East Junction by midday tomorrow.”
Peter frowned, probably because he’d hoped to have made better time. I understood his frustration and his impatience to get to our final destination, but there was nothing we could do about it.
“Fine,” he agreed. “Let’s find a hotel.”
I got out my phone again and began searching for places to stay. There wasn’t much nearby, but if we were willing to drive a little farther…
“This is weird,” I murmured.
“What’s weird?”
I held up my phone. “There’s a five-star hotel ninety minutes from here. Just a few miles off the interstate.”
He stared at me. “You’re joking.”
“I’m not,” I said. “It’s hard to imagine there’s a fancy hotel within a million miles of here, isn’t it?”
It was the truth. I’d remembered the scenery along this stretch of highway as uninspiring, but if anything, I’d remembered it through rose-tinted glasses.Desolatedidn’t feel like an adequate word to describe the windswept, barren landscape that seemed to stretch on forever in all directions. We’d seen very few cars since crossing the border from Utah; the few we had seen appeared to be in as big a hurry to get to where they were going as we were.
This gas station was so run-down it wouldn’t have looked out of place in an episode ofFallout. Most of the other shops and restaurants we’d seen since Utah had been dollar stores and fast-food places.
“Maybe things are fancier ninety minutes down the road,” Peter said dubiously as he turned the key in the ignition.
After our last motel, the idea of staying someplace fancy for a night was appealing. Between the cash he’d brought with him and my credit cards, we could afford to splurge.
“I’ll call and see if they have two available rooms,” I said.
“Tworooms?”
Peter’s tone gave me pause. Was he disappointed we’d be getting two rooms? Had he thought we’d share again?
Did hewantto share again?
For that matter—did I?
His face gave nothing away. All his focus was on the road in front of him, his hands gripping the steering wheel a little tighter than necessary.
“Two rooms,” I confirmed. I wouldn’t be the first to admit that the idea of sharing a room again sounded nice. I might have once been fearless, but I wasn’t brave enough for that. “That all right?”
A muscle feathered in Peter’s jaw. “Of course,” he said. “Two rooms is…sensible.”
We drove on for a little over an hour, seeing almost no other cars the entire time, before Peter turned off the interstate onto a narrow road. Within minutes we were on a long, winding drive lined with more trees than we’d seen since entering Wyoming.
When the hotel finally appeared in front of us, I gasped.
This wasn’t just a hotel.
This was aresort.
