Page 54 of Road Trip with a Vampire
“I don’t know,” he said, thoughtful. “But this feels intuitive to me.”
“Really?” I couldn’t fathom.
He nodded. “Easy as breathing.”
Once finished, he stood up, wiping his palms off on his jeans. There was a streak of grease across the bridge of his nose. I had to resist the urge to reach out and rub it away with my fingertips.
“Thank you,” I said. “You’re a lifesaver.”
He shrugged, like what he’d just done was no big deal. But he couldn’t quite hide the pride in his voice or the smile that tugged at his lips when he said, “All in a day’s work.”
It was a twenty-minute driveto the nearest auto repair shop. Fortunately, they had a full complement of new tires available and said they’d have my car ready for pickup in an hour.
“Mind if I get something to eat while we wait?” I asked Peter as we watched the mechanics get started. “I’m starving.” There was a truck stop across the street, complete with a convenience store on one end and a diner on the other. I could all but hear my soon-to-be breakfast calling to me.
“Why would I mind?” Peter slid on a pair of sunglasses as we stepped out of the repair shop and into the sunlight. “I plan to do the same.”
I turned to look at the truck stop. The parking lot was full oftrucks and their truckers—which meant there were a lot of potential witnesses.
“It’s fine,” Peter said as if reading my thoughts. “I suspect those truckers are half-asleep. If I’m wrong, it’ll take just a small glamour to make sure I’m not spotted.”
My mind snagged uncomfortably on the oblique reference to his powers. “Your glamour abilities are strong.”
He frowned. “Are they?”
I nodded. “All vampires can hide their fangs. I’ve only known a few who could alter people’s perceptions beyond that.”
He considered that. “Do some vampires like a sunny day?”
“Not many,” I said. “But some do, sure.”
“And the sun feels awful to me,” he pointed out. “Being able to alter people’s perceptions beyond hiding my fangs seems a fair trade-off for never being able to enjoy the beach.”
In the wrong hands, a power like Peter’s could be put to terrible use. Dwelling on this while I was traveling with him, though, would lead to nothing good.
There were few cars on the road, and we easily crossed the wide street between the truck stop and the repair shop. To my surprise, Peter followed me towards the convenience store rather than heading directly for one of the sleeping truckers.
“I need a hat,” he explained as he opened the door for me. The bell above the doorframe jangled far too loudly for the early hour. “To keep the sun off my face.”
“But you already have a hat.”
He scoffed. “What? That chicken thing?”
I gave him my shit-eatingest grin. “Yes. That chicken thing.”
“I amneverwearing that hat again.”
“But I bought it just for you.”
The place was spacious for a convenience store and had anentire wall of hats, most of them with slogans likeGit-R-DoneandNASCARemblazoned on the front. Peter quickly found the only hat in the store that didn’t have a slogan on it—a little neon-green number that was so bright it probably could have been seen from space—and paid for it at the cash register.
“Lime green?” I asked when he popped it onto his head. “Really?”
“It was either a lime green hat or a hat that said something stupid.”
There was something so haughty about the way he saidsomething stupidthat made teasing him about his hat selection nearly irresistible. From the twinkle in his eye, I suspected at least part of why he’d chosen it was to goad me into giving him shit.
“What do you think?” he asked, confirming my suspicions. He turned this way and that as he modeled it for me.
