Damaged Gods

I pull the amulet up out of my dress and then over my head. I drop it onto his knee, which is covered in shaggy, straw-colored fur. “It’s all fake. Grant told me. He took the real books with him. He made money out in the real world—”

“OK, stop.” Pell breathes heavy for a moment. “Hold the fuck up. What did you just say?”

“I saw Grant. I had some kind of hallucination inside the restaurant—or maybe I really did climb into the sheriff’s lap and grind on him—but either way, I ran out the back door and went back to my Jeep and Grant was there. Waiting for me. And he told me this is all bullshit.” I point to the amulet. “All the books he left behind were bullshit. So I probably did climb in Russ’s lap and stick my tongue down his throat. Because this amulet didn’t fucking protect me!”

I throw it across the room.

Pell places his hands on my shoulders and my body immediately heats up, the same way it did in the restaurant. Like he’s filling me up with magic too. “What else did he say?”

Or maybe he’s filling me up with insanity. Ha. I’ve already got plenty of that.

“Pie!” he growls. “What else did Grant say?”

“Don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter. None of this is real!”

He sneers at me. That’s the Pell I know. The sneering, snide, predator Pell. “Don’t be fucking crazy. I’m real. You’re real. This place is real.”

“I’m so far past crazy, Pell, it’s a done deal, OK? And now I would like to wallow in my insanity for while. So could you just please leave?”

He stands up and I think to myself, Finally. Somebody gives a shit about what I want.

But he doesn’t leave.

He grabs my keys from my hand, picks me up and flips me over his shoulder, carries me outside, through the gate, into the parking lot, and then plops me down in the Jeep’s passenger seat.

“What the hell are you doing?”

He slams my door, walks around to the driver’s side, gets in, and starts the engine. His eyes blaze yellow-orange when he looks at me. “You’re not insane, Pie Vita. And I’m gonna prove it to you.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN - PELL

Aside from moving the Jeep from the front to the back the other day, it’s been a really long time since I drove anywhere. Grant hasn’t been all that fun to hang around for the past few decades, and now that I know he really was working against me this whole time, my aversion to going places with him makes sense.

I guess I always knew, but before Pie told me that he snuck his books out, it was just a hunch.

Now it’s real.

And that sucks.

But what sucks more—what really pissed me off—is he has no right to taint Pie’s mind like this. She’s already confused and even though I don’t know a lot about her life, I get it. She’s under the impression she’s crazy because of that bird.

And maybe she is, I don’t know. I never saw her talking bird. I’ve seen a bird. Just looks like a normal bird to me. But the sanctuary is real. This curse, as crazy as it sounds, is also real. And we’re living in the real world at all times, even though there’s a wall up that separates us from them.

That’s why I’m taking her to the gas station.

Except… when I pull up to the crossroad where that gas station was the last time I came by here, it’s just a shell. A rusted-out sign, no gas pumps, no phone booth, and the windows to the little store are all boarded up. So I just idle at the stop sign across the street.

“What are we doing?”

I look down the road to my left, then to my right. “This used to be open.”

“Like fifty years ago, maybe. Do we need gas?”

I look down at the gauge. “It wouldn’t hurt. But that’s not why I brought you here.”

“Why then?”

I put up a hand, asking her to be quiet. “Just let me think for a moment. I need to find another one.”

She points to the left. “I think the highway is that way. There should be a gas station near the on ramp.”

I look down the dark, lonely stretch of road. It’s as dark as dark gets, even with the moon. Because the moon is almost always hidden by the tops of trees. This is what it means to live in this part of Pennsylvania. Thick, encroaching woods and no sky to speak of. That’s what I miss most about the Old World. At least the part I lived in. There was always so much sky.

“Pell?”

“Hmm.”

“Well, what are we doing?”

“OK. We’ll go that way.” I turn left and we drive for a while. There are houses, most of them with porch lights, but there are no street lamps out this way. So that feeling of being trapped in the trees never quite diminishes until, sure enough, the road opens to reveal a highway and just past the on ramp, there is a gas station.