“Do you want to hear who won?” I cocked an eyebrow at her. “After all that?”
“Nope.” She grabbed the keys out of her pocket and jingled them. “We won. I always win.”
“Not always,” her mother said smugly enough that Lethe had to swallow a growl.
A booming gunshot rang out, and I ducked on reflex. “What in the…?”
Another blast, this one closer, had the girls backing away slowly.
Speeding over the hills, heading straight for us, a bulky four-wheeler growled under the strain. A young man drove, headlights flashing, while a short woman stood behind him, sighting her shotgun for another blast.
“Get off my land,” she boomed at us. “Leave my goats alone.”
“I called the cops, you dirty thieves,” the man added. “They’re on the way.”
Bride or not, I got trampled in the rush back to Moby. I still had a foot hanging out the door when Lethe gunned the engine and whipped us around for the drive back to Savannah.
“Ladies and gent,” she hollered, “reach beneath your seats. There’s a second bottle. Chug it.”
Patting around the carpeted indention beneath me, I made sure there weren’t more hidden bottles. “When did you have time to restock?”
“I’m a woman of infinite mysteries.” She flipped her short hair. “Okay, red team is ahead. No surprise there.” A grumble from the back caused her face to flush. “Stuff it, Mother. If you can’t play nice, I will drop your geriatric butt off at Woolworth House and leave you there to play pinochle with the ghost boy.”
In the odd way of dominant gwyllgi, Tisdale settled into blissful happiness at having been put in her place by a fellow alpha.
The more I knew about gwyllgi, the less I understood them.
“What’s next?” Hadley dared the question. “Do we need to change first?”
“Nope.” Lethe turned smug. “You’ll all fit right in as is, my little bumpkins.”
“You’re taking us to that new bar, the country one.” Adelaide caught on first. “There’s a mechanical bull, right?”
“You people don’t like surprises, do you?” Lethe threw up her hands, which took them off the wheel and forced me to swallow my heart where it stuck in my throat. “Yes, yes. There’s a bull. Same teams. The team with the best rides wins.”
“What do we win?” her mother asked. “Or are we competing for bragging rights only?”
“Please.” She scoffed. “Like it’s worth bragging that my team beat you bunch of losers.”
“I didn’t know you were into themes,” I said before Tisdale got mad enough to climb into the front seat and take a bite out of her daughter. “What are you calling it? Gone Country?”
“Themes are lame, but you’re a sucker for them, and this is your night. I figured you would appreciate the novelty.”
“Aww.” I rested my head on her shoulder. “You get me.”
“Don’t flatter me. You’re not hard to figure out. Keeping you alive? That’s the hard part.”
It’s not like she was wrong, but still. Rude.
Determined to help her keep her winning streak alive, I began reading blogs with tips on how to stay seated on mechanical bulls. The words swam together, and I couldn’t remember how much wine I had drunk or how another bottle got in my hand. Pretty sure I drained mine from under the seat already, so where…?
“Where are the boys tonight?”
The yellow lines on the road were squiggling, so I wasn’t brave enough to risk turning my head, but I was pretty sure Tisdale was the one doing the asking.
“They wouldn’t say,” Hadley answered. “Guess they don’t want us to worry.”
“Would you?” Tisdale asked, the question pointed. “Worry?”
The tips of my ears burned hot as I realized I was eavesdropping on a private conversation.
Whatever Hadley said, I made sure I didn’t hear it. I wanted my conscience clean.
Taking another swig of my drink, I engaged with Lethe, who was listening so hard it was a miracle she hadn’t abandoned the wheel to climb in the back. “Do you think goats would make good pets?”
The SUV swerved a bit. “What?”
“Goats.”
“They’re tasty and provide both meat and cheese. How many animals can say that?”
“You missed the part where I said pet.” I set my drink in the cupholder. “Not dinner.”
“They’re cute, I guess?” She kept darting frantic glances at the rearview mirror as she tried to pick up gossip. “You can’t seriously be thinking about buying one.”
“Would one be enough?”
“Goats are like potato chips. You can’t stop with just one.”
“I’m going to pretend you mean it would need a friend and not that one goat isn’t very filling.”
“You do that.”
“The question is…” I paused to check on the Hadley/Tisdale situation, “…would the pack eat them?”
“Duh.”
“What if I kept both edible and nonedible goats?”
“Are you telling me you, the mushiest-hearted person I know, would split her goats down the middle—metaphorically—and put one in a pen to slaughter and one in a pen to milk?”
Thanks to the wine—how had it gotten in my hand again anyway?—it was easy to squeeze out a few tears.
“Don’t cry, you sap.” She elbowed me. “I was kidding. We wouldn’t eat the goats. Happy?”
Wiping my cheeks dry with my fingers, I sniffled. “Do you mean it?”
Her lips screwed up tight. “Yes?”
“Liar.”
“What is she lying about this time?” Tisdale leaned forward. “She should have been a writer. The stories she told when she was a pup…”
The bar reminded Linus of an airplane hangar down to the galvanized steel panels covering its walls and its high dome ceiling. They must have bought it for the location then renovated it. No one would build a bar to these specifications. It would cost a fortune to heat and cool this place.
A karaoke stage, dwarfed by the size of the building, stood empty at one end. The main attraction, the padded arena with a mechanical bull, filled the other. A long bar stretched across the back wall, its glossy top beaten and chipped but kept clean and polished by the older barkeep who took his time filling orders. Linus retreated there to await his next turn.
With his shuffling gait, his worn flannel shirt, and starched jeans over scuffed boots, the barkeep could have walked off the set of a western film.
As the groom, Linus had enjoyed the dubious honor of the first bull ride. Once was enough to convince him to hang up his spurs for good. He hadn’t broken a sweat beating the timer, but his tailbone wasn’t going to thank him anytime soon. The machine was calibrated to humans, and he wasn’t that. Not even a little. The gwyllgi, with their superior reflexes, smashed his record with ease. The last time he saw Hood, he was riding the bull backwards with his hands tucked under his arms.
Not exactly inconspicuous, but they were here to party, and the premises were warded against humans after midnight.