I know he isn’t there. Not really.
Knowing that doesn’t stop the scream of rage from bubbling out of my throat as I take the next turn so fast that I feel the moment the wheels start losing their grip on the road.
The sound is gone, and the pain of emptiness and numbness settles back into me like a bone-chilling cold that digs into my bones and won’t let go. I refuse to stop. I won’t stop until I hear something again.
Or so I think until something leaps out into the road and the car nearly careens into it.
I’ve been here before.
The old car skitters to a halt, narrowly avoiding a wreck as I snap out of my daze and look to see what it was that we almost hit.
It takes me a moment to catch my breath, then another to peel my hands from the death-grip they’ve taken on the steering wheel just long enough to put the car in park.
I’ve been here before, I think again.
But last time, it was my father trying to take me away.
This time … this time …
I need to know what stopped me.
I must be hallucinating again, because when I look up through the windshield. I think that I see Vivian standing at the edge of the forest.
Vivian.
My brain, or some long-lasting residual effects of the mushrooms, is conjuring this image just to torture me further.
Perhaps karma is playing its hand with me now.
Vivian looks wild and ferocious as I stare at her. No matter how many times I blink, how many times I look away and look back, she’s still there.
What a fitting fate it would be for me to be attacked and killed by a wolf in the forest with no pack to protect me this time.
But when Vivian approaches the car, I realize that she’s not at all a figment of my imagination or a drug-induced apparition; she’s actually here.
Or, at least, I think she is.
What is Vivian doing here? The eclipse will be starting in hours. She should be with the rest of the packs gathered for the ceremony.
It’s a surprisingly sober thought for my decidedly not sober mind.
Vivian walks straight over to the passenger side and wrenches the door open even though it was locked. For such a small girl, she is exceptionally strong. I guess that just comes along with being a shifter.
She doesn’t say anything to me.
She just throws herself into the passenger seat and points ahead of us to the stretch of road.
“Drive,” Vivian says to me. “NOW.”
There’s an urgency in her voice that makes my heart pound faster. Hallucination or not, I’m not going to disobey.
I have no idea where I’m even driving to, but I just drive anyway. I both scared and excitedly relieved to see Vivian here.
Even if she does turn out to be some kind of very convincing hallucination. Even more convincing than the rest.
I don’t drive as recklessly this time. Something about her, here in my car, it seems too solid. Too real. I have to focus on driving as much as I want to stare at her until I’ve made up my mind on whether or not she’s actually here.
“You goaded him into this, you know,” Vivian says, suddenly, with vehemence in her voice. “If this ends badly and if something happens to him, I hope you realize that this was all YOUR fault.”