Jenny Plague-Bringer: (Jenny Pox #4) (20 page)

He lifted a loose horizontal board and opened the wooden door it had pinned shut. 
Inside, where Juliana had expected a wagon or buggy, there was a long, sleek, maroon
and black Cadillac convertible, its creme-colored cloth roof laid back to expose the
leather interior.  It had a gleaming spare tire mounted behind each of the front wheels,
just ahead of the running boards.  The hood ornament was a silver goddess with wings.

Juliana looked at Sebastian, who was gaping at the polished luxury automobile.  It
was like something in which a king might travel during a parade, waving to the crowd.

“I may as well drive you there myself,” Barrett said. “It’s the fastest way.  Besides,
the two of you will be my greatest contribution yet to the Evolution Congress.  I
want to make sure every moment is as fully pleasurable for you as possible.” He winked
as he opened the front passenger-side door. “Ladies ride in front, of course.”

Sebastian shook his head and opened one of the rear doors.  He gave her a grin as
she sank into the soft leather seat in front of him.  Jealous or not, he was clearly
going to enjoy the ride.

“Thank you,” Juliana said to Barrett. “I believe this is the finest automobile I’ve
ever seen.  Will we really travel all the way to Charleston in this?”

“It won’t be a long ride.” Barrett grinned as he dropped into the passenger seat and
cranked the motor.  The entire car thrummed and vibrated.

“You don’t have a servant to drive you?” Sebastian asked.  He’d clearly expected Barrett
to ride in the back with him.

“I suppose I could pay a servant to drive my car for me,” Barrett said.  He slid a
pair of very dark sunglasses over his eyes. “I suppose I could pay someone to eat,
drink, smoke, and dance for me, too, but where’s the fun in that?”

Sebastian didn’t look happy, but he moved to the center of the back seat, sprawling
out his arms and legs as if pleased to have so much room to himself.  He forced a
smile and did a horrific attempt at an English accent: “Then drive us, good sir!”

Barrett looked back to give him an annoyed look while punching the accelerator.  The
car shot out of the shed at high speed, across the brick path and toward the peach
orchard. Barrett didn’t even look where he was going. 

“Watch out!” Sebastian shouted, ducking.  Barrett laughed and wrenched the car around,
kicking up grass and dirt as he fishtailed back onto the paved path, more or less,
and then gave the car even more gas, charging past the house and into the circular
turnaround in front of it.  Juliana screamed as he slid sideways in front of the house,
his back tires squealing and smoking, and then he whipped onto the driveway and roared
past old magnolias and oaks on the way to the front gate.

Juliana looked back over her shoulder, her heart crashing in her chest.  A cloud of
dust and burnt-rubber smoke hung like a veil in front of the house.  In a third-story
window, Juliana caught a glimpse of a woman with a very pale, thin face and unkempt
hair the color of pine straw.  The face vanished quickly.  Juliana wondered whether
Barrett had even told his wife and son that he was leaving for the day.

The car roared through the open gate and flung up another long cloud of dust as it
spun onto the road.  They moved east, toward the sun and the countryside, leaving
the town behind.  The state highway was paved for the initial stretch, so Barrett
pressed the accelerator to the floor.  The Cadillac moved unnaturally fast, turning
cotton fields and cow pastures into a green and white blur on either side of the road. 
The speed pushed Juliana back against her seat and sent her long, dark hair streaming
across her face.

She looked at the round speedometer dial and saw the needle touching 100 miles per
hour.  She didn’t know anything could move that fast, except maybe airplanes.

Barrett swerved around the very occasional wagon or farm truck without slowing.  At
each turn, Juliana had to grab the door and the edge of her seat to avoid being slung
back and forth, or possibly out of the car altogether.  It was frightening, and far
more exhilarating than any ride at the carnival. Juliana felt a little bit in love
with the car.

Then the highway turned from pavement to dirt, and Barrett had to slow down because
of the dips and washout gullies that bounced the car.

“That was fantastic,” Juliana breathed, her skin flush from the long, unexpected blast
of speed.

“Must be one of those eight-cylinder cars like the detective had,” Sebastian said,
trying to sound bored.

“
Sixteen
cylinders,” Barrett told him, beaming. “They don’t make many like this, because most
people are too dull to want a car like this.”

“It doesn’t seem possible for a person to drive so fast,” Juliana said.

“You could do it,” Barrett told her.

“I don’t believe so!  I’ve never operated any automobile before.”

“Is that true?” Barrett slowed to a stop, pulling over to the right side of the road
next to a barbed-wired goat pasture.  The creatures stared at them as he climbed out
of his seat and motioned for Juliana to slide over behind the wheel.

“No, you don’t want to do that,” Juliana said. “I’ll wreck us.”

“I’ll drive the car,” Sebastian offered, but Barrett ignored him.

“You will not wreck us, Juliana.  Take the wheel,” Barrett insisted.  He crossed in
front of the car, around to the passenger side.

“Are you joking?” Juliana looked at the dials and levers.

“All the things in the universe are in a state of decay,” Barrett told her. “It’s
a law of thermodynamics.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

“It means time is always wasting.  The time we spend arguing could be time you spend
flying down the road.” He opened her door, standing over her, blocking out the sun.
“Move on, or it’s going to get crowded on this side.”

She laughed and slid over behind the wheel, touching it hesitantly with her gloved
hands. The engine rumbled ahead of her, sounding eager to move.

Barrett placed one of her hands on the wheel and the other on the long gear stick
that jutted up from the floor.  Though he knew of the demon plague within her, he
seemed to have no fear of leaning his face close to hers, or touching her through
her thin summer dress.  Juliana found herself blushing a little, and her breaths grew
shorter as he positioned her feet on the clutch and the brake pedal, explaining how
to use them.  His hands brushed her legs a few times, and once his hand happened to
linger on her lower thigh as he explained when to shift gears.  She wanted to slap
him, but she wanted to do a few other things to him, too.

She was grateful that the plague took the choice out of her hands.  If she were free
to touch Barrett all she liked, she might have been in danger of betraying Sebastian. 
She could feel guilt on her face as she glanced back at him.  Sebastian simply stared
at her and said nothing, but he had an angry glint in his eyes.

“I think you’re ready to drive,” Barrett told her.

“I’m not sure...” Juliana said, but she moved the stick out of its parked setting
and operated the pedals and wheel as he’d demonstrated, and the car lurched forward
and began rolling.

“More gas,” he said, and she stepped hard on the pedal.  The Cadillac surged forward,
spraying dust behind it.  Juliana couldn’t help crying out in excitement as she felt
the power surging under her and the wind blowing back her hair.  Her fear quickly
turned to joy, and soon she drove as fast as the road would allow. 

“I’m doing it!” Juliana shouted at Barrett, over the roar of the engine and the high
wind that filled her ears. “I’m driving!”

Barrett grinned and patted her on the back.  He let his arm linger at her shoulders
a little too long, and it almost gave her goosebumps to think of him so near, so willing
to risk death just to touch her.  His hand was dangerously close to brushing against
the bare flesh of her neck.  He only withdrew the arm when Sebastian leaned up between
them and kissed her on the cheek.

“Don’t kill us!” Sebastian suggested.

“I’ll do my best!”  Juliana put on more speed. “I could drive all the way to Charleston,
Mr. Barrett!  Just tell me where to turn.”

“All you need to do is follow the telegraph line.” Barrett pointed to the cables strung
alongside the road, held high above them by wooden poles with crossbars.  She remembered
a story she’d read in a musty library book when she was a child, about a slave uprising
in ancient Rome.  The slaves had lost, and thousands of them had been crucified on
wooden crosses like these, all along the road to Rome.

For a moment, she could
see
the bodies crucified along the road.  It wasn’t the blocky woodcut image from the
old book, either, but real people nailed up and dripping gore, their faces contorted
from long, painful deaths, as if she had been a witness to them, traveling along the
stone road in the aftermath.

She gazed at Barrett beside her and felt something dark and ancient between them,
as if they’d ridden side by side countless times, drawn by fast horses here and there
across the world. Later, she would learn the term
déjà vu
and understand its meaning immediately, thinking of this moment.

Then the moment passed, and she was simply driving again, feeling the sun and the
wind on her face.  She looked forward to the next stretch of pavement, where she could
press the accelerator all the way down and feel the car’s full speed.

Jenny and Seth slept late on Christmas.  Jenny awoke first, made a pot of coffee and
took a small, rich square of chocolate with her to the frosted front window.  The
short but brightly lit tree by the window filled the apartment with the golden scent
of living pine.  Outside, a thin, fresh frosting of snow had fallen, decorating the
trees, ledges, and balconies with spotless icy fluff.

She thought of her father again, back home in Fallen Oak.  Maybe he wasn’t even home
at all, but over at June’s apartment.  Jenny hoped they were still seeing each other. 
She hated imagining him at home, by himself, accompanied only by the dog and pictures
of his lost wife and daughter.  She wondered if he’d started drinking again.

Jenny busied herself by getting a start on Christmas dinner.  She was attempting
a few French dishes, including a
bûche de Noël
for dessert, a rolled-up cake with chocolate cream filling.  The fun part would be
carving the outer layer of icing with a fork to make it look like the bark of a Yule
log.

Her digital Christmas song list played at random on the stereo, jumping from Bonnie
Raitt singing “Merry Christmas Baby” to John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas.” 

She made hot chocolate, another smell that reminded her of Christmas.  Her father
had made it for her, usually by mixing Valu Time chocolate-flavored syrup with Piggly
Wiggly brand milk and heating it in the microwave.  He did that even in those years
when December in South Carolina had felt like early summer.  Now she made it with
fresh-grated dark and white chocolate from
La Maison du Chocolat
.  She wished her father were here to try it.

Jenny looked out at the boulevard below, where thousands of tiny golden lights glowed
on strings as far as she could see and the lamp posts were hung with green garlands. 
The sun slid out from behind the clouds, making the city’s blanket of snow sparkle. 
Few cars passed, and everyone who walked by seemed beautiful to her, even the hacking
old man hunched over his walker, escorted by two excited young kids who must have
been his grandchildren.

She heard Seth approaching in his sock feet, probably trying to sneak up on her. 
He found that hilarious for some reason.

“Merry Christmas,” he said, sliding his arms around her waist.  He felt strong and
warm against her back.

The sky darkened, and their ghostly, transparent reflections appeared in the window
pane.  Jenny found herself looking at her own face and Seth’s sleepy, smiling face
behind her.  Their child growing inside her.

This is it
, Jenny realized. 
This moment is the happiest I’ll ever be.  The baby will die, and I’ll hate myself,
and Seth will probably hate me, too, if he finds out.  Nothing will ever be the same.

Jenny watched her own eyes fill up with tears, until her vision turned blurry and
she had to wipe them.  Stupid hormones.

“What’s wrong?” Seth asked.

She turned to look at him, smiling as she touched his face. “Merry Christmas,” she
whispered, and she kissed him.  Then she leaned in against him, hugging him with all
her strength, as if she could stop the future from coming if she clung tightly enough
to the present.

“Are you sad because we haven’t opened presents yet?” Seth asked, which made her laugh.

“I was just thinking about my dad.” She wiped her eyes again, and she’d managed to
swallow back the tears and put on a smile.

“Yeah, that’s hard.” He hugged her back just as tightly. “I think about my parents
waking up in a silent house on Christmas morning.  They’ve lost both their sons now,
Carter and me.”