Persephone Alcmedi 00 - Wicked Circle

your room.”
    “But Gram—”
    “Get your shoes,” she said. Evan scurried off. As soon as he was out of earshot, she seized Johnny’s arm. “Don’t you dare try to take him from me yet!”
    “I wouldn’t!” Johnny realized what she’d thought. “I wouldn’t steal him. He doesn’t even know me yet.”
    She released his arm.
    “I don’t know where to start. He obviously likes cars. So do I.” He shrugged. “You can come with us.”
    Toni sat in a chair. “No,” she sighed. “Go for a drive, just the two of you.”
    Evan returned with his shoes on, laces flopping. “Tie those or you’re not going,” Toni told him. “No speeding.” She pointed her finger at Johnny. “And he has to sit in the back.”
    “We’ll be back in twenty minutes. You have my word.”
    After letting Evan sit in the driver’s seat for a few minutes, Johnny told him to get into the back—Evan crawled over the console—and put on his seat belt. Johnny revved the engine a few times while in the driveway, and Evan giggled gleefully.
    He backed onto the road and headed back the only way he knew to go. Soon, Evan was begging, “I want to go fast!”
    “Toni said not to go fast.”
    “She said no speeding . The speed limit is higher on the highway. That’s why they call it the high way. Geez.”
    Johnny saw a sign for NY-3. He followed it, heading west. He punched it up to the allowed forty-five. “So, tell me a little about yourself, Evan. Do you get good grades in school?”
    “School? Bleh.” Evan stuck his tongue out. “Can we go faster?”
    “No.”
    “Not even just a little?”
    “Well. Tell me about school and I’ll go a little faster.”
    “I like recess and gym. Art class is fun.”
    “What else?”
    Evan sat up like he was trying to see the speedometer. “Are we going faster?”
    “A little.”
    “How fast?”
    “Forty-eight.”
    Evan sat back in his seat with arms crossed. “That’s not fast.”
    “I’ll do sixty-five in a straight stretch if you tell me about your spelling tests.”
    “I do okay. Not As, but no Fs either.”
    “What about your teacher?”
    “Seventy-five?”
    “Your teacher is seventy-five years old?” Johnny asked incredulously, teasing.
    “No. Can we go seventy-five?”
    A straight patch stretched before them and there were no other cars around except the one about eight car lengths back, so Johnny slowed down to thirty, then punched it so it would feel more dynamic to hit seventy-five.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

    I nvestigator Kurt Miller was following the Maserati as nonchalantly as possible for a quiet Sunday midday. Most folks were in church now. The roads were empty.
    And it seemed John Hampton was heading back to Cleveland.
    Kurt followed him, wondering if he could even make an arrest based on a warrant for a suspect identified as human. He decided to leave that to someone else to decide. The real question was, How am I going to stop him while he’s still in my jurisdiction?
    Then the fool gave him cause. He did a quick stint of seventy-five in a forty-five.
    Kurt rolled down his window, slapped the magnetic base of his police beacon on the roof, and flipped it and his siren on.
    “Your grandmother is going to kill me.”
    Johnny’s voice grumbled from the radio. Aurelia had been making notes, and perked up.
    “What?” the kid said.
    Then Aurelia heard the siren.
    “Cool!” the kid said.
    “Not cool,” Johnny said.
    “You’re pulling over? This car could outrun the cop’s car! C’mon! C’mon!”
    “No,” Johnny said firmly.
    Aurelia picked up her phone.
    The Maserati drove onto the shoulder in front of Kurt, who waited. He wasn’t in a uniform, but he had a badge and handcuffs. The warrant for the arrest of John Hampton had been issued years ago, but warrants never expire.
    Would he resist? What if he secured him into the cuffs and into the back of the car, then he did that at-will transformation thing? Kurt had no other choice.
    Kurt Miller got out of his Crown Victoria and, with his hand on his weapon, he approached the car. Two good paces from the driver’s door, he halted, set his feet and drew the gun. “Step out of the car, now!”
    Nothing happened, so he repeated himself.
    The door opened.
    “Keep your hands where I can see them.”
    John Newman, or Hampton, eased from the car, with his palms outstretched. “I know I was speeding,” he said. “It was stupid. I was showing off for the kid.”
    “Kid?”
    John motioned with his head