by Megan Walker
“Marco can’t wait. Be back soon.” There’s another tiny pause, and then: “I love you, Anna-Marie.” Like he needs me hear it, to know it, even though I already do.
“I love you too, Josh,” I say back. We’ve been saying this a lot, especially over the last couple days.
We hang up, and I make my last-minute preparations—big curls in my hair, which is already dyed red for my role as Maeve, and dramatic, smoky eye makeup paired with dark red lipstick. I had Chinese food delivered, and have that packed in a picnic basket, along with a blanket, a couple mini-flashlights and some candles and a lighter, since it’s already dark out and will likely be even more so in the middle of a graveyard.
As I see the headlights of his car swing around into our driveway, I grab the picnic basket and step out the front door, before he has a chance to pull into the garage. He stops in the driveway and my pulse picks up in excitement—and nerves, too, because there’s more to this plan than even Josh knows about.
And then Josh steps out of his car and into the warm pool of porch light, and my pulse is racing for a whole other reason.
Instead of his usual designer suits, he’s wearing a tweed, professor-like suit jacket—complete with the leather patches over the elbows!—and thin-rimmed glasses. His dark hair, which he usually gels in place because if he doesn’t style it right out of the shower, it gets this adorably weird wave on one side, is still styled, but in a kind of mussed, shaggy way, with locks of it falling over the rims of his glasses.
I hadn’t found anything great in his closet for the Marco persona, but he took care of getting the geeky professor/watcher character right all by himself. And more than just how hot he looks—which, damn—I am all the turned on by the effort he went to for this.
God, I love my husband.
And the way he smiles me, the way he’s taking in my look the way I’m taking in his . . .
Lately, I’ve kind of been hating on my body for what it can’t do, but this reminds me of how great my body can be, and not just aesthetically (though god knows I work hard to keep it up to TV standards). Because I know that even if I was bigger in some places or smaller in others, Josh would still look at me like that. My body’s great because it’s mine and Josh loves it, and me.
And I sure know things to do with it that make us both very happy.
“Scarlet,” he says in an admonishing tone, perfectly spoiled by the way the glasses slip down his nose and he has to push them back up. “We’re going out patrolling, hunting some of the most dangerous demons in the world. And you’re bringing a picnic basket?”
I saunter down the steps slowly, walking right up to him until I’m the barest inch away from pressing myself against him.
“You know me, Marco,” I say in Scarlet’s seductive voice. “I don’t ever work hard without playing a bit, too.” I look up at him from under my lashes, even as I take the car keys from his hand. To the credit of my sexy voice and probably the amount of cleavage he’s looking down into, I don’t think he even notices.
“I suppose a little bit of—” he starts gruffly, and then his eyes catch on the keys I’m holding up. “What are you doing, Scarlet?”
“Well, I thought we’d get to the graveyard in style tonight,” I say, brushing past him towards his Porsche, running a finger along the smooth lines of the hood. It’s actually less dirty than I thought it’d be—not that Josh goes too long between car washes, but he must have gotten it cleaned and waxed recently. I turn back around to see him watching me with an eyebrow raised, curious as to where I’m going with this.
“In a Porsche, Scarlet?” he says. “A little flashy, don’t you think?”
“Not for me,” I say with a smile. “I think I’m made for cars like this. And I’m sure the stuffy agent and his bitchy actress wife that I borrowed this from would agree.”
“No doubt,” he says dryly. “And when they report your borrowing of this car to the police, I certainly hope the Watcher’s Council doesn’t find out.”
“Don’t worry, Marco. I can keep a lot of things secret from the Watcher’s Council.”
He smiles and reaches for the keys, but I hold them back and open the driver’s-side door and get in. Now both of Josh’s eyebrows are raised.
“What are you waiting for?” I ask, putting both hands on the steering wheel. “I think you automatically get shotgun.”
I take no small amount of pleasure in the growing look of shock on Josh’s face, even as my nerves are now skittering around even more. I don’t drive in LA if I can ever help it—which usually I can. It’s not that I can’t drive, but when I was first out here in LA, having come here at twenty on a whim—or really, a desperate need to get away from anything related to my life in Wyoming—I got hit at an intersection by one of those huge-ass Tour of the Stars’ Homes buses. Shockingly, I was barely hurt, just a sprained wrist and a tweaked back, but the whole thing scared the ever-living crap out of me.
From then on, even though I know LA is just like any other city, and most traffic is stop-and-go on the crowded interstate, it seemed like everyone in LA drove like they were out to kill me personally. Barreling down on me in buses or zooming by me in their sports cars like they’re auditioning for the next Fast and Furious.
It’s stupid, and I know Josh really wants me to be able to drive myself around rather than using Uber—he doesn’t love me subjecting my safety to strangers. He’s been trying to get me to drive his car for years. And though I actually enjoy using the Uber time to read through scripts or even just sit back and feel like I’m fancy enough to have a driver, I can see his point.
And so I thought today would be a good day to start. After all, I’m an actress. I can get into character. And Scarlet sure as hell isn’t afraid of driving in LA.
“Okay,” Josh says, and then walks around the front of the car and slides into the passenger seat. He looks less shocked and more just happy about it now. “Though I’m not sure how you’ll drive this thing without those vampire reflexes.”
I laugh. It’s a reference to the Twilight books, not Buffy. Josh read them in college because his girlfriend at the time was into them and he was so excited that she was into something geeky they could share. He never became a huge fan, but he liked them well enough. I did too, back when I read them, though they’re certainly not Buffy. And could definitely use more sex.
“I have fast slayer reflexes, so we’re good.” I remember something and reach into the picnic basket in the back, pulling out a long wooden stake, sharpened at one end. “I also have this.”
Josh’s brow furrows over the glasses. “Hopefully not for driving.” I can tell he’s imagining this thing puncturing his leather interior.
“For slaying, obviously,” I say, “I have a feeling I’ll need a big piece of wood tonight.”
Probably too obvious an innuendo even for Scarlet, but I can’t resist. And Josh can’t either, slipping out of character to grin, taking the almost foot-long stake from me and holding it up. “Is Marco supposed to have starred in Boogie Nights? Because I don’t remember that expectation in our character creation.”
I laugh. “I have a feeling Marco will more than measure up.”
As I back out of the driveway and find myself grinding the gears of Josh’s car while we’re still in our neighborhood—he heroically holds back a grimace—I start to think that maybe it’s not Marco who should be worried. It’s Anna-Marie. Who, yes, does technically know how to drive stick, but hasn’t done so since high school. And never in a really expensive sports car.
Maybe this wasn’t such a great idea, after all.
“Easy,” Josh says gently, after yet another jerky stop at a stoplight that leaves us both in serious danger of whiplash. “Be careful when the light turns. You know, if you don’t want a premature release.” This last bit said with a mischievous smile.
I try to channel Scarlet’s sa
uciness as I prep to not completely destroy the gears. “A real car should be able to handle some action without that.”
The sexiness of this statement is reduced somewhat by the little squeal I inadvertently make when the light turns and I tap the gas—barely tap the stupid thing!—and the car shoots forward across the intersection.
Josh is clearly trying not to laugh—or panic, interchangeably—at my reactions to his car’s crazy-sharp response times, or at when I swear at the way-too-calm-sounding GPS as she robotically tells me to turn right on a street I barely even saw because I was too busy getting my stiletto heel unstuck from the floor mat.
But even so, after a little bit, I’m starting to feel like I’m getting the hang of it. The starts and stops becoming smoother. The need for an entire new transmission (or whatever the hell I’m destroying every time I switch gears) starting to diminish. My own nerves starting to calm.
That is, until I see it up ahead, across the intersection. Big and bright and gleaming, and with its turn signal indicating that it’s about to turn onto the same street I am.
A tour bus.
My heart rate skyrockets.
“It’s okay,” Josh says, the intersection bright enough with all the streetlights and flashing business signs that I can see his expression perfectly—and he can obviously see mine. One of these is far more panicked than the other. “It’s okay. I mean, really, Scarlet,” he says, slipping back into Marco’s voice. “It’s just a bus full of vampires. You can handle vampires any day. You’ve got your huge wooden stake, after all.”
“Right,” I say, trying to breathe through the anxiety. Because it’s stupid. It’s just a bus, slowly starting to turn onto the street. I flick a glance over to him. “Though really, you’re the one holding the stake.” He’s been holding it ever since we left the house, making numerous jokes about the length and diameter of the shaft, all of which, I have to admit, were pretty damn hilarious. Because when it comes to sex jokes, both of us have the elevated sense of humor of a teenage boy.
I make the left-hand turn, my heart thumping, forced to get into the same lane as the tour bus, which is now stopped due to traffic. Which is fine, I tell myself. It can’t hit me if I’m behind it, and we’re stopping now—
“Anna-Marie, hold still,” Josh says suddenly, and his eyes are wide. Staring at the bus ahead of us.
“What is it?” I squeak, my eyes darting between him and that damn bus that I’m slowly oh so slowly approaching. Is it going to back up into me? Is it—
“It’s okay,” he says, though the panic in his voice says the exact opposite. He lifts the stake like he’s going to use it, and that’s when I see what he’s really staring at.
A snake. A small, living, actual effing snake on the dashboard.
I scream and hit the brakes just as he stabs forward with the stake, jabbing it into the dash. We jerk forward and back, and the snake—oh my god, the snake flies into my lap and there’s a sudden fiery pain on my inner thigh. I scream again and kick out my leg in panic, hitting the gas.
And in the space of one horrible second, there’s the loud, sickening crunch of our car hitting the back of the bus, and then the sharp punch of the airbag in my face, snapping my head back against the seat, and everything, for the moment, is black.
Thirty-three
Josh
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. There’s a smell like burning plastic, and my head spins from the punch of the now-deflating airbag. I reach for Anna-Marie.
“Are you okay?” I ask. She’s braced back against her seat, looking simultaneously dazed and scared out of her mind, and there’s a spattering of dust—from the airbag?—on both her and me. And on her lap is the snake, lying across her thigh.
I reach over and grab the snake with my bare hand.
It’s limp. Dead. But on her thigh, visible just below the hem of her booty shorts, is an angry red mark.
“It bit me,” she gasps, her eyes wide. “It bit me. Is that—”
“The rattlesnake,” I say. Someone’s walking around the front of my now very crunched Porsche. It’s the driver of the bus, a middle-aged woman with a fierce scowl. Several thoughts run through my head.
Anna-Marie was bitten by a rattlesnake.
We have to get her to the hospital.
And there’s no way we can get there in my car.
The bus doesn’t look too bad, just a little dinged, and the idea of waiting for an ambulance is terrifying.
“We need you to take us to the hospital,” I say, shoving open my door. “My wife just got bit by a rattlesnake.”
“You hit my bus!” the bus driver says. “What the hell were you doing?”
“We’ll sort it out later!” I shout at her. “My wife just got bit by a rattlesnake.” To punctuate this, I fling the dead baby rattlesnake at her, and the bus driver jumps.
“It’s dead,” I add, clearly too late, and I pick its limp body back up and shove it in my pocket in case they need to see it at the hospital to believe my crazy story. I want to flag someone else down and make them drive us just so I don’t have to argue, but I’m pretty sure it counts as a hit and run if I leave the scene, even if my car doesn’t.
Probably easier to explain if I leave the scene with the person I hit.
“Sir,” the bus driver begins, the scowl replaced with genuine concern, “I think you may be in shock.”
Anna-Marie claws her way out of the car behind me, and I’m not sure if I should be encouraging her to hold still so the poison moves more slowly to her heart, or what. All this time I’ve had a baby rattlesnake in my car, and I didn’t bother to look up what to do if you’re bit by one.
“Are you going to take us to the hospital or not?” I demand, running over to the other side of the car and reaching to help Anna-Marie stand.
Anna-Marie lifts her foot onto the hood of the car, and the mark on her thigh is angry and red. “How the hell did it get in the car?”
Oh, god.
“Yeah, okay,” the bus driver says finally, eyeing the bite with concern. “Get in.”
I scoop Anna-Marie up in my arms and carry her into the bus. People are returning to their seats, having crowded at the back of the bus to gawk at us. No one here seems to have suffered any from being in an accident.
“There’s a hospital a mile or so from here,” the bus driver says.
“Good,” I say, setting Anna-Marie down on the first available bench, as the bus starts to move. Too slowly. God, there’s too much traffic, how long will it take to go even a mile in this—
“Josh,” Anna-Marie says, her voice small. “Am I going to be okay?” I notice now that she’s got what looks like a burn the size of a silver dollar on the inside of her right arm, probably from the airbag.
But she’s can’t die of an airbag burn. The mark on her thigh, though . . .
“I don’t know,” I say, my heart and head pounding in tandem. “She was bit by a rattlesnake. Does anyone know what to do?”
“Call 911!” someone shouts, and a dozen people pull out their phones.
“Isn’t she on Southern Heat?” an older lady asks, with a gasp.
“I think you have to suck out the poison!” someone else yells. “Suck it!”
I think a few of those phones are recording us, and I’m pretty sure if I suck it, there are going to be photos all over the internet of Josh Rios supposedly going down on his wife, actress Anna-Marie Rios, in a Tour of the Stars’ Homes bus. Though if it’ll save her life . . .
“I’ll suck it,” a dude in a black leather jacket says all too eagerly, staring at her legs.
Hell no. I glare at him. If anyone is going to suck it, it’s me.
“Google says don’t suck it!” someone shouts.
“Ah!” I shout. My whole body has broken out in panic sweat. “Tell me what I am supposed to do, or my wi
fe is going to die and it’s all my fault!”
“That looked like a baby rattlesnake,” the driver calls back. We’re headed down the road in the Los Angeles traffic, and not going nearly as fast as the ambulance we probably should have called. “Aren’t they even more poisonous?”
“No,” someone else says. “That’s a myth. But they’re still definitely poisonous.”
I look down at Anna-Marie, who is pale and has sweat beading on her upper lip, which might be from the shock of the bite or the accident or the poison that is currently coursing through her system.
“I killed you,” I say, the horror of that thought paralyzing me. “Oh my god, I killed you, I’m so sorry, I—”
“You killed me?” Anna-Marie says. “Am I dead?” She’s collapsed against the window, her bitten leg propped up on the seat.
“I lost the snake in the car,” I say, almost like I’m pleading. “I had it detailed and I assumed it would have crawled out by now but—”
“You lost a snake in your car and then you let me drive it?” she shouts.
“I forgot,” I say. “I’ve been driving it.”
This only seems to make it worse. “You’ve been driving it and you could have got bit and killed!”
“And then I let you drive it and get killed!” My eyes are starting to burn.
“Dude,” leather jacket guy says. “Maybe you should use a tourniquet.”
“Then she’ll lose her leg!” the driver shouts.
“Will it save my life?” Anna-Marie yells back. “Because I could lose a leg to save my life.” She’s nodding, like she’s trying to convince herself. “Is this like a 127 Hours situation? Because if James Franco can do it, then I sure as hell can—”
“Google says no tourniquet!” someone shouts.
“Why are you dressed like that?” a teenage girl asks.
Oh, god. We look like actors. Someone already knows Anna-Marie from the soap. All around us, people are looking confused, like they think they may have had their bus commandeered by some kind of performance art troupe.