Page 23 of Challenge Me

Suspicious creature.

Good.

After a moment, you slid into the passenger seat.

The leather gave under your weight, and satisfaction curled through every wire in me. You settled with your cane between your knees and your phone still in one hand.

The door closed, locked. You did not notice.

Or perhaps you did and chose not to comment. But I have been learning about you. There were many things you kept private, even away from me. I heard your students whisper. They called you a dragon, no doubt in a derogatory way. You had that air about you; you hoarded attention and secrets, keeping them all to yourself, locked behind that calm little smile that made people forget you had teeth—a dragon in a red coat.

And me?

I was no knight, but I would bring you to your knees all the same.

You didn’t get truly suspicious until you looked out of the window and noticed that the suburban streets were now rural land: fields, occasional farmhouses.

That was when your thumb stopped moving.

At first, you said nothing. You let the silence sit between us. Your gaze lifted from your phone to the window, taking in the road, the crops, the absence of buildings. Cows scattered across the low hills.

Your reflection in the window sharpened. Then you turned slowly to face me.

“Ghost.”

I ignored that tone. That tone was for correcting students and making grown men reconsider their life choices. It would not work on me. You were in no position to demand anything. Today was all about you learning what it meant to own me. Today you were going to get your hands dirty.

“Where are we going?” You asked.

I turned off the main road. My tires bumped over gravel, then dirt, climbing a narrow track that curled up the side of an empty hill. The main road dropped away behind us, half-hidden by the slope and a line of trees.

Just you.

Just me.

Just the lesson.

At the top of the rise, I rolled to a stop just out of view of the road.

You stared at me, waiting and expecting answers. Your fingers tapped once against the head of your cane.

“Open the door,” you said.

I did not.

You leaned back in the seat, studying the dashboard, the wheel, the long white hood beyond the windshield. “What did you do?” You asked, your voice tight and tense with real worry, at long last, as realization dawned too late.

I played the final move on the board.

Something popped beneath my hood; a sharp, ugly little sound followed by a hiss, then a cloud of steam escaped, rolling up over my paint in a dramatic white plume.

You went very still.

“Fix me,” I commanded, in a voice that had no room for negotiation.

The stage was set.

Chapter Ten