I said, “Glurg.”

My hand slipped off the wheel. Meg hit the accelerator in alarm. With Reyna still half out of the cab, her greyhounds howling furiously, our Chevy veered across the ramp and crashed straight through the guardrail. Lucky me. Once again, I went flying off an East Bay highway in a car that couldn’t fly.

***

The Tyrant’s Tomb, Chapter 31

***

MY SON ASCLEPIUS ONCE explained the purpose of physical shock to me.

He said it’s a safety mechanism for coping with trauma. When the human brain experiences something too violent and frightening to process, it just stops recording. Minutes, hours, even days can be a complete blank in the victim’s memory.

Perhaps this explained why I had no recollection of the Chevy crashing. After hurtling through the guardrail, the next thing I remembered was stumbling around the parking lot of a Target store, pushing a three-wheeled shopping cart filled with Meg. I was muttering the lyrics to “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay.” Meg, semiconscious, was listlessly waving one hand, trying to conduct.

My cart bumped into a steaming crumpled heap of metal—a red Chevy Silverado with its tires popped, its windshield broken, and its air bags deployed. Some inconsiderate driver had plummeted from the heavens and landed right on top of the cart return, smashing a dozen shopping carts beneath the weight of the pickup.

Who would do such a thing?

Wait…

***

The Tyrant’s Tomb, Chapter 32