Free The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness

just the ends of driveways leading into thickets of trees. And why should I feel like I’m trespassing anyway? It’s
my
phone.
    The tarp’s tied on pretty tight with a nylon rope. I walk around the wreck, trying to find a weak spot. The driver’s side door wouldn’t close properly after they pried it open, and the ropes are looser there. A flap of the tarp lifts right up. I duck down and look inside. The roof is sheared nearly all the way off, so it’s like looking into a convertible with the top down. Covered in a tarp.
    The deer smell is
much
stronger here, and the trapped heat makes it even worse. There’s a kind of tunnel across the driver’s seat past the broken steering wheel. I can’t fit to crawl all the way in, but I think I can lean in far enough to feel around.
    I start to worm my way in, breathing through my mouth, trying not to inhale hot rotting deer. My ribs ache at the tight fit, but I make it far enough to reach down to the passenger’s side floor. It’s not the same shape it used to be; it’s shorter, rounder, no longer any places to put your feet.
    “Hah!” I say, my fingertips finding my phone. I pull it out between two fingers and look at it there, still stretched across the seat. The glass on the front is cracked, but I manage to turn it on and get a few seconds of display out of it before the battery dies. At least it worked.
    The smell of deer is getting worse, so I start to pull myself gently out of the car–
    Which is when everything lights up. The sun is shining, but this is way more than that. Every shadow under the tarp disappears, bathed in blue. I can see the head of the deer pressing on the back of the passenger’s seat. I can see the metallic eyes of the flies crawling over the deer’s skin. Then the light gets even brighter, so much I actually have to squint against it.
    All I can think of is the pillar of light we saw from the Field right after indie kid Finn ran past us.
    Indie kid Finn who turned up dead.
    I’m afraid to get out from under the tarp.
    I’m afraid to
not
get out from under the tarp.
    But then it stops. The light drops so fast I’m blinded for a second and have to blink to see again in the normal shadowy, tarp-covered sunlight.
    I listen. It’s silent.
    And then it’s not silent.
    There’s a sound. Nearby. One that wasn’t there before.
    Something’s breathing.
    It’s the deer. It’s the freakin’
deer
. I see its head move and a wet, disgusting snuffle of breath comes out the end of its nose.
    I pretty much throw myself out of the car, tumbling back into the ditch, as the deer starts butting its short antlers against the tarp. The same antlers that scarred my cheek as the deer was flying
to
its death
. It bucks and jumps, until most of the tarp slips off the back.
    And there it is. Standing in Henna’s car.
    Its neck is obviously broken, so are its legs, but it stands on them, seemingly without pain. It shakes the flies from its hide, and I can hear a horrible
snap
as its neck, mostly, rights itself. Then it looks down at me.
    Its eyes glow blue, actually
glow
, and on my back in a soggy ditch as it stands over me, it’s pretty much all I can do not to wet myself.
    Then it looks past me, into the woods from where all the deer came that night. It leaps gingerly, gracefully, out of the car, over the ditch, and onto the ground. Its legs are nightmarish, no
way
they should be able to support its weight.
    But they do. And with a snort, it heads off into the trees, disappearing from sight.

C HAPTER T HE E IGHTH ,
in which Satchel, Dylan and second indie kid Finn throw themselves into research in the library, trying to find any mention of the Immortals; later that week, at Kerouac’s funeral, Satchel’s parents hug her and give her space to grieve; meanwhile, the Court of the Immortals, unable to live in this world for more than brief periods, begins its search for permanent Vessels in earnest; they find Satchel’s uncle, passed out in his police