Highway to Hell

  That's what clairvoyance is. My Gran calls it “the Sight,” but it's more than that. All my life I've had freakily accurate hunches, great intuition, even though I haven't always listened to it. Then last year, I started to sense things. It began with dreams of something stalking my classmates, and then I was seeing the thing in real life.

  After that, I paid attention to my intuition, and worked on focusing on those feelings. But last fall, my weirdness got a major boost when I met the sorority from Hell. I started getting flashes when I touched things. Not just vision, but sound and smell and taste. Emotion, too. You know how you can tell your parents stopped arguing right before you came into the room? Like that, times a thousand.

  I thought it might go away after Lisa, Justin, and I dealt with that particular baddie. But the sensory flashes seemed to be a permanent development. Mostly I pick up little things-moods, recent events—and usually it isn't intrusive. I can tell when the barista who hands me my coffee has had a fight with her boyfriend. I know who's calling me without looking at the caller ID. But this was the first time since December that something had, literally, knocked me on my butt.

  So, needless to say, I was almost more shaken up than I was grossed out.

  Lisa started back toward the Jeep. I fell in alongside, keeping a careful distance from the carcass. “I'm an idiot. I know.”

  She stopped, facing me with her hands on her hips. “You knew it didn't die peacefully. What did you think would happen when you touched it?”

  I shot her a cranky glare and sank into the passenger seat. “Tell me again why we're friends?”

  “Who else is going to tell you, ‘Don't poke the dead cow, Maggie, because you might get a vision of its horrible and vio-lent death’?”

  A shiver ran through me, like my body was trying to shake off the image. “It was awful. So many teeth.”

  She paused, maybe picking up on my disquiet but not ready to ask. “Probably a coyote.”

  That was how we were going to play it. Lisa rejected my unspoken suggestion that this was something … other than normal. I let it go, for now. Middle of the night, middle of nowhere—we had plenty to worry about without my adding the eerie to the mix.

  “Probably so,” I said, and tried to sound convinced.

  Lisa picked up the flashlight she'd set aside. “I'd better go put up the flares. Stay here and don't touch anything else.”

  “Yes, ma'am.” I saluted her Roman-centurion style and she went back to business. I sat in the dark, slapping mosquitoes and jumping at the unfamiliar noises of the wilderness.

  My arm ached, and I rubbed the knotted muscles along the ridge of the scar. I used to think of myself as two people. Logical Maggie: honors student, journalism club, yearbook photographer. Nothing weird there, except maybe my obsession with science fiction movies. Freaky Maggie had stayed nicely compartmentalized until I'd needed her.

  But try finding out that the natural world, all that stuff you learn in physical science, is only part of the picture. There's this whole other stratum of super natural reality, with its own rules, that the rest of the world has no clue about.

  If my experiences last fall had done anything permanent to me—other than the damage to my right arm—it was that I'd been forced to integrate the parts of my self. Freaky had to work with Logic, or I was going to wind up dead. Worse, people I loved would be hurt. You can't come back from that.

  Which meant that I could pretend for a little while that I believed that we were only dealing with coyotes, but I couldn't entirely let it go.

  “Car!”

  I jolted out of a not-quite-doze, glimpsing Lisa's back as she swung out of the Jeep. It took me longer to untangle my brain and my legs. By the time I joined her on the road, she was waving the flashlight in the direction of an oncoming vehicle.

  “ What are we going to do if it's an axe murderer?”

  Lisa kept her gaze on the rapidly approaching headlights. “You can always go up and touch him and see what you See.”

  I eyed her profile. “Do we not have enough on our plate without a side of sarcasm?”

  The grille of a large pickup stopped in front of the bovine roadblock, motor churning down to a throaty idle. The door opened, and boots hit the asphalt with a crunch.

  It was hard to make out details of the guy, backlit by the truck's headlights. Mostly just a silhouette, tall and whipcord lean. Low at his waist was the gleam of one of those plate-sized silver belt buckles. He set his fists on his hips and whistled.

  “Daaaaaang.” One syllable, stretched long. “This is some mess. You girls all right?”

  Lisa glanced a question at me, and I shrugged. I wasn't sensing a threat, but I wasn't ready to commit myself.

  “Ladies?” Cowboy Joe repeated, sounding more concerned. “You okay?”

  “We're fine,” I said, appointing myself spokesperson. “But our Jeep isn't going anywhere.”

  “Dead as this heifer, huh?” He circled the carcass with a don't-you-worry-little-lady amble. I saw Lisa's left eyebrow climb, and knew she was thinking something sarcastic, so I jumped in before she could speak it aloud.

  “I think the gas tank was sort of … gored.” I swatted a mosquito that hadn't heard from his friends that I'd already been bled dry.

  “What happened?” he asked, heading toward the Jeep.

  “The cow was lying in the road like that. We went over the top of it.”

  “You're lucky you didn't roll over.” He crouched to look underneath the car, which gave us an excellent view of the back of his jeans as he bent over. I caught Lisa checking him out, her other eyebrow shooting up to join the first. Not so sarcastic now.

  Since I have a boyfriend, my interest in his Wranglers was purely aesthetic. I swear.

  He stood and dusted off his hands. As he turned, I got my first look at his face. Tanned skin over sculpted cheekbones, deep-set dark eyes, tidily cropped black hair. He wasn't obviously Hispanic or Native American, but he was definitely the thoroughbred product of a nice mix of bloodlines.

  “I can't tell much in the dark, but it's a pretty sure bet …”

  He hesitated and Lisa finished for him. “That we're screwed?”

  “Something like that.”

  This was not news, but it was hard to hear. I felt light-years away from home. If I'd had even half a bar of signal on my phone, I would have called my mom. But she would just tell me not to be ridiculous. Sensible action, Maggie.

  “How close is the nearest town?” At least some part of my brain was functioning.

  “Well, Dulcina is not too much farther.” He pronounced it with the accent on the second syllable. Dul-SEE-na.

  I imagined “not too much farther” could be anything up to fifty miles. “Is there a garage that can send a tow truck?”

  Thumbs hooked in his belt, Cowboy Joe considered the question. “There's a garage of sorts. Buck usually takes care of tractors, flat tires, that sort of thing. It's a start.”

  “We couldn't get a cell phone signal.” I pulled my phone from my pocket to check again.

  “All kinds of dead spots along this highway.” He glanced at his watch. “You don't want to call now anyway. Wake Buck up and he'll charge you an arm and a leg.”

  “So what do we want to do?” Lisa asked, arms folded, hip cocked to the side. “Besides get out of this dead spot in the road.”

  The guy snuck an up-and-down look at her, which she neither missed nor appreciated. The corners of her mouth tucked in displeasure, but I thought it served her right. Not to mention, I should hold up so well to scrutiny. Lisa was tall and slim, and with her long chestnut hair pulled back, you could see her pretty face and unusual gray eyes.

  I'm not saying I'm a dog. I'm short, and with my pointed chin and turned-up nose, I suppose pixie comparisons are inevitable. I get called cute a lot, which isn't a bad thing to be. I prefer to think of my beauty as idiosyncratic, like my personality.

  Our knight in shining denim answered Lisa's question withou
t acknowledging her sarcasm. “Why don't I take you to Dulcina. You can get a room for what's left of the night. Your Jeep is already off on the shoulder. We'll call the state troopers and report the accident, and you can get Buck out here first thing in the morning.”

  This was an extremely sensible plan, except for the get-into-a-car-with-a-perfect-stranger part. But fortunately I was equipped to deal with that.

  “Thanks.” I wiped my fingers on my shorts to make sure there wasn't any more cow blood on them. “I'm Maggie, by the way.”

  “I'm Zeke.” He stepped forward and grasped my offered hand without hesitation.

  Zeke was the smell of hay and the sweat of hard work, the silky coat of a dog with one brown eye and one blue, the tang of beer with lime, and spicy enchiladas every Sunday with his grandmother.

  “Thanks for the ride,” I said, unable to stop a smile.

  “No problem.” He glanced at Lisa expectantly. She stopped goggling at me long enough to supply her name, too. “Nice to meet you both. Why don't you get whatever you need out of your car, lock it up, and I'll see what I can do about this.”

  Our eyes followed his gesture to the bovine remains. “What are you going to do?” asked Lisa. “It's too late for anything but a barbecue.”

  He didn't quite laugh. “I can't leave her in the middle of the road for the next car to run into. You two were lucky you weren't killed.”

  Lisa responded on a droll note. “Yeah. We live a charmed life.” She grabbed my good arm and tugged me toward the Jeep. “Come on, Mags.”

  “Stop pulling,” I hissed, letting the diesel engine of Zeke's truck cover our voices.

  “What is wrong with you?” Lisa's voice was a harsh whisper. “Did you learn nothing from the cow?”

  “But you said—”

  “I was joking!”

  I shrugged. “I figured if anything happened, you could turn him into a frog.”

  “Very funny.”

  Maybe not. But I didn't get to yank her chain very often. By the time I'd taken Zeke's hand, I'd felt pretty certain he wasn't a threat. Opening myself up to the psychic slideshow had been confirmation.

  It's not the same thing as reading minds. The hyper-intuition isn't an exact science, and neither is the touchy-vision thing. It's really more like a compass heading than a road map. But I'm pretty good at getting a read on someone's nature—what my best friend, in her D&D Lisa days, would call alignment: good, neutral, or evil.

  Unlike role-playing characters, most human beings are a mix of all these things—weighted, maybe, to one side or the other. I couldn't tell if Zeke was the kind of guy to cheat on his girlfriend, but I could see he wasn't the type to chop us into bits and feed us to his dog. So the situation wasn't as dire as it could be.

  A horrible scraping noise and the throaty roar of a diesel engine made me turn, as Zeke used the pickup to drag Old Bessie off the road and onto the shoulder, leaving a gory smear across the asphalt.

  Not that dire for us, anyway.

  3

  The blaring of my cell jolted me out of a deep sleep. Fumbling for the phone on the nightstand, I flipped it open without checking the caller ID. “Hey, Justin.”

  “You were supposed to text me when you got in.” The thin mobile connection didn't do justice to his voice, which was normally a warm and congenial baritone. It was neither of those things at the moment.

  “What?” My brain felt thick and gummy inside, which meant I'd been dreaming, even if I couldn't remember it yet. Slowly, the unfamiliar room, sandpaper sheets, and stale motel air worked their way through the fog.

  “When you got to South Padre.” At my befuddled silence Justin continued impatiently. “You were expecting to get there in time for breakfast? And you were going to let me know that your insane drive-all-night plan had not, against all probability, resulted in disaster?”

  Memory sharpened to a painful point between my eyes. The road, the cow, the wreck. My vision of flashing teeth, and the sharp-sweet tang of blood, thick in the air. The dream that had only confused me more.

  I sat up, head pounding. “What time is it?”

  “Eight-thirty. You sound awful.”

  “Headache.”

  “Where are you now?”

  I glanced around the motel room. Sunlight edged the drapes—a brown, orange, and gold floral hideousness that matched the bedspreads—and when I finally managed to focus on the second of the double beds, I found it empty. The bathroom door stood open. No sign of Lisa but her rumpled covers and open suitcase.

  “A town called Dulcina.”

  “Where is that?”

  “The edge of the world, I think.” I rubbed my forehead with my left hand, trying to massage out the ache. “You have to promise not to say ‘I told you so.’ ”

  A pause, so prolonged that I thought the call might have dropped. Finally he spoke, worry and displeasure vibrating through the network. “Just tell me what happened.”

  I told the abbreviated version: deserted highway, dead cow, wrecked Jeep, handsome stranger, cranky night manager at the Artesian Manor. Of course, I may have left out the word handsome, along with the details of the gore-o-vision.

  He didn't say anything about our getting in a stranger's car, blah blah blah serial killer, but cut to the important question. “So did you get a vibe on anything … weird?”

  Squeezing the bridge of my nose, I willed my thoughts into line. “Zeke—the rancher that rescued us—said a couple of coyotes could bring down a calf.”

  “But a full-grown cow?”

  I sighed, knowing I was at the end of my self-deception. “I don't know.”

  “Did you dream last night?” I'm the psychic one, but Justin has got decent intuition himself. We're a good team, because he's also as intellectual as Lisa, but not nearly as clinical.

  “Yeah. The details are still vague.” I sat up, swung my legs over the edge of the bed. No wonder I itched; my legs were polka-dotted with mosquito bites. “Maybe I'll remember more after I shower.”

  Justin made a grumbling sound. “Are you sure you're not hiding something from me?”

  “What could I be hiding? I don't know anything.” My reply was snappish, but psychic hangovers coupled with physical misery tend to make me a little cranky. “Sorry. You know how this works. I don't get all the answers. Just more questions.”

  Justin's sigh was deep, and not with contentment. “So, what are you going to do?”

  “Get the Jeep towed back here, I guess. Call the insurance people. Figure out what to tell my parents.”

  “I suggest the truth.”

  “Yeah. That'll be fun.” I changed the subject. “First I have to go find Lisa.”

  “Okay. Henry and I will be knocking around the campus, so I may not have my phone on. Just text me or leave a voice mail. I'll check messages.”

  “I'll keep you posted.” I knew I should let him go, but I felt the distance between us keenly, and wanted to hold on a moment longer. “So, how is the monastery?”

  “Seminary. Henry's only a pre-theology student.”

  “I was joking.” It depressed me that he didn't realize that, but then, phone connections don't transmit smart-aleck very well.

  “Oh.” He laughed, more at himself than at my questionable wit. “We went to an all-boys boarding school. This isn't that different, except that the conversation in the dorm isn't all about sports and girls. Not as much, anyway.”

  Justin's parents were doctors who had died overseas while working for a Catholic relief organization. The only other family he ever talked about—besides his best friend, Henry—was the bishop who became his guardian. Justin didn't discuss the details, but apparently it wasn't as Oliver Twist as it sounded. His parents had a good insurance policy, and the boarding school had given him a scholarship so he could save the money for college. But even so, losing your parents would suck.

  “Henry was glad to see you?”

  “Yeah.” There was a funny note to his laugh, sort of nostalgic, s
ort of not. “Seminary hasn't changed him as much as I thought it would.”

  “That's good, right?”

  “It is to me. Not sure how the Church will feel about it.”

  “He sounds like an interesting guy.”

  I said it offhand, without meaning anything by it. He answered the same way. “You'll meet him eventually.”

  “Great.” And then there wasn't anything else to say. My stomach was rumbling, but I waited in awkward silence, because I didn't know how to end the call. I'd never said the L word to Justin, not even casually. But the accident and the miles between us somehow made “See ya! Bye!” a little too cavalier. And “Care about ya! Bye!” was just ridiculous.

  “Maggie?” Justin's voice dropped to the warm rumble I knew well. “I'm really glad you weren't hurt.”

  I smiled and sat on the edge of the bed. My headache almost disappeared. Because his mouth might be saying, “I'm glad you're all right,” but everything else was saying those three little words.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Me too.”

  The wallpaper on my phone was of Justin, sitting on his sofa with a book in his lap, wearing worn jeans and a faded T-shirt. Normal college-guy uniform. His brown hair was short over his ears, his face clean-cut, but he had a crooked, roguish smile that took him from boy-next-door to boy-next-door-who-you-want-to-watch-mowing-the-yard-without-his-shirt-on-every-Saturday.

  Snapping the cell closed, I tossed it on the pillow. I needed coffee before my thoughts got really sappy.

  Hot water would help me think through my dream. Not to mention get rid of any lingering cow cooties. Only exhaustion had kept me from taking a shower when we'd checked in.

  Scratching absently at a mosquito bite, I looked for a note from Lisa, found none, and decided that she couldn't have traveled far without a car. Maybe she'd gone to find some breakfast. My stomach growled again at the thought.

  I grabbed my toiletry bag and some clean underwear out of my suitcase and headed for the bathroom, only to recoil when I saw my reflection in the vanity mirror. My hair stood up like a tornado had hit it, the dark brown against my pale skin making me look even more washed out than normal. Bloodshot eyes only enhanced my undead chic. Nice.