They continued to travel north in heavy traffic. People were getting a head start on Memorial Day weekend. She hoped it would make them even harder to spot.
The orderly procession along the highway produced an illusion of normality, and the late afternoon sunshine made her sleepy. She sipped her black cherry Gatorade and chewed her lip as she thought through what she and Michael had discussed.
The Deceiver could have been in touch with his various police contacts by cell within minutes of leaving the cabin. It was logical to assume he had, so she had to believe they were now fugitives from the police. Did he have enough political clout to get the authorities to put an APB out on them?
He aspired to take the Presidency, so if she were a betting fool, she would bet yes, he did have that kind of clout. Their continued freedom might hinge on whether or not a police cruiser sighted their vehicle, which was why Michael couldn’t let himself fully relax.
She gritted her teeth and put it out of her mind. There was nothing she could do about it. She had to concentrate on handling the challenges right in front of her. She just hoped that the null space that Michael was projecting . . . that strange energy coming from his lax body . . .
Her mind slid away again. What was she thinking? She just hoped the heavy traffic helped to camouflage them somewhat from their pursuers.
How had the Deceiver found Michael’s cabin? What had given them away? Would they ever find out? If they didn’t know how they had been discovered, how could they prevent it from happening again? How could they ever stop moving, even when they reached Astra?
Despair threatened to engulf her. They were already tired and wounded, and now they were fighting to meet up with an old woman who looked like she was at death’s door. What if all three of them became fugitives?
She realized this was the first time she’d had to think in private since she had escaped from her would-be kidnappers a few days ago in northern Indiana. First she had been too shocked to absorb the enormity of what was happening. Then Michael had found her, and events had hurtled forward at a breakneck pace.
A few days ago, she had been a different person, a person who questioned herself but did not think to question the reality she lived in. That Mary Byrne had suffered from disturbing dreams and the stress of knowing that in some fugitive, mysterious way she did not fit into her life.
That Mary had argued with her ex-husband and worried about losing her own sanity. She had bought a chocolate shake and had left town for an afternoon’s outing. When her concept of reality had undertaken a radical, irreversible shift, so too had her sense of self, and that Mary Byrne had died.
As she had described once to Michael, she felt like she had lived in some kind of painting all her life. The painting had so much color and detail, it seemed as if it should have made sense, should have been real. But then somebody either smashed the frame or she had fallen out, and she couldn’t go back to live there any longer. The painting was two-dimensional, and she didn’t fit, but she barely understood this new reality either, or how to survive in it.
Or maybe she, like the painting, had been a two-dimensional creation, more illusion and memory and the reflection of other people’s expectations than reality. Some aspects of her core nature lingered. She had an innate gentleness, her moral code, her artistic appreciation and healing abilities, but all her illusions had burned away. Michael had described her as being “bent.” She thought of herself as crippled, not quite twisted into an aberrant existence, quietly subsisting as a shadow of her true self.
She thought of the shabby little house she had rented, her ivory tower, now burned to the ground by the Deceiver. All of the minutiae that had comprised her earlier human life, the mementoes and photographs from her family, her quilts and paintings and clothes, had been destroyed.
It would be a lie to say she didn’t feel a twinge of loss, because she did, but she realized that the loss of her home would have hit her former self, the shadow Mary, much harder. She had lost a home but had regained her health and sense of identity, along with a strange heritage that might be terrible, but it was also powerful and real, and it was hers.
They could never go home again. (And she realized, even as she thought it, after all this time she still called the other alien place “home.”) So gradually through the millennia they became more humanlike.
The times they forgot who they once were, they dreamed of human things, desires and ambitions, of satisfying work, a loving marriage, raising children and living peaceful lives. But even while they dreamed, they were troubled because they knew somewhere in their hearts that those dreams weren’t real. Then they woke again and realized who they were. But they still remembered they had dreamed.
Then she thought, No.
In that line of thinking, she was inventing a community that did not exist. Perhaps it had at one point in the distant past. But of the original seven who had pursued the Deceiver to Earth, four of them were gone forever. Astra never forgot who she was, and the Deceiver stole human lives in order to remember his past.
And Michael had just admitted that nothing had seemed real before he met Astra. His sense of unreality had to stem in part from her long disappearance, but she couldn’t have been the only reason. He must feel that way in part because he didn’t feel human.
So she was talking only about herself.
She was the one who dreamed those human dreams. She kept going back in memory to her life nine hundred years ago, because she remembered living for too brief a time in a way that allowed her to celebrate and explore the two aspects of her identity, both the alien and the human, with people who loved and accepted her. Their lives had been gracious gifts imbued with hearth and magic and mystery. They had understood that about themselves, about each other and their world.
She realized how much she missed those people. They had been her family, and they had died so long ago she didn’t even know where their graves were.
An ache settled deep under her ribs. She rubbed her face. Then she set the thought of them aside as gently as if she had been handling an old, fragile photo album and concentrated on moving toward her future.
Chapter Five
THE HIGHWAY UNFURLED in a long, winding ribbon that lay across a rolling wooded landscape, like an endless snake that encircled the world. The wooded landscape was interspersed with patches of sunlit farmland filled with fruit orchards and fields of golden grain dotted with giant bales of hay.
It wasn’t long before Mary held on to the steering wheel and her concentration as she fought a combination of hunger and exhaustion. Every dip and curve in the road felt exaggerated. Dizziness was never far away. She kept her silence and kept driving.
Every mile she drove gave Michael a chance for more rest. She wanted to give him all the recovery time she could. She had no illusions about herself. She had gotten very lucky in her morning confrontation with the Deceiver. Michael was far more valuable in a fight.
Finally she came upon a stretch of landscape she recognized. The highway was dotted with intermittent clusters of neighborhoods, restaurants, various strip malls and antique stores. She guessed they were a half hour away from downtown Petoskey. She placed a reluctant hand on Michael’s knee.
He straightened instantly. His large, warm hand, having never left the back of her neck, pressed against her skin. She sensed him scanning her, body and spirit, in a skillful, comprehensive sweep even as his light, sharp gaze took in the passing scenery.
“You know, you could just ask me how I’m doing,” she said. She was glad she could talk to him again, glad to be doing anything different from driving in silence and getting sleepier.
He gave her a skeptical look. “How are you doing?”
She said strongly, “I’m fine.”
His eyes narrowed. “Sure you are. You’re also exhausted and faint from hunger. I think my scan gave me more accurate details, don’t you?
”
She scowled. “Like you couldn’t deduce any of that anyway.”
She felt his fingers curl around her short, thick braid. He gave it a gentle tug, then turned his attention to the road. “I like to see things for myself. I also want you to turn off the highway as soon as you can.”
“All right.” She eased off the gas pedal and started watching for intersections. “What road do you want me to take?”
“The next one.” He pointed. “Turn right, into that neighborhood.”
As she complied, she noted the painted wood sign at the corner of the road that read Lakeshore Estates. The road they turned onto was named Seahorse Drive.
It was cute. She wasn’t in the mood for cute.
“Drive slow,” he told her.
“Okay.” She slowed the car to a crawl.
They passed by large homes with well-kept yards. Late afternoon was turning into early evening. Children played and rode their bikes, sprinkler systems flung water in wide sparkling arcs and people mowed their lawns. She rolled down her window. The smell of fresh-cut grass filled the car. Someone was barbecuing. The smell of roasting meat wafted into the car. Her empty stomach rumbled in miserable response.
She started talking to take her mind off her fatigue and hunger. “What are we doing here? If we had been getting close to Astra, you would have said something, wouldn’t you? What am I saying, you don’t speak unless you absolutely have to. Astra doesn’t live in the suburbs, does she? Or maybe a middle-class lifestyle would be the perfect place for her to camouflage herself and hang out, but for some reason I expected something different. You know, this car doesn’t look like much, but it handles like a dream. I thought you said we needed to change vehicles.”
“Okay, chatterbox,” he said, sounding amused. “You see where this road curves left and you can exit out of the development? Humor me, and follow that.”
She turned and came to a stop sign at a three-way intersection. As she paused, both she and Michael looked in either direction.
They had come to a two-lane county road, appropriately named Orchard Road, as it bordered a large orchard filled with cherry trees. Turning left on Orchard Road would take them back to Highway 131. While she was mystified at Michael’s directions, she wasn’t surprised when he told her to turn left and continue slowly.
She glanced at the orchard, now on her right, while Michael stared at the houses lining the left-hand side of the road. “I like this better than inside the development,” she said. “It’s more quiet and secluded. It would be nice to look out your front window and see the orchard all year-round. I bet the scene is pretty in the wintertime. Why won’t you answer any of my questions?”
“I’m busy,” he said. “I can talk in a minute. Pull into the driveway here, two driveways up ahead.”
Mister Enigmatic was busy? Doing what? She frowned at him.
She pulled into the driveway of a pleasant-looking, two-story house with a wide yard shaded by several mature maple trees. Relieved that they had left the busy highway and she could stop driving for a few minutes, she put the car in park and let the engine idle.
While Michael stared with a fixed gaze at the garage door in front of them, she let her head fall back on the rest and relaxed. Tiredness rose to blanket her in gray fuzz.
“Okay,” he said. “The people who live here aren’t home. They don’t have dogs and there’s an SUV in the garage. We’re going to take fifteen minutes, use the bathroom and clean up, see if they have food and I’ll hot-wire their SUV.”
She swiveled to stare at him. He could scan buildings for people and pets—and vehicles? She looked at the garage door and saw the shadow of a large vehicle through a narrow shoulder-high row of windows. Well, okay, that part seemed obvious. Apparently he just scanned for people and pets.
“We can’t steal from these people,” she said.
He gave her a blank look. “Why not?”
Why not? She bit her lip, then spoke as though to a four-year-old. Or to an alien. “Because it’s wrong.”
“We have to.” He still looked blank. He looked as if he might be the one talking to the four-year-old, and he wasn’t sure how to do it. “I agree with what you said earlier. We have to assume that the police are hunting for us, and that they’ve got a description of this car and the license plates. We have to switch vehicles, but we can’t rent one. Car rentals will be one of the first places they check. We need sustenance, yet we have to avoid public places. Our choices are limited.”
“But. . . .” Her forehead wrinkled. She wanted to find fault in his logic, but she couldn’t.
His grim expression gentled. “They’re going to have a bad day. They’ll feel violated. They’ll have to deal with police statements and insurance companies, and if they haven’t got one already, they’ll probably decide to install an alarm system. They might miss a day or two of work, and they’re going to tell their friends all about it, and suck up all the sympathy they can get. They might even start a Neighborhood Watch group. And we still have to do it.”
“All right.” She blew out a breath and rubbed the back of her neck. “I don’t have to like it. And it’s still wrong.”
“Compared to what we’re facing, it’s not that big of a deal. They’ll think it is, of course, but we know better. Besides, if everything goes well we won’t have to borrow their car for long. We can leave it somewhere public for the police to find.” His tone turned brisk. “We can’t sit here all day. We’re going to walk to the front door as though we have every right to be here. Ready?”
No. She scowled. “Yes.”
She climbed out when he did, watching as he limped around the front of the car. He looked down at her set expression, sighed and gestured for her to walk ahead of him to the door. “If any of the neighbors come over, let me do the talking, okay?”
She nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak to anybody, not even to him. She understood everything he had said. She even agreed, which was why she was walking to the house with him.
Compared with the horrors she had faced over the last forty-eight hours, stealing someone’s car and breaking into their house wasn’t that big of a disaster. Michael was right. The people would have a bad time and they would get over it.
Her problem was that the pragmatic part of her head and the emotional part weren’t speaking to each other.
She had gone from being Miss Petulant to Miss Criminal.
She growled under her breath as she hovered at Michael’s side. He pulled a couple of thin tools from his wallet and picked the lock on the front door. Then he pushed the door open and stood back to let her walk in.
She looked down at the threshold. Lift up your foot, dammit, she told herself. Step inside. She whispered, “You’re sure nobody’s home?”
“Positive.” He put a hand to the small of her back and propelled her into the house. Then he shut the door behind him and locked it. He went to the front window and drew the curtains shut. “You take the bathroom first. Take a shower if you feel you need to, but be quick. You’ve got five minutes. I’ll check out the kitchen.”
She stood frozen inside the doorway. Her gaze swept around the living room. The house was clean, and the furniture looked comfortable and sturdy. She smelled a floral scent and also a hint of lemon, perhaps furniture polish. Her gaze snagged on a large photo collection on one wall.
Several antique photographs graced one section. The rest were more modern. She saw a smiling couple somewhere in their midfifties on a cruise ship, three wedding photos of younger couples, family portraits, candid snapshots of children and a formal photograph of a woman in uniform.
Those pictures told the story of their lives.
This house was the older couple’s home. Their children grew up here. Their grandchildren loved to visit Nana’s house. The family celebrated holidays here. Judging by the beams on everyone’s faces
, they were clearly overjoyed when the woman in the uniform came home for Christmas.
Mary’s chest felt tight and hot. What was this? She pressed a hand to her breastbone. It took a couple heartbeats for her to realize she felt a crazy kind of love for this unknown family, a frustrated sense of protectiveness and deep regret.
They were so normal, she thought. And we don’t belong here.
We never did.
“Mary.” The intensity in Michael’s voice broke through her reverie. She shook herself and looked at him. He was a troubling incongruity in the placid peacefulness of the living room, a tough, strongly built man with red-flecked bandages on his muscled chest and arms, his hard-angled face grim with shadows. “It will be far worse on these people if they come home before we get out of here. Hurry.”
Her imagination galloped off with that idea and the results weren’t pretty. She gave him an agonized nod and raced up the stairs.
She found four bedrooms and a hall bathroom. The master bedroom probably had an en suite bathroom, but she kept to the hall bath. She felt like enough of an intruder already.
She used the toilet and gave the bathtub and showerhead a longing glance. So much had happened since her bath at the cabin. She felt filthy. Her jeans had stains from dirt, grass and flecks of blood. But no matter how much she wanted to bathe, she couldn’t make herself strip in this strange family’s home.
There was no point in indulging in too much of a freak-out, or in overanalyzing things. She found a washcloth and scrubbed at her face, neck, arms and torso with cool water and a bar of scented soap. The wash was not as satisfying as a shower, but it was refreshing and helped her to wake up.
She rushed downstairs again.
Michael stood at the open refrigerator door. He was packing food into plastic grocery bags. He gave her a keen glance. “Couldn’t stand to shower, huh?”
“Nope. I had a quick wash at the sink.” She gestured at the fridge. “You’d better go. I can take over that.”