“Are you going to tell them I was here?”
“I won’t have to,” said Abigail sadly. “Someone else will. It’s inevitable. They’re already looking for your car. A black Dodge Charger. That’s a car that sticks in the memory.”
“Can you help me?”
Abigail’s smile was impish. “Help you how?”
“Could you … could you stop them for me?”
“You mean … kill them? You want me to kill your parents and their friends? But … but I’m just a little girl. What could I possibly do against big, bad monsters like that?”
“I don’t want to kill them, I don’t, I just … I want …”
“I’m not in the monster-stopping business, I’m afraid. But I will do you one favour. When they ask where you’ve gone, I’ll pretend I don’t know.”
Amber frowned. “But you don’t know.”
That smile again. “Oh, Amber, I know everything.”
Amber left The Dark Stair, found Milo and Glen waiting outside.
“She says my parents are back on our trail, and they know the car.”
Milo nodded. “To be expected. Come on, then. No more detours.”
“So,” Glen said, chewing his lip, “here is where we part ways, huh?”
Milo said, “Bye,” and walked to the Charger.
“Bye?” said Glen. “Bye? That’s all I get, after everything we’ve been through?”
“Yep,” said Milo.
Glen turned to Amber. “What if there is no bye? What if I didn’t have to go?”
“But you do,” said Amber. “You don’t have the Deathmark anymore. You can go home.”
“I don’t have a home,” said Glen. “My dad is dead. Everyone else despises me.”
“Then explore America.”
“I want to,” he said. “With you.”
“Glen …”
“Now just wait, Amber, okay? Yeah, there are times when we’ve butted heads, all three of us, but that’s what makes us a great team. We each contribute. You’re the brain. Milo’s the muscle. Me? I’m the heart.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Then I’m the soul.”
“You’re not the soul.”
He frowned. “Then what am I? I’ll be anything.”
“You can be the appendix,” said Milo.
“Then I’ll be the appendix!”
“The appendix is a completely useless part of the colon.”
“Whatever!” Glen cried. “I’ll be the nose! I’ll be the nose of this team! But I do contribute, you can’t deny that. I helped against Shanks, didn’t I?”
“Kind of,” said Amber. “But Milo and me, we have to continue on this road. You don’t. You can stop.”
“I don’t want to stop. I want to help. Please, Amber. I’ve never belonged anywhere before. Let me belong.”
She looked over his shoulder at Milo.
“Don’t look at him,” said Glen. “He’ll only shake his head. He’s probably shaking his head right now, isn’t he?”
She paused. “He’s not not shaking it.”
“I know you’re shaking your head, Milo!”
“I want you to know that,” Milo responded, sounding bored.
“Amber, please,” said Glen. “We have something, don’t we?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You and me. We have a connection. You feel it, too, I know you do. Especially … especially when you change. Especially when you get horny.”
“Do not call it that.”
“You can’t abandon me,” said Glen. “Ever think that maybe when we met it was meant to be? Fate has thrown us together, Amber. The universe has decided that we are to be a part of each other’s lives from this moment on.”
“But why does the universe hate me?”
“Amber, I’m asking you to let me help you on your quest. Let me help you stay ahead of your parents. If anything happened to you, Amber, anything that I could have prevented, I’d never be able to live with myself.”
“Now you know how we feel,” said Milo.
Glen ignored him. “You need all the help you can get. Don’t try to deny it. I don’t know why you’re even listening to Milo’s opinion. You’re paying him to be here, but me? I’m here for free. I’m here because I care. We are a well-oiled machine, and do you know what we’ve been built for? Stopping you from being eaten. That’s it. That’s our purpose. That’s my purpose. Don’t deny me my purpose, Amber. Don’t do it.”
She sighed. “Fine.”
His eyes widened. “Really?”
“Sure.”
“Thank you! You will not regret it!”
“I better not.”
“What was it that changed your mind? The team bit? The part about the well-oiled machine?”
“Mostly it was how pathetic you sounded.”
“That’ll work for me!”
“But don’t call it a quest.”
“Absolutely.” He turned. “Hear that, Milo? I’m coming with you.”
Milo ignored him and got in the car.
THEY LEFT SALT LAKE CITY and drove through a wide expanse of nothing. Mailboxes stood at the mouths of dirt trails that branched off from the road, trails that led to not much more than the rusted corpses of propane tanks and farm machinery. They passed a three-storey house that rose above the scattering of trailer homes around it, and a construction yard that had become a cemetery for old cars.
They drove until the flatness developed some hills. Amber preferred that. There was something so vastly empty about a featureless horizon, like they could drive and drive and the horizon would just fall away. There were moments when the earth seemed flat, and they were hurtling right to the nearest edge. Hills were good. Even the smallest and slightest of hills blocked her view of whatever lay beyond the next bend, allowing her some degree of hope. There was a certain kind of comfort in ignorance.
They got to a truck stop outside of Boise, Idaho, and Amber had a grilled ham and cheese sandwich and fries. She endured Glen talking about how everything in America came with fries – even when you didn’t order them – and then they drove on for another two hours. They reached a small motel in Baker City with only two free rooms available. Milo decided to spend the night in the car and wouldn’t change his mind, and they were on the road again before seven the next morning.
A little after midday on Saturday, their destination crept up on them. First there was nothing but trees rising up on either side, Douglas firs and red cedars mostly. The valley deepened, and there was a flower bed on a grass shoulder with a circular sign informing them that they were now entering Cascade Falls, and that the population was 9,243. A smaller sign beside that told them this was a Tree City USA. The first building they passed on their right was a nice-looking bar and restaurant – the first on their left was an Econ-o-Wash. They passed a feed and supply store, a used car lot, a drugstore, the Cascade Falls Heritage Centre, and a grand old hotel that stood tall and proud, looking out over the town.
“We’ll stay here tonight,” said Amber.
Milo nodded. His face was lined with tiredness, even though his eyes were bright. They parked in the front lot and got out. Amber and Glen eased the stiffness from their spines. Milo didn’t have to.
They passed through the stone archway into the foyer. Lots of dark wood and old paintings. The woman behind the desk smiled. “Welcome to the Varga Hotel. My name is Ingrid. Do you have reservations?”
“We don’t,” said Milo. “Is that all right? Would you have three rooms for us?”
“You may be in luck.” The smile stayed in place, like fresh flowers at a graveside, while Ingrid checked the outdated computer before her. “You’re in luck,” she said. “We do indeed have three rooms available. How long will you be requiring them for?”
“Tonight to start with,” said Amber. “We may need them tomorrow night, but hopefully not.”
Ingrid nodded. “Very well. But please do let us know at your earliest convenience, to make
sure we can keep them for you if there’s a sudden rush. Please fill out these forms.” She slid them each a card and provided them with pens. “Have you been to Cascade Falls before?”
“First time.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll love it,” Ingrid said as they wrote and lied. “We have a surprisingly diverse community. I know the town looks white bread through and through, but we have so many different cultures and people – it’s a real American town, that’s what my grandmother used to say. I was born here, you know.”
“That so?” Milo asked.
“Born and raised,” said Ingrid. “I moved away when I was twenty, got married and started a family in Boston. I liked it well enough, but I came back here for a weekend to visit my folks and realised I never wanted to leave again. I let go of my husband and my kids and all my stuff. I didn’t need it. Didn’t need any of it. Everything I needed was right here. This is a wonderful town. The people are lovely. Wait till you meet Mr Varga. He owns the hotel. You’ll love him. Everyone does.”
Her eyes had glazed over while she was talking, and her smile had stretched so wide Amber thought her skin might tear.
“We’re actually looking for someone,” Amber said, her voice cutting through whatever daze Ingrid was sinking into. “Gregory Buxton. Do you know him?”
Ingrid blinked, took a moment to process the question, then shook her head. “Sorry, I don’t. I know an Althea Buxton, though. She’s a nice old lady. Maybe she’s related?”
“Maybe,” said Milo. “She live around here?”
“Over on Bleeker Street. My mom and her used to be friends. Then she got all religious. Or maybe she was always religious. Althea, I’m talking about, not my mom. You’d never find my mom in church. She never had any time for organised religion, said it was all a big scam. Of course, she was visiting psychics every week and forking over most of her disability allowance, and if anything is a scam it’s those crooks. She passed away two years ago. My mom, that is, not Althea.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Milo.
“Thank you. Taken before her time, that’s what everyone said. The Saturday after she died, one of the psychics she saw regularly called the house and asked why she’d missed her appointment. I said you can’t be a very good psychic if you didn’t see this coming. Know what she did? She offered her services as a medium at a reduced rate. I told her to go to hell, and hung up the phone.”
“Nothing but vultures,” said Milo.
Ingrid nodded. “That’s what I said. I told Mr Varga about it and that’s the exact word I used. I said she was a vulture. Mr Varga agreed with me. He’s a very smart man, and he’s been around the world, not just to Boston, like me. He knows a thing or two.”
By this time, they’d all slid their cards back to her, and she scooped them up and placed then carefully into a narrow wooden box. She took three keys from the board behind her and handed them over.
“You’re all on the second floor,” she said. “Dinner is served from seven till ten, but, if you aim to be in the dining room at eight, you might even get a visit from Mr Varga himself.”
“Well, that’d be lovely,” said Milo, and smiled.
They dropped their bags in their rooms – Amber’s had a four-poster bed and a heavy dresser with a huge mirror – and got back into the Charger. They drove to Bleeker Street, a pleasant road in a pleasant neighbourhood, up the hill slightly from a church. They found the house with Buxton on the mailbox and knocked on the door.
An elderly black woman answered, dressed in a bathrobe and slippers with a cross around her neck.
Amber smiled. “Althea Buxton?”
“Who are you?”
“Mrs Buxton, my name is—”
“What do you want?”
“We were hoping to—”
“What’s this about? Who sent you?”
“Uh, no one sent us.”
“I’m not going to invite you in.”
“That’s quite all right,” said Amber. “We’re looking for your son, actually. Is he around?”
“My son passed away.”
Amber frowned. “It is Gregory Buxton we’re looking for.”
“I know who my son is,” Althea snapped. “I only had one of them, and he passed, ten years or more. He’s gone now and that’s that. I can’t help you.”
She stepped back, and closed the door firmly, the sound coinciding perfectly with the plummeting of Amber’s heart.
“That’s it, then,” she said dully. “It’s over. He’s dead. I have nothing to offer the Shining Demon. My parents will keep chasing me until they … they …”
Milo walked back to the car. “He’s not dead,” he said.
Amber looked up. “What?” She hurried after him. Glen followed. “How do you know he’s not dead?”
“The Shining Demon would have known it,” Milo said, leaning on the hood. “That old lady is scared.”
“Of us?”
Milo looked back at the house. “Of someone.”
They parked in the courtyard at the back of the hotel, and Amber took Milo’s iPad to her room, using the free Wi-Fi to log on to the In The Dark Places messageboards. The very idea that she suddenly had some time to herself, plus an internet connection, filled her with such a feeling of warmth that it actually brought a tear to her eye. She refused to cry, though – to cry for something as silly as the ability to chat online would cheapen somewhat the things she genuinely had to cry about. Which were many. And dreadful. She didn’t mind the tear in her eye, though. That didn’t count.
She skimmed the users chatting, and her heart lifted when she saw names she recognised. This was a world she understood. This was a community where she belonged, a place where she wasn’t a monster. Wasn’t a killer.
She shook her head, like the movement itself would be enough to shake the memory from her mind. Ralphie McGarry was dying, anyway. Glen had seen to that. She’d just helped him on his way, that’s all. It had been a mercy killing. It had been the right thing to do. She wasn’t to blame for any of it. She wasn’t to blame for the circumstance she’d found herself in, nor the action she had taken. She wasn’t even to blame for the brief flash of pleasure she had derived from killing him.
“Not me,” she said aloud. “That wasn’t me.”
She pushed down the arguments brewing behind her words and instead focused on the words in front of her.
The Dark Princess said …
Hi BAC.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Well hey there, stranger! Been a while! Y u no respond 2 my emails???
The Dark Princess said …
Been really busy, sorry. Family stuff.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Problems?
The Dark Princess said …
You could say that.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
That’s why we come here, right? To escape the parental units and their insanity.
Hey, u hear that the full cast has been confirmed for the con? 1st time EVER!
The Dark Princess said …
Doubt I’ll be going actually. Plans have changed.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Seriously?
U wanna talk about it?
The Dark Princess said …
It’s nothing anyone can help me with.
Wow, that sounds dramatic! I’m doing OK, though. Everything is messed up but I’m making new friends. Kind of.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Online or irl?
The Dark Princess said …
Real life. Weird, I know.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Tres weird.
The Dark Princess said …
World’s gone all upside down. Not able to email cuz of reasons. Some pretty scary stuff happening.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Sounds intense.
The Dark Princess said …
It is. Didn??
?t want you worrying, that’s all.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Well I wasn’t. I am NOW though.
Sith0Dude said …
OMG! Laurie killed Stryker! What the HELL?????
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Private convo, Sith0Dude.
(BTW spoiler warnings – heard of them??)
Sith0Dude said …
U shouldn’t be having private convos in public forums. How am I sposed to know?
(There’s a spoiler warning at the start of this thread!)
The Dark Princess said …
Go away Sith0Dude.
Sith0Dude said …
U guys suck.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
You sound weird, Princess. Worryingly weird.
The Dark Princess said …
I’m sorry. Just wanted to log on, talk to you, get some normality back.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Am I helping?
The Dark Princess said …
You always help.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Wish I was with you. Why is Australia so far away? Wish I could just hop on a plane to Florida.
The Dark Princess said …
Not in Florida anymore.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Gone travelling?
The Dark Princess said …
Yep.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Where?
Amber hesitated. It was practically inconceivable for her parents to check these boards. They didn’t know she chatted here, didn’t know what her user name was … but even so. Even so they scared her so much that she wasn’t about to take that chance.
The Dark Princess said …
Not far. Damn, have to go.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Something I said?
The Dark Princess said …
Course not. It’s late though. Need sleep. Early start tomorrow.
Balthazar’s-Arm-Candy said …
Take care of yourself, OK? And check in regularly. U got me worried now!