Bone Music (Burning Girl #1)(24)

She tells herself she’s waiting to make a decision because more bikers might come flying past. But there’s no sign of anything on the northern horizon. She’s waiting because she’s paralyzed. Amazing to realize that despite her incredible strength, her muscles can still be seized by self-doubt.

She hears what comes next before she sees it. A crack that sounds small and thunderous at the same time—two things that contradict each other. When she looks south, she sees a column of white flame shooting up into the night sky. It’s a good distance away. About as far, she guesses, as the scene where the bikers ran her off the road. Whatever its source, the explosion is a single event. It’s precise. It’s big. And even though she’s very far away, she can see pieces of debris inside it.

She lets her foot off the brake, turns the Civic north, and gives it as much gas as she can without destroying the pedal.

North.

It’s the only thought she can manage. Go north. And then possibly west, toward California, the only state she’s ever really called home. But when she tries to think any further ahead than that, her breaths grow shallow and her vision starts to shrink, so she just keeps saying it to herself over and over again. North, north, north.

A daze comes over her. She thinks it might be shock, but it doesn’t seem to affect her ability to drive, so what does it matter really? She’s not sure exactly how much time has passed when she realizes she’s forgotten to keep her grip on the steering wheel featherlight. Her knuckles look white in the dashboard’s glow, but the steering wheel’s intact. Slowly she eases her foot down onto the brake, pulls over to the side of the empty road.

She steps from the car, walks into the headlights, and picks up a jagged rock that’s about the size of a newborn baby. It’s heavy and lifting it hurts her arm. Which, in a normal world, is how it should be. When she tries to throw it with one hand, it slips and crashes to the asphalt. Her wrist sings with pain from the effort.

Whatever Dylan’s miracle provided, it’s over now.

The strength is gone.

And now, with the fears of an ordinary woman, she’s looking out into the vast emptiness where the shadows of jagged rocks and cacti are slowly resolving underneath a star-crazed sky.

She doesn’t have to be careful now as she reaches into her pocket and removes the cardboard packet. Two of the remaining pills have been reduced to orange powder inside their plastic bubbles. Another’s been cracked in half. The fourth and fifth are intact.

You’re the first one to take it and live.

She places the pills back inside her pocket and slides behind the wheel.

The Beretta’s on the seat next to her.

Facts, figures. Short-term goals. These are her salvation right now.

She checks the phone.

Three hours. That’s about how much time has elapsed between her first fight with Jason, the emergence of her miraculous strength, and this moment when it left her abruptly and without fanfare.

How could it have been only three hours? It feels like a lifetime.

She starts the car, eases back onto the highway. North, she tells herself again, just as the tears start. North, she tells herself as her hands start to shake in a way that’s all too human. All too normal. All too frightened.

Then she remembers she’s got five pills left, and the fear gradually starts to recede until her hands go still.





10

Before she reaches I-40, Charlotte pulls over to the side of the road and makes a call she should have made hours before. A call that will determine in which direction she heads now—east or west. Kayla answers after one ring. The same woman Dylan dismissed as being undeserving of the title of Charlotte’s only friend, despite the fact that she won the case against Charlotte’s dad and routinely battles wealthy wife beaters and corporations that poison entire communities.

The minute Kayla says her name, not her birth name but the name she chose for herself, Charlotte feels a sudden, hot sheen of tears in her eyes.

She speaks through a lump in her throat. “I need to meet. Someplace safe. Outside San Francisco. Wherever it is, make sure you’re not being followed.”

“Media?” Kayla asks.

“No.”

“Your dad?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Jason Briffel.”

“Yeah,” Charlotte answers. “It’s bad.”

The incompleteness of the answer feels like a lie.

“Where are you?” Kayla asks.

“Nowhere. Making a decision where to go next.”

“Whose number is this?”

“Don’t ask.”

“Whatever’s happening, you know you can trust me, right?” Kayla says.

“Why do you think I called? The problem is, I don’t actually know what’s happening.”

“All right, where are you now?”

“Near Flagstaff.”

“Are you in your car?”

“No.”

“But you have a car?”

“Yes.”

“Come to California. Once you hit the 5, go north like you’re going to San Francisco. You’re gonna meet me in Patterson. It’s south of the 580 split. When you get there, go east on Del Puerto Canyon Road, and in about two blocks, you’ll see a giant Amazon fulfillment center. I’ll meet you in the parking lot. Describe the car you’re driving.”