Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(26)



Shaking from cold, she plunged her head and arms into the T-shirt. Did she need to ditch her jeans? She checked. The knees were wet with large, dark red patches.

[people toppling like mown flowers]

She must have crawled through blood to get to her purse. She didn’t remember. She had been focused on the men, their guns, the hawks and her own terror.

The jeans joined her sweater in the Dumpster, and she hopped into the clean pair.

A small wind gusted into her face, and a thread of a voice said in her head, Hurry.

She froze. How could she have forgotten her daemon? She slammed the trunk, slid into the driver’s seat and started the car again, letting the engine idle as she turned the heat on. Only then did she roll her window down partway.

The breeze blew in and bounced around the interior of the Toyota. Whatever it was, it seemed as upset as she.

Is there more danger? she asked. She locked her doors.

Not here. Not now. It swirled around her. It seemed as uneasy as she did about being motionless, but she could be projecting. If she followed her first impulse, she wouldn’t stop running until she hit California. Then she would think very hard about getting on a boat.

But there’s still danger, she said. Close? Searching?

Yes. We must leave.

Okay.

With her shock lessening so that she could more or less strategize, she said, I need to go to the police.

No!

Disappointment and fresh fear slammed her. Why not?

Her daemon didn’t answer. Perhaps it didn’t have the capacity to communicate the answer, or she didn’t have the capacity to hear what it said. It continued to rotate in agitation around her so she turned her own thoughts to answering.

She didn’t believe her house burned in a freak accident. Someone set fire to it. She didn’t yet know why, so she set that aside for now.

If she had been followed from her house, those men would have taken her earlier in a much less public place—for instance when she sat outside Gretchen’s house, or when she was alone in the Grotto. Nobody knew where she was, or where she would be next. They couldn’t, because even she hadn’t known. She had gone through her entire day on impulse and instinct.

How had they found her at Friday’s?

The restaurant manager had done as she had asked, that’s how, and had called the police. Whoever was looking for her either had contacts on the police force, or they could monitor police communications.

She blew out a shaky breath, more grateful for her small presence than she could say. Without it, she would be headed right now for the nearest police station.

Okay. No police. And visiting Gretchen again was out. She couldn’t put the other woman in danger, no matter how much she wanted to see what the psychic would make of the hazardous Rubik’s cube her life had become. For the same reason, she wouldn’t be looking up old classmates in South Bend or coworkers in St. Joe, or go knocking uninvited on Justin and Tony’s door.

A train wreck of a feeling clenched in her gut. Shit, she was more worried than ever about Justin.

Air caressed her cheek.

I know, she said to it. I can’t have a nervous breakdown in the parking lot. I’m a sitting duck here.

The world had transformed into a weird mystery, and she was all alone in it except for a small puff of air that talked to her. It was such a quiet little voice, just something she heard in her head. For all she knew it was a splinter of her own overstressed personality.

If it was, it was smarter than the rest of her and had saved her life, probably more than once. It also seemed to be pretty clued in to what was going on, so she needed to pay sharp attention whenever it gave her any advice.

The thing was, she didn’t think it was a piece of herself. Maybe if it had been just a small voice in her head, yeah sure, but it wasn’t. Even now it plucked at strands of her hair and gusted against her swelling cheek as if patting the injury.

She whispered, “You’ve been with me all day, haven’t you? I just wasn’t aware that it was you I was hearing.” The presence circled around her, like nothing so much as a small cat purring. She put a hand to her cheek. “Okay. As the Skipper might say to Gilligan, where to now, little buddy?”

North, her daemon said, flowing along her fingers in an insubstantial caress. Go north. We must find the Grandmother.

The vision at the Grotto had said Mary needed to travel north, but the woman hadn’t looked anything like a grandmother. Mary chewed her lip as she thought back over the conversation. The woman had also warned her about danger and told her to take care.

Later in the restaurant she had tried to rewrite what had happened because she hadn’t understood. While reasonable, that was a mistake that could have gotten her killed and had probably contributed to the murders of four innocent people.

She rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t think about it right now. She had to channel Scarlett O’Hara, and think about that tomorrow.

Okay, she said to her only friend. North it is. But I’m going to have a truckload of questions to ask when we find this Grandmother of yours.

She put the car in gear and, her thoughts rambling through bits and pieces of TV and movie trivia, she pulled away from her old home.

Overhead, a couple of resting hawks took flight and followed.

* * *

HER GAS GAUGE hovered a millimeter over the red E. She had to stop and fill her tank. At least if she was being hunted, they already knew she was in town. A credit card trace wouldn’t tell them anything new, and she could keep the cash she had for later. Thanks to the kindness of Gretchen and T.G.I. Friday’s, she still had ninety-five dollars in cash.

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