“Huh.”
Two teenagers posed on the curb, the fire a backdrop as they mugged for their phones. Nobody said anything to them for a while, and then a man with a baby strapped to his chest gave them an irritated look.
“That’s enough, Harry,” he said. “That’s someone’s livelihood, not a photo opportunity.”
The shorter of the two boys rolled his eyes. “It’s for TikTok, not the ’gram.”
“Anyhow,” the other one said as he stepped off the sidewalk into the road, “I heard the guy was a pedo or something. So who gives a fuck.”
He backed into the street, phone held above his head for the best angle, and nearly got pancaked by a Chevy whose driver was distracted by the fire. The guy with a napkin in his collar was the one that grabbed him and pulled him back.
“Shit, man,” the kid yelled as he spun around. He jabbed a finger up in the air at the Chevy’s rearview. “Watch where you’re going.”
Baby-sling man collared the angry kid and pulled him back onto the sidewalk. “You watch what you say. You can’t go making up things like that.”
“Yeah, I know that. ‘Cause I’m not,” the boy insisted. “Like I said, I heard it.”
“From who?”
The kid shrugged, loose and boneless. “I don’t know.”
While the baby-sling dad dealt with his kids, Ledger stood and watched the fire. It made sense, he supposed. It certainly explained why the dead person that Ledger had done business with before conducted their affairs through correspondence and phone calls. The dead were meant to fade away, not make new memories for people. It was only natural.
The big plate glass main window splintered into a hundred branching lines. It broke with a sharp, brittle sound and sprayed hot needles of glass into the street. Some flew far enough to rattle off the metalwork of the cars parked at the curb, scratching paint that had already stained and blistered.
“Did anyone call the fire department?” the woman whose date had been interrupted asked. When no one answered, she got her phone from her bag.
That was Ledger’s cue. He had one inexplicable event attached to him already. The last thing he needed was to give Syder an excuse to hold him overnight. Ledger wasn’t going to remember anything—he didn’t think there was anything to remember—but it didn’t look like he could convince the sheriff of that.
He pulled his keys from his pocket and started over the road. Luckily he’d parked far enough down from the store that the car looked undamaged. He was already going to have to pay for the window. If he had to pay for a new paint job, too, he might as well buy the car. Once he was close enough, Ledger thumbed the unlock button on the fob. The lights flashed once, and the mirrors on both sides opened out. Ledger folded the keys into his hand and went to open the driver’s side door. He paused when he saw the sticky-note pasted to his window.
Ledger slid forward until he could stretch over the hood and peel the note off. He brushed a few bits of char off it, black smuts smeared over the paper, and read the message.
where am iwas scribbled in an uneven, messy script on the paper, over and over, each message stacked crookedly on top of another.
Ledger stared at it in confusion; then he balled it up into a tight little knot and shoved it into his pocket. It might end up being something he had to deal with, but between the handwriting and the delivery, he hoped not. He had enough of Bell’s problems on his plate already, and he’d left town in the first place to avoid those.
The fire truck arrived the same time he left, siren on and lights flashing. Ledger checked the mirror as he drove away. For once, no one was pointing after him.
That made a nice change.
Stoodup at midnight on a back road in Sutton.
Ledger stood on the scrubby verge with his hands shoved into the pockets of his pants. He took a deep breath of warm night air as he looked up and down the empty road, then let it back out on a sigh that blew his cheeks out. The only thing to see was the half-rotted carcass of a dog—or maybe a coyote—that hadn’t been quick enough to dodge the traffic.
“This is what prom would have been like,” he said, “if I’d gone.”
The sound of his voice in the dark was unexpectedly intrusive. It made the back of his neck crawl as he imagined something out in the dark suddenly aware of him. The rustle of the corn in the wind suddenly sounded like something moving toward him.
It wasn’t.
Most urban unnaturals had started as humans—some technically still were, even if humanity probably didn’t want to claim them—but out in the wilderness, there were still the great old things. Cryptids, the humans had named them; it was as good a catch-all as anything. Things that just were. Something like that didn’t share territory, though. It wouldn’t have tolerated Earl. So either there’d never been one here, or Earl had killed it already.
Either way, if something was out there, it was a standard roadside murder-hobo.
That was reassuring for as long as it took Ledger to remember that he did business with horrors; he wasn’t one. A roadside murder-hobo could kill him as dead as anything else.
Ledger gave in and turned to look behind him.
