Lu hopped up into the truck bed. Lorde lifted her head, the tags on her collar jangling as she moved out of the way for us. I crawled up onto our bed and had to admit that a hotel bed would not have been any softer or more welcome than this.
I stretched out on my stomach, herding a pillow down to me and sighing in deep contentment.
Lu settled next to me, her hand resting on my neck, working the muscles there before stroking down my spine. “Feel better?”
“Well, it’s not a hot shower—” I began, then yelped as Lu pinched my side. I grinned.
“We can shower at a truck stop tomorrow. Tonight… Tonight, I need this,” she said.
I shifted around, shoving the pillow under my head as I flipped, then lay on my side facing her.
“You could have died, Brogan.”
This was news to me. “When?”
“When you grabbed hold of the ghost. When you argued with a werewolf.”
“Ah. That. You were there.”
Even in the darkness, I could see her sunlight eyes watching me. “What does that mean?”
“You were there. So I wasn’t worried about dying.”
Her eyes closed for a moment too long, and she tipped her face to the sky. “I need you to be more careful. Need you to… Not do that kind of thing.”
I just hummed and tugged on the edge of her shirt.
She resisted a second or two, then scooted down and curled into my body, her head tucking beneath my chin. I wrapped my arms around her.
“Do you want the rest of the water?”
I did. I really did, but having her in my arms and knowing I could hold her like this for as long as I wanted was more important.
“Later.” I closed my eyes, felt myself drifting off, and opened them again.
The stars spun out above me like a diamond-beaded net cast across a dark sea. It was beautiful, the sky. The moon had waned to a sliver of a crescent that cast almost no light, making the darkness darker, while starlight caught like distant fire.
It was Lu’s fingers, though, gently tracing my arm, her body so close and warm against me, that was the real treasure.
“I love you, Brogan Gauge,” she said, as she always had.
“I love you too, Lula Gauge,” I replied, as I always would.
I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep. But with Lu in my arms, and Lorde at my feet, and a soft breeze finally, finally wicking the heat from the ground, from the trees, and from me, I fell down and down, over and out.
* * *
“Run.”The deep voice was a cat-like growl, frantic. Thick fingers crawled across my lips, dug into my cheeks, pressed into the skin of my forehead, bruising bone. “The moon, the moon. You must save the moon.”
Those fingers lifted, scrabbling through my hair and pulling until the roots stung.
“Find her…”
I took a huge breath and opened my eyes, disoriented in the suffocating darkness.
There were no stars above me, no mattress beneath me, and no Lu in my arms.
Everything was stone: beneath, around, above. Even the air tasted of stone, as if I inhaled a hillside, slick minerals, and earthen mold.
