CHAPTERONE
The only good thing about being a spirit cursed to haunt Route 66, was that at least as a spirit, I hadn’t had to worry about trying to sleep in the back of Silver, the old truck my wife, Lula had insisted on buying a couple months ago.
I hadn’t had to worry about being in a field in the middle of nowhere Kansas, with metal edges digging into my ass every time I turned over, either.
I exhaled and shifted, shoehorning myself between the wheel wells, claiming a sliver of mattress crowded with five other bodies sprawled around me.
Sure, it’d been lonely following Lula as she traveled the Mother Road for nearly a hundred years, hunting for the monsters who had attacked us, leaving her athrawn, which was one step away from becoming a vampire, and me a tethered spirit.
But if there had been one small good—maybe infinitesimal, but still good—benefit to being a spirit, it was that I’d had a little room to move.
I rolled my foot, trying to ease the promise of a cramp in my calf.
“Okay?” Lula asked softly, as I shifted my hip yet again.
“Motels have soft beds,” I said into her hair, stretching my toes.
“You hate motels,” she replied. “They have ghosts, which you also hate.”
“True.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d won this conversation. Every time she checked into a place for the night, she’d worry I’d have to deal with hostile souls, so she avoided motels. It was partly why she’d bought this truck. It had sleeping space for two.
Two. We hadn’t planned on picking up people along the way.
“Butyoulike motels,” I said, giving it the old college try.
“I like the truck. I like the open sky and the stars.”
Moonlight filtered down through the oak trees around us. We’d parked the truck in a field, far enough from the road we wouldn’t be bothered.
She repositioned in my arms, pressed her back more firmly to my chest and pulled my arms closer around her. She closed her hand over mine, which rested against her stomach, and looked over her shoulder. “I like being here, in your arms.”
The look in her eyes was a story of its own. She’d missed the flesh of me, the realness of me. Nearly a hundred years without being in each other’s arms was a lot to make up for.We’d held on for this chance, for someday having each other again.
Having this again.
“Still,” I said, “it’s pretty crowded.”
She snuggled closer. “I like it fine. I’ve slept alone for enough years. This is good.”
She was not wrong.
My shoulder under her head was falling asleep, the cramp in my leg bit harder no matter how I stretched my foot, and my back hurt.
But when Lula said she wanted nothing more than to lie in my arms, there was no possibility I’d say otherwise.
Abbi—who currently looked like a stout ten-year-old girl, but who was actually the rabbit who lived in the moon—started the night sleeping beside Lula. But she’d wriggled and squirmed, tossed and huffed until she’d ended up sprawled above both our heads, stretched out and dreaming.
Abbi had been excited about the camp out. She might act like the shaggy white-haired girl she appeared to be, but she’d come down from the moon searching for her lost shadow and protector, who had been stolen by the foul Hush creatures who lived beneath the hills of Missouri. We’d found her living with a pack of werewolves who adored her.
We’d saved her shadow, Hado, and saved her, too. Then she’d surprised us by choosing to travel with Lula and me.
Said it felt right.
Said she always wanted a family.
I’d always wanted a family too, but that hope had been buried in grave dirt the day Lula and I had been attacked by monsters and cursed to follow Route 66.
Lu pressed back into me more and a bolt dug into my hip, bruising. Abbi smacked her lips and flipped onto one side, her stockinged feet flopping into my face.
