“I should come with you,” Ricky said.
“No,” Lu shook her head. “Your power is here. And what you’ve done,” she lifted her hand to indicate the place of rest, the friendship, and then pointed at the table and the remaining magical deadly bits and bobs, “is more than enough. Is everything.”
“Anytime. I am here. We are here for you. And if you need me, call. Oh, and the house says take this to the witches.” Rickyhanded Lu a flat box. “It’s the diary of a very powerful witch. She did a lot of healing, including vampire bites.”
Lu took it. “Thank you.”
Ricky pulled her into a hug. When she released Lu, I was there, waiting for my turn.
“Well, well,” she said, accepting a hug, and hugging me back. “Be careful,” she whispered. “Don’t die.”
I gave her a small squeeze to indicate that was the plan.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Ahundred miles out,” I said for the millionth time. “He’s a god. He could have dropped us at the honky tonk’s front door.”
Lula was driving, Lorde with her new favorite corn toy, lying between us.
Raven was nowhere to be seen.
“One snap and he could have had us in the bar.”
“Maybe he just wanted to give you a hundred miles to complain before we got there,” she suggested.
I huffed and squinted out the window. The landscape was dried out, life and color sucked down by summer’s fangs. I was tired, I was hot—had I ever not been hot?—the headache constant now.
Hollow. I felt as hollow as the landscape.
Strawberry angel food cake. How had I forgotten that?Ricky had remembered. Even the stinking magical house had remembered. But me? No.
On the heels of that thought, I knew I was kidding myself. Had been kidding myself for years.
There wasn’t going to be a birthday party. Because she and I didn’t get to live lives filled with normal joys. She and I didn’t have a life with time for candles and cakes.
We weren’t people anymore. Those kinds of happiness weren’t ever coming our way.
Lu eased the truck into the honky tonk’s parking lot where half a dozen people lingered beneath the shade of the tree on the corner.
A small figure burst out of the group and ran toward the truck, waving.
“Hi, oh, hi!” Abbi popped up next to my window before Lu had even put the vehicle in park. “We really do need help. Did you bring Valentine? I don’t see Valentine. Is he hiding? Is Ricky here too?”
“No ghost, no Ricky,” I said. “Just me and Lula.”
Abbi stuck out her bottom lip, then brightened. “You came! That’s good. Isn’t that good?”
Her words hit like a small hammer on a steel pipe. Just a constant ringing rattle, echoed by pain. My headache was ramping up enough my stomach was about to get in on the act.
“It is,” I said. I fumbled with the door and stepped out into the heat. My lungs were on fire, and the sunlight speared my eyes, blinding me.
I blinked hard and dark spots swarmed to block out the edges of my vision. Abbi had either stopped talking, or the whole world had gone quiet and buzzy.
“Inside.” Lula cupped my shoulder and took my arm. She guided me toward the building.
I was going to argue, but if I opened my mouth I’d start heaving.
Then the light was gone, the heat was gone, all of it blacked out as we crossed into the Honky Tonk.
