Lorde was at my feet on the floorboards, snoring. Abbi sat closest to the window, her arm stuck out, her hand flat so she could fly it up and down in the air current.
I sat next to Lu, my arm over the back of the bench seat, my fingers gently brushing her shoulder.
The radio played a country song, just loud enough I could catch the higher notes over the wind in the cab. The sun burned in the pale blue sky, lowering toward the horizon, but not yet giving in to the sunset, to the end of its daily rule.
If it hadn’t been a thousand damn degrees outside, it might have been a nice, sleepy sort of drive.
If we weren’t headed to meet a ghoul, who had tried to kill us, to retrieve a book that everyone else wanted to kill us for, it might even have been almost a perfect stretch of road.
Lula slowed the truck as we reached Adrian, the open fields with short square farmhouses, metal outbuildings, tall cylindrical grain silos, and rows and rows of modern windmills indicating people had settled here to build lives. This stretch ofhighway was smooth concrete, and recently painted with a huge white Route 66 shield right in the middle of the road.
The Midpoint Cafe and Gift shop sat on our left, the sign with the googie arrow pointing cheerily at the small, one-story white building that housed the home-cooking, 1950s-style café. It shared the parking lot with a brick motel on one side and a boarded-up gas station on the other.
There was only one car in front of the café, and it was not the hunter’s truck. Lu parked in front of the building and turned off the engine.
“I’m going too,” Abbi said.
I reached across Abbi to open the door. “We know. You’ve been telling us that for the last three miles.”
“Because I have the token.”
“Yep,” I said.
She picked up kitten-Hado and dropped him on her shoulder where he draped himself. “And I made the deal.”
“Part of it,” I agreed.
Abbi shimmied out of the truck and batted at her yellow skirt to make all the folds fall the right way down to her knees. She wore a sparkly light blue tank top, and green socks.
“You look like a dandelion,” I said.
She grinned at me. “Thank you! Cassia gave me this skirt. It swirls!” She held out the skirt and did a little twirl.
Lu stepped out of the truck. An oversized blue handkerchief covered her head in a triangle tied behind her braid. She wore a light linen, long-sleeved shirt, jean shorts, boots, and sunglasses.
I’d never seen a more gorgeous sight in my life.
She walked to me, and a smile lit up her face.
“So, what you said this morning,” I said.
“What did I say this morning?”
“That it’s your birthday.”
“I recall.”
“I’d like to do something special for you.”
“Oh?”
I grinned.
“How special?” she asked.
I caught her hand and stepped close enough to breathe in her perfume. I leaned down, my mouth near her ear. “I’ll show you later.”
She made a dismissive sound, but her cheeks had gone pink, and it wasn’t from the sun.
