“Because Peculiar is a few hours from here.” I gave him a half-smile. “Don’t tell me you were in the neighborhood.”
“I’ve been searching landfills since about midnight last night.” He shook his head. “It was the one thing Sunny was sure about in her vision. You, somewhere amidst mountains made of trash. The only place that fit the bill was a landfill. There are four of them in this area, by the way. This was the last one on my list.”
“Wow.” I wasn’t sure how to respond. But now it made sense why, as we drove farther away from the heaps of garbage, the odor still remained. I put my hand to my mouth. “Oh my, gosh, the smell is coming from you.”
“Yep.” He glared at the road ahead. “Tell me what happened to you last night?”
“Sunny didn’t see that part, huh?” I was being glib, and he’d obviously spent the entire night digging through piles of rubbish trying to find me. I shook my head. “I…Honestly, I’m not sure.” I wanted to feel safe but was safety from William even possible? “My father sent someone after me.”
“Doc?”
“No.” I shook my head. “The other one.” It was so hard to think of William as anything but my father, considering he’d raised me from the second I was born. Unfortunately, he was also a monster. I understood that now. “He wants me back.”
Jo Jo's lips thinned into a grim line. “Why?”
I shrugged. “Wish I knew. Probably a point of pride. Nothing motivates that man like wounded pride.”
“Is that what put the cut on your bruised cheek? Wounded pride?”
I touched my face and winced. “Cordell Perkins. William’s number two. He made a grab for me last night and tackled me through a glass window. I must’ve gotten cut on the flying shards.” It was an easier explanation than the truth.
Jo Jo’s knuckles went white as he gripped the steering wheel even tighter. “What happened to Cordell?”
“Dead.” I shuddered, remembering the way the woman had sliced the air with her hand. Cordell had been partially shifted at the time, and by the time he hit the ground, he’d been all human. “He got stabbed in the neck with one of the pieces of glass and bled out.”
Jo Jo’s lip curled. “Good.” His grip eased, allowing color to return to his fingers. “I’ll get you back to Peculiar. If he’s got trackers, it’s the safest place to be.”
“I’m not safe anywhere. Not from William.”
He glanced at me. “You’ll be safe at home.”
Anxiety seized me. “That’s not my home.”
He winced as he pivoted his gaze back to the road. “Then where?”
I wanted to tell him that he felt like home. I didn’t. “I wish I knew.”
Jo Jo’s phone chirped. He grabbed it from the console, looked at the screen, and grunted.
Nervously, I asked, “Who is it?”
“Sunny.” He answered the call and pressed the phone to his ear. “What’s up?” His brow knitted. “Yes, I’m with Etta. How did you—” He shook his head. “Never mind.” His frown deepened. “She’s not going to like it.” He glanced at me and grimaced. “She’s really not going to like that.”
Sunny must’ve been whispering really quietly because I couldn’t overhear anything she was telling him. “What is she saying?” I mouthed.
He gave me a confused look. “Hold on,” he told Sunny. He put the speaker on. “Say it again.”
“Go to Grove,” the perky-voiced woman said.
“Why?” I asked. I knew from the year I’d spent in Peculiar that Sunny was a psychic and human. She was married to Babel Trimmel, Chavvah’s brother, which made her sort of my aunt by marriage. The psychic part was well-known, but the human part was a well-kept secret outside of Peculiar. Humans weren’t allowed in therianthropic towns. Only her closest friends and trusted allies knew the truth about her non-shifting status. “Did you see something?”
Sunny sounded worried. “There’s someone who can help you with your…transition?” She made the word a question. “Sorry, it was a weird vision. More like a message than my usual kind. All I know is that you must go to Grove. An old lady is waiting for you.”
“Old lady?” Could this be the wise woman of the lake the fortune teller had said I needed to find? “How is someone I don’t even know waiting on me?”
“Don’t know,” Sunny said. “But she’s been waiting a long time for you. She wants to help you.”
“How long?” I asked. “And help me how?”
