“I don’t know, Turner, they didn’t seem like they were into demon role-play. Can you keep him here or not?”
Hudson regarded Thomas coolly for a long moment. “Yeah, I think I can convince him to stick around.”
“Good. Vivienne, let’s go.”
The sound of her name sparkled through her, like a match held to the tip of a firecracker. She jolted to attention, her heart racing. He still hadn’t looked at her, but now he was gathering up the dogs’ leashes, heading for the door.
“I think it’s safe for the moment,” said Thomas. He stood by the door, peering out through the narrow sidelights. “Let’s move.”
•••
Thomas’s truck was parked outside, just a short way down the road. He helped her into the passenger seat without a word, tossing her bag in the back. The inside was timeworn but neat. No clutter. No mess. A blue rosary hung from the rearview mirror. It swung like a pendulum as Thomas pulled out into the street.
They rode in silence. The only sound was the hum of the engine, the wind rushing over and over the hood. Molly and Judd slept stacked one on top of the other in the shallow back seat, their perked ears the only sign at all that they were listening for trouble. The highway raced past in wide patches of dark, interspersed here and there with quick bursts of white.
In the glass, Vivienne had no reflection at all.
She reached out and touched a finger to the place where her face ought to be, stretched out like taffy in the arcuated pane of the passenger window. There was nothing there but dark, dark, dark, the faint strip of the guardrail whipping past in quicksilver flashes.
Sitting back, she found Thomas watching her sideways, a muscle firing in his jaw. His eyes snapped back to the road. His knuckles were white against the wheel. If he noticed her lack of a reflection, he didn’t say.
He didn’t say anything at all.
Where are we going?she asked, when they reached a well-lit stretch of highway.
“Somewhere safe,” he said.
He didn’t say anything else.
An hour passed. Another. The sign for Massachusetts slipped by in a flicker of blue. Thomas kept to the speed limit, his eyes flitting intermittently to the side mirror. The road behind them was empty.
It was past midnight when he pulled the car into an overgrown driveway and put it into park. They were fifteen minutes off the pike, lost in a flat suburban sprawl of split-level houses in varying states of disrepair. In front of them, several crooked solar lamps lit a brick path gone snaggled with weeds. A cobwebbed porch light hung askew on its mount, iron red with rust. A television flickered inside the screened-in window, illuminating a wall adorned with mismatched picture frames and a lumpy couch bordered in floppy houseplants.
Her door was pried open, and there was Thomas, dogs standing at attention beside him.
“Come on.”
Is this your house?she signed, but he didn’t see. He was scanning the dark road, watching a car crawl past on the adjacent street.
“Let’s move,” he said, and there was an edge in his voice she didn’t recognize. “Quickly.”
He ushered her up the walk, cursing under his breath as Judd and Molly paused multiple times to relieve themselves on the overgrown rhododendron.
They’d just made it to the front door when it flew open. Framed in the glow of the television was a girl no older than fifteen. Tall and slender, she stood in a tackle position, her hair in a messy topknot and her graphic T-shirt three sizes too big.
“It is the middle of the night,” she said, in a voice so infused with venom Vivienne was surprised it didn’t strike them both dead on the spot.
Thomas scooted her out of the way without a word, somehow managing to usher Vivienne and both dogs in through the door in one fluid sweep. The door slammed shut. The dead bolt clicked into place. They were in a living room with low ceilings and mismatched trim, the walls a vivid, sunrise array of colors. Between the warm light of the living room and a cramped sheet-vinyl kitchen there hung a single, drooping banner.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
“Close the curtains,” Thomas said to the girl, peering out the eyehole.
The girl—his sister, Vivienne assumed—looked thoroughly unmoved by his tone. “You promised, Tommy.”
“Close the curtains, Tess.”
“Youpromisedyou wouldn’t miss your birthday. We made cupcakes.”
