“Pining,”the monster singsonged.
I scowled.
Too soon, we rolled through the town of Audrey’s single, blinking stoplight. I kept my eyes forward, unwilling to risk being recognized. Old worn-out buildings in charming pastel lemon and cornflower blue blurred through my periphery. The café. The school. The Honey Shoppe. I told myself the landmarks couldn’t bruise if I didn’t look too long.
My knuckles whitened as we drove past a pale chapel that was chipping old paint. Weeds climbed up its siding, and a harsh whistle drew my attention to the hole in the roof, where a clutter of dark birds circled overhead. My inhale sharpened to a blade.
Starlings.
While clever, their greedy and invasive nature too often disrupted the local ecosystem with their habit of driving other birds out of their nests. Farmers hated starlings, but my mother had loved them, charmed by their astounding gift for mimicry.
The monster let me stew in my thoughts until we turned off Main Street. We were getting close. I could practically taste the wax in the air, and outside, the road licked a black asphalt tongue around the edge of the Walkers’ pear orchards.
Déjà vu wrapped around me, thickening with every passing minute. I hadn’t driven this road in years, but my body remembered. Time, it seemed, wasn’t enough to patch the wound this place had carved in me.
“You have such a flair for the dramatic,”the monster complimented. I rolled my shoulders reflexively—an old habit that never succeeded in shaking its voice out of my head.
My stomach growled. After opening the glove box, I fished through the mess of honey sticks until I found a speckled cinnamon, then popped one end open with my teeth.
I knew I should cry for her. She was my mother, after all. I should have cried weeks ago. Instead, nausea twisted my empty stomach over in knots. My appetite had fled the moment I got the call that she was gone. If that was grief, I sure as hell didn’t know how to digest it.
But I could still choke down honey.
“I could help, if you’d let me.”
“No.” I didn’t want the monster’s help. It had made such offers before, and they always ended in disaster. Whenever the monster gave in to its own strange appetite, I ended up with the tail of a squirrel between my fingers, or fish scales under my nails. I didn’t need another animal husk staring at me dead-eyed and accusing. I knew the monster’s work was wretched. Maybe even wicked. But I was worse, for letting it use me, letting ittake.
“It doesn’t have to be like that. We could—”
A loudpopjolted us both, stalling a surely horrific proposal.The cab lurched up and down, the van sagging violently to the right. “Shit!” I tapped the brakes and eased onto the road’s narrow shoulder. Dust bloomed skyward where the wheel dug into the naked soil until the Volkswagen ground to a standstill.
I sat back, frustration heating my skin. This was the last fucking thing I needed today.
Stepping out into the ocean of heat, I rounded the van, crouched before the ruined tire, and ran my fingertips over the rubber tread until I hit a nail.
“You’re kidding,” I muttered.
If Fate was laughing at me, it sounded an awful lot like the whir of cicadas.
“Do we have a spare?”
“It’s a mess.” One more item on a never-ending list of things I’d broken and never repaired.
“So… we walk?”
I didn’t answer, nor did I fight when the monster turned my head to the wall of textured evergreens hugging the side of the road. Dandelions speckled the ditch in sunny pops of yellow and wishing fluff. Beneath us, rootscapes stretched to wrap the edge of a warren just out of sight. The monster salivated, tuning our senses to the rollingtha-dumpof a rabbit’s heartbeat, the mammal glow of life pulsing like a toothache behind my gums.
“You skipped breakfast,”it noted.
I shuddered. We shared too much, our edges too often blurring together. Sometimes I dreamed of surrender. I could disappear into that cool, relaxing space in my head where I stopped feeling everything so acutely. It would be so easy to give up control. A relief, even, to loosen my grip and let the monster—
“Stop it,” I snapped.
It flicked a tongue against my spine.“Just a taste?”
I opened my mouth to refuse, then all but choked at the sudden outpouring of life flooding my senses. I looked down to find my hand wrapped around a clump of milkweed.
“Oops.”
