Nadine paused frantically, before blurting out, “I got an email from her last night.”
“Oh, well, is she all right? I could come, too . . .”
“N-no! No. She just wants me. I think—I think she’s just lonely.”
“You girls,” said Nikki, although she didn’t sound entirely displeased at the prospect of having the place to herself. “Make sure you call regularly and keep me updated. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I will,” Nadine had promised.
And now Nadine was here, with this cab driver blasting college rock while her sister’s postcard burned in the bottom of her duffel bag like a dirty secret. He hadn’t helped her with her bags, which was fine because she only had the two, but that initial misstep had created an awkwardness that had only grown as the minutes ticked by and he aggressively continued to ignore her presence with loud music and the occasional asthmatic huff.
“Argentum’s a long way out,” he said eventually, after about half an hour. Just when the silence was starting to feel comfortable. “What’s a kid like you doing out there?”
Nadine felt a brief flash of annoyance she quickly stifled. “Family emergency.”
“Yeah? You got family out there?”
“My sister,” she said, and winced. She should have said ‘her brother.’
But the driver wasn’t all that interested in what she had to say. He turned down the dial, lowering the music, and said, confidingly, “You know,Igot family out here.”
“Oh?” she asked warily.
“It’s tough in these places when the money dries up. People start to get dependent on things outside of their control. I’m not just talking about the weather. I grew up in Gethsemane,” he added, naming a town she thought she might have seen on an exit sign twenty minutes ago. “That’s out in the central valley. Deep in the central valley. There used to be whole fields of sheep and cows, but then drought hit and developers came, and those who still had land to sell sold their land and then got the hell out. That was when the gangs and the meth addicts started coming in, doing deals right out on the highway. Squatting in abandoned buildings. That sort of thing. Coke and turf wars—that’s what these small towns out here are known for now.”
“Right,” Nadine said, hoping that would be the end of it. But it wasn’t.
A better person might have said something to put him in his place about his racist rants, but she was a woman trapped in a car with a man in the middle of nowhere. She wanted—needed—to save her sister. So she opened Bejeweled on her phone and played as discreetly as she could, trying not to imagine Noelle tied up in a gangbanger’s trunk.
“Argentum was revived by old family money,” the driver continued, warming to his subject. “And that hunting festival of theirs kickstarted a failing economy back into drive, right when they needed it most. But now folks have grown to depend on that money over the years, which creates a whole other pool of resentment. Blind eyes, and all that. And of course, there’s the accidents.”
Nadine looked up sharply from her phone. “Accidents?”
“Yep. You get a whole bunch of out-of-towners and ply ‘em with guns and beer, and there’s bound to be a couple of those. Still. Bad day to be out and about if you’re on anyone’s bad side, if you get me. And if I had a daughter that looked like you, I wouldn’t let her anywhere near those woods.”
Nadine felt sick. A ringing noise had started in her ears.This is it, Nadine. This is where he parks the car, and rapes and murders you, and leaves your body in a ditch.
Over the ringing, she heard herself ask, “When’s the next festival?”
“Little less than a month out. Mid-May. So you got time to settle accounts before you’ve got to start worrying.”Ha, thought Nadine, a hysterical laugh rising to her lips. She swallowed it quickly as the driver let out a hoarse, humorless laugh of his own. “I’d take Gethsemane over Argentum any day, though. They say it’s better, dealing with the devils you know.”
I know one devil, thought Nadine, thinking of Caledon Cullraven and his mocking dark eyes.
The driver turned up the volume on the radio and the percussive sound of Smashing Pumpkins filled the car like a throbbing headache, which was exactly what she had when he finally dropped her off in the town proper. Not raped and not murdered. Alive.
The dizzying relief of that made her hands tremble as she opened up her wristlet and discreetly peeled out the two-hundred-dollar cab fare, with two extra twenties for the tip.
“Good luck with your family, kid,” he said, stuffing the bills into the pocket of his dusty uniform. “Remember what I said about those woods. Stay out of there.”
And then he peeled off from the curb, leaving her standing there alone.
Nadine looked down at her phone, which she was still clutching tightly. There was now a banner at the top of the screen informing her that she was in “offline mode.” That had happened before, at the wedding. Nadine tried switching the wi-fi on and off, but couldn’t get a connection. Ironic, that a place sitting pretty on so many minerals didn’t appear to have any cell phone towers.
She started down the sidewalk, loose gravel scraping beneath the soles of her Converse. She recognized the old storefronts from Noelle’s postcard, but they didn’t look like they were being used. In fact, as she got closer, she saw that the doors and windows were actually painted shut, the pitted glass dark and smeared with the same color of dust that sat heavy on the ground.
This side of the street had more recent-looking buildings. There were weathered bungalows, probably built in the 1920s. Some of them had wrap around porches and had clearly once been homes, but now it seemed that they were being used commercially. At a glance, she picked out a general store, a diner, a bar, and a Chinese restaurant called Yunnan Rooster.
Nadine ducked into the general store. A bell tinkled overheard to announce her arrival and the cashier lowered the romance novel she was reading to dart a quick smile in her direction. She looked like she was in her early forties, with curly blonde hair that was starting to gray.
