ever happens.”
“That the internet knows about.”
“The internet knows all,” she said. “It’s the one place we’ll be safe from the Shining Demon.”
“But why?”
“Is that important?” she asked. “I mean, obviously it’s important, yeah, but is it important now? Is it important right now, at the side of the road? All we need to know is that we’ll be safe in there.”
“Buxton only lasted a week.”
“He said it was a weird place. That’s fine with me. I can handle weird. Milo, we can sort this out later. We can ask questions and get answers. But I’m tired. You’re tired. We need a good night of sleep. We need to stop running.”
He sighed, and rubbed his eyes. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“Damn right I’m right.”
“Okay then, we go in, we don’t attract any attention. We speak only when spoken to. We fade into the background, understood?”
“I’ll try.”
“Try?”
“It’s a small town in the middle of nowhere. Newcomers are going to be noticed. That’s kind of inevitable.”
“Yeah, maybe, but we do our best to keep a low profile.”
“Agreed.”
Milo paused for a moment longer, then put the Charger in gear. “Okay then.”
They pulled out on to the road and passed the town sign and the Charger bolted forward suddenly and Amber yelled as she shifted, pain flaring in her hands, the shock of the change nearly blinding her to the fact that Milo, too, had turned into his demon-self. He jammed his foot on the brake and the Charger slid to a halt, growling in protest.
Cradling her hands to her chest, Amber met Milo’s burning red eyes. They were narrowed. He looked behind them, then in front, then stuck his head out of the window and looked up. Expecting an attack. Expecting something.
They waited. The Charger waited. But nothing came.
Milo’s skin lightened and the burning red left his eyes and mouth, and his curved horns retreated into his hairline.
“What the hell?” said Amber.
Milo examined his hands. “I don’t know. I can still feel—”
He shifted again without warning, into that black-skinned, horned demon, and he snarled in irritation and immediately reverted to his normal self.
“That was weird,” he muttered, then looked at her. “You’re going to have to change back.”
“But it hurts.”
“You have to change, and then you’ll have to fight against the impulse to shift again. It’s strong. It’s very strong.”
“For Christ’s sake …”
She gritted her teeth and reverted, and fresh pain sprang from her fingers and blinded her to her own thoughts and there was another flash of pain and she was a demon again.
“I can’t do it,” she gasped. “I can’t.”
“Revert,” said Milo. “And hold.”
“Give me a minute.”
“Now, Amber.”
“I’ll try again in a minute, you dick!”
“Now,” Milo snarled, his eyes starting to glow red, and Amber snarled back and reverted and this time she held it, despite the pain, and she focused on staying a normal, clumsy, ugly human …
And when the pain retracted far enough she took a deep, deep breath.
“Well done,” Milo said, settling back into his seat.
“This is horrible,” said Amber. Every inch of her wanted to shift. Her nerve endings jumped. Her skin was electric. The human form she inhabited was all wrong. “I feel like I need to pee,” she said. “I don’t need to pee, but you know that feeling? When you’re about to burst and you know that all you have to do is relax and it’ll suddenly feel so much better? It’s like that, times a thousand.”
Milo looked at her for a while. “Right,” he said at last. “Not the analogy I’d have used, but fair enough.”
“What’s wrong with us?”
Milo didn’t answer. He just got out of the car. Amber turned in her seat, watched him walk to the sign. He passed it and turned, a curious look on his face. He took a big step back to the Charger and shifted.
He stepped to the other side of the sign and reverted.
Scowling, he walked back to the car, shifting as he did so. By the time he got behind the wheel, he’d reverted again.
“This town is a curiosity,” he said.
“You think whatever shielded Buxton from the Shining Demon is the same thing that’s making us shift?”
“It’s likely the reason, yeah. Pity he didn’t mention this to us before he flew off.”
“I don’t like this,” said Amber. “I don’t like this feeling.”
“How’re the hands?”
“They hurt. Like, a huge amount.”
“We’ll get to that motel you found on the map,” said Milo. “You’ll be able to shift behind closed doors, and you’ll heal faster as a demon. A day or two, tops.”
He was probably right. The swelling had already gone down and her fingers were returning to their normal colour. Being a demon had its advantages.
“Sorry for calling you a dick,” she said.
“That’s okay. Sorry I snarled.”
“Guess we’re a little ruder than we’d like to be when we’re horned up.”
Milo looked at her.
“I should probably use a different word for that,” she said.
“Probably,” he agreed, and they started moving again. The town was affecting the Charger, too – its rumble was deeper, and somehow even more menacing, than usual.
Amber had examined the map online a dozen times before now, and as they drove she did her best to match it with her surroundings. They passed a used-car lot (TODD’S NEARLY NEW CARS! BEST PRICES!) hemmed in by a chain-link fence. The cars stood in their rows like prisoners in an exercise yard, their gleaming potential bridled by circumstances beyond their control.
Beyond the lot was a gas station, complete with small convenience store, and then they were in the town proper. Main Street was the widest street the place had, and the longest, and it boasted a church and a healthy array of businesses. The Hill Hardware Store was next to Lucy’s Laundromat, which stood opposite Doctor Maynard’s office, which in turn stood next to Reinhold’s Pharmacy. Moraga Discount Store was the massive building on the east side of the square, a slightly raised public meeting place in the exact centre of Main Street that the road itself circled. The west side was taken up by the grander Desolation Hill Municipal Building, which had eighteen steps leading up to its doors and pillars on either side, marred only by the scaffolding that scaled it from ground to peak like the skeleton of a building that had been left there to die. There was nothing on the square itself except what looked like an old wooden mailbox on a post that had been set into the concrete.
The Charger drew some curious looks as it passed. Amber was used to that – it was certainly an impressive car. But today she thought the attention they were getting was different, somehow. Not hostile, exactly, just … wary.
Milo turned off Main Street, passed a bar named Sally’s,