Page 95

The two places couldn’t have been more dissimilar, coastal Wales and the parched Mojave, with the Vegas shrub leeching whatever water the sun had left in the air, shriveling the sinuses, and drying the eyes.But mine were wet anyway, from memory.Of the last time I’d seen him, my own special ghost, the very last time...

Or was it?

I waited, my heart in my throat because I didn’t know.The jalopy ticked and coughed as I sat there, the engine turned off but not yet silent.Offering a wheezing commentary on the day and on the foolishness of my quest because there was nothing here.

There couldn’t be; he was gone.

I knew that, as sure as I knew anything, and I didn’t need the mournful wind over the sand to tell me so.I was freaked out and imagining things, and who wouldn’t be after the last week?Or when faced with what lay ahead, who wouldn’t want the whispered voice of a friend in her ear or the reassuring press of a hand, even a ghostly one?

Maybe especially a ghostly one.

I thought I’d seen him in the crowd, just for a second, when I was talking to Æsubrand.But try as I might and scour the surrounding streets as I had thereafter, for hours, there had been no further glimpse.Nor of the ghosts who’d been stalking me earlier, all of whom had suddenly disappeared.

Instead, I’d found only one mad old thing in a darkened alley, where the roofs of two adjacent houses almost met and left the area in the shade, enough so that I could just make him out, pawing through a garbage can and muttering to himself.And then swiping at me with a clawed hand when I got too close and threatened whatever prize he’d thought he’d found inside.The pale eyes had been as crazed as my own probably had last night, and he’d hissed at me, warning me off.

There had been no others, and there were none now, even when the sunset faded into a sullen line before winking out altogether, like the world shutting its eyes.And leaving the desert bathed in moonlight and looking strangely ghostly itself.The temperature started to drop as soon as the sun vanished, leaving me huddled in my Old West coat even though it was only September here, but it was unseasonably cold for Vegas, and I was getting uncomfortable.

For more than one reason.

What the hell was I doing?

I needed to get back.They’d be looking for me soon, and I had given everyone enough reasons to side-eye me lately; I didn’t need to add another.Not when I expected them to follow my lead, and wasn’t that a joke?

The lead of Cassie freaking Palmer, who had elevated fake-it-‘til-you-make-it to a high art form but was about to run face-first into the pointed stick of consequences as if I’d been doing anything else since I got here.Or even before.I was frankly amazed that I was still alive, not that that was likely to continue for much longer.

Yet people had kept looking at me all over town while I hunted for someone who wasn’t there.As if I were Gertie or Agnes and knew what to do.Vendors, trying to push free food on me, people in the crowd watching me with half-hopeful, half-fearful eyes, Æsubrand staring at my poor, tattered card as if it held all the wisdom of the ages...

God, what was Idoing?Sitting in a rapidly cooling Jeep or whatever it had been before a thousand repairs had made it intothis, and hoping for what?A miracle?Because those didn’t happen anymore if they ever had!

I needed to start the freaking Jeep, needed to drive off into the smear of color left by the sunset before I got anyone else killed, needed to stop tearing up like a little bitch because I didn’t have time for this.I didn’t have time for anything!Including this latest breakdown or whatever the hell I was doing!

Only I couldn’t leave because I’d also managed to drop the fucking keys, and they weren’t in the seat or the Jeep’s rusted floorboard, meaning they’d fallen outside into the sand.And wasn’t that perfect?Wasn’t that exactly what I needed?

I floundered out the door and got down on my hands and knees, scouring the darkened landscape, but I couldn’t see them.I couldn’t feel them, either, just more dirt under my fingernails, under my tattered, lousy manicure, under myskinlike everything anymore.And suddenly, it was all too much.

I sat in the sand with my back to the rusted jalopy, pulled my knees up to my chin, and cried.And cried and cried and cried, and wasn’t sure who I was even crying for.Myself?All the people I was about to let down?Billy Joe?

Because he wasn’t here, he wasdeadand passed on, and I wasgladhe was!Glad he couldn’t see the woman he’d given his life to protect and who had managed to fuck it all up anyway.And who was about to get killed by a bunch of fucking assholes who had wrecked the world he’d died to save!

Only no, she wasn’t because she couldn’t even manage to find the fucking—

Keys.

I blinked because they were somehow right in front of my face, but not on the ground.They were literally right there, dangling in mid-air, gleaming a little in the moonlight and blurred by my tears.And while levitation was a skill that witches were taught, I wasn’t doing that.

I wasn’t doing anything except backing up fast until I hit the fender of the Jeep, and yet there they still—

“Billy?”I heard my voice croak, but nothing answered except the wind.

I scrambled to my feet, tears drying on my cheeks, and stared wildly around, but still...nothing.He wasn’t there, nobody was there, just the same boring desert I’d been looking at for half a bloody hour now.But then I turned back around and—

“Fuck!”I yelled because the keys bumped me in the nose; they were so close.

“Ah, that’s better,” the wind sighed.“I thought I was going to have to deal with you in a state.”

I grabbed the keys, and they were just keys.Colder than they should have been, but that could have been the night air.Only it wasn’t the goddamned night air!

“Billy!”My voice broke again, but this time, I didn’t care.“Where are you?”