I looked at the bed and saw Brooke, the covers kicked off her body but twisted around one leg. Her chest rose and fell, just like Boy Dog’s. How much nicer, I thought, to have woken up with that pressed against me instead?
I corrected myself immediately: with her pressed against me. And then I corrected myself again: I couldn’t touch her at all. She thought she loved me, but I couldn’t love her back. I had broken her before, by failing to catch the demon called Nobody, and now it was all I could do to keep her from breaking again. She was my responsibility, not my girlfriend.
I saw the shape of her body under her clothes, the hint of pale skin at her waist.
I went to the bathroom, keeping the light off, and washed my face in the dark. The towels were thin, like dishrags. I stared at my silhouette in the mirror, a dark outline barely separate from the dark room behind it. The corner of the glass was cracked and the mirrored surface was flaking away.
Brooke and I had been on the road for seven months now, hunting monsters. I had always called them demons, but they called themselves Withered or Gifted, depending on whether they saw their lives as a curse or a blessing. I’d killed the first one on my own, almost four years ago now. And while I’d tried to keep the rest of the world out of it, this dark, hidden underworld had started pulling others in, killing or corrupting everyone I knew. Everything I touched. My mother had died, and Marci, and Brooke had been saved but only by the barest definition. I sometimes wondered if she would have been better off dead.
I saw the shape of her body again like an afterimage in my mind, so still and silent in the bed.
I sat down on the old chair in the corner of the room, pulling on my shoes as the wood creaked softly with each tiny movement. I’d been sleeping in front of the door—Brooke sometimes walked in her sleep—so Boy Dog was there now as well, blocking me from opening it more than a foot. I undid the chain and tried to slip through, but Boy Dog woke up and scrambled to his feet, shaking and rattling his collar. I hushed him, putting my hand on his neck, and he followed me outside. The light seemed blinding, but as my eyes adjusted I saw that it was still early morning, the whole world bathed in predawn blue. I stretched and rubbed my arms. Across the parking lot someone was throwing a fat white bag in a garbage can. The garbage can, I supposed. That’s how they thought of it, the people who lived here: it was their garbage can. Their home. To me it was just another place, just another parking lot, just another stop on the highway that was taking us … somewhere, I guess. We had no specific plans. We were hunting Withered and we went where they did, and whoever—or whatever—was hunting us came after. We had to stay one step ahead, or more if we could manage it. I honestly had no idea how many steps behind us they might be; if you run fast enough, you’re so far ahead you have no idea who’s chasing you.
I looked at the door to our room; I probably had a few minutes before Brooke woke up. I made sure it was locked, then walked toward the front desk to ask for information on the commune—motel clerks didn’t freak out about drifters, or anything else it seemed. We were some of the most normal people they saw.
The man at the garbage can went back in through the rear door of whatever business he was opening for the day. A pawn shop, maybe. It was too early to be a bar. The town was quiet, only just waking up, and I wondered what it would be like to live here, to put down roots and stay here forever. Not much different than in Clayton, I supposed. What brought people here, instead of there—or there instead of here? Did they choose to live here, or were they just born here and never moved away?
The front office had a bell on the door that dinged as I walked in.
“Good morning, sir.” He called me sir even though I was only eighteen and looked even younger. I’d tried growing a beard, hoping it would make me look like an adult, but it just came in wispy and thin—I was so obviously trying to look like an adult that I gave up and shaved it off. He glanced down at Boy Dog, who followed me in. “That room working out for you?”
“It’s been great,” I said. “Thanks for letting us keep the dog; a lot of places get picky about pets.”
“No problem. What can I do for you?”
I needed information, and I was caught by the sudden urge to torture it out of him—to tie him down and cut him in strategic places, just a bit at first, then more and more until he told me everything I wanted—
No. I wasn’t allowed to hurt people. I took a breath and spooled out the story I’d concocted instead. “Well, I’m looking for my sister—”