“You find this funny?” Trisk said dryly, then reached for the wall when the van leaned precariously as they took a corner. The brakes squealed in protest . . . and then the van righted itself and they raced down a straightaway.
“Everyone okay?” the driver asked, her childishly high but beautifully resonant voice flowing out along with “House of the Rising Sun” from the radio. It sounded eminently right blaring from the huge speakers as they ran from Weres in the moonless night. The girl’s window was down, and her long black hair whipped in the wind as she took a quick glance at them.
“I don’t know,” Trisk said, wondering if she’d hit her head at some point and didn’t remember it. How could she have just left Benson and May like that? And with a little kid, too.
The girl gave her a grin before turning her attention back to the road. With a sudden shock, Trisk realized the driver was sitting on a phone book. Even so, Trisk took in her curves and adjusted her age to be about nineteen. She was just really small. A Were, maybe? she wondered, breathing deep for any telltale smell of wolfsbane as she looked from her to the tall boy. They didn’t look anything alike, the tiny woman’s pantsuit in dark shades of brown and black, and the tall boy in orange-and-yellow bell-bottoms that went with his hair and little else.
Uneasy, Trisk cleared her throat. Kal rolled back and forth as the van wove through the empty streets. Exhaling loudly, Daniel slumped against the wall, his knees bent and his feet spread wide for balance. His hat was leaking silver dust. Seeing her questioning look, Daniel shrugged. “Ah, I’m Trisk, and that’s Daniel,” Trisk finally said.
“Hey,” Daniel said, giving them a little wave.
The gangly adolescent whooped when the van took a bump hard, his smile never dimming. “I’m Takata,” he said, pointing to a sticker on one of the boxes stacked up against one side. “And that’s Ripley. She’s my drummer.” He glanced at the driver. “Take it easy, Rip. I think we lost them. You’re going to bust my ride.”
“I’m not your drummer,” the woman said. “You’re my bass.”
Trisk’s eyebrows rose as she realized what the odd-shaped bumps taking up most of the van were. Pelhan said he was in a band, she thought, worried when Ripley picked up speed as they headed out of the city.
“We’re going to Cincinnati,” the kid said as he brushed the dirt from his orange slacks. “If my mom finds out I ditched work to play a gig this Halloween, it won’t be the plague that kills me. Then they cancel it. Dude.”
Trisk put a hand to her middle, not feeling well from all the sudden shifts and bumps. “It’s in the tomatoes,” she said. “Just don’t eat them.”
“That’s what I heard!” Takata’s gaze touched on Daniel’s blisters before turning to the woman. “You owe me a Coke, Ripley. It’s the tomatoes.”
She flipped him off, but Takata didn’t seem to care as he leaned close, whispering, “Your friend is all right. He doesn’t have the plague. He’s been pixed.”
Trisk’s lips parted, and from Daniel’s hat, Orchid shouted, “You’ve seen a pixy? Where!”
“No way!” Takata shook Ripley’s shoulder when Orchid pushed the hat up, peering out at them as Daniel tried to hold it down. Bright silver pixy dust spilled from under his hand, looking like an aura as the wind ripped it away and it pooled at the back of the van.
“It’s a pixy!” Takata exclaimed, and then his face went still, eyes wide as he glanced from Trisk to Daniel, clearly knowing he was a human. “Ahh . . .” he said, looking almost terrified.
“Where!” Orchid demanded, but the kid was tongue-tied.
“It’s okay,” Trisk said, putting a hand on Takata’s shoulder. “I’m taking care of it.”
“Like hell you are,” Orchid said, and Daniel yelped when she poked at him to stop trying to get her to hide. “If anyone has to kill Daniel, it will be me. Besides, he’s not going to say anything,” the pixy added. “He’s cool with all of us. You know where there are pixies?”
Still unsure, the kid rubbed the back of his neck in what looked like remembered pain. “We had a family of them in the woods behind our house when I was growing up. They might still be there.” He chuckled. “I told my mom it was poison ivy.”
The dust spilling from under Daniel’s hat spun through a kaleidoscope of color, and the tiny woman stared at all of them, clearly torn. “You should go with them,” Daniel said softly, clearly knowing the problem, and Orchid’s dust turned a blue so dark it was almost unseen. “We’ll get to DC okay.”
“Not until I know no one is going to kill you to keep the silence,” she said, tucking back under the hat, her expression becoming pensive.
Mood undimmed, Takata tapped a rhythm on his knee. “Man, I gotta write a song about this. ‘Little death, looking for love.’?” He turned to the woman. “Ripley. ‘Tiny little death, held captive by silence,’?” he sang, shocking Trisk with his beautiful voice. “?‘Pining for love, made strong by violence.’?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Just no.”