13. Flying the Coop
13
FLYING THE COOP
I wasn’t sure what I’d been expecting of Adam’s cousin Lana — maybe someone quiet and bookish, the kind of woman who might worship a man like Jasper from afar but who would never have the nerve to present herself as a possible candidate for marriage — but any of those vague notions pretty much blew themselves right out of my mind the second she walked into the restaurant.
Her black hair was perfectly coiffed, lying just at her collarbones, and her full mouth wore red lipstick just a shade darker than mine. And clearly, she wasn’t too worried about attracting attention, since her close-fitting dress was almost the same color as her lips, striking with her inky hair and dark eyes.
Quite a few male heads swiveled as she made her way back to our booth, but she must have been used to that sort of attention, considering how she never broke stride or even looked to one side or the other, instead intent on her destination. As soon as she came near, both Seth and Adam stood up, and she inclined her head slightly toward me as she slid into the booth.
Somehow, she managed to make even that awkward maneuver look downright graceful.
We knew there were no other Wilcoxes in the restaurant — and she must have realized that as well — because she said by way of greeting, “I’ve never met a McAllister before.” Her dark eyes flickered toward me. “And you — I can’t quite make you out.”
“My mother is a Wilcox,” I said politely. I couldn’t help feeling a bit outmatched by having such an amazing creature sharing our booth, but I told myself this wasn’t a competition. “My father is from a clan in Massachusetts.”
“How very fascinating,” Lana responded in tones that seemed to indicate she wasn’t terribly fascinated after all. Then she looked over at her cousin. “They’re trying to stop Jasper, I assume.”
“Yes, we are,” Seth said. Although he’d given her a polite smile, he hadn’t otherwise reacted in a way that would make me think he was at all entranced by her, which only made me love him that much more. “Adam said you might be willing to help.”
A waiter walked by our table, and Lana immediately lifted a hand. “A Manhattan, please.”
I had the impression the man had been on his way to help someone else, but he stopped and said at once, “Of course, miss. Anything for the rest of you?”
Cocktails seemed to be the order of the day in this era, but I’d never been one for mixed drinks, and the few I liked — margaritas and cosmos and daiquiris — probably weren’t on the menu in 1947 Flagstaff. Instead, I asked for a glass of wine and Seth followed suit, while Adam requested a Tom Collins.
With the matter settled and the waiter heading off to fetch our drinks, Lana said, “Anything to get Jasper to abandon this ridiculous scheme of his. I’ve tried to tell him on many occasions that there’s absolutely no evidence to suggest that binding himself to a prima from another clan will do anything to break the curse. But because the Wilcox men have tried everything else, to no avail, it seems that Jasper is allowing himself to get lost in improbabilities rather than acknowledging that the situation is one we’ll all have to live with.”
I wanted to ask her why — when she certainly seemed like the kind of woman who could have pretty much anyone she wanted and was clearly smart and articulate as well — she’d be willing to throw all that away on a life that would last for her maybe two or three years at the most.
But I wasn’t that brave…and it really wasn’t my business, either.
“I’m glad you want to help,” Seth said, and she gave him an indulgent smile.
“I haven’t said that I would,” she responded. “But I also haven’t said that I won’t. I want to know what we’re working with here. From some rumblings I’ve sensed within the clan, I know that Jasper was successful in taking Ruby from McAllister territory. Anything after that, however, currently escapes my grasp.”
“She’s not being held in Flagstaff,” I said, and decided for now not to say anything more than that. If Lana ended up agreeing to be part of our rescue mission, then she would have earned the right to know more. “But the place where she’s being kept has been protected with all sorts of spells to keep her from escaping.”
“That sounds like something Jasper would do,” Lana remarked. “He always has been a singular combination of daring and cautious at the same time. Still, there’s not a warding spell anyone in this clan can cast — including Jasper — that I can’t bypass if necessary. What else?”
While her words allowed me to be cautiously optimistic, we all had to pause there for a moment as the waiter came back with our drinks and asked if we wanted to order food. Because none of us had even glanced at a menu, we told him we needed some more time, and he nodded and said he’d check back in ten minutes or so.
“We think someone must have teleported her into the room to avoid notice,” Seth said.
“That would have been our cousin Matthias,” Adam said. “He’s the only one in our clan with that particular gift, and he’s always been part of Jasper’s inner circle.”
“One of his lackeys, you mean,” Lana responded before taking a sip of her Manhattan.
For someone who was supposedly madly in love with Jasper Wilcox, she certainly didn’t seem to have a very flattering view of the people he surrounded himself with. Then again, you could care for someone and still allow yourself to see all their warts and flaws.
So far, I hadn’t seen many in Seth, but that was only because he was superior in every possible way.
“Whatever you want to call him, Matthias is the only person who could have hidden Ruby in that room without anyone seeing him,” Adam said. “Whoever else is watching her, they have to come and go like an ordinary person.”
“Ruby said it was a man and a woman who took turns,” Seth said, and Lana tilted her head, looking at him with narrowed eyes.
“‘Ruby said’?” she repeated. “You actually spoke with her? How?”
“I heard her in here,” he replied, pointing at his temple. “That’s how I know she was taken to her current hiding place after being in the Wilcox cabin for one night, and also that it sounds as if several different people are watching over her.”
Lana picked up her Manhattan again. “Wherever that is. I suppose you’re just being cautious.” A sip of the cocktail, and she added, “But still, if Jasper isn’t there, it should be easier to spirit her away. And once you do so, I would recommend taking an alternate route home. The last thing you want is to have to drive her right back through Flagstaff. I’m afraid our primus would probably be able to sniff her out.”
“They can take Highway 87 to Payson,” Adam said, then directed his next words directly to Seth and me. “That’ll get you safely back into McAllister territory.”
Right. My family had driven that way one time, heading south out of Winslow so we could go to Payson and have lunch, and then coming down into Camp Verde, where we picked up the northbound I-17 and completed the circle. In my world, such an outing wasn’t a big deal, since no one really cared how many Wilcoxes were going into McAllister territory or vice versa.
But in 1947, the highway would give us the escape route we so desperately needed. Seth had told me he’d been able to transport himself nearly a hundred miles, but I had no idea whether he could replicate such a feat when carrying another person.
Or two, I thought, but I pushed the notion away at once. As much as I would have liked to think that Seth could carry both of us, doing so would have strained his powers to the limit even with the amulet helping out.
No, I’d have to drive the getaway car…and hope like hell that Jasper wouldn’t concern himself with small fry like me.
Seth was looking confused — I had a feeling the highway had been built sometime after 1926 — but if he had any questions, he’d apparently decided to hold on to them until the two of us could talk in private.
“So, she’s in Winslow,” Lana said, and Adam frowned, seeming to realize he’d given away something of Ruby’s position merely by mentioning how we could get her back into McAllister territory with the least amount of fuss. “One of our ranches that way?”
He gave a noncommittal shrug. “Somewhere around there. But we can stop pussyfooting around if you agree to help us.”
Lana went silent for a moment as she swirled some of the ice in her glass. “Oh, I’ll help you. This whole thing is ridiculous, and I told Jasper if he attempted something like it, he’d be risking a full-out clan war. That’s the absolute last thing he should be doing, not when we’re all just trying to get on with our lives now that the war is over.”
Had any Wilcox sons been lost in that fight? I couldn’t be sure, since it was all ancient history to me. Somehow, though, I guessed Jasper had done what he could to keep any Wilcox warlocks from being sent overseas. I’d never heard that the men in my clan had resisted the draft, probably understanding that to do so would only invite some very unwelcome scrutiny from the U.S. government, which was the last thing any of them could afford. That didn’t mean they might not have all ended up in safe positions stateside, well out of harm’s way.
However, I thought I could see why Lana wanted things to remain on an even keel.
“I don’t know if we’d go to war,” Seth said. “There’s a lot more of you than there are of us.”
It was such an obvious fact that he’d probably decided there wasn’t much problem in pointing it out once again.
“There are,” Lana said without even a blink. “But there are also a great many people in the de la Paz clan, and if their prima should decide that Jasper has given himself an unfair advantage….”
She didn’t complete the sentence; not that there was much reason for her to do so. I hadn’t thought of that angle, but I realized she was right. As long as everyone stayed in their own lanes, then the three Arizona clans would maintain the uneasy peace that had existed for so many years.
What Jasper had just done…well, it was sort of like firing those first shots at Fort Sumter, the ones that had started the Civil War.
“Well, the easy way to avoid all that unpleasantness is to free Ruby and get her back to Jerome,” Adam said calmly. “At that point, if the McAllisters want to firm up their alliance with the de la Paz clan to ensure nothing like this ever happens again, I’m all for it. But I’d rather get down to the nuts and bolts of what needs to be done.”
Lana gazed at her cousin for a moment, as if taking his measure all over again, even though they must have known one another their entire lives. The hair and the lipstick and the dress made her seem quite mature, but I guessed she couldn’t be much older than twenty-five or twenty-six at the most, thus giving Adam a few years on her.
“Simple enough,” she said after a pause. “Or that is, it’ll be simple if you tell me where Ruby’s being held so I can go there and get a feel for the spells that are currently preventing her from escaping. Once I get the lay of the land, it should be easy enough to lift them. You’ll be standing by, of course, and will spirit her away by whatever means necessary. Jasper may sense that something has gone wrong, but he can’t teleport, which means there’s very little he can do. He might think that holding her in Winslow was a good idea, and yet I’m afraid it might backfire on him in the end.”
Which, one would hope, would make him sit down and reexamine his life choices. To be honest, I didn’t know much of what he’d done with himself after his attempt to kidnap Ruby had failed. He’d lived to be in his sixties, I thought, but he certainly hadn’t tried anything like that again.
With any luck, he’d be similarly chastened after we stole Ruby out from under his nose.
And afterward? Well, I hadn’t been allowing myself to think about that too much, not when we were all focused on freeing her first. Without that happy outcome, matters would become so much worse.
But if we were successful, maybe…just maybe… the universe would decide we’d been kicked around enough and that it was time to send us back where we belonged.
Or at least, where I belonged, and where Seth had told me he wanted to make his life as well.
It was something to hold on to.
“We can only hope,” Adam said, and his tone had grown a little grimmer. I noticed that he’d barely touched his drink, as if he hadn’t wanted to blur any edges until we got all this hammered out.
Lana smiled. “Oh, we’ll do much more than hope.”
Her gaze flickered toward me, then back toward her cousin.
“We’ll win.”
In the end — well, after we’d finally ordered our dinners and knew we’d have some time alone before the waiter returned — we came up with a simple enough plan. Although we still had nearly a week until the dark of the moon, it felt much better to bust Ruby out of there sooner rather than later, especially since we were starting to edge toward the weekend, and that meant La Posada would potentially be much busier than it had been today during our visit.
“I’ll need to wait until I’m off work, though,” Adam told us. “If I try to take a day when it’s obvious I’m not ill or have some other reason for not being there, that will rouse too many suspicions.”
“That’s fine,” Seth said, although I couldn’t miss the flicker of worry in his eyes. With Adam getting off at five, the absolute soonest he could be in Winslow would be sometime after six. Night would be falling.
Maybe that would be better. This did seem like the sort of maneuver that should be carried out under cover of darkness. On the other hand, I wasn’t sure whether I much cared for the idea of having to drive Highway 87 all alone in the dark. It cut through big, gloomy pine forests for mile upon mile, and even though I’d gone that route once, I’d been in junior high school and hadn’t been paying all that much attention…and I certainly hadn’t been the person behind the wheel.
But with Seth continuing to imply that he thought it was too risky for him to carry more than one person, we didn’t have much choice. Neither of us had mentioned anything about the amulet, probably because even though we were risking a lot by putting our trust in Lana and Adam, it felt extra dangerous to tell them we had such a powerful artifact at our disposal. No, Seth made it sound as if he’d always had the ability to carry a “passenger,” so to speak, and we left it there.
What our Wilcox accomplices didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.
“It’s more than fine,” Lana said briskly. “Because the three of us will get there a little early so I can familiarize myself with the spells that have been set on your prima -in-waiting’s room. That way, when Adam shows up and we set our plan in motion, there won’t be anything to keep us from carrying it out right away.”
She sounded so no-nonsense about the whole thing, as though the only possible conclusion could be that we succeeded and everyone went on their merry way.
I sure hoped she was right.
And I knew it was silly of me, but I was really hating the lack of cell phones or any other kind of reliable long-distance communication in case something went wrong. I assumed they must have walkie-talkies or some kind of shortwave radio in the 1940s, but walkie-talkies wouldn’t have the kind of range to reach from Flagstaff to Winslow, some sixty miles away, and a shortwave radio wasn’t the kind of thing you could plug into your car’s cigarette lighter.
Then again, none of my co-conspirators had grown up with cell phones, and they didn’t look too worried about not being able to keep in constant communication. Maybe in the past, people had been more self-reliant because they knew they couldn’t pick up their phone and get immediate help.
“We’ll go separately,” Lana continued. “It wouldn’t do for you to be seen coming to my house to fetch me, and likewise, I shouldn’t go anywhere near the Weatherford.”
“We’re having dinner together now,” I pointed out, and her slender shoulders lifted a fraction.
“In a restaurant without any Wilcoxes,” she replied. “Believe me, if I’d seen a single one of my relatives in here, I would have turned around and left. But I know Adam chose this place because very few people in our clan tend to eat here.”
Seth turned a curious look toward the warlock, who nodded.
“It’s more popular with tourists and other out-of-towners,” he explained. “We have our own places we like to frequent. I thought it would be safest to come here.”
Well, that seemed to settle that particular problem.
Driving separate cars, Lana in hers and Seth and me in his father’s two-tone Chevy, we’d set out for Winslow a little after four. That would give us about an hour to reconnoiter, and by the time Adam arrived, Lana would have sussed out the enchantments on Ruby’s room and come up with the best way to circumvent them. Once we had the door open, Seth would hurry inside, grab her, and teleport the two of them back to Jerome, while Adam and Lana would provide cover for me to get to the car and drive off on Highway 87. After they were assured we’d made a clean getaway, they’d head back to Flagstaff and do their best to act as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
“Jasper will be furious, of course,” Lana said, then drank the rest of her Manhattan, looking a little annoyed with herself for not ordering a second one. “But at the same time, he’ll do his best to hide his anger from the rest of the clan, since then he would have to admit he’d been bested by the McAllisters.”
“Won’t people figure out sooner or later that Ruby got away?” Seth asked. “That is, it seems as if most people in your clan know of his plans.”
“They might have heard of them,” she replied without even blinking. “But that doesn’t mean they’ll know he was actually successful at taking her from Jerome. The only people who know that for sure are those in his inner circle.”
I shot a dubious look at Adam. “You’re in his ‘inner circle’?”
He seemed almost sheepish. “I wouldn’t phrase it that way. Jasper tends to be a little closer with those of us who work for Northern Lumber, since the company has been in the family for nearly eighty years now, and he has a vested interest in the whole thing. But he knows that I don’t agree with what he’s done here. Not at all.”
His tone was so firm that I guessed it would be better not to probe too deeply. As Seth and I had discussed earlier, we’d already rolled the dice on trusting Adam Wilcox. Questioning his motives now wasn’t going to improve the situation.
The waiter came by then to inquire about dessert, which we all declined. By mutual agreement, our little party broke up soon afterward, with Adam insisting on paying the bill and Lana looking on in some amusement.
And since we’d already agreed on what we needed to do the following day, Seth and I went out to the car and drove back to the hotel. Both of us were subdued, and I knew I was starting to have a little buyer’s remorse, wondering if we should be jumping into this so quickly, thinking maybe we should have taken more time to plan.
No, this was the right thing to do. The longer we waited, the greater the chance that Jasper might move Ruby to some other hidey-hole. Also, if the escape attempt got botched somehow but we were able to get away, we’d still have time to regroup and come up with a different plan. Waiting until the last minute would only lose us a chance to pivot.
My thoughts rattled around, and when we got to the hotel, Seth still didn’t say anything, and instead only held my hand as we rode up in the elevator. Once we were inside our room, though, he finally spoke.
“You’re worried.”
“Aren’t you?”
“A little,” he admitted, and then shrugged off his overcoat so he could hang it up in the closet. “But Lana seems confident.”
“I have a feeling she’s confident about pretty much everything.”
He chuckled. “You’re probably right. I wonder if Jasper wasn’t interested in marrying her because he’s a little afraid of her.”
Somehow, I had a hard time imagining that black-haired warlock being afraid of anyone or anything, but I had to admit I didn’t know anything about how he interacted with women. I supposed part of the reason abducting someone like Ruby might have appealed to him was that he thought it would be easy to overpower someone so much younger than he.
Well, except for the part where it sure didn’t seem as if Ruby would ever allow someone to overpower her, even if he did happen to be a Wilcox primus.
“His loss,” I said. “I don’t have much respect for men who’re afraid of strong women.”
Smiling, Seth came closer and took my hands in his. “Strong women are what make the world go ’round.”
“Damn straight.”
We kissed then, the faint afterglow we had from our wine with dinner making it seem as though the smartest thing we could do in that moment would be to fall on the bed and kiss one another, over and over again, until at some point our clothes were on the floor and we were just two naked bodies pressed together in the darkness. Reassuring to feel him against me, in me, our contact letting me know it would all be okay.
It had to be.
That Thursday felt like one of the longest days I’d ever endured, even though Seth and I found a movie theater over on San Francisco Street and managed to use up a good chunk of time by going to a double feature, one that also included a newsreel and a couple of cartoons before the main event began. Too bad we couldn’t have really gone to the Grand Canyon, but those plans had obviously been canceled.
But at least we walked out of the theater just a little before four o’clock, the perfect time to retrieve our car from where the spot where it was parked near the Weatherford and to point it east toward Winslow. Seth and I had already decided that I should be the one behind the wheel, since that would give me a chance to get familiar with the Chevy before I had to drive it all the way back to Jerome by myself.
Due to our lack of cell phones, I had no idea whether Lana had left Flagstaff or not. We’d already planned to meet near that gallery room on the upper level, the one closest to the spot where Ruby was being held, so it wasn’t as though we had to worry about trying to connect with her in the parking lot at La Posada or anything.
As we were driving, though, I kept looking in my rearview mirror, wondering which car on the road might be hers, and what kind of vehicle she would even drive. Probably a convertible of some sort; she seemed like the sort of person to go around town with the top down and a silk scarf covering her head, her eyes shielded by sunglasses. She might not have been an actual movie star, but she sure looked like one.
But I didn’t see any convertibles, and I supposed that even if Lana did drive something that flashy, she might have borrowed a less conspicuous car from a friend or relative. Even doing that would have been problematic, though, since she would have been tipping them off that she needed a different vehicle that day, for whatever reason.
The sun had slipped behind the horizon, and a hazy, purple dusk had settled over the landscape by the time Seth and I pulled into the parking lot at La Posada. Several more cars were parked there than we’d seen the day before, but I told myself that wasn’t so strange, not with it now being Friday and more people probably on the road.
Maybe it was better that way. Anything that might help us to escape notice had to be a good thing.
We walked into the hotel as if we had every right to be there, although we bypassed the reception desk, where another couple, maybe ten years or so older than the two of us, were talking to the clerk. Glad of his distraction, we headed toward the rear corridor, where we could take the stairs up to the second-level gallery.
Lana was already standing there, studying the Navajo pottery on display as if it was the only reason for her to have come to this level. Not looking directly at us, she said, “The spells are powerful, but I’ve already begun unwinding them. It should be only a few more minutes.”
As far as I could tell, she hadn’t done anything at all, but I had to admit that I didn’t know much about this kind of magic.
“Did Jasper put them there?” I asked.
“Some,” she replied, her expression still almost distracted, as if she was focused on something far beyond this space.
Maybe she was. Or at least, even though I knew Ruby’s comfortable prison was located only a few yards from where we stood, I wondered if part of those spells reached out into a different plane from the one we occupied, manipulating an entirely separate form of energy.
Well, I could worry about the theory of it all once we were safely away from here.
“The rest I think were placed by my cousin Mary,” Lana went on. “She’s also good at this sort of thing. But she’s not so good that I can’t undo what she’s done.”
And thank God for that. Once again, I thought of how much trust we were putting in Lana Wilcox, of how she could have been bullshitting us the whole time and only laying a trap that we’d walked right into.
If that had been the case, we would be pretty much sitting ducks right now. It wasn’t as if Jasper and his goon squad couldn’t have just waltzed in and grabbed us as we stood there.
That didn’t happen, though. After a few more minutes, Lana looked over at us again.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “But at this point, I think it’s better if we wait for Adam to get here before I unravel the final spell. Once all the wards are gone, we’re going to want to hurry in there right away so you can get Ruby, Seth. I’ll just feel better if we have Adam here as reinforcement.”
For what, I wasn’t sure, since his particular magical gift wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that would be of much use in a confrontation with Jasper Wilcox.
On the other hand, Adam was tall and well-built enough, if not quite as muscular as Seth, and I supposed he could provide some additional physical protection if nothing else.
To my relief, though, he appeared only about ten minutes after that, arriving earlier than we’d expected.
“I made good time,” he told us as he approached.
“But you didn’t leave work early,” Lana replied, something in her tone almost warning, and at once, he shook his head.
“Of course not,” he said. “I know better than to attract attention like that.”
His reply, although not sufficient to make me relax all the way, still was something of a relief. Even in his eagerness to get to Winslow, he hadn’t done anything that would attract attention.
“Then let’s do this,” Lana said, her tone firm, confident.
I glanced over at Seth. His jaw was tense, but he looked ready to go. And since I’d placed the amulet in his jacket pocket on the drive over here, I knew his powers were as boosted as they could possibly be.
Although I understood that he was the one who needed to carry the amulet, I had to admit I felt almost naked now that I knew I no longer had it with me. Right now, we were standing so close that its field of effect still would have boosted my power-hiding talent, but I didn’t think I needed it now, not when Lana and Adam already knew exactly what Seth and I were.
“She knows we’re here,” he said then, and I knew he must be speaking of Ruby, who’d probably reached out to him telepathically just as she had the day before.
“Good,” Lana replied, looking unfazed by this revelation. “Then tell her to get ready, that I’m about to pull the thread on this final spell, and that afterward, she has to go with you.”
That was the plan. Ruby absolutely had to be the first order of business here…even though I hated the idea of being left behind.
You’re not being left, I scolded myself. You’ll have Adam and Lana here, and they’ll make sure you get in your car and drive off to Payson. A half-hour from now, you’ll be safe in McAllister territory, even though it’s going to take much longer to get to Jerome.
If the gods smiled on us, of course.
Face taut and unsmiling, Seth nodded. “She’s ready.”
Well, that made one of us.
However, I didn’t say anything. At this point, I was largely superfluous. They didn’t need me to take down those warding spells, or to blink Ruby out of here…or even to provide some muscle in case some Wilcox warlocks actually did show up.
No, my main reason for being here was to drive away so Seth’s big Chevy wouldn’t get left behind at the scene of the crime.
I knew if I said any of this aloud, Seth would be quick to contradict me and say I’d been a vital part of the plan, that if I hadn’t managed to keep us undetected in Wilcox territory for so long, none of this would have been possible.
Maybe that was mostly true. For now, though, I couldn’t let myself worry about it.
Lana began to walk away from us, up the short flight of stairs that led into the corridor where Ruby’s room was located. We hadn’t told her where it was, but it seemed her work undoing the wards had given her all the information she needed. Seth followed with me right behind, while Adam brought up the rear.
Doors on either side of us, and one at the end of the equally truncated corridor. Lana laid her hand on the doorknob, and it turned, opening inward.
A woman around my age, maybe a little younger, with strawberry blonde hair and big blue eyes, stared out at us. I didn’t have much chance to gather more of an impression than that, because Lana said in a voice like a knife, “ Now, Seth,” and he leaped forward, grabbed the young woman — who I assumed must be Ruby — around the waist, and promptly disappeared.
“So much for that,” Adam remarked.
“Almost,” Lana said. “We need to get out of here. Devynn, follow Adam. He’ll lead you to the highway and then double back.”
While she, I assumed, would get in her own car and head straight for Flagstaff, although I didn’t ask.
No, the important thing was to get on the move.
We couldn’t run down the stairs and out of there without inviting way too much notice, so the three of us walked as calmly as we could out of the hallway — after Lana had closed the door to Ruby’s room — and then through the lobby and into the parking lot. Once we emerged into the chilly night air, I didn’t exactly let out a breath of relief, although it felt better to be outside for some reason.
“Good luck,” Lana said briefly before walking over to a pale blue convertible with the top up.
I allowed myself a moment of inner triumph at correctly guessing the kind of vehicle she drove, then hurried over to the two-tone Chevy, key already in my hand. Adam had parked next to me, so it was easy enough to wait while he backed out and then follow him from the parking lot and onto Winslow’s dark streets.
Even at the best of times, I couldn’t have said I knew the town well except for the route to and from La Posada to Route 66, and now, with full dark fallen and not even a sliver of a moon overhead to light my way, I had to trust his guidance completely as we turned onto one street and then another, and another.
But then I spotted a reassuring sign that said “Highway 87,” with “Payson - 90 miles” listed right underneath, so I knew he’d brought me to the correct spot. I turned onto the highway, and he peeled off, heading in the opposite direction, presumably so he could pick up Route 66 and make his way back to Flagstaff.
I wished him godspeed and pressed down on the accelerator. The big engine picked up speed immediately, and again, I thought of how powerful it felt, how alive it seemed compared to the motors of the silky and seamless electric vehicles of my own time. Sure, they had decent torque, but they weren’t anywhere near the same as the rumbling beast beneath the Chevy’s hood.
However, I wasn’t about to floor it and end up shooting the car over the edge of the highway and into a ravine, something I knew would be a distinct possibility once it began to climb into the forests along the Mogollon Rim.
No, I made myself go at a steady sixty miles per hour, which was still ten over the posted speed limit. In addition to the utter blackness out here — very different from my own time, when solar-powered street lamps helped illuminate the highway — strange eddies of mist had begun to drift across the road, and I took my foot off the accelerator just a little. Although mist and fog were both rarities in this arid, high-desert region, we’d still get them from time to time, depending on how rapidly the day had cooled and how much actual moisture there was in the air.
I really wished they weren’t here now, though. There might not have been a single sign of pursuit, but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to get the hell out of Wilcox territory just as quickly as I could.
Something appeared up ahead in the mist, something that looked large and solid and black, completely blocking the highway.
Another car.
My foot immediately lifted from the accelerator, and I jammed on the brakes. Although the roadway was dry as a bone, the vehicle began to skid and then spin, threatening to send me over the side, just as I’d feared.
And then it was as if an invisible hand took hold of the out-of-control car, grabbing it so the spinning stopped and the Chevy came to a halt in the middle of the highway.
Breathing hard, adrenaline screaming along every nerve ending, I clutched the wheel for a moment longer so my brain could catch up with reality and realize I wasn’t going to die out here after all.
Very slowly, I unwrapped my fingers from the steering wheel and made myself get out of the Stylemaster, wondering what the hell was going on with that other car. Had it died in the middle of the highway?
But then a tall shape emerged from behind the other car, a shape that resolved itself once it stood in the illumination from the Chevy’s headlights, a shape that became a tall man with black hair and a mocking smile, one that seemed all too clear...and sent a shiver of ice down my spine.
Something about the scene seemed oddly familiar, as if I’d been here before.
And then it clicked — the moonless sky overhead…the black car…the mist swirling around so nothing about the landscape had any detail or definition, was not much more than a black void.
Those prophetic dreams hadn’t shown me Ruby’s kidnapping.
They’d shown me mine.