What are the Odds? Ethan
“It’s good the Malibu didn’t stop for us,” Hunter said, rubbing his temples. “Those girls were armed.”
They walked the Dust Road: Ethan’s fingers numb around the handle of their gas can, his mind in the past. He thought of what Jack Allen had told him today in that little pocket of suspended time they’d shared at the diner in Turner.
He thought of a scar his mother had shown him once.
Two scars to be exact, a pair of small circles like a snakebite in the flesh of her thigh.
Daddy did this to me with a barbecue fork, his mother had told Ethan.
Can you blame Mama for running the second she could?
Ethan remembered the night his mother had died.
The moment she’d died. She’d passed in her sleep, in her little bedroom behind the shop.
Ethan had been in his own bed upstairs, directly above her, and he’d awoken a few minutes before dawn to feel an electric tingle in the air, a creeping sensation on the back of his neck.
Something seemed to vibrate for a long moment in the room, tense and melancholy as an unanswered question.
Ethan had known, even before he found the courage to go down and check her pulse, that he’d just felt his mother’s soul move from one place to the next.
He remembered the crushing weight of the debts she’d left him.
He remembered the tinkle of the bell over the shop’s door when Hunter had stepped inside, a few months later, and asked for a job.
Ethan remembered the letter he’d found addressed to Sarah Powers in the old house behind the Brake Inn Motel last night, shortly before the end of the world.
Don’t try to steer the wind. The ceremony is drawing them together all on its own.
Ethan wondered if there had ever been a moment, in all his life, when he hadn’t been trapped in a plan not of his own design. Just as Jack Allen had said.
You will witness true horror.
Up ahead, the mountain grew closer. Ethan thought of what Tabitha had said in the cafe last night.
The old tribe believed the mountain had a special power. They said it ensured things always worked out the way they were meant to.
But at what cost?
He saw the motel come into view. An hour ago, when the Malibu had passed Ethan and Hunter on the road, time had seemed to dilate for a moment when Kyla’s face passed near Ethan’s own. There had been a question in her eyes so obvious, Ethan could almost hear her voice in his head.
Do you remember?
Ethan had nodded. Somehow, when they’d swallowed the shards of the silver mirror last night, they’d finally broken free of the amnesia that had cursed them for who knew how long. Ethan had brought a finger to his lips. Don’t say a word.
They couldn’t risk Sarah’s killer knowing something had changed. That this night wasn’t like all the other nights. The killer might do something drastic. They might find a way to murder Sarah before Ethan and Kyla had the chance to stop them.
Kyla nodded in agreement, looking as if she understood all of this. The car crept along the road until the moment they lost sight of each other’s eyes. All in a rush, time kept moving. The car rocketed away.
Hunter spat a wad of bloody phlegm into the desert. He thumped his chest. Ethan pulled his mind back to the present. He said, “What?”
As they neared the Brake Inn Motel, Hunter spotted the Malibu parked at the gas pump.
He grew tense. He withdrew the Python they’d stolen in Turner from the back of Ethan’s jeans, just as he did every night.
Ethan saw a glint of light from an upstairs window in the old house behind the motel.
The lens of Sarah’s camera snapping their photograph. Just like always.
But through the window of the motel’s office, Ethan saw his first surprise of the evening: Thomas was standing behind the front desk. Just Thomas. Alone.
Tabitha was nowhere to be seen when the boys made their way inside. Thomas smiled. “Good evening.”
“Evening,” Hunter said. “We need to pay for some gas.”
“I’m so sorry. I’m afraid our pump is dry for the night. We’ve been told to expect a delivery—”
Hunter tilted his head. “ ‘We’?”
“Yes. My sister and my… myself.” Thomas seemed anxious, his patter falling flat. His hand twitched across the desk. He toyed with the heavy fountain pen. “She’s in her room. Not feeling well.”
They heard footsteps on the porch. Kyla arrived, followed a moment later by Fernanda, and she gave Ethan a single alarmed look, a brief widening of the eyes.
Something else was wrong.
Thomas certainly seemed bothered. There was an edge in his voice as he said, “What is it?”
“We need some soap. There’s none in our room.”
“Of course there is. I left it with the towels not twenty minutes before you arrived.”
Kyla shrugged. “I looked high and low. Can you just grab us some more?”
Thomas spent an age behind the desk, turning a scowl from Ethan to Kyla long enough for Ethan to fear the man might be about to spoil everything. Hunter watched it all with curiosity. So, too, did Fernanda.
Finally, Thomas said, “I’ll just be a moment.”
When the man headed out the door, Ethan turned to the fireplace and discovered a second surprise: the stone eggs that had rested on the fire’s mantelpiece on every other evening were, now, nowhere to be seen.
Hunter said to the girls, “Thanks for the ride.”
There was a hard flatness in his voice. A dangerous edge.
Kyla and Fernanda hesitated a moment near the door.
Hunter went on. “I’m surprised to still see y’all here. You were in an awful fucking hurry.”
Fernanda said, “I apologize. We were dangerously low on fuel. We were afraid the car might not even make it this far.”
“And look at all the good that did you.”
“I get it,” Ethan said, just as he had the first time they’d all met. “It’s dangerous out here. There’s no telling what kind of people could be looking for a ride.”
Kyla came to warm herself near the fire. Near Ethan.
“For what it’s worth, I felt bad about it. I’m sorry.”
Their backs to the others, Kyla flashed Ethan a glimpse of something concealed in the pocket of her jacket: a bar of soap, no doubt swiped from her bathroom.
Her eyes scanned the junk on the mantel.
She was looking for the eggs, too, and no doubt trying to avoid the same frightening conclusions as Ethan.
“Is it true what the man said?” Ethan asked, trying not to sound robotic as his mind moved in a dozen other directions. “That the pump here’s out of fuel?”
“I tried it myself,” Kyla said casually, though that fear was back in her eyes. “An hour ago, when we got here, I didn’t believe him. I went and squeezed the pump. It’s bone-dry.”
“Why didn’t you believe him?” Hunter said.
“I don’t know.”
Ethan was worried for Tabitha. Whatever Thomas was doing here, his sister wouldn’t have gone along with it. Not willingly.
Ethan remembered the explosion in the cafe last night.
He remembered Jack Allen saying, I will become a god in truth.
They didn’t have time to be bothered for long.
There was creak from the porch outside, the shape of a body passing by the frosted window, but it wasn’t Thomas who stepped into the office.
It was a woman in her late thirties, with tan skin and very dark hair tied back in a ponytail.
She wore the kind of comfortable outerwear a well-off traveler would take on a camping trip: tall brown leather riding boots, gray cashmere sweater, black vest trimmed with fox fur.
A camera hung around her neck. It looked expensive.
A large knife in a leather sheath rode on her hip.
It was Sarah Powers.
“Afternoon,” she said. “Y’all out of gas too?”
Only Ethan replied. He nodded carefully toward the parking lot. He said, “That’s your Rover?”
“It is. I can’t believe I ran dry. I thought I’d left Stockton with a full tank.”
Sarah took a few steps toward the coffee maker in the corner, rubbing her hands.
Ethan knew he only had a moment. While the others were distracted, he looked to Kyla, met her eyes, mouthed, Wait for me.
She nodded.
Sarah Powers hesitated in mid-step. She looked at Ethan as she walked past, looked at him again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But is your last name Cross? This is going to sound crazy, but I think I knew your mother.”