Austin.
TWELVE
SINCE DEAN HAD POLITELY but vehemently objected to her willing the truck faster, Claire let her head loll back against the headrest and closed her eyes. Extending her will toward Toronto, she slid past the permanently monitored sites, her passage noted only by the elderly Keeper at the site in Scarborough.
“Oh, sure, you can go by like a ship in the night, but you never write, you never call. A lousy birthday card would kill you? The best forty-two years of my life I give to you and you don’t even remember my birthday. You got a memory like a cantaloupe.”
“Excuse me?”
“Why? What did you do?”
Claire moved on into the possibilities a little faster. Keepers who essentially became the seal that stopped darkness from emerging out of an unclosable hole, became caricatures of their former selves. She’d narrowly missed becoming the youngest Keeper to ever hold such a position and shuddered at the sudden vision of herself at ninety-two in stretch capri pants and wedges, scarlet lips and crimson fingernails, badly dyed hair poofed out over way too much purple eye shadow—a cross between Nancy Reagan and Miss Piggy.
Didn’t happen, she reminded herself. Didn’t…
Wait.
Something was happening.
She heard voices…
“I’m warning you, Michael, don’t touch the horn.”
“Or you’ll what? Blow me?”
…then a sudden flash of light threw her back into her body. She stiffened and moaned. The Summons hit a heartbeat later.
“As much as I’m happy you two are back into it,” Austin muttered without opening his eye, “given that we’re speeding down a snowy highway with a bunch of lunatics who’ve forgotten how to drive since the last time the frozen white stuff fell, don’t you think Dean ought to keep both hands on the steering wheel?”
“I can feel the demon.”
“I thought you were calling it Floyd. Ow!” He turned his head and glared at her. “Don’t poke the cat, I’m old.”
“So Diana came through, then?” Dean asked, making a mental note to ask about this Floyd guy when the cat wasn’t around.
“I knew she would.”
Austin snorted. “You thought she was going to destroy the world as we know it, bringing upon us the Last Judgment and roller disco. Not that there’s a lot of difference,” he added.
Somewhat redundantly in Dean’s opinion. “Are we still after heading to Toronto, then?”
Claire checked the Summons. “So far.”
They drove in silence for a few moments.
“The angel’s gone, then?”
Curious about Dean’s tone, Claire turned to face him. “Yes.”
“And you can find the demon now?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And when you find the demon, you can get rid of it?”
“I’m a Keeper. Of course I can get rid of it.”
He glanced toward her and smiled suggestively. “No angel, no demon…”
“No problem.” Realizing where he was headed, she returned his smile and stroked one finger along the top of his thigh.
“Is it just me,” Austin asked, sitting up, “or are we suddenly moving a lot faster?”
The angel had changed.
Feeling suddenly exposed, Byleth ran into the only room in the mission where she’d be left alone—unexpectedly finding three other girls already in there sharing a cigarette.
The dominant member of the trio slid off the sink and turned to face her. “You want something, new girl?”
The part of her that was a seventeen-year-old girl wanted to protest that she’d just come in to use the bathroom and she wasn’t looking for trouble. Then the rest of her pushed that part down and stole its lunch money. “I want you to leave.”
“What?”
“Leave.” Breathing heavily through her nose, barely holding all the parts together, Byleth reached into the darkness. “I want you to leave.”
“Yeah? Well, I don’t give a half-eaten rat’s ass for what you want. I…What’s that?” Pierced brows drew in and scowled at the dripping bit of flesh hanging from the tail in Byleth’s hand.
“It’s a half-eaten rat’s ass. Take it and go.”
Eyes locked on the partial rodent, the other two girls sidled by and out the door. In the complex hierarchy of adolescence, having a rat’s ass conveniently on hand clearly trumped a pack of smokes and an attitude.
“What kind of retarded shithole do you come from?” their abandoned leader asked, taking an unconcerned drag. “That is so totally not what I meant. Now, me, I’m going to finish my cigarette and…” Her gaze locked on Byleth’s nose. “I never saw you light up.”
“I didn’t.”
“But there’s smoke…”
“Get. Out.”
“Hey, you’re not the boss of me.” Bravado winning over common sense, she flicked her butt toward the sink…
“NOW!”
…and was out the door before it actually touched the porcelain.
Byleth tossed the rat in the garbage and stared at her reflection. “Why is it so damned foggy in…oh.” Like thousands before her, she found it a lot harder to stop smoking than to start, but, after an extended struggle, she managed it. Not that it mattered, her cover had been blown. She might as well walk around in a pair of horns, carrying a pitchfork—if that particular look wasn’t so yesterday’s demon. Without equal and opposite coverage by the light, she’d be easy to spot by any Keeper and probably most Cousins. Metaphysical alarms would be screaming, “Demon in the world!” and every Goody Two-shoes in the area not currently helping little old ladies across the street would be zeroing in.
She should have changed with the angel. He was as much tied by the stupid body he was wearing as she was. Therefore, he couldn’t have changed on his own. He so cheated.
“Oh, yeah, he got a Keeper to change him so they could find me. Fine. You want to find me, Keeper, you’ll find me!” A light wisp of smoke drifted out of both nostrils. It felt great. “If I’m going out, I’m going out big. No more just hanging around and irritating people.” She spread her arms. “I’ll open a hole of darkness so big it’ll make the
