Amber frowned up at the place. She didn’t have much choice. The sun was quickly setting behind the hills.
There was a counter just inside the front door. The bell mounted on the door had announced her presence, but Amber rang the bell on counter anyway, figuring they wouldn’t have put it there if they didn’t want it rung.
The man who appeared from the back looked confused.
“Do you have a room?”
“Reservation?” he asked. He was already licking his finger and turning the pages of his book. From the blank lines there, Amber doubted that anyone had a reservation for that night.
“I don’t. Do you happen to have a room?”
With his head still tilted down, he studied her over the top of his glasses.
“I’ve been driving all day and I’m exhausted.”
He picked up a pencil.
“Cash or credit?”
“Credit.”
“We won’t be able to provide breakfast since you don’t have a reservation. We shop for breakfast the day before and…”
“That’s fine,” Amber said. “Just the room would be great. I just didn’t want to stay in one of those big hotels, you know?”
His confused smile suggested that he had no idea what she was talking about.
Amber looked outside to her car, wondering if she should just get back in and keep driving. With some more coffee and sugar, she might be able to keep going. But dawn wouldn’t be for a long time. It would be impossible to make it all the way around the clock again. She had to rest somewhere.
“Just you?”
“Yes.”
“We have a single that overlooks the street, or a queen that faces the pasture.”
“Single is fine.”
“It shares a bath with another room, but since that room is unoccupied, it’s as good as a…”
“That’s fine. I don’t mind,” she said.
He didn’t seem to pick up on her urgency at all. Instead, he slowly interrogated her for all her details. Amber wanted to pull the pencil from his hand and fill out the book herself. She forced herself to stand still and stop tapping her foot. By the time he ran her credit card, she was at the end of her patience.
“If you could just give me a moment to make the bed and set out…”
“That’s fine,” she said. “I’ll go grab my stuff.”
Amber was through the door before he could answer.
# # #
Amber paused with her hand on the roof of the car, looking up at the sky. The colors were just the same as they had been at dawn. Stars—planets, probably—were just appearing in the fading purple backdrop and bright dots of pink clouds looked like tufts of glowing cotton.
Most of her clothes were piled in the back seat of the car, along with hastily packed bags of food. She had already thrown away the cheese and meat that she had pulled out of her uncle’s house. She still had some bread and fruit. It looked like the car of a crazy hoarder.
Amber sighed and walked to the trunk.
She hadn’t opened it since the Ridge Hotel, when she had stuffed her bag back there. She had supplies in the trunk, too. There was at least one box of Borax, some more seeds, and her other sharpened stake.
She pulled out her bag and set it on the asphalt next to the bumper. Her hand touched the stake. It would be weird to take that upstairs, but she wanted to do it anyway. What would the man say? He would probably peer at her over his glasses again and then call the police.
The seeds were pretty normal. It was a giant bag of sunflower seed. She thought that she could get away with taking those inside without raising too many red flags.
She reached for the bag and froze.
Something had moved in the back of the trunk.
Amber’s heart paused and then thudded in her chest. She held her breath as she withdrew her hand slowly and let her fingers settle around the shaft of the stake. When she started to pull the stake from the trunk, the thing shifted again.
Amber forced herself to slow down. She eased the stake out from the trunk. When her hand was clear of the lip, she took a giant step back and allowed herself to breathe, but not to blink. She didn’t dare blink.
Amber gripped the stake in both hands and approached. She was halfway back to the car before she remembered the eyes. Amber looked away and tried to find the shape in her peripheral vision. It just looked like a deep shadow back there.
It didn’t matter—once she started stabbing the darkness, she would find the thing.
Amber pulled back and then thrust the…
“Wait,” a whisper said. If she hadn’t recognized it, Amber would have simply stabbed away until the voice turned to screeching and then the monster turned to slime.
But she had recognized it. The voice was the whole reason she had been dragged into the mess at the hotel. Or, if she twisted the perspective just a little in her head, she was the reason that everything at the hotel had ended in tragedy. Of all the people who were there that night, Amber was the only one with previous experience with the monsters. It was possible—maybe even likely—that they had attacked the hotel that night simply because Amber had been there. They had set the trap at the train tracks, watched Amber try to rescue Riley, and then followed her back.
“No,” Amber whispered. She wasn’t going to fall into that trap. Blaming herself for what happened was a trap. It was an excuse that victims would use to justify letting themselves be victimized again.
Amber drove the stake into the darkness. The point of it hit the carpeted metal and she pulled it back to stab again.
“Please,” Jennifer’s voice whispered. “I need help.”
“I am helping,” Amber said. She thrust again.
