by Devon Monk
She held up one hand in a wave, even though her eyes were focused over my shoulder.
I held a couple of fingers up to her, watched her turn and walk down the road with her hand resting on Lorde’s head. The way she filled out those jeans, Wranglers should pay that woman for carrying their label over her back pocket.
She must have felt me watching her, ’cause she paused and gave her hips a little extra wiggle before striding off. I chuckled, closed my eyes, and went back to wishing for sunlight.
Chapter Three
Lu had found a water bottle in her knapsack and was sipping from it. She sat cross-legged on the hood of the hunk of junk, her sunglasses on, but not a hat. Sunlight was hard for her in quantity, but a few hours out in it wouldn’t do her any harm.
I knew she was tracking the tow truck long before it was in sight, knew she could tell how many people were in it by the heartbeat—one man—and that he was in his early thirties, in good health.
I could tell all that stuff, too, because I’d drifted over to the oncoming truck and had taken a look with my own eyes.
When the driver pulled through a neat turn to back the tow to the front end of poor broken down Silver—which was never gonna be its name—I knew something about the man interested her. It was in the tip of her head, in the elevated speed of her breathing, in the pause between swallows as she watched him through narrowed eyes.
And if Lu was interested in a human being, then so was I.
“Lorde,” Lu called. “Lorde.”
The dog immediately trotted over from whatever she was sniffing at the side of the road.The driver killed the engine and dropped down with that easy grace of youth, like time hadn’t found a way to crack his shell and take bites out of the vital parts of him yet.
If sunlight could walk around in a pair of tan Dickies and a short-sleeve, button-up shop shirt with Calvin stitched in blue embroidery over the pocket, then this is what it would look like.
More than just straw-colored hair, bangs of which would be in his eyes if they weren’t finger-combed back, he had smooth, clean skin gone golden tan and blue eyes that gave the sky a run for its money.
He moved, every step warm sunshine and easy roads. There was something more in his smile. Something white and bright and clean and good.
I immediately didn’t like the guy. Too tall, too blond, too good looking.
“Afternoon,” he said, flashing the smile. “Everything okay? I heard you praying? Calling for the Lord?”
“I wasn’t praying.” Lu pointed down at our dog. “The Lorde is my shepherd.”
Sunshine paused, then he cackled. “Oh, that’s good. Really good. Lorde. Clever.”
“Give it a break, Sunshine,” I muttered. “She’s got decades of chewing up and spitting out pretty boys like you.”
Lorde, sitting so close to me by the front bumper she’d be leaning on my leg if I were solid, got to her feet and cut Sunshine off before he was close enough to extend a hand to Lu.
“Hey, there,” the guy said. “Lorde. Aren’t you a beauty?” He dropped his hand, let Lorde give it a sniff and stood still, watching as she circled him, sniffing his boots, pants, and anything else in her reach.
By the time she got around to the front of him again, her tail was slowly wagging and her black tongue was out. He reached down and scratched between her fuzzy black ears. “She part Akita?”
“Chow chow, German shepherd,” Lu said. There was caution in her voice, but there was also a lot of curiosity. Uh-oh. Lu’s curiosity got the both of us into more trouble than you could carry in a bucket. “You’re Calvin?”
“Yes, Ma’am. Calvin Fisher. Fisher’s Auto is my shop. You called in and talked to Ray. That is if you called for a tow?”
Lu tipped her sunglasses down so she could see over the top of them.
I leaned back on one elbow to watch his reaction.
“I hear ya, buddy,” I said, “those eyes, right? You want to fall all the way in and drink until you drown. ’Course the red hair ain’t doing her no damage.”
I pushed away from the front bumper to stand to one side of where Lu was still sitting on the hood and watch him try not to swallow his tongue.
“I did.” Lu held her hand out. “Lu,” she offered. “Lu Gauge.”
He took her hand, and if her skin was cooler than any person sitting on a truck hood baking in the sun in the middle of Illinois had the right to be, he didn’t say anything.
“Pleasure,” he said. “So I can take you up to Bloomington or down to Lincoln. Happy to get you out to your place if you’re staying in the area?”
“What makes you think I’m just driving through?”
He smiled, pouring on the charm, and it popped a dimple in one cheek.
“Oh, give me a break. You’re human, right?” I circled him just like the dog had before me, looking for any marks or signs that he was something supernatural. Maybe a siren or a god pretending to be human, or one of those gorgeous, dangerous Faefolk.
Nothing.
“Most people take the highway,” he said. “People on the Route are on it for the road itself. Getting their kicks on Route 66. That, or they’re locals who know the back roads. You aren’t local. I’d remember you if you lived around here.”
“That right?” she asked. The woman was not flirting. She hadn’t even smiled yet. But Lu usually ignored people any chance she got. Seeing her chatting it up with the boy was irritating. And interesting.
“What do you see in him, Lu? You like that look?” I tipped my head to do some calculations on if he was her type.
He was my opposite, that was for sure. If he was sunlight, I was the night sky. Dark hair, pale skin, eyes the color of stones. I’d been told by more than one woman that I was dangerously handsome, and maybe that was true.
But this man didn’t have any of my hard edges, didn’t have my build—I was a good four inches taller than him, and he had to be a six-footer if he was an inch. And while he had a good strong build—shoulders hard from working, stomach flat, good muscles in his arms—I could bench press him with one hand tied behind my back.
What I’m saying is I’m a big man. Broad at the shoulder, thick at the hip, but not fat. Not even in life and certainly not in death.
“You’d remember if I lived around here?” she repeated.
“Sure,” Sunshine drawled. “Truck like this isn’t something you see every day.”
There was a beat, a pause where Lu and I both took a minute just to stare at him.
He could have gone for the cheesy line, the pick-up line, told her she had skin like snow and hair like fire. But instead he’d made a crack about the crappy truck.
“Nope,” I said. “Still don’t like you, Sunshine.”
But then something pretty damn rare happened. Lu smiled at him.
I groaned. Whatever caught her interest wasn’t gonna stop here.
“Just picked it up,” Lu said. “Thought I’d get to a shop somewhere along the way and have him checked out. Looks like it’s all going to plan.”
Sunshine chuckled and ran fingers back through those too-long bangs. “Well, then. Let me know where you’d like me to take him, and we’ll get you all set.”
“Fisher Auto come recommended?” she asked.
He nodded. “It’s been said it’s the nicest little shop this side of the Mississippi.”
Lu raised an eyebrow.
“Well, my mom said it, so there might be some bias there.”
“I Googled you.”
“Ah. Well, then.”
“Not a single bad review.”
“I’m sure I’ll get one eventually. Can’t please everyone.”
“No, you can’t.” Lu dropped down off of the hood, her boots planting in the dust and gravel. “But then, not everybody deserves to be pleased. I’ll get my stuff.”
“Fisher’s?” he asked.
“Fisher’s.”
Chapter Four
We’d been in every town dug down or spru
ng up along the Route. We’d seen them rise up slowly like a planted crop, seen them thrive and spread, or falter and crumble down to dust under the hammer of the years.
The big business keeping McLean on the map was the Dixie Truck Stop and café. Built back in 1928, the place had survived storms and disaster and only missed one day serving food and fuel. That was because the place burned down and had to be temporarily located to a nearby house while rebuilding.
It’d changed hands from family ownership some time back, but the restaurant was still standing right in the middle of a big, wide, flat stretch of pavement with room for dozens of trucks. Route 66 and I-55 ran north/south on either side, the truck stop its own island in between.
Directly across from the parking lot stood a little green train depot—one of the two left that had seen Abraham Lincoln’s funeral car rumble past—unremarkable except for a sign marking it as an important place.
Someone had set up a model train store in it. I thought that wasn’t such a bad thing.
Fisher’s Auto, however, wasn’t anywhere near the truck stop. It was on the north side of town, right at the fork in the road between Fisher Street and Route 66. From the look of the place, it was once a home with a barn, and now the barn was an auto shop, which was, much as Mother Fisher had remarked, nice.
The streets were concrete, cracked from hard summers and harder winters, grass growing up in the middle of it wherever it caught root.
A couple kids on bikes churned past, none of them old enough to be teens, and none of them worried about rambling around town on their own.
Sunshine made quick work of backing the old truck into the garage space then glanced over at Lu. “We can take care of the paperwork inside. You’re welcome to stay or maybe get a cup of coffee or lunch—we have a good diner just down around the block a bit. I’ll give you a call with a quote before we start in on repairs. How’s that sound?”
“Like we aren’t getting out of Illinois tonight,” I said from where I’d crammed myself behind the seats, my shoulders tipped at an angle that stuck them square in the middle of the seat ahead of me, but kept them out of actually pressing into Lu.
Walking through a living person was hard. Pressing into Lu was an ache I’d only tried once.
It’d left us both so shaken and wanting, I’d vowed I’d never do it again. Ghost possession was not an easy ride.
Lou reached for the door handle. “Any rooms open around here?”
I raised my eyebrows. Lu didn’t sleep much. But when she did it was always under the stars, or better yet, in a graveyard where we had a better chance of really being together. Of hearing each other.
Hotels were a mess of old pain, ghosts, monsters, and less desirable things.
It wasn’t just humans who lived in these parts, after all.
“We’ve got the Super 8 just outside of town. Water’s hot. Clean sheets.” He dropped out of the truck, following her and Lorde. I exhaled and drifted through the cab of the truck, then out through the door.
I stomped my feet to get some feeling back into them. It was a true injustice that even as an almost dead-guy, cramped quarters still made my feet tingly.
“Something quieter?” Lu asked.
Sunshine hummed, thinking about it. He quickly stepped in front of her and opened the door to the building before she got there.
“I’d offer you my shop WiFi to do a little searching, but my wireless is out. The crap wireless company hasn’t sent me another crap repair guy since the last crap repair guy was here twiddling his crap thumbs.”
Lu listened to him—Lu always listened. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was taking the measure of the woman who stood just inside the open door.
The woman had golden brown skin and glossy black hair that was tight-shaved on one side of her head but long on the other. Tiny gold rings sparkled in her dark eyebrow, ears, and nose, and her brown eyes were lined with black pencil that did that little wing thing at each corner.
More jewelry—silver, hemp, bead, leather—wrapped the wrist that was resting on a messenger bag slung over her shoulder. Shirt was white and pants were black, and that messenger bag had a logo on it that said: Quality Cable and Computer Repair.
“Oh, Sunshine. You are so screwed.” I laughed and rubbed my hands together. This was gonna be good.
Sunshine followed Lu’s gaze and noticed the woman standing in the shop. “Can I help you?”
“Sure,” she said. “I’m your crap repair guy here to do crap nothing while I twiddle these crappers.” She held up her thumbs and delivered a glare that looked like it was gonna be followed by a kick in the nads.
Sunshine made a weird croaking sound, cleared his throat, and coughed.
She just kept right on glaring.
He went beet red and wrapped one hand around the back of his neck. “I…uh. Okay. I’ll show you to the…uh…wireless. Junction. Router. And the computer that’s not working.” He gestured for Lu to precede him into the building.
Lu looked at Sunshine, looked at Quality, and then she got this gleam in her eyes.
“No,” I said. “No, nope, no. You are not going to hook this joker up with the brainy computer gal.”
Lu rubbed her thumb along the side of her pointer finger like she was consulting an oracle stone.
“Do not play Cupid. Lu. You have no right to meddle in people’s lives. Just move on. Get the truck fixed. I don’t think Sunshine over here is good enough for Quality, no matter how many dimples he has.”
“Lu,” she said, sticking her hand out toward the woman and stepping into the building.
The room was too small to be a lobby, but obviously served as one. Repair bays were beyond the door marked as such to the left, a hallway stretched straight ahead, and it looked like an office was about mid-way on the right.
“Jo,” Quality replied, shaking firmly.
Sunshine couldn’t keep his big stupid shoes out of his big, stupid mouth.
“Jo? Is that short for Josephine or something?”
She raised one eyebrow. “It’s just Jo.”
I grinned. “Atta girl. Don’t give an inch. It’s a good name.”
“Nice name,” Lu said.
I groaned. When she was picking—antique hunting for the dealer who paid top dollar for her to find rare and usually magical items—she was all about chatting up a seller. But out among normal life and normal folk, my Lu didn’t like to rub more than two words together.
Picking kept money in the bank. It also gave us a chance to dig for artifacts and magical items that might bring us closer to solving our Unliving problem.
It was a thin hope, one that had gotten thinner over the years. But if there was a chance we might be able to change what happened to us, we weren’t going to give up on it.
Lu sure as hell wasn’t going to back down. And if we couldn’t fix the almost-dead of our existence, well, then between the two of us, we still had more than enough anger to hunt down the bastards who did this to us.
“Don’t get in the middle of this oil jockey’s business, Lu,” I went on. “Why are you trying to shine him up anyway? That apple ain’t worth Jo’s time.”
“My parents liked it,” Jo replied.
Lu nodded like that was plenty good enough reason. “They local?”
“Texas.”
“Nice out there,” Lu said.
“Can be.”
During all this, Sunshine stood there, silent, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else than in the middle of the small talk.
“You been to Texas?” Lu asked Calvin, reeling him on in.
“Here we go,” I muttered. “I am going to bet you—right here and right now—that you will regret playing Cupid. Again. It never works out, Lu.”
Sunshine let out a hard breath. “No. Never wanted too. Never got along much with those people.”
“Well, that’s real nice,” I said. “Disrespecting on a woman’s hometown.”
“And you’re still batting a thous
and with those people,” Jo said.
Lu raised her auburn eyebrows like she couldn’t believe Sunshine had let that fall outta his mouth.
Sunshine looked disappointed in himself too. He was back to that root vegetable color, his jaw locked. “Yeah. Yes. Sorry. So, um, let’s get you to the office. That is if you still want to take the job after I’ve been…well...” He rubbed his hand over the back of his neck again.
Quality looked like she wanted to say no, but she nodded. “That’s what I’m here for. Office this way?”
“Yes, here, let me.” Sunshine angled his body past the two women and made short work of crossing the little lobby and opening the office door.
The office was slightly larger than the lobby. Shelves stacked with papers and manuals lined the walls, a small red refrigerator sat in one corner. A desk with what I assumed was the wireless router and a computer that even I knew was out of style took up most the space.
Lu waited in the little lobby, but I knew she’d hear every word.
I followed Jo, who paused in the office doorway, then reached for her messenger bag strap, pulling it up and over her head.
“So the wireless just, uh…stopped working about two weeks back,” Sunshine said. “It would connect at first, but every time it did, the printer kicked in and started printing out garbage. Couldn’t get it to stop. And when I finally unplugged the internet box, it wouldn’t turn back on. Neither would the printer or the computer.”
“Where have you been doing your printing?” I wondered as Jo pulled back the rolling chair. It was old enough to have come original with the shop, but it was in good shape—no tears in the dark brown leather, no creaking in the wheels.
“I’ve been doing my printing over at the diner. Owner knows me.”
I smiled and shook my head. That happened sometimes. I asked a question and somehow a Living heard me and answered.
“They have Wi-Fi too. I’d be happy to have lunch brought over for you. On me,” he added.
Jo sat, tipped her boots to balance on her toes, like she was ready to dive off into a pool or jump off the starting blocks.
