by Devon Monk
He nodded and nodded, and wisely kept his mouth shut.
“I think we’ve both been assuming some things.” Jo ran her fingers back across the shaved side of her head, then tugged on the earring at the top of her ear before clasping her hands together and resting her elbows on her knees so she could lean forward.
“Give me three questions.”
He nodded.
“Answer them honestly.”
Nod.
“One: Do you only like me because of the tats and piercings? Because I’m some thing you’ve never seen before?”
Oh, the anger behind those words. I didn’t know all of the things that had happened in her past, but being an object to be scorned instead of a human being to be respected had to be one of them.
“No,” he said. “I like those things, but that’s not all you are.”
“You better not be bullshitting me, Fisher.”
“I’m not.”
There was no doubting the honesty in his words.
“Well, I’ll be damned.” I moved over to where Lu sat and looked between the two people. “I gotta admit this isn’t going how I expected.”
Lu just waggled her eyebrows.
“Two.” Jo held up two fingers. “Do you have any idea how these people you call family hate me?”
He lifted his head, asking for permission to speak.
“That wasn’t a rhetorical question, Fisher. I expect you to answer it.”
“The people I call family don’t hate you. They like you a lot. Ray sure is on your side more than mine.”
“What about Doug and Keith?”
“Doug is an ass, and isn’t welcome in my shop any longer. His views are not mine, and not the view of most people in this town. As for my brother.” Calvin rolled his eyes. “I stopped taking his sorry-ass opinion as gospel when I was eight. He’s a thick-headed jerk, who hasn’t had to make room for anything in his life except his own ego.”
“I heard you talking to him.”
“I recall.”
“You shared his opinion about me.”
“Nope. No, I did not. I’m sorry if it sounded like I did, and I’d be happy in the future to clarify any and everything I say to him for you. But no. My brother and I do not see eye-to-eye on anything but making sure our mother doesn’t kill herself remodeling that old house of hers.”
“Okay,” she said. “Okay.” She sat back, but seemed even more tense.
“Last question.”
He opened his mouth, then closed it and nodded. He looked like he was bracing for a hit or getting ready to catch someone falling off a cliff.
“Did you really mean what you said? About seeing me and….” She swallowed.
Sunshine opened his mouth.
Lu lifted one finger in warning, just as I said, “Stow it, Sailor.”
He shut his mouth. Waited.
“What you said,” Jo continued, “that you saw me? That you’d remember me?”
He waited a moment, then an extra beat after that. Jo waited too.
“Come on you two. You can do this,” I said. “Take the chance. Leap for it. If it’s love, you’ll never regret a single, stupid minute of it. I promise. I promise.”
Lu tipped her face up, her eyes closed, and turned her hand for me.
I took it in mine, because I always would. Always.
Sunshine walked toward Jo, then he knelt in front of her. He rested his fingers—just his fingers—on one arm of the chair. Not caging her in. Giving her room, giving her space.
“Every word I said is true. I… I don’t know how to make you believe me, but from the moment I saw you… It’s you, Jo. You’re all I can see. All I…hope for. A chance. Just a chance to see if we can be… If there’s something here. Between us. Together.”
“And if it doesn’t work?” she asked.
“We’ll still be friends.” He winced. “Well, after we get done being mad. I think we could be friends.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Look at what we’ve gone through already. Diners with jackasses, brothers who are dumbasses, bossy customers.”
“Hey,” Lu said on a laugh. “Don’t drag me into this.”
I rolled my eyes hard enough it hurt. “Drag you into this. Like anyone could drag you out of it. I know. I tried.”
“It’s been a lot in just two days,” Jo said. “What if it’s all boring from here on out?”
“Have you seen this town?” he asked. “Boring can be kind of nice.”
Jo pressed her lips together, then ran her fingers over her hair again. “Okay. Like a date. Or two. Just to…try.”
Sunshine smiled so hard I thought his face was gonna break.
“That’s good. That’s really great. That’s good. So good.”
I sighed and turned to face Lu. “Go ahead. Say it.”
Lu grinned at me like she’d just eaten the last Twinkie in the apocalypse. “Calvin, did you say Silver’s ready for me now?”
“Silver?” he asked, looking away from Jo with some effort and slowly rising.
“That’s the name of my truck. I just named it. Silver. It’s the perfect name, isn’t it?”
I shook my head at the heavens and the gods who paid absolutely zero attention to losers like me.
Chapter Seventeen
Lu ran her fingers over the steering wheel and adjusted the mirror that didn’t need adjusting. She was always like this at the start of hitting Route 66 again. A little nervous, a little hopeful, a little resigned.
The road was two thousand four hundred forty-eight miles of twisting, lonely broken pavement. It had been our life for so many years now, there was a sort of desperate fear that we’d never know anything else. That we’d never see a different horizon.
“You don’t have to follow it,” I told her, like I did every time we returned to the Route we couldn’t seem to escape. “You could book a flight. Hawaii. Scotland. Go see the world. I’ll be here. I’ll wait for you. Forever.”
She turned her head, finding where I sat, slouched against the door, Lorde snugged up against my insubstantial leg. Lu’s duffel sat at my feet. Even if I hadn’t been Undead, there would have been plenty of room for her duffle, my feet, and at least another bag of gear in the spacious cab.
“You and me, Brogan Gauge. We are going to see this through to the end together. Together. Do you hear me?”
The fierceness of her, the fire that even all these long, sad years couldn’t put out, burned hot and clean and dangerous.
“Yes, Ma’am, Mrs. Gauge. I hear you. Together. Always.”
She rolled her shoulders, inhaled, exhaled, then started the truck.
It growled to life like a dream come true.
“There you go, Silver,” Lu said. “Listen to that heart of yours. You’re hungry for the road, aren’t you?”
The truck, not being alive, didn’t answer. But Lorde yawned and thumped her tail.
Lu put the truck in gear, then pulled out of the little stretch of pavement on the side of Fisher’s Auto. She flipped the turn signal, then eased out into the sunny day.
“I’m thinking food soon,” she said. “Maybe resupply in Lincoln or Springfield? I’m not stopping at a hotel tonight, so I’ll need a sleeping bag.”
“You can stop at a hotel. I can handle a hotel, Lu.”
“We both need some rest. Away from people. Living people. Or ghosts with agendas. What about the Union Miners Cemetery in Mt. Olive? I’ll get some sleep. You can see if any of Mother Jones’s boys are up to shoot the shit.”
“Works for me, love, though I still think you should get a room with a bed. You’re exhausted.”
She yawned, then cranked down the window just a crack to let a fresh breeze into the cab.
“I’ll buy a mattress,” she said. “And a pillow. I’d rather be in the graveyard with you than cooped up with all those beating hearts around me.”
Right. There were reasons Lu didn’t like hotels too.
“Why do
I argue with her?” I asked Lorde. “She always wins.” Lorde just huffed in agreement.
“You know I always win,” Lu said with a quick glance over at Lorde. She stroked Lorde’s soft black fur. “Sweet girl. You should not have done that. We are going to work on our stay commands. No more running in front of hunters with guns. Jesus, you know what could have happened?” Her voice broke there at the end, and tears gathered in the corners of her eyes.
That was my Lu. Cold as winter steel when shit was going down, and only allowing herself time to fall apart when the world rocked back to an even keel.
She rubbed at the corners of her eyes with the back of her forearm and blew a fast breath out between her lips. “I’m fine. We’re good. We’re all good.”
“Ah, love.” I stretched my arm up over the back of the bench seat, my hand resting gently in her hair. “How about a little music?” I suggested. “Something easy? Think the radio works?”
“I bet you want music,” she said. “All right, rock or country? Or blues? What’s your poison?”
“I’ll bet you fifty bucks that radio won’t get anything but random ham radio static.”
“Let’s find out.” She turned the knob on the AM radio mounted flush under the ash tray in the center of the dash.
A crackly station came through the speakers, then “Cupid” by Sam Cooke crooned out, his soothing tenor clear as a bell as he asked Cupid to shoot an arrow to pierce a lover’s heart.
Lu drove as the song played through, and when it was over, the DJ came on the air.
“That song is dedicated to Lu and Brogan, and all the lovers out there on the Route.”
Lu scowled at the radio, then at me.
“Dot, maybe?” I said. No one else knew both of our names. Well, not in McLean.
Lu scanned the cracked, rough section of the two-lane road. We were coming up on Kickapoo Creek, I-55 buzzing with traffic to our left, the railroad tracks appearing and disappearing behind a wall of scrub trees to our right.
Nothing seemed amiss.
“This is DJ Bo, and you’re listening to KUPD radio, all the love, all the songs. Listeners Lula and Brogan went out of their way to help a pair of young lovers fall in love. Isn’t that nice? Broken hearts and people falling in love is what we’re all about here at KUPD. So to celebrate Lu and Brogan’s kind deed, we’re giving them a prize!
“I’m out here on the other side of the Kickapoo Creek at the pullout on old Route 66. That’s just north of Lawndale. Lu and Brogan, come on over and claim your prize.”
There was something about that voice. Something that dug in bone deep.
Power.
Lu hit the brakes so hard, Lorde had to scrabble to keep from tumbling to the floorboards. Dust billowed up behind us rolling in a cloud over the truck, depositing a fine layer of grit on the window.
She snapped off the radio.
“What in the hell?” she whispered, her hand straying to the watch around her neck. Goosebumps prickled down her arm and red slapped over her cheeks and neck.
“That was a god. Brogan, that was a god.”
“Yes, it was.” I soothed Lorde who fumbled and turned so she could put her head on Lu’s leg.
“Pretty sure it was Cupid,” I said. “Let me go look. You just stay here a minute.”
“Don’t go anywhere.” Lu’s voice was rough. She was afraid I’d do something stupid. Well, afraid I’d do something stupid without her.
“We go together,” she said. “We do this together. Don’t you dare ghost out of here and face that god alone.”
“We could turn around,” I said. “Drive north.”
“Cupid’s the god of connections and destruction,” she said. “He won’t have any problem following us. Finding us. I don’t want to live my life running from a god.”
“We could bunker up somewhere with spells, hit the storage. Hope this—whatever this is—blows over.” I had a good idea what this was. Lu had meddled in Cupid’s business. And now the piper was demanding his pay.
“We haven’t done anything wrong,” she said.
I grunted.
“Nothing wrong to him,” she said. “Jo and Calvin dating would have happened if we were there or not.”
I made a fifty-fifty waggle with my hand. “We did an awful lot of interfering. I’m thinking we might just rename this truck the I Told You So, now that Cupid’s on our ass.”
I focused on those last words, filled them with my love and my laughter. Whatever mess we were in with the god, we’d handle it. No matter what the outcome, we’d handle it together.
“No,” she breathed, pulling back her shoulders and straightening her spine. “We do this together. Face the god together, right, Brogan?”
“It’d be smarter to let me go see exactly what we’re driving into.”
“Don’t you dare leave me,” she said, her emotions still too close to the surface. Losing the book to a hunter had been hard. Stella possessing her had been harder. Lorde getting injured—shot to save Lula—had been the hardest.
She was tired, injured, holding on by a string. And now she had to face a god.
But not alone. Never alone.
I held my hand out for her, palm up. “Never alone, love. Not even when you’re being stubborn and a little stupid because you’re afraid. We are not helpless, you and I. And there hasn’t been anything in this world that’s been able to kill us yet.”
She put her hand, palm down, over where mine was resting on top of Lorde’s head. I squeezed it hard enough I imagined she might be able to feel my flesh, even though I knew she couldn’t.
But she could feel my intention, my faith in us. Right now, that was all I had to give her.
“Let’s drive, Lula. Let’s see what the god wants.”
Lu took her foot off the brake and headed toward the bridge.
It never ceased to surprise me how the freeway, running parallel to the Route, could be full of cars while the Route—a little shabbier, a little narrower, a little slower, a thing of the past—was largely ignored.
Right now I was grateful for it. There were no cars behind us and none ahead. Whatever was happening, wouldn’t put innocent people in danger.
The bridge over Kickapoo Creek wasn’t anything special. Built in 1954, the concrete parapet, with its squared off rails, stretched out ahead, the spaces between the rails and balusters sectioning sunlight and shadow out across the length of the bridge.
There was a man sitting on a beast of a motorcycle in the pullout—just a dirt, grass, and gravel shoulder to the left of the bridge where fishermen parked their vehicles while they rambled down to the creek in search of small mouth bass and channel catfish. The man glowed with power that moved and pulsed around him like refracted starlight.
Not a man, a god.
“He’s on the other side,” Lu said.
“Yeah, I see him.” I could feel him too. The burn of his power stabbed the back of my neck, spread forward over my head like a giant hand had just grabbed me from behind and wrapped fingers over my chin and cheekbones.
“No deals,” Lu said.
“No deals.”
“No lies,” Lu said.
“No lies.”
“No fear,” Lu said.
“No fucking fear. Go ahead, Lu. Get close.”
She pulled across the bridge and turned into the pullout next to the god.
Cupid wore black denim, leather chaps, and a black jacket over a gray shirt that looked surprisingly soft and worn in. He was a big man—not as big as I am, but by no means small—bald headed with a long gray goatee topped by a mustache that could go for handlebar style if he wanted. He wore black leather and boots.
A diamond flashed at the top of his right ear and two gold hoops glinted in his earlobes. Colorful tattoos covered the side of his neck above his collar, disappeared underneath, and spread out across his hands, covering one with an angry owl and the word lead, the other with a dove and the word gold.
“Don’t leave t
he truck,” I said. I pushed through the passenger door and stood in front of Cupid, arms crossed over my chest.
“We don’t meddle in the business of gods,” I said. “We’d prefer you don’t meddle in ours.”
Cupid looked me up and down, from my boots to my eyes, and nodded once. “Brogan Gauge.” His voice was the grumbling baritone of bars and neon and engines on the open road.
I heard Lu’s quiet curse right before the truck door creaked open and her boots hit the gravel.
“I’ve heard of you and Lula,” the god went on. “Of the attack. Of you two exchanging bits of your souls on the seam of Death’s doorway. I’d wondered when our paths would cross.”
“We don’t want any trouble,” Lu said. “And we don’t have anything you’d want.”
He leaned sideways, as if looking right through me was a problem. “Afternoon, Lula Gauge. Or should I say Lula Doyle?”
She pulled her chin up. “It’s Gauge.”
“Well, it would be if you had had a chance to take your wedding vows,” the god said. “But you never had that chance, did you?”
This was not the god to challenge when it came to how things connected and joined.
Lu raised her eyebrows. “We took our vows. It doesn’t matter if we never did it in front of a priest or judge.”
“I happen to agree with you,” he said. “Although the old-fashioned romantic in me likes the ceremony of marriage. Such a beautiful vow of love, of fealty. A memory never to be forgotten.”
“Come on, Lu,” I said, “Let’s hit the road. Sorry to take up your time, Cupid. It is Cupid, isn’t it?”
“I prefer to use the name Bo with people I know.”
“You don’t know us,” I said just as Lu said, “I don’t know you.”
Cupid looked at me, leaned to look at Lu, and frowned. “This is awkward, isn’t it? Here.”
He snapped the fingers of his hand with gold written across the knuckles.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Brogan?” Lu asked, startled.
“I’m here, love,” I said, not looking her way, still standing between her and the god. “How about you just go on your way, Bo?” I said. “No hit, no foul.”
“I can’t.” He stood up off the motorcycle and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. “Well, not yet. I need to talk to you. To both of you.”
