“And lightning,” added the friend.
Odina hoped nothing happened to these girls. They were so young. Maybe if she told them about the mysterious lights and strange sounds…
“Then there’s that hum they talk about. Folks that can hear it, they say it sounds like an engine gone bad, but it would have to be one hell of an engine to be heard for miles and miles. Could be coming from Los Alamos. Who knows what the government does up there. They sure don’t want us knowing about it, that’s for sure.”
The girl nodded. “We’ll listen for the hum.”
You know, now that she thought about it, maybe they did believe her. The thing was, though, they were going to do whatever the hell it was they planned to do anyway. They weren’t scared. What was wrong with kids these days, anyway?
Chapter Twenty
Abby returned from the convenience store’s restroom and hopped into the rental car where Gwynne waited for her in the driver’s seat, pressing a postcard against the steering wheel and tapping her mouth with a pen.
“You could die this afternoon and you’re writing postcards?” Abby pulled the door shut. “If you’re writing a suicide note it would be easier to post it online.”
“It’s not the same. Didn’t your grandmother teach you the olden ways? A handwritten note says you care.” Gwynne scribbled something on the postcard. “Besides, I always send postcards when I travel. People expect it.”
“What people?”
“Dara, Hank, Megan-and-Kira…”
A happy thought struck her. “If you want to write postcards, we could switch places and I could drive.”
“Nice try.”
It was, wasn’t it? “You must be tired after all that driving,” Abby said, antsy from too much time in the passenger seat and unable to resist needling her. “Especially with the angel light shining straight into your eyes. Wouldn’t it be safer if I drove?” Not that driving safety was at the top of their priority list right now. If that clerk at the convenience store was right, Gwynne was going to die anyway as soon as she touched the angels’ humming secret government property. Either that or get eaten by mountain lions.
“Relax.”
Oh, sure, like that was going to help. Abby squirmed in her seat. “Are you writing about the hum?”
“There’s no hum.”
“Maybe we just can’t hear it.”
“I doubt it.” Gwynne kept writing.
“All that stuff she was talking about—it must be the bridge.”
“Of course it’s the bridge.” Gwynne tapped her pen on her stack of postcards. “I hope Dara’s not having any problems running the appointment desk.”
“You should tell Dara about the hum. She loves that stuff.”
“There’s no hum.”
“Hmmmm,” Abby said, anxiety making her act silly. She walked her fingers up Gwynne’s arm. “Hmmmmmmmm.”
Gwynne’s eyes twinkled. She stashed her postcards in the door and started the car. “I don’t hear a thing.”
* * *
Half an hour later they were driving at Gwynne’s idea of highway speeds when the car slowed and Gwynne started swearing. Abby glanced at the road, trying to spot what was wrong, but saw nothing. The cords in Gwynne’s forearms visibly worked as she gripped the wheel.
“Hang on,” Gwynne said tersely as she pulled the car off the road onto the dirt where the shoulder should have been.
They hit a bump and bounced farther from the road before coming to a stop beside a clump of what she guessed was sagebrush. Abby stared at Gwynne’s hands—one held the gearshift that was now in Park, the other still gripped the wheel. After the bumpiness and the gravel hitting the undercarriage, everything seemed oddly still.
“What happened?” Abby asked.
Gwynne stared straight ahead, motionless except for her ribcage moving up and down. She laughed, but she didn’t sound amused. She turned the ignition and the engine didn’t even try to start. But Abby hadn’t seen her turn the engine off. Wait, did that mean…
“The engine stalled?” Abby asked.
“Yup.”
“We drove off the road for that?”
“Sorry for not trying to restart the engine at seventy-five miles an hour.”
Abby loosened her seat belt and refrained from telling her she could have done it. So Gwynne overshot the road by a few yards. No big deal. The important thing was no one got hurt.
Gwynne tried to start the car again.
Nothing.
Gwynne bent down to feel around the gas pedal. “Do you know anything about cars?”
“I know how to call a mechanic.” Abby pulled out her phone and scanned for a signal. No signal. It figured. She got out of the car and held her phone up to the heavens. Still no signal. Staring at her phone, she walked several yards away, staying parallel to the road, then zigzagged away from the road, then back to the car.
“It’s not looking so good,” she said when she returned. “Not unless one of the angels wants to step in and do something.”
All the angels in the vicinity promptly vanished.
“Right. You’re not engineers,” Abby said to empty air. She looked at Gwynne, who had popped the hood and was peering at the car’s parts from enough of a distance that it was clear she had no idea what she was looking for. “What do you think the chances are they went to get help?”
“No idea.”
“Craptastic.”
“Yup.”
Abby left Gwynne with the car and stationed herself at the side of the road to flag down help. It didn’t take long for someone to pull over and agree to send a tow truck from the next town up the road. When she returned, she found Gwynne underneath the car, her feet sticking out.
“What are you doing?” Abby ducked her head to look under the car. Gwynne lay faceup in the dust, her arms outstretched like Jesus on the cross. She was petite enough that she had enough clearance, but…“Isn’t the car hot under there? What if something sparks?” The last thing they needed was for Gwynne to get injured doing something stupid.
“I’m doing energy healing on the car.”
On the car? Abby was glad Gwynne couldn’t see her face. “Is it working?”
“I have no idea.”
“Should we test it?” It seemed unlikely that anything Gwynne could do would have helped, but it was worth a shot. And it might get her out from underneath the car.
Gwynne wriggled out and scooted into the driver’s seat. She turned the key in the ignition. Nothing.
“I’ll do more healing on it.”
“I don’t think more healing’s going to work,” Abby said through the window. “Let’s just sit and wait.”
“Maybe I should try to flag down another driver for help,” Gwynne said. “As backup, in case your Good Samaritan falls through.”
“She said she would call a tow truck for us. She was very nice.”
“I just want to be sure.”
“Worrying is not going to help.” Abby cracked her knuckles, which probably made her look worried. They could wait a few hours. If the tow truck didn’t show up, they’d try again.
“Flagging down another motorist isn’t worrying,” Gwynne said. “It’s doing something.”
“So is waiting.”
“What if she doesn’t follow through? We’re just going to sit here and wait for AWOL angels to save our asses?”
“They want us to get to the bridge. They’ll make sure we get there.”
“They want you to get to the bridge.” Gwynne tried the ignition one more time. She slapped the keys in her palm and got out of the car and slammed the door shut behind her. “If we die out here in the desert, they get what they wanted all along.”
Abby followed her away from the car. “They wouldn’t do that.”
“Elle wants to kill you, Abby. My coming along on this trip is her way of appeasing you.”
“She said it might work.”
“After I talked her into it,” Gwynne pointed out.
“How about we sit farther from the road, okay? I wouldn’t put it past Elle to distract a driver and make him crash into us. She’s bloodthirsty.”
They found a spot a safe distance from the highway and settled down to wait. Gwynne sat on the ground with her forearms resting on her bent knees and stared out at the desert. She was gut-droppingly beautiful, the strong planes of her face outlined by the sun. Gwynne turned her head and met her eyes with her fathomless gaze, and the shock of it made Abby sway, made her feel like she was falling out of the sky.
Gwynne rose and sat closer, close enough to touch. “I love the gold streaks in your hair,” she said. “You have so many colors. The blond, the brandy, the caramel—”
“The gray?”
“You don’t have any gray.” She lifted a strand of Abby’s hair between her fingers and reverently tucked it back into place, smoothing it down.
“Flatterer.”
“It will be beautiful gray too.”
Gwynne stretched out on the ground beside her, the side of her thigh touching Abby’s hip, one arm draped over her eyes to shield herself from the sun. Abby wanted to kiss her, wanted to roll on top of her, but she couldn’t—not here. Anyone driving by could see them from the road.
She almost didn’t care.
Instead, she got up and retrieved her harp from the car.
“Come back,” Gwynne said.
An invisible thread of wanting stretched between them. Abby still wanted to kiss her. Seeing her flat on her back reminded her too much of making love to her. It was like a Pavlovian response, giving her ideas.
She returned with her harp and sat so her thigh pressed against Gwynne’s while the harp rested in her lap. Back home, she’d loosened all the strings to protect them from snapping in the changing air pressure aboard the airplane, and now it took her a good ten, fifteen minutes to tighten each string and bring it back into tune, even though it was a small harp with only three octaves.
Gwynne moved her arm off her face and turned onto her side and propped herself up. “Maybe I should do some more healing on the car.”
She was getting up? She shouldn’t get up. She looked so sexy lying down. And touching her, even if it was only leg against leg through their clothes, felt too good to stop.
“It’s an inanimate object, Gwynnosaurus. I don’t think more energy’s going to help.”
“I need to prove to myself that I can fix it.”
“Why?” Abby said. “It’s not a good test. Your skills are designed to work on people, not cars. You can’t expect a machine to behave like a living thing. If something’s broken, no amount of energy is going to conjure up the replacement parts.”
“The angels’ bridge isn’t alive, either. It’s more like a car than like a person.”
“It’s not a car. It’s not made of earth materials. And even if you could fix the car, we have no idea what the bridge will do. Even the angels don’t understand how it works. They know how to use it, but if they had to build a new one, they’d have no idea how.”
“That’s exactly how I feel about that car.”
“Gwendolyn…”
“I can fix inanimate objects.”
“You don’t have to prove anything.” Gwynne’s stubbornness was starting to worry her.
“Watch.” Gwynne waved one hand over the harp, not quite touching it. “Try playing it now.”
Indulging her, Abby played a few notes of the “Arran Boat Song,” and the notes were more clear, more haunting than before. Was it the power of suggestion? Her fingers went up and down the octaves, testing it out, relieved that Gwynne’s magic had worked and hopeful this meant Gwynne would stop worrying about the car.
“Better?” Gwynne asked.
Abby launched into an Irish slip jig. The difference in tone was amazing. She ran her hands over the frame of her harp. “What did you do?”
“It sounds better, right?”
“Noticeably so. You could get people to pay you for this.”
“I’d rather be able to fix our car. My skills are so…minor. Useless when it comes to things like not getting stranded in the desert, or…” Gwynne plopped down in the sand. Her voice cracked. “Or saving my mother’s life.”
Abby’s heart ached for her. “Your skills make people’s lives better. You ease their pain. That’s just as important as saving lives.”
“Is it?” Gwynne’s eyes looked pained. “If it’s not enough to fix that damn bridge, I’m going to lose you too.”
If something went wrong, it was far more likely that Gwynne would be the one to die and Abby would be left to take care of Gwynne’s rabbits. Or, because they were linked, they’d both die. And if they both survived, what would happen after that? Would Gwynne decide she’d had enough angel craziness, and leave? There were many ways this could end badly.
Abby hugged her harp to her chest. “You don’t have to save me.”
Gwynne’s expression didn’t change. “Yes. I do.”
* * *
Gwynne watched Abby’s hands fly confidently over her newly improved harp strings, turning them into blurs of vibration. Her head was bent over her harp like a mother holding a baby, and a shaft of desert sunlight backlit her hair, making it glow like a shimmering, golden halo. She made an unbearably beautiful angel.
Gwynne dropped her head to her knees, torn between the overwhelming need to memorize every curve of Abby’s body and her reflex to look away because it hurt too much to watch something that beautiful. She blinked away the moisture that blurred her vision.
She was going to lose her. They were going to fix this bridge and Abby was going to decide she wanted to stay in the Angelic Realm after all. Once she realized she really was an angel, what would stop her?
And it might not matter either way. Because once they had her, Elle and her bright, shining thugs were never going to let her go.
Chapter Twenty-One
It was dark when the tow truck dropped them off at the auto repair shop. Abby checked out the touristy Native American dream catchers adorned with dangling pigeon feathers displayed above quarts of oil stacked against the wall while Gwynne explained to the mechanic what happened to their car.
“I can take a look at it tonight, but officially I’m already closed for the day,” the mechanic told her, heedless of the stream of angels flying into the shop. Hundreds had returned en masse after having disappeared all afternoon.
“Didn’t this happen the last time we rode in a car?” observed one of the angels.
“Coincidence,” Elle said dismissively.
“What?” Abby said sharply.
“What do you think is wrong with it?” Gwynne asked the mechanic, covering for Abby’s outburst.
Abby sent her a mental thank you for her quick reaction, because rude outbursts weren’t going to get their car fixed any faster, and might leave them stranded instead.
The mechanic shrugged like it wasn’t worth his time to explain stuff a city girl wouldn’t understand. “Electrical, maybe.”
“I wonder how that could have happened,” Abby said, giving Elle a hard look.
“I felt something spark,” volunteered one of the angels.
“Me too,” said another one. “Right when I was trampled and fell through the engine.”
Abby realized her mouth was hanging open and clamped it shut.
“It’s not our fault cars these days have so many electronic controls,” Elle said. “How about you call the rental company for a replacement car so we can get going?”
“Car won’t be ready until tomorrow,” said the mechanic, talking over Elle, clearly oblivious to the angels’ commentary. “Any chance you’re here for the yoga camp?”
“Just passing through,” Gwynne said.
“No hotels here. You’ll need a place to stay the night. My wife can drive you to the camp.”
“We’re fine sleeping in the car,” Abby said. She’d never be able to pass herself off as a yoga enthusiast—she couldn’t even touch her toes, let alo
ne drape her leg over her head or whatever else it was they did.
“Replacement car,” Elle said.
What was the big hurry? Was she afraid the longer they delayed, the more likely they were to change their minds and back out of the plan? Even if they did get a replacement car, it would take several hours to reach them. And surely Elle didn’t mean for them to deal with the bridge in the dark. They might as well wait for morning and give themselves a few hours of sleep before they attempted to not get themselves killed.
“The yoga folks don’t mind visitors,” said the mechanic. “You’d be a lot more comfortable there than sleeping in my repair bay, but if that’s what you really want…” He trailed off like he hoped what they really wanted was to get out of his garage and let him start on their repair.
Gwynne’s elbow poked into Abby’s side. “If I don’t get some sleep, I’m going to be a grouchy-pants when we get to Elle’s house.”
Okay, so Gwynne didn’t want to sleep in the car.
“They serve food,” the mechanic said. “Vegetarian. Not exactly what I’d call food, but my wife likes it okay.”
Elle flapped her wings open and closed. “Replacement. Car.”
Abby distanced herself from Gwynne’s elbow. As long as she didn’t have to do any backbends…
Gwynne pulled her outside. “Yoga camp, here we come.”
* * *
The sea of closely-packed tents glowed from within, and random laughter and muted conversations filled the night. A woman sipping from a mug the size of a soup bowl emerged from a wooden shed marked Office.
“Namaste,” she said between sips that sent dozens of thin, gold bracelets tinkling as they slid up and down her forearms.
“Namaste.” Abby brought her hands to prayer position, hoping she looked like she knew what she was doing. “We were told we might be able to stay here for the night?”
“Of course. Welcome. Our restroom facilities—toilets, sinks and showers—are located at the northern perimeter. Cold water only.” She pointed to a corrugated aluminum shack strung with colored lights. “Did you bring a tent?”
“Uh…no.” Abby tightened the strap that secured her harp to her back. “Our car broke down and…it’s a long story.”
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