And since he was a Salem, born and raised, he used that magic to fight the multitudes of evil, corrupt beings that plagued the world. That’s what the Salem family had done for generations, no matter how dangerous it was and no matter how many people gave up their lives in the fight. Like his parents had.
“I’m pretty wiped out,” he said, unwilling to chat about his gift or his calling.
Yes. Now you must sleep.
“Yeah, it’ll be a long day tomorrow.”
Perhaps. Mostly, I desire warmth, and that is paramount.
Dom shrugged and said the only thing he could be certain of. “You’re such a cat.”
As soon as he lay down, Pie nuzzled next to him, purring. He was drifting off before he could warn the cat not to use her favorite sleep-inducing spell. He dreamed of a real house, a home to hold his family, his whole family.
In the dream, his parents were still alive, his brothers were with him, and someone who he was sure was a sister. Lily, he thought, though in typical dream logic, sometimes she looked like Lily and sometimes not. It was summer, the smell of the grill in the air along with the bitter smoke of cheap fireworks and the heavy, sweet scent of twilight air before the night came on with its fireflies and stars. It was the perfect summer day, in the perfect house, with the perfect family. There was even a dog on the lawn, barking happily.
Dom fell deeper into the dream, aching for the simple joy of it. That’s what he wanted, what he wanted his whole life, since that horrible, soul-shredding moment when he heard his parents weren’t ever coming back, and that nothing would ever be safe or the same again.
There was a spot of wetness on his face. Tears? No, just Piewicket poking her little nose at him.
Sleep. The past is done and the future is free. Sleep.
Chapter 2
“Get your paws the hell off me!”
Vinny shoved the guy away from where she sat in the passenger seat of the car plowing down the desert highway. The guy was six three and probably nearing three hundred pounds. She was five nine on tiptoes and less than half his weight. But she still would bet on herself in a fight.
The guy leaned back toward the driver’s side, jerking the steering wheel as he went. A car was such a bad place to hit on a girl, especially when it was in motion. At least this stretch of highway was straight, and the scenery uncluttered by distraction—uncluttered by anything, really. The part of Texas they were crossing was filled with dusty, hot nothing.
Vinny had hitchhiked a lot in her life, often enough to know most of the crap that could happen and how to prevent it from happening. On this particular trip, she’d been lucky up till now. Leaving New Orleans, where she’d been living, she’d ridden with a nice trucker from South Carolina who knew a lot about German shepherds and breeding them and was happy to share every bit of his knowledge. He’d apologized every time he’d referred to a female dog as a bitch, which made Vinny laugh.
Then she’d got in with a young band on their way to Chicago for a gig. But their van started having engine trouble, so they had to pull over. She gave them as much cash as she could out of her stash, because she remembered being in these situations when she toured. But repairs would take a while, so she was forced to find a new ride.
Enter Wade. Wade wore a bright red trucker hat and had loud opinions Vinny didn’t agree with. But he was headed west and didn’t blink when Vinny took a photo of him and his license plate to send to a friend. She warned Wade that if she didn’t check in, that photo would get sent to the cops.
The warning usually worked pretty well. And Wade had behaved for the first couple of hours. Until now.
“Keep your eyes on the road, moron,” she added, under her breath. She didn’t want to get hit on, and she definitely didn’t want to get killed.
“That’s it, blondie.” He hit the brakes, and the car screeched to a halt. Vinny lurched forward, held back only by the shoulder belt. The guy’s head almost hit the windshield, but Vinny’s luck wasn’t so good that he got some sense knocked into him.
“What now?” she muttered, automatically glancing around. There was no one on the road behind them. Or ahead of them. This area was totally deserted.
Vinny felt for the little folded knife in her pocket. Still there. She hoped to hell she wouldn’t have to use it.
Wade shook his head in disgust. “Stupid bitch.”
“I’m not the one who tried to attack someone while driving,” she snapped. She unbuckled her seatbelt with one hand.
“Didn’t attack you,” he growled. “Just being friendly.”
“We’re not friends. And there’s nothing friendly about groping a women without asking.”
“What are you talkin’ about? You wear those tight clothes and got that fake blonde hair and you ride with any stranger who says okay. You’re asking, baby.”
She glared at him. “What decade are you from?” She grabbed her backpack. “If you asked for gas money, no problem. But you don’t get to feel me up.”
“You’re in my car. I get to do whatever I want.”
“Then I’m out of here.” Vinny reached for the door handle.
He leaned across her, grabbing her wrist. “Hold up, now.”
Vinny twisted back and hissed at him. “Back off. You try anything with me and I’ll cut you up.”
He grinned, evidently not worried about her threat at all. “Tough little bitch, ain’t you? Bet you’re fun once you know who’s in charge.”
Vinny spat directly in his eye, then opened the door and launched herself out of the car. She hit the ground awkwardly, but she picked herself up fast, pulling her bag up from where it had dropped.
“Want to see how much fun I am?” she said. She flicked the knife open.
His face twisted into something ugly, but he just said, “Fuck this. You ain’t worth the trouble.”
He revved the engine and pulled the passenger door closed. “When you’re begging for water out here with the snakes, you’ll wish you were nice to me!”
“Go to hell!” Vinny screamed as he drove off.
The car became a speck in the distance. Vinny just stood there for a little while, half-fearing her scuzzy ride would come roaring back with a gun in his hand. But nothing happened. He didn’t return.
She was alone in the middle of nowhere. Vinny looked around. There were no road signs, no houses, no hint of civilization. She didn’t remember how long it had been since they passed a gas station or something, but it had been a while.
“Not good,” she muttered.
The sun was high in the summer sky. Vinny, dressed in jeans, a thin t-shirt, and a leather jacket, was already feeling the heat. She wore a bunch of necklaces, too, and the metal of the chains already felt hot.
She dug in her pack for her umbrella. The tiny shadow it cast would help keep the direct sun from beating on her skull. But this was a desert. It would hit a hundred degrees today. She had one half-full bottle of water in the bag.
“Damn,” she said. “That guy really left me here.”
She pulled out her phone. She’d call 911. This must qualify as an emergency.
No reception. No bars. No nothing.
Was it her device acting up, or was it the total desolation? Vinny cursed out the phone and tried everything she could, but nothing changed. She couldn’t even call for help.
She’d just have to start walking. She chose west—that’s where she was headed anyway. There’d be something on the side of the road soon enough.
Vinny trudged along the road. She talked to herself while she walked, both to keep herself company and to keep her spirits up. She worked best when fueled by anger. Rage could keep her going for hours.
“This is nowhere near the worst situation you’ve been in, Vin,” she said. “Remember that night in the Bronx after Malika’s party. That was bad. This is nothing.”
But the night she’d usually considered the worst of her life was a little different, if only because there’d been people around. Mostly
bad people, sure. But it was in New York, not the middle of nowhere.
“Oh, get over it. This is a highway. People use highways. Someone else will come by. No decent person would just drive past a damsel in distress. Right?”
In fact, no fewer than six drivers were perfectly willing to drive past a damsel in distress. Every single car that passed by—four going east, two going west—ignored her stuck out thumb, her frantic handwaving, and her shouts for help. Most of them sped up. Was she that scary looking?
“Keep walking, Vin. Think about Emma. She’ll flip when she sees you.”
Emma would certainly do something when she saw Vinny, because she hadn’t seen Vin in, what, three years? They hadn’t parted on the best of terms, and though they exchanged texts and such, the rift was still there. Vinny had been afraid to bring it up, because maybe bringing it up again would torpedo their friendship completely.
But then Vinny had the nightmares.
As a kid, she had nightmares all the time. The usual stuff about monsters and getting lost in the dark, and being trapped in a huge spiderweb, which her therapist said was a ‘metaphor for Vinny’s difficulty with her parental relationships’ or whatever.
As she got older, and stopped going to that stupid therapist, her nightmares lessened.
Then, last week, she suffered three nights in a row of vicious dreams. The same spiderweb showed up, but this time, the person stuck in the middle was Emma.
And every night, Vinny watched, screaming, as something horrible devoured Emma. The nightmares started differently each time—a club, in Vinny’s old house, in the woods somewhere. But they ended up with Emma being caught up in sticky webs, one silvery strand at a time. Vinny could see them, one by one, but each time, she didn’t quite realize what was happening until it was too late.
And then everything was darkness, and there was Emma, begging for help, and no matter what she tried, Vinny could never reach her. She tried and failed and watched as Emma died. Then she woke up, sweaty and tangled in bedsheets, telling herself it was just a dream.
Three nights in a row.
Vinny couldn’t take it anymore. She had to get to Emma. This wasn’t a phone call situation. Hey, what’s up? Been a while. Listen, I think you’re maybe going to be devoured by a massive spider. And even if it’s a metaphorical one, it’s still going to eat you.
Nope. Vinny couldn’t text that. This required a face-to-face.
Trouble was, Emma’s place was all the way across the country from Vinny. And Vinny was nearly broke. But what else could she do? Ignoring this wasn’t going to work. Vinny didn’t believe in dreams or magic or anything other than pure rationality. But when a paralyzing nightmare occurred out of the blue and kept repeating, it meant something. The spider wasn’t important. What was important was the horrible certainty that her friend was in danger.
The nightmares faded to a manageable level as soon as she started traveling, which Vinny took as a good sign.
Besides, it wasn’t like she had any other obligations. She was between jobs, having quit her last gig as a cocktail waitress in the French Quarter. The money she made was barely enough to scrape by. She made a bit more playing in bands, but that was never steady work.
Vinny worried about money. She knew what it was like to have a lot of it, and what it was like to have none of it. Having none of it sucked. At almost twenty-eight years old, it was time to stop coasting and start thinking about the future. She couldn’t survive on short-term, part-time gigs forever. And she’d die before asking her family to help with anything.
“Think about helping Emma,” Vin said. “Think about staying with Emma. Those damp cool days. The mist. The rain. Oh, Lord, the rain.”
Vinny would practically sell her soul for a good thunderstorm about now. But the sky remained stubbornly clear.
The sun crawled westward, hotter every minute. Vinny kept walking. A low, pulsing headache began in the back of her neck and slowly spread upward. Sweat trickled down her face and the back of her neck in a steady stream. Her jeans were plastered to her skin. She wanted water. She needed water. She waited as long as she could to drink the last drop from her bottle, but it was mid-afternoon now, and things were starting to look pretty bad.
She automatically looked behind her every five minutes or so, hoping, praying that some speck in the distance would turn out to be a good Samaritan in an air conditioned SUV filled with lemonade.
Nothing. She must not be damsel-ly enough.
Then she did a double take. Something glinted in the distance, the flash of sunlight on chrome.
She turned toward it and waited. Through the shimmering heat, a shape appeared. It was a motorcycle, not a car.
She moved to the very edge of the baking-hot asphalt and held up one hand, waving to it.
A miracle occurred.
The bike started to slow down.
She watched as the motorcycle slowed further, then stopped. The guy driving it put one foot on the ground, steadying the bike. He pulled his helmet off and pushed his black hair away from his face.
Wow.
Vinny was glad she had her sunglasses on, because she knew she was ogling him. He was hot. Smoking hot. All bad boy in faded jeans and a shiny black leather jacket.
Are you kidding me? Vinny thought. The one person to stop looks like more of a threat than the guy who left me here?
The guy looked her over, too, though she couldn’t tell what he was thinking behind those very pretty eyes.
“You need a ride,” he said. Said, not asked.
“Not from you, thanks all the same.” Even in this situation, Vinny knew better than to get near anyone who looked like him. Good thing she didn’t believe in luck. Because her luck seemed to be tanking.
He raised an eyebrow. “You waiting for your limo?”
“I’m not actually hitching,” she said, ignoring the fact that she had flagged him down. “I’m just walking to the next…whatever.”
“Are you serious?”
No, Vinny was not serious. She had no idea how far the next whatever was. “No offense, but I left my last ride because he was a creeper. Not making that mistake again.”
“Look, I don’t really want to give you a ride,” the guy responded. “But it’s too hot. You’ll get heat sickness if you stay out here. Or dehydration. Or worse.”
She wiggled the umbrella. “I’ve got shade.”
“How’s that working out for you? Feel ready to run a few laps? Stand out here for another two hours with the sun in your face the whole time?”
Vinny closed her eyes. That sounded like hell.
“You could call the cops,” the guy suggested. “State troopers pick up stranded travelers all the time.”
She laughed at that. She hadn’t seen a single bar on her phone for hours. But she did notice the battery draining away. “Tried that. No signal.”
He pulled out his own phone and checked it. “Yeah, you’re right.”
Then he reached into a side pack and produced the holy grail—a bottle of water. He held it out to her.
Vinny snatched it and guzzled half of it down before she thought about all the awful stuff a person could slip into a bottle of water.
“Whoa, slow down,” the guy said, looking alarmed.
She couldn’t. She was too thirsty. She drained the bottle and wiped her mouth. “Thanks.”
At that moment, Vinny’s gaze caught a movement at the side of the guy’s bike, the same place where the magic bottle of water came from. She blinked to make sure she wasn’t hallucinating. Was this what heat exhaustion did? She’d never hallucinated a calico cat before. “Is that a cat?”
He glanced back. “Yup.” After a long second, he added, grudgingly, “Her name’s Piewicket.”
Fascinated, Vinny watched the little creature, which had crawled out of a sort of side pannier saddlebag thing. It stretched out, first front paws, then back paws. Then she looked at Vinny with big eyes, blinking slowly.
“You own a cat.
A cat who likes motorcycle rides?”
“Own’s not really the right word,” he said, now with a hint of a smile. “Pie wanted to come along for the ride, and she’s kinda in charge.”
She looked at the cat for another long moment, trying to figure out what the scam was, then back at the guy. No one who rode with an adorable calico cat in his saddlebag could be evil. Right?
Vinny made a decision. She said, “I’ll take a ride, just to the next stop. Gas station. Restaurant. Whatever. I just need to crash somewhere, and I’ll call my friends to bail me out.”
The cat surveyed Vinny, then yawned and crawled back into the saddlebag.
“Fine by me,” the guy said. “Normally I wouldn’t even let you on without a helmet, but leaving you out here in the sun wouldn’t be much better.”
She bit her lip. “I’m not good on motorcycles. I’ve only ridden one once before in my life.”
“Just get on,” he said. “I’ll go easy on the speed.”
Vinny nodded. But first, she walked to the front of the bike and held out her phone to take a picture.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Standard hitchhiking procedure,” she said. “I send pics of the plate and the driver to a friend. If I don’t check in, she’ll send this to the cops.”
She held up the phone to get him in frame. “Say cheese.”
“No.”
She clicked anyway, then pocketed the phone again and collapsed the umbrella. She adjusted the backpack and got on. “I suppose I’ve got to hold onto you.”
“No one else around.”
He waited until she was settled, then put his helmet back on. Vinny found herself in the awkward position of needing to essentially hug a stranger for an extended period of time.
Vinny was terrified she’d fall off the bike once it got going, but the guy didn’t drive like a maniac, so that was good. He probably just wanted to protect his cat.
The road got even more desolate than she imagined possible. The sun was well on its way below a mountain ridge when they finally saw a lighted sign in the distance.
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