by Allison Hurd
“Sounds very cool! Let’s just do that anyways.”
“Ten-four. You figure out how to get into space, and after my nap, I’ll start looking at what kind of baddies we might expect.”
Ophelia adjusts her road music—the very comforting, not at all frenetic trip-hop she loves— and I doze off almost instantly.
I wake suddenly to what sounds like the same song. “How long was I out?”
She looks over at me half amused, half sympathetic.
“Twenty minutes, on the nose. As usual.”
“Dammit!”
“You can try those sleeping pills,” she suggests again.
I shake my head in frustration. “No. I know the one time I dope up, we’re gonna literally run into a nest of vampire-ghost-werewolf…demi god…whoza-cabras and I’ll be useless.”
My sister laughs. “Hot damn! Vampire ghost wolf chupacabra! What’d that be? Wolpirecabra? Chupolf vampost?”
“Well don’t keep saying it, you might summon it.”
She laughs again while I dig around for water.
“Can we please not listen to something that sounds like I am in fact tripping balls on sleeping pills?”
“So what…want the radio?”
I glare at her. In this neck of the woods, it’s all Delilah and country music. I’m not sure which is worse. “Just…something else, please. Until I wake up.”
She shrugs and changes the song, guitars screaming as something metal starts. “Much better,” I approve, leaning back again.
We take turns driving straight through. Our system is pretty practiced at this point. About every hour, I can fall asleep for twenty minutes—maybe even twice in an hour, if it’s dark and the road conditions are perfect. After three of my naps, I can stay awake for three hours without needing to sleep. It means I get an hour for roughly every three my sister gets of shut eye, which is less than ideal. But our last honest work was over a month ago and funds are short for motel rooms where, frankly, I don’t really sleep much better anyway. I think sailors must feel the same way—that sleeping when you can’t sense movement is unsettling. We only stop for necessities, stretching, and trouble.
Straight through, it’s about forty hours, accounting for rest stops, and the seven fill ups we need to pay for to get there. Driving in this old gas guzzler, sometimes flying is cheaper, but the TSA ask so many questions about weapons, and checked baggage fees…oy. Who needs the headache?
We pull up in the outskirts of Roanoke, Virginia and into the cheapest motel that has a second story. We feel too exposed on the ground floor—there’s nothing like bringing your work home with you when you’re in the monster fighting industry. I’ve tried it a couple times now, and Lia and I agree that it’s best that we keep work at the office. Motels are only economical when you don’t need to pay for burned out mattresses or blood-stained carpets.
“Sweet lord in heaven, hallowed be thy name, a shower,” my sister says, making as if to race me to bathroom.
“Go for it, I’ll do a perimeter check,” I reply, with a look of longing at the bed. “Focus, Summer,” I mutter to myself testily. I walk around, hanging our travel safety measures: dream catchers, cold iron, a small pat of butter in a bowl by the door and so on. Things for humans, too: a lens that fits over the fisheye in the door to project images of people outside onto my laptop, and a small shatter-proof glass pane secured by a tension rod that covers most of the window. It’s not super helpful for keeping determined things out, but it’s pretty good at catching a bullet or two and limiting the amount of glass in the room. I’m really tired of pulling glass out of wounds.
When I feel that my preparations are sufficient, which maybe not coincidentally coincides with Ophelia opening the door to the bathroom, I throw a pinch of salt over my left shoulder, grab my shower stuff and head in myself.
“What’s left?” my sister asks.
“The room should be about good to go. You get to choose: you can search for dinner, news reports, or work.”
“I am the luckiest girl on the planet, all those enticing options.”
“You bet your ass. Livin’ the dream.” I make a sarcastic face at her and close the door, avoiding the puddles she always leaves when she showers, but enjoying the warm steam already wafting around the small, tiled room.
I undress, careful of the hitch in my collarbone from when I broke it two years ago. I trace the scars on my hips and back, and feel for the earring that heats up and glows when trouble is near. I straighten the silver and iron cross around my neck, and move my spell pouch to the back of the toilet, within reach of the shower should I need it.
As soon as hot water touches me, I feel alive again. The road grunge, the aches and pains from sitting too long, the headache from insufficient sleep all fade away under the glorious water pressure. Leaving is hard, but my very exacting internal clock starts going into overdrive if I shower more than fifteen minutes, so with a sigh I turn the water off and towel dry.
“Which did you pick?” I call out as I pull on yoga pants and a thermal shirt. Silence. “Lia? Which did you pick?”
I instinctively reach for my earring again as I open the door. It’s not hot, which is a good sign, but Lia isn’t on her bed or anywhere else in the room, which is less good.
“Fuck!”
I grab my phone, my gun and the last of my cash before I run towards the door, trying not to panic. The previous close calls she’s had swarm to the forefront of my mind, and the worst possible scenarios vie for my attention. All of our wards are still in place. What could get past them?