Her eyes focused hard on the road as she ignored him. “Which way now?” she asked when we reached the intersection.
“Left,” I answered after drawing in more air.
“Celia—”
I cut Aric off. “Looks like she’s listening to you about as much as she did when you were together. Later, bossman. I’ll call when I’m onto something.”
Aric snarled another curse before I could disconnect. I took another whiff. “Go up 431; it looks like they’re headed toward Mount Rose.” My phone rang. I tossed it in the glove compartment and lifted my body out of the car to sit on rim of the door.
Celia’s phone rang next. “Crap. It’s Aric.” The ringer abruptly cut off. I thought she answered until she hit a few buttons and nothing happened. “We must be getting closer. My phone’s dead again.”
“Or the collection of spirits is more than we thought,” I muttered.
I continued to hang out the car window to track the sour stench of Dan’s muffler. The rows of cedar-planked homes disappeared one by one until the thickening woods swallowed us like an approaching army. I slipped back into the cabin when the only aroma interfering with the cold autumn night was the lingering exhaust of Dan’s muffler.
“This is all my goddamn fault.”
Celia’s eyes cut from the long winding road. “It’s not. You’re not the one calling forth these ghosts to rise. We need to find out who is and shut her trap.”
“But Dan wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t bet he couldn’t land a decent lay.”
“Danny knows what you’re like—we all do.” Her voice quieted. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t know you care.” Celia pulled up on her smeared lacey shirt. The gray blood was plastered all over it. She ripped it from her body in one hard tug and tossed it in the backseat, leaving only the skimpy black top beneath. I barely noticed how it hugged her full br**sts. My focus remained on finding Dan.
“I bust his balls too much.”
Celia smirked. “Ballbusting is your calling card. Hell, it’s practically your middle, last, and confirmation name.” She patted my knee. “We’ll find him, Bren.”
“I just don’t want to find him in pieces.” I took another whiff. “I smelled his blood in the alley. Shit, I can smell some in the air now.”
Celia clenched her jaw. “I know. I scented it, too. I don’t smell anything now.” She sighed. “These things need him. If they wanted him dead . . . we would’ve found him already.”
She meant to say, we would’ve found his body ditched in the alley. I knew it because damn it all, I was thinking it, too.
When I met Dan, I was working at a gym in Palo Alto as a personal trainer. Cake job; I didn’t even need to work out. My beast gave the false appearance that I survived on protein shakes and spent every waking moment lifting. All I had to do was pretend like I could make some skinny ass wimp look like me by convincing him to buy the shit the gym sold to build bulk . . . along with locking him into a six month membership. The first wimp sent my way was Dan.
We tried squats first, just to loosen his spaghetti limbs. He face planted within the first four and cracked his glasses. A few of the meatheads watching laughed. I didn’t, and half-expected him to bolt from the humiliation. I would have. Instead the little turd wiped the blood from his nose and fixed his glasses. “Um. What’s next?” he asked me.
“A trip to the emergency room,” I answered him honestly.
He ignored me and moved toward the weights. I followed and maneuvered him back to the rowing machine where I’d thought he wouldn’t get hurt. Hell, the motions were too much for him. He flailed around as if drowning. Hands-down the most uncoordinated piece of work I’d ever seen. Somehow he managed to belt himself in the schnoz with his knee. I yanked him up by his now bloody shirt and tossed him a towel . . . which he of course, didn’t catch.
The others laughed. They stopped laughing at the sight of my glare. I crossed my arms and loomed over Dan. He blinked up at me with his shattered lenses. Damn. He probably saw twelve of me. “Why are you here?”
He glanced around. “To get in shape.”
I didn’t need to take a whiff to know he was lying. “Sure you are. Why are you here?” I asked again.
He lowered the towel from his battered nose. “I want to look better so I can meet women.”