a word over the last few minutes, retreating into himself and hoarding his thoughts. She knew this was as difficult for him as it was for her. If she’d ever consider praying to a higher power for anything, it would be for the ability to help him instead of hinder him.
She pushed the door open and exited. Resting her forearm on the roof of the car, she looked around. Upland was inland from Orange County, which made the temperature hotter and the air drier. She missed the ocean breeze already, but Eve suspected that was part of a general homesickness for anything familiar. She was separated from her family and her best friend, she’d lost her job, and Mrs. Basso was gone. A hotel stay in a strange town only added to her feeling of being a fish out of water.
Water.
Thinking of the Nix, Eve pushed away from the car and shut the door. Alec appeared on the opposite side. Tall, dark, handsome, and brooding. He slipped shades over his eyes, hiding his thoughts from her visual probe. There was a huge gulf between them at the moment. Like the tide against the shore, they crashed together and drew apart.
“After we get a room,” she said, “I need to hit the convenience store for a soda and a prepaid cell phone.”
He smiled. “You’d make a good spy, I think.”
“I have a fondness for action flicks.”
Alec came around the trunk and offered his hand. She accepted, but the closeness was only superficial. Emotionally, he was miles away, which was why she took a room with two double beds.
“You two got any pets?” the desk clerk asked. He was a young man in his midtwenties, Eve guessed. Over-weight by about sixty pounds and a mouth breather.
She shook her head. “Just us. Please don’t put us in a room that has had pets before. I’m allergic to cats.”
“No problem.” He leaned over the counter and lowered his voice. “Someone in the area has been stealing pets and hacking them up. It’s in all the local papers. Just wanted to warn you.”
“Hacking them up?” she repeated, remembering the article she’d read earlier that morning.
“Nasty stuff. Disemboweling, removing the eyeballs . . . that sort of thing.” His tone was more gossip-monger thrilled than it was disgusted or disturbed. “I read once that most serial killers start out mutilating animals, then they progress to people.”
“So this area isn’t safe?”
“It is for humans.” He shrugged, straightening. “Not so much for pets.”
While she signed the paperwork, Alec paid the balance in cash. He stared at her from behind his shades, but didn’t say a word until they went outside.
“Something you want to say to me?” he asked as they skirted the front office and crossed over to the 7-Eleven parking lot.
“About what?”
“About the two beds?”
“No pressure.”
“Hmm.”
An electronic beeping announced their entrance into the convenience store. Out front, three cars were filling their gas tanks at the pumps. Inside, an elderly woman with big white hair manned the counter and two teens stood by the coolers against the rear wall, looking at the soda.
Eve grabbed a hand basket by the door and moved to the prepaid phones hanging on an end cap.
Alec gestured to the soda fountain. “Want something to drink?”
“Diet Dr Pepper, if they have it. Otherwise, I’ll get it in a bottle.”
“Okay.”
Alec walked away and she rounded the aisle, grabbing beef jerky, nuts, and Chex Mix. She had a vision of lying across her motel bed with junk food, soda, and a movie on the television. The mere idea of a few hours of decompression was heaven on earth. They wouldn’t head out to the masonry until night, so she had time to vegetate and make sense of life as she now knew it. With that in mind, she grabbed chocolate, too—Twix, Kit Kats, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.
Eve was making her way around the next aisle when the Infernal stench hit her. She sought out the source of the putrid smell and settled on the teenagers by the rear cooler. One wore a hooded sweatshirt with the hood up. The other wore a Hurley T-shirt and unkempt hair. On his nape, a tattoo of a diamond animated. It rotated, displaying the glimmer of its various facets.
She gaped, unmoving. As if he felt the weight of her stare, the hooded boy turned his head toward her. Eve’s gaze dropped, her obscenely steady hands absently pulling unknown items from the shelf into her basket. She continued down