But what was the
here and now?
There were no newspaper stands in sight
—her usual method of keeping track of the day. "Excuse me," she called out to the woman behind a counter that sold fudge by the pound. The woman turned her head and raised her brows.
"What's the date today?"
The woman smiled as she cut a block of gooey dark candy from a massive slab and put it on the scale to weigh. "Thursday the eleventh."
She looked around out the window. No snow, but then
—would there be any here, regardless of the month? "What month?"
That question got an odd look, but not to the point the woman did more than shrug. "April."
She wished she could ask the year, too, because that could make a large difference in where she went next. She suddenly remembered Pony, but that meant things were splitting in her mind, melding into threads of other possibilities. But if not knowing the month was odd, not knowing the year would seem completely insane. No, she'd have to do this the hard way. She'd managed to find a few coping mechanisms over the years to help in situations like this; by far her favorite was the handy inspection stickers on vehicle windshields. Only in August and September did that method sometimes fail her, when people often replaced their vehicles with the newest model.
"Visine's on aisle two." A male voice in front of her startled her out of her mulling, and she looked up with a quick shake of her head.
"Excuse me?" She turned her head to see who he might be talking to and realized she was the only person in hearing distance.
"Your eyes look pretty red. You been driving all night?"
Did they? That seemed odd, since her eyes should heal as quickly as the rest of her Sazi anatomy. "Um, yes. But I'll be fine."
The man, not much more than a boy really, looked her over again with enough scrutiny that she instinctively sniffed for his scent to see if he were a danger. No, there was nothing but cheap cologne and the lingering smell of stale popcorn and hot dog grease that clung to his pale skin and shaggy auburn hair like glue. "We've got a shower in back
…
for the truckers. I've heard people say it helps wake them up."
A shower. Her breath caught in her throat. Was the vision just a vision, or would she find Rick here, in this stupid interstate gas station? Her heart pounded nervously. She shouldn't still feel things for him
—he deserted her, after all. But she did.
The showers weren't unisex, unfortunately, and the stalls were built wrong for the one in her vision. Still, the hot water really helped and being dressed in clothing that fit was even better. One thing
Josette
had always liked about big truck stops was they carried clothing and toiletries. Everything necessary to keep a trucker
—male or female—clean and on the road.
Pressing the button on the keychain, the vehicle's security system gave a reassuring beep. Still, she was feeling antsy. Perhaps it was the vision, but she
just didn't feel comfortable. Something was nibbling at the edge of her consciousness, like a mouse at grain. Before she climbed inside, she walked over to the side of the dining room and looked down the length of cars. As she watched, a black SUV much like the one she was driving pulled up to the back of the building. The man from behind the counter where she paid rushed out to greet the pair of suited, olive-skinned men who climbed from the vehicle. She took a tentative whiff. As she suspected, they were snake shifters.
The encounter could mean nothing. But it didn't
look
like nothing. In fact, to her it appeared downright sinister. Was the suggestion of a shower to delay her? If so, it had worked. And what would she have discovered in aisle two if she'd ventured there as the clerk suggested?
Josette
backed quickly into the shadows, and right into another person. Feminine hands grasped her shoulders and a snarl spilled from her lips as her magic flared.
Adrenaline flooded her system as she turned, expecting to have to fight her way out of the parking lot. But the face that greeted her when she completed her spin was young, probably only sixteen or seventeen, with a panicked expression.
And she smelled of fear and feathers, not scales.
"Please! You've got to help me. They're going to kill my mom if I don't get back there in time." Her words were whispered and hurried and her eyes
kept flicking toward the SUV that
Josette
had been watching.
Time slowed as the girl turned and crouched down behind a pebbled concrete trash can. She'd seen this moment before
…
in a vision years before. The girl was petite, with nearly black hair and dark brown eyes. She had dressed in low-slung jeans and a scooped-neck tank top that clung to her like a second skin, showing off impressive cleavage. Her arms were long, too long to be in complete proportion to her body. One of the birds then; a Sazi almost ready for her first turn. But why on earth was she out in public so close to her first change? Where was her family, her mentor?
"Who are you?"
Josette
realized her words came out suspicious, but there was certainly cause. "And why do you think I can help you?"
The girl didn't seem to mind the misgiving. She stared at her with near adoration, as though
Josette
was someone she knew and trusted. "My name's Ellen
…
Ellen Harris. I realize you don't know me, but you're one of
them,
one like me, but with fur. And
—" Ellen's face took on an intense, yet somehow helpless expression. "I just
…
know.
I know things, but I'm not very good at explaining them."
A
seer.
The girl was, or would be, a seer like her.
Josette
looked at the bright, birdlike eyes, filled with fear and knowledge and felt something in her mind
shift
—enough to nearly make her dizzy, as though the future was rewriting itself as she watched.
She made the decision just as the black SUV's doors slammed and the clerk hurried back into the building. "Stay here. I'll drive over and pick you up. Get in the back passenger door and stay on the floor. We can talk after we're out on the interstate."
Ellen nodded and smiled, a shy turning of lips with tear-filled eyes. "Thank you. I've been waiting for days for you to stop for breakfast
—hiding behind the restaurant, stealing food from the Dumpster. I was starting to get afraid that—"
"That you might be wrong?"
Josette
raised her brows and the girl shrugged with near embarrassment. It nearly made her chuckle. How many times had she done similar things when she was a child, waiting impatiently for a future scene in her mind to arrive? It was like counting days until a birthday or Christmas for a human. She crouched down beside the girl and touched her hand before whispering in her ear. "You weren't. I've seen you, too."
With a quick pat, she pulled away her hand and bolted for the rental, keeping low and moving between parked cars to confuse the men in the SUV. The lingering scent of Ellen's surprise, laced with warm flowery gratitude, stayed in her nose even over the petrochemicals assaulting her from the idling trucks and cars.
It went off like clockwork. A massive tanker truck pulled across the line of sight of the SUV just as she started the car and pulled over to pick up Ellen. Dark
smoke rose from the rear tires in the rearview mirror as the men realized she'd escaped onto the frontage road, and they accelerated to start the chase.
The posted speed limit was quickly surpassed as they raced toward Albuquerque to, hopefully, lose the pursuers in the crowd of cars. Ellen seemed to be content to remain on the floor in back while
Josette
drove with determined intensity. The girl's scent had moved from afraid to pleased relief, despite being thrown around on the floor as the car dodged between slower moving vehicles at an ever-increasing pace.
"Where do you need to go? Where are they holding your mother?"
"We live in a little town to the east of here, called Pony. You've probably never heard of it."
A laugh boiled up out of her chest, nearly causing her to take her eyes off the road to see the girl's face. But that would be a bad thing, considering she was next to a semi and was just crossing a bridge. Instead, she turned the rearview mirror down so she could keep her eyes forward and then pulled out the key tag that Yusef had written, handing it back between the split seats. "Do you recognize this address?"
Ellen took the key and nodded as she read, her short dark hair bobbing in the sunlight just at the edge of Josette's peripheral vision. "Oh, sure. This is old Widow Hunt's place. You mean
you're
the one who bought her husband's Firebird convertible? It's
been sitting in her garage since I was born, waiting for the new owner to show up. My cousin goes over every fall to drive it around town a few times to keep the battery charged and then drains the oil for winter." Her laugh was a fluttering screech, the high-pitched sound of a raptor, and she covered her mouth, reeking embarrassment.
Josette
saw an opening between the semi and the delivery truck in front of it and pressed down on the accelerator hard to squeeze into the space before slowing. The black SUV started to move into the lane to catch up when a highway patrol car pulled into the median. She was relieved when the SUV backed down its speed and pulled in behind the semi.
"You don't have to be embarrassed about your laugh, Ellen. All Sazi birds make that same sound, or something like it." She did glance down then, just a quick flick of her eyes when fear boiled up out of the girl's pores. "You haven't had your first change yet, have you?"
"Huh-uh. And if my dad has any say about it, I won't, either." Her voice and scent said she truly believed that.
"He
doesn't
have any say about it. If you're meant to turn, you will. Do you have others in your family who turn that can help you through it the first time?"
Again she shook her head. "Gramma was the only one on Mom's side, and Daddy doesn't talk about his family, so I don't know. But Mom said I got it from
both sides. I left because I was afraid what he'd do if I did change. I was already weird to him because of the dreams that come true, and he
hates
shifters
— hates and fears them, the way people used to hate women healers in Salem. Even mentioning his or Mom's family makes him insane. I just know he's going to use me as some sort of guinea pig for that stuff he's been cooking up with his freaky friends out in the desert. I've heard him talking, like they can cure me, or something."
Josette
sighed as she darted the rental between another pair of trucks and slowed to make sure there was no room for their tail to fit. So, there was another group trying to
fix
them. It wasn't the first time. "There's no cure for what we are, Ellen
—even though sometimes I wish there was. We are Sazi. It's nothing to be ashamed of. But if you truly feel you and your mother are in danger, I'll give you a phone number to call. A woman named
Ang
e
lique
is the leader of all the birds in the world. She can help you. If you leave—"
"I
did
leave. But then I
saw
what he'd do to Mom if he found out I wasn't coming back, so
…
I have to go back. I can't leave her to
—" She grimaced and pressed both her hands to her temples, as if staving off another vision. "Please. I don't want to talk about what might happen."
A wave of pain flashed through
Josette,
and tension churned her stomach. Talking about bad visions
only made them worse; sometimes they triggered a new, darker image just through the speaking of it. "I understand. More than you can know, I understand."
The overhead sign that zipped past revealed the next exit was for one of the main business streets. With careful maneuvering, she managed to make it into the right lane without the SUV noticing, so when she exited along with a flow of other vehicles, their pursuers were caught flat-footed. She ignored the squealing tires and horn honks as the SUV cut through traffic, and across the median
…
as the chase car gave up all pretense of hiding their intent.
Josette
concentrated instead on moving into the downtown where she might be able to lose them.
That one decision apparently made them more bold and the few horn honks became many as the SUV began to force vehicles off the road in order to get closer.
Josette
couldn't even bear to look in the rearview to see the images that the sounds hinted at before they disappeared into the distance
—squealing tires, yelling, the angry rent of metal twisting and glass breaking. With a hard yank of the wheel, she moved off the main street onto an empty side street. But then Ellen's voice came from behind her, in a whispered singsong that she recognized. The girl was having a vision.
"She can't die. The woman
…
blue sedan
…
must live. Baby
…
future
—"
It was a good opportunity to coach the girl on using her visions to help keep an important future on track.
“T
ell me what you're seeing, Ellen. Look around at the scenery and describe things." She scanned the area ahead. New architecture blended with old on the quiet street. There were a number of sidewalk cafes ahead with a few scattered patrons. She raised her voice and pushed magic into Ellen, causing the girl to gasp and thrash against the door. "I need to know! Where is she?"
Josette
passed through a yellow light and cursed under her breath when the SUV zoomed through the cold red in her wake. Glancing down at the speedometer, she realized she was already ten over the limit and was bound to become a danger to people soon.
She needed to end this. She touched Ellen's arm, forced her way into the girl's vision until
Josette
was standing beside her on the street in a near future time. Yes, a different angle, an altered perspective, but it was this place; this time. The Ellen in the vision turned to her with awe plain on her face. But she was too far inside to separate her mind from that which was happening
to
her mind.
Josette
desperately tried to keep her attention on the task of driving while seeing her own car approaching from far down the street. But she couldn't look to the side until Ellen herself did. Not without losing her hold on reality. "Think! Tell me quick.
What's on the street?
What do you
see?
Turn your
head and look around." More magic, filled with a subtle persuasion that shouldn't give her too much of a headache.
The girl's head turned and it was enough.
Josette
saw the location just as Ellen spoke in the car. "Chairs
—" The voice was reedy and thin and she started gasping for air. "Green
…
striped awning."
Josette
removed her hand, pulled herself away from the image, and looked as far into the distance as she could.
There!
She saw it:
a caf
é
far up the street and yes, there was a blue sedan parked in front.
Abruptly, anger filled her. She hated this, hated that the people in the SUV cared so little for the humans that they would risk them all just to get her. But she wasn't willing to go down that road easily, nor would she risk killing people that could alter the future.