Highway to Hell

S
ome people think that Texas has only one season, that it's summer all year long. In fact, the Lone Star State does have four seasons: Hot, Humid, Horrible, and Hellacious. But when I decided to road-trip with D&D Lisa to South Padre Island, I didn't think that last one would be so literal.

I shouldn't have been surprised. I'm Maggie Quinn: Psychic Girl Detective. Lisa is an amateur sorcerer. We aren't exactly normal college freshmen. Yet there we were, doing the normal college thing, setting off on a Rite of Passage: Spring Break at the Beach.

An odd choice, since I hate any water deeper than a
bathtub, I already have a boyfriend, and if you couldn't tell from her nickname, D&D Lisa isn't the beer and boobfest type. Neither am I. But we'd wanted to take a road trip, and the destination had started as a joke. Then I pitched an article to the editor of the Bedivere University newspaper—who seemed amused by the whole World's Least Likely Spring Breakers angle—and to my surprise, Lisa went along with it.

In the end, our reasons don't matter, except to explain how we came to be cruising down State Highway 77 in the smallest hour of the morning, even though we knew—better than most—what kinds of things go bump in the night.

I flexed my hands on the Jeep's steering wheel and sank lower into the seat. It was a long drive, which hadn't seemed so daunting until I realized how much of it was through landscape so desolately featureless, it made me think Dante must have visited here before he wrote
The Inferno.

“If I owned Hell and Texas, I'd rent out Texas and live in Hell.”

Lisa paused in fiddling with the radio. “What's that about?”

I shrugged. “Something I read once. Like … Did you know Velasquez County has more cows than people in it?”

There was just enough light from the dashboard to see her roll her eyes. “Remind me to never go up against you on
Jeopardy!”

Under a nearly full moon, the coastal plain was as flat as a silver-gray sea, cut by a black ribbon of highway and a smaller thread of railroad tracks running alongside. Now and then we'd reach a crossroads, where there might be a grain silo, a water tower, or a tiny fruit stand, deserted for the night and only adding to the barren atmosphere.

It seemed like there should be more traffic—other spring breakers, semis on their NAFTA routes, minivans loaded up like the Griswolds' station wagon in
Vacation—
but since we'd passed Corpus Christi, the signs of civilization had dwindled to zero. We'd passed the last minimart an hour ago, and with nothing on the horizon but more road—and eventually Mexico—I was beginning to regret the twelve ounces of Coke I'd downed to keep alert in the unrelieved boredom.

“You didn't have to come with me,” I pointed out.

Lisa had given up on the radio and plugged my iPod into the adaptor. “Is it so weird to want to do something normal?”

I glanced at her silhouette, arching my brows wryly. “For you? Yes.”

“I'm taking a break from my sorcerous studies. It will be just like the old days, except that instead of sitting around in the caf mocking the jock-headed and lame, we'll be sitting on the sand mocking the drunk, sunburnt, and slutty.” She bent her long, denim-clad leg to an impossible angle and propped her foot on the dash. “Besides, I'm ahead on all my coursework, so what else am I going to do? Sit around and play World of Warcraft all week?”

Our friendship had endured four years of high school, freshman semesters spent at colleges half a country apart— not to mention the forces of darkness. In the past year, one of us had summoned a demon, one of us had vanquished it, and our friendship had nearly fallen apart. Then we'd had to team up to defeat a sorority who had the devil on speed dial. Lisa had saved my life, which went a long way toward reestablishing trust between us.

That's a grossly abbreviated summary of events, of course. The important thing is, Lisa isn't a bad person,
though she sometimes thinks she is. Really she's just … complicated. Which I guess you would have to be to summon a demon, even sort of unintentionally, in the first place.

So I could see her wanting a break from that for a week. As for myself, a feature article for Bedivere U's
Daily Report
was just an excuse. My real reason was tiny, pink, colicky, and possessed of a wail like an air-defense siren.

I'd been an only child for eighteen years, and while I didn't mind sharing the bright center of my parents' universe, I'd been completely unprepared for the disruption that my infant sister brought to the house. Lately I spent long hours away on campus, or at my boyfriend's apartment. But with school out for the week, and Justin going out of town, too, I was at loose ends. I would have jumped at a chance for a trip to the moon.

Lisa clicked through my playlists, looking dissatisfied with the selection. “You're going to have fun this week, right?”

I glanced at her doubtfully. “Surrounded by the drunk and disorderly? We are going to study the natives, not to become them.”

“Which does not preclude having a good time. You're not going to be all goody-two-shoes?”

“What does that mean?” Since I had already taken the unprecedented step of lying to my parents about our departure time in order to avoid the “Two girls driving alone at night” speech, I really didn't appreciate being called a killjoy.

“Don't get pissy. I just don't want you to mope around because Sir Galahad isn't there.”

“Sir Galahad” is my boyfriend, Justin. He and Lisa had
started off on a bad foot, though they've since reached a kind of détente. Lisa, in her D&D terminology, says that Justin is a Lawful Good Paladin. She doesn't always mean it as a compliment, but it's absolutely true, so it's hard to take offense.

“Just because I have a boyfriend doesn't mean I
require
a guy to be happy. And if I ever do, just shoot me.” Needling me was Lisa's way of breaking up the monotony of the drive, but that didn't stop me from getting defensive. “Besides, it's good to have some time apart.”

“You're sure?” She prodded me like a bug under a microscope. “It doesn't irk you he's spending the week with this buddy of his?”

The only thing more provoking than Lisa in a good mood was Lisa in the throes of boredom. “Why should it
irk
me?”

“It's your first school break as a couple.” She was fishing, and I was determined not to take that bait.

“Henry's been his best friend since forever. They're going to hang out and do guy stuff. It's not any different than you and I going off to do girl stuff.” I shot her a look. “Not that I can remember why that seemed like a good idea.”

“Because we're best friends.” Lisa unplugged my iPod and replaced it with hers. The screen cast her face in a cool glow, at odds with her devilish smile. “And when I take over the world, I'll appoint you to a place of distinction in my Council of Evil.”

“Can't wait.”

The music had started low—a distinctive, almost tribal, drumbeat. Bending her other leg to join the first, Lisa tapped her bare toes on the dash and drummed on her knees along with the Rolling Stones.

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said.

Lisa just grinned and sang along with Mick. “ ‘Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste …’ ”

“Sympathy for the Devil.” I slanted her a look of disbelief. “You have a sick sense of humor.”

All I got was a wider grin and more lyrics. “ ‘Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name.’ ”

“That might have been funny before you took up sorcery as a hobby.”

“One little demon summoning,” she said, as the chorus began, “and you never let me forget it.”

If she was going to Hell, I guess I was, too, because the outrageous irony dragged a laugh out of me. She bobbed her head, tapping the beat on her knees. This was why we were still friends, as much as because of the saving each other's lives and teaming up against Evil stuff.

Abruptly, Lisa dropped her feet to the floorboard. “Brake lights.”

I peered into the darkness beyond the Jeep's headlights. “I don't see anything.” Only road and more road.

Drumbeats nearly drowned out our voices. “There! Dead ahead.”

I glimpsed twin red beacons in the silver-gray darkness. But in the instant it took for me to shift my foot to the brake, the lights disappeared.

“Where'd they go?”

“There!” Lisa pointed into the field. How had that car moved so fast? The gleam of red seemed to be moving off-road, across scrub and between the shadows of scraggly mesquite.

“How … ?”

“Maggie! Look out!” I slammed my foot on the brake. Lisa braced herself with a hand on the dash and another on the roll bar. I could see it now—something huge lay across both lanes, too close to swerve around. The Jeep hit the yielding bulk of the thing; a lower-profile car would have smashed into it. But the off-road tires of the Wrangler went up and over, tilting precariously to one side. The whole vehicle shuddered as something scraped the undercarriage to the tune of tearing metal.

We hit the ground on the other side. There was a sharp crack, and my teeth rattled as we spun out, tires squealing like a tortured soul. The flat gray Purgatory of South Texas whirled past the windshield as I released the brake and turned the wheel into the spin, my right arm burning in sharp protest. Careening onto the shoulder, we came to a stop facing back the way we'd come.

The headlights illuminated the great misshapen carcass of a horned animal, dead in the middle of the highway. In the anticlimactic quiet, the Rolling Stones played on.

“Pleased to meet you. Hope you guess my name.”

L
isa's hand shook as she clicked off the iPod.

“What the hell is that?”

“Cow, I think.” Though my first guess from the size of it would have been buffalo. But then, all I knew about cattle came from the movies.

No question the cow was dead. Its big head was twisted almost all the way around and one horn looked half torn off, possibly from meeting the undercarriage of the Jeep. The asphalt was darkly wet.

“Did
we
kill it?” I asked in a guilty whisper.

“I don't think so.” Lisa sounded dazed. “Did you hurt your arm?”

Until she said it, I didn't realize I was cradling my right arm against my chest, holding it protectively with my left. “I had to turn the steering wheel pretty hard.”

The sharp aching pull was dulling quickly. I wiggled my fingers, the flare of the injured nerves racing up and knotting in my chest. The puffy red scar that ran nearly from my elbow to my wrist was a souvenir from last December. Eventually the scar would fade, but my hand would always be weak, and always protest when I asked too much of it.

I took a deep breath and let it out, letting some of the pain go with it. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. No harm done.”

Right on cue, the Jeep gave a sputter, then died.

“Okay.” My voice sounded high and tight in the silence of the desert. “Let's not panic.”

“We're not going to panic.” Lisa stated it as fact. “We're going to get out of the car and check the damage.”

Another deep breath. “Yes, Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

She was right. No point in freaking out until I knew the extent of the damage. Grabbing the flashlight that I kept between my seat and the center console, I opened the door.

Beside the Jeep, the ground fell away steeply from the shoulder of the highway, and I had to slide down until the prickly grass scratched at my ankles, and the toes of my flip-flops sank into the sandy soil. I could smell gasoline, carried on the warm air. That couldn't be good.

Lisa joined me as I crouched to shine the light under the Jeep. “See anything?”

“Yeah.” A direly mangled hunk of metal hung from the undercarriage, dripping some liquid steadily onto the earth. “But don't ask me what it is, other than bad.”