Thoroughly Kissed (26 page)

The spring greenery gave the area a magical quality. The Black Hills themselves were dark and a bit foreboding. But the light was clearer here than it was in Madison, and the sky bluer. Perhaps there was less pollution, or perhaps the air was drier. She didn't know. All she knew was that the morning was one of the finest she'd seen in months.

Michael turned on Highway 212 at Belle Fourche. The highway was exactly what Emma had feared it would be, a two-lane paved road with buckling concrete. Once they left Belle Fourche, there were no houses or cars or even beggars on horseback. They were the only ones on the road.

After they turned off, Darnell moved from the backseat to her lap. He seemed to want comfort, which was very out of character for him. He purred as she petted him, and stared out the passenger window, his muscles tense and alert.

He didn't like this area. She wondered if he would have behaved this way if they traveled I-90 through Wyoming instead.

Michael didn't like it either. He shut off the radio after fifteen minutes of static—apparently they were too far away from any town to get a signal.

The road stretched before them like a mythical road—disappearing into the distance. The only signs of civilization were the fences that ran along both sides of the road. They were on ranchland, but Emma saw no cattle, no equipment, nothing but miles and miles and miles of fence.

“I was afraid it would be like this,” Michael said a half an hour into the ride.

Emma didn't answer. She didn't want to get into a fight about the choice. Instead she watched the road and tried to ease the tension out of Darnell.

Another half hour in, Michael made her dig out a map. “I thought there were supposed to be towns here.”

Emma looked at it. They should have gone through Alzada before the first time Michael spoke up, and they should be about to enter Hammond.

“There were supposed to be towns,” she said. “But I haven't seen anything.”

He took the map from her and spread it on the steering wheel. “They're awfully small,” he said. “Maybe they're ghost towns.”

“Ghost towns?” Panic shot through her. “You mean we're heading directly for the spirits?”

Darnell dug his claws into her leg as if he could hold onto her and remain safe. She had to pry them loose one paw at a time.

Michael laughed. “Ghost towns don't refer to spirits. It means towns that were once there and have since died. Sometimes the buildings remain, sometimes just the place names.”

“Oh.” Emma took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. The little things that she didn't know still amazed her sometimes. “Do you mean there may be nothing on this road from here to Billings?”

“Why do you think I bought all the food?”

“How did you know?”

“I didn't. I've just been on western back roads before. They're not easy.”

And she would have traveled this by herself, with no food, no water, no preparation. Just like she might have gone through the desert herself. Maybe Michael's dream hadn't been that far-fetched after all. Part of her had wanted to believe that Merlin had made up the whole thing to get Michael to travel with her. She hated to think she would have made such elementary mistakes.

But she was the first to admit her knowledge of this world was lacking. She was better than she had been but, as Michael pointed out, there were still astonishing gaps in her knowledge. Knowing how to survive in places like this seemed to be one of them.

“If you know this would be so desolate,” she said, “why did you agree to come?”

“Because your friend said we had to get out of the Black Hills fast, and this route cuts almost two hundred miles off our trip to Billings. If things go all right, we should be there in five hours instead of nine.”

“If things go all right,” Emma repeated, numbly.

“I won't lie to you, Emma. If we break down here, it could take a day or more to have someone find us. And then we'll have all the time it takes to get the car repaired. We'll probably have to go back to Belle Fourche or Sturgis to find someone who can order in the parts.”

She slumped even farther, trying not to let that idea sink in. Because if it did, she would be afraid that she would cause the car to break down, and that would be a bad thing. A very bad thing indeed.

Darnell's claws were in her legs again. Thanks to Darnell, both she and Michael would be scarred for life from this trip.

At noon, Michael pulled over to the side of the road.

“Are we having car trouble then?” Emma asked.

“Nope,” he said, getting out.

“What's going on?”

“Personal trouble.” He walked to the back of the car. She watched him. He stood for a moment in the empty road, looked at the fences blocking both sides, the long flat treeless land that extended in either direction and shook his head.

“Would you mind looking away?” he said.

Suddenly she understood what he was about. She turned around, and waited, realizing that she would have to do the same thing.

She worked at prying Darnell off her. Then she closed Michael's door, set Darnell in the cat bed, and waited. When Michael returned, she got out and found a private place to get rid of the morning's beverages.

She hadn't used the outdoors like this in a long, long, long time. She grinned. The entire experience made her think of her girlhood—of holes in the ground and wooden toilet seats (although they weren't called that) and the rags that an occasional kind soul left for someone's use.

Now she would shudder at the unsanitariness of it all, but when she first arrived at Nora's apartment, she had been frightened by the sterile chrome and porcelain, the clean smells. The bathrooms had truly told her that she was in a new time.

Who would have thought that the cool wind on her bare skin would be something that she had missed?

“You alive?” Michael shouted.

“Yep.” She finished and came around the car. Michael was still standing outside, leaning against the side and staring at the grassland beyond.

“Can you imagine living here?” he asked. “There's nothing. You must really have to hate people.”

“Or just be very private,” she said.

“Would you like it here?” There seemed to be some worry in his voice, as if he were afraid she would say yes.

“I like Madison,” she said.

“Me, too. Despite the weather.”

She smiled. “Oh, the weather is part of what I like. You forget. I like adventure.”

“I'm not forgetting,” he said. “It's becoming clearer and clearer every day.”

He opened the door to the backseat and caught Darnell as he tried to get out. Then he handed Darnell to Emma, who clutched him tightly. Darnell looked all around, seemed to decide that he disliked desolation, and sniffed the air. Michael opened the cooler, took out some sandwiches that he bought, and two bottles of water. He set them on the hood, took Darnell back from her, while she took out Darnell's leash. Emma clipped it onto Darnell as Michael closed the door.

She set Darnell on the road, and he turned his face into the wind. He still didn't seem happy—it was more like he was sniffing for a sign.

It only took a few minutes to eat sandwiches when you were leaning against a car. The food tasted good, though, better than it probably should have, given that the sandwiches were hours old.

Emma ate hers and stared at the land beyond the fence. Brown with patches of green. Dust whipped past her, getting into her mouth as she chewed. She had become a product of the twenty-first century. She was used to eating clean and fresh food inside. She liked the amenities, from the bathrooms to the hotel rooms to the cars. If someone had told her when she first woke up that she would rather stay in this century, covered as it was with concrete and steel buildings, she would have been appalled.

Now she was appalled at ever moving back to the tenth century.

“What's that?” Michael asked. He was pointing in the distance. Emma looked. For a moment, she saw a heat shimmer. Then she could see through it, to the village of her birth.

She muttered the reverse spell as fast as she could, her heart pounding. The last thing she needed to do was vanish from here, leaving Darnell alone and unprotected in the middle of nowhere.

The heat shimmer vanished.

“You did that?” Michael asked.

She nodded. “I was thinking about the past.”

“Miss it?”

“No,” she said. “I just realized how much I like it here.”

He smiled at her. Then he brushed her hair back tenderly from her face. “I'm glad that you like it here.”

She captured his hand with her own. “Michael—”

“Emma, I liked holding you last night.”

Her fingers tightened over his. “We already had this discussion.”

“And we didn't finish it. I say let's test it. If something goes wrong, I know how to contact your Fates. At worst, I can get your friend Aethelstan—”

“No.” The word came out before she had a chance to think about it. She pulled away from him. “I'm not ready. Too much has gone wrong these last few days. It would be better if we didn't experiment until we were safe.”

“Safe?” He let his hand drop at her side.

“Portland.”

“That's a compromise, then?”

She took a deep breath. She hadn't realized she had come toward his position. But she had. She nodded.

He smiled. “Emma, you're more practical than I give you credit for. It's a marvelous idea. You won't change your mind?”

She already was. But his question made her defensive. “Of course not.”

“Good.” He opened the driver's door. “Let's get going. I have real incentive now to get to Oregon.”

“Some would say a kiss isn't enough reward for what you're doing.”

“It is if the kiss is a special one.” He got inside the car.

“Great,” Emma said to herself as she crossed toward her side of the car. “Not only do I have to worry about losing another thousand years of my life, but now I have to worry about whether or not that kiss'll be good enough.”

Life had been a lot easier when she had been on her own. Less interesting, and not as much fun, but easier.

She wished she could convince herself that she missed being alone. But she found that, despite the pressure, she was looking forward to the end of the journey—and not just because the magic would be under control.

***

Emma lost all track of time on the empty windy road. She wondered if it would go on forever, if it was a curse sent by the same people who had sent those shadows the night before. She was actually glad she wasn't driving. The emptiness was hypnotic in its own way, lulling her into a kind of stupor that felt almost like sleep.

The car was pretty quiet. Michael had shut off the staticky radio and Emma hadn't brought any CDs. He wasn't talking either, and Darnell was asleep.

The sun wasn't as bright as it had been. Sometimes Emma thought she saw more shade on the land around her than there should have been, given the dearth of trees. And the air had gotten colder.

“Is it darker than it should be?” she asked Michael.

“I don't know,” he said, “but I'm beginning to wonder if we've fallen through the Rabbit Hole.”

“Which rabbit hole?”

He looked at her sideways. “You've never heard of Alice in Wonderland?”

“I'd heard, but I had no idea that it had something to do with rabbit holes.”

Michael laughed, and proceeded to tell her the story of the hapless Alice who was at times too big, and at other times too small. Darnell woke up for the part of the Cheshire Cat, which, Emma thought, suited him perfectly.

Then the road turned and buildings appeared as if out of nowhere. Houses and a garage. The street widened. They had arrived in a town.

“Well, whaddya know?” Michael said. “Civilization.”

As he spoke the words, a nearly grown calf ran down the middle of the street. Michael hit the brakes, narrowly missing the animal. It shied and skittered toward one of the buildings.

At that moment, a cowboy, complete with chaps, rode a horse toward the calf, swinging a rope over his head. He held the reins in one hand and then lassoed the calf easily. The creature bucked and started, but the cowboy held him fast.

“Another vision?” Michael asked Emma.

She hadn't been sure at first, but now she was. The horse was brown and healthy, the cowboy as real as Michael. The calf was bleating, a sound she knew she had never heard before and therefore couldn't conjure up.

“No. This is real.”

“You've got to be kidding. That's harder to believe than a restaurant with fifty chefs.”

“I'm not kidding,” she said. “My horses are all white with rainbows. This one's just brown.”

“Poor thing,” Michael said sarcastically.

“And that cowboy doesn't look like a beggar to me.”

Almost as if he'd heard her, the cowboy tipped his hat at her, and then rode toward the center of town, pulling the calf behind him. Michael waited a full five minutes before starting to drive again.

“Why did that unnerve you?” Emma asked.

“I thought the Old West was long dead,” he said.

“Apparently not in Wyoming.”

“I don't think we're in Wyoming anymore,” Michael said.

“I thought the quote was about Kansas.”

“That too.” Then he looked at her. “You know
The Wizard of Oz
?”

“Who doesn't?” she asked. “Even my parents had heard of the Wizard of Oz.”

“I hope you're yanking me,” he said.

“I told you,” she said with a smile. “We can't do that.”

He caught his breath and then looked at her. His eyes were twinkling. “At least until we get to Oregon.”

She felt a wave of desire, then willed herself to suppress it—which was harder than it had been. The feeling didn't just go away because she wanted it to. Great, she thought. Just one more thing that was out of control.