Golem in My Glovebox (10 page)

He was a golem. A construct carved from wood. He shouldn’t have
wanted
anything at all. I took a quick peek through my shields. I didn’t get the sense of emotions the way I did with other people—or even the blunt, primal emotions I received from animals—but something was there. A tiny light, maybe. A seedling, like an ancient ancestor to emotion people felt today. It was certainly more than I’d pulled from Bernice’s other creations, but I remained unimpressed and a bit creeped out.

“Well, Gris,” Riley said. “Welcome to the team.”

Gris tipped his head at Riley. “Much appreciated. Now that we’ve met, however, I’ll leave you to it. I don’t want to intrude or be in the way.” He grabbed the edge of the glove box door and shut himself in.

I had no idea how to react. Riley seemed to be taking it in stride, but he wasn’t the one normally wigged out by Bernice’s toys. Now I had one of my very own, and it wanted me to show it the world. Holy hell.

I tilted my head and looked askance at Riley. “So,
that
just happened.”

“What should we do?”

I shrugged. “Nothing, I guess. At least for now.” I gestured at the closed glove compartment. “He seems content to take a nap.”

Riley reached over and rested his hand on my leg. “Think we should worry?”

I paused, considering the implications of having a tiny helper, then shook my head. “Nope. If there were something to worry about, Bernice wouldn’t have sent him. Are you prepared to get your ass royally kicked at license plate bingo?”

“That’s not a thing.”

“It is now.” A blue Ford drove past in the other direction. “Wisconsin!” I punched him in the biceps.

“Wow. That was so unfair. I didn’t even know we were playing.”

“Get over it, reaper. Loser has to do whatever the winner wants in the hotel tonight.”

“Is that right?” A wicked twinkle glittered in his eyes. “California!” he gave my leg a light slap.

“Where? You totally cheat. There aren’t any cars on the highway.”

“You didn’t count our car.”

“That’s so uncool.” I folded my arms across my chest and pretended to pout for at least two miles.

* * *

By the time we pulled off the road at the Cadillac Ranch, we’d pretty much forgotten about Gris. I’d checked on him earlier when we stopped for gas and souvenirs—a “Don’t Mess With Texas” satin pillow and a silver Texas belt buckle in the shape of a sheriff’s star—but he hadn’t moved or responded. It seemed reasonable that he was conserving his energy, so we let him be.

Daylight would only last so long, and we had to scour this strange tourist attraction for clues before we couldn’t see anymore.

We stepped out of the car and stretched our cramped legs. Two other cars were parked on the shoulder. To the south through a gate and down a dirt path, ten Caddies stood on their noses in a straight line, displaying their tailfins to the sky. I shook my head at the weirdness, and we made our way toward them.

The smell of the spray paint hit me from over a hundred feet away. This was not some casual, underpass graffiti. This was the serious work of thousands of people over the course of decades. The smell had probably absorbed into the surrounding dirt and grass.

A family of five gathered around one of the cars on the far right, engulfed in a cloud of neon. They shared the paint cans, applying their personal tags of happy faces, initials and stick figures on the side of the car. The clicking of the mixing balls in the metal cans and the laughter of the family traveled across the distance between us.

After a few minutes, Dad called a halt. Mom gathered the hands of waist-high twins, and Dad hiked an even smaller girl to his shoulders. The little girl waved at us from her perch as they passed by, blonde curls bouncing with each of Dad’s steps.

I shivered.

“What’s wrong?” Riley asked.

“They’re so happy. They have no idea there was a dead body here yesterday.”

We turned together and watched them make their way back to their green minivan, then we swung around to face the row of brightly decorated car frames.

“Why isn’t there crime scene tape?” I stepped closer, counting the cars to figure out which one was my target. “Why aren’t cops chasing us off?”

Two people stepped out from behind one of the cars—an enormous man, with skin so dark it might’ve had no color at all and a tall, shapely woman with an olive complexion and shining black hair to her waist.

The man’s voice was deep. His eyes were deeper. “Because our people took care of it before local police could get involved.”

My face split into a grin. “You guys!” I ran to the woman first and threw my arms around her.

Kam squealed and hugged me back. “I made Bernice promise not to tell you we were your backup team.”

She smelled like leather and expensive perfume. The first time I’d seen the djinn, she’d looked as if she’d come straight out of an ‘80s music video—poofy skirt, fingerless gloves and massive hair sprayed into impressive heights. She’d helped me save dozens of imprisoned Hidden, and I’d helped her get free from the man who’d kept her enslaved for over a century. I’d been sorry to see her go, but she was determined to strike out on her own.

“I like the new look,” I said, stepping back to admire her.

She preened and spun to model for me. Clothed head to toe in tight black leather, she looked damn tough. Her wrists, which always had to be hidden to keep the gems embedded in her skin from view, were covered in leather gauntlets laced with red ribbons. They were a nice touch.

“Hard to sneak up on people, though. I’m squeaky.” She held her arms out front and did a few squats to demonstrate. She was right. Every move creaked like a tree in a high wind. “I’m thinking maybe silk for tomorrow. It’s quieter.” She looked past me and grinned. “Riley!”

While the gorgeous djinn squeezed the stuffing out of my boyfriend, I turned my attention to the enormous man who’d first spoken. I still felt a kind of weird about Darius. He was big. He was intimidating. He was more than a little terrifying once the sun went down—that’s when he stopped passing for human and went full-on mothman. Not
the
Mothman. Darius told me that guy had happened a long time ago.

Also, this particular mothman used to sleep with my mother, which creeped me out far worse than the lack of a face that occurred at night.

But awkward or not, he was my friend. And he’d also helped save all those Hidden from the auction block so they could go home to their families. As devastated as I’d been when it was all over to find someone new had kidnapped my mother right out from under us, Darius had been equally upset.

I stepped forward and hugged Darius around the waist, which was about as high as I could reach on him without straining my shoulders. “Hey,” I said. “Did you find anything?”

He gave me a gentle squeeze. “Nothing yet. The last of the tourists seem to have left. I doubt we’ll be interrupted.” He squinted up at the sky, his chocolate eyes already tinged with red. “Not much daylight left. We should hurry.”

Kam returned to my side and linked her arm in mine as we walked to the crime scene. “So,” she said. “What’s the hap?” She flicked her eyes in Riley’s direction and jerked her head. “Getting hitched anytime soon? Preggers? Anything new at all?”

I laughed. “Not since last week.”

Kam had trouble sometimes keeping up with current words and phrases. She was trying to catch up, but she’d escaped her master several times at odd intervals throughout history, picking up the vernacular of that time before being recaptured. She also had absolutely no filters when it came to other people’s sex lives.

“Nothing new to report,” I said, shaking my head. “Is this the right car?”

We came to a stop in front of a car frame that, to me, looked no different from the others. The front end was buried, and the body jutted out at an angle, pointing into the eastern sky. Spray paint in every color proclaimed
Jerry loves Amber
,
Terrence is a douchebag
and
JoJo forever
. Discarded cans and lids littered the ground. Paint bubbled in thick, dried layers over the frame. The message someone had painted for me on the hood had already been partially covered by new layers of anarchy symbols and declarations of love.

I wrinkled my nose. “I feel like I should have gotten a tetanus shot before coming here.”

Riley laughed. “Come on, Zoey. It’s art.”

“Oh, I can see that. I’m artistic. I get it. But I’m also safety conscious enough not to want to cut myself on a rusty car frame.” I ducked down and peered into the car. “I’m going in there.”

Darius grabbed my arm with his thick fingers and pulled me to a standing position. “There’s no need, Aegis. We’ve already thoroughly searched it.”

“And all the other cars, too,” Kam said. She shrugged. “Bupkis. Nada. Zip.”

I sighed. “I’ll feel better if I go in.” I shook loose of Darius. “Anybody got a light? It’s getting dark.”

Kam pulled a small flashlight out of nowhere. I clicked the silver button and crawled into the upturned car through a side window.

There wasn’t much to see in the tiny space, and not many places to hide a clue or a secret message. I swung the light, examining the cracks, the dirt and the painted shapes and letters.

A person would get pretty high spray painting in such a tiny space. A picture of a giggling tourist flashed through my head. The picture dissipated, and my thoughts went to poor Dennis. He’d been in this spot a day earlier, his body posed half in and half out of the window.

The space became claustrophobic, and sweat beaded along my hairline. The car seemed less like a metal frame and more like a gutted cadaver. The already paint-heavy air was difficult to breathe, and my lungs couldn’t grab enough to fill themselves. I tried to back out into the open, but I lost my orientation. I couldn’t tell which way to go, and I bumped against metal whichever way I turned.

The floor moved. I was sure of it. Everything was so dark, but my flashlight couldn’t penetrate the abyss. I flailed an arm behind me in an effort to find the hole I’d come through.

Something grabbed me and pulled. If I’d had any air in my lungs, I’d have screamed.

“Goddamn it, Darius,” Riley yelled. He cradled me in his arms, making soothing sounds. “Turn it off.”

I gulped air, my whole body shaking. After a moment, the fear that gripped me eased, then left completely, as if it had never been. I let go of Riley’s shirt. My fingers had cramped from clutching the fabric. “Sunset?” I asked, my throat hoarse.

“Yeah.” Riley brushed my hair away from my face. “Sunset.”

“Darius,” I said. “So help me, if you don’t warn me next time so I can shield myself, I will buy the biggest bug zapper I can find.”

“Harsh,” Kam said.

“Yeah, well. You’re a djinn. You have a natural defense.”

Darius stood like a wall, even taller than before, powdery wings sprouting from his shoulder blades. His facial features blurred into a black hole of nothingness. Except for his eyes. Two bright stoplights shone from the darkness. Cold. Inhuman.

We’d been through this before, the first time I’d seen him shift. At least that time he’d warned me it was coming, and after the initial onslaught, I’d shielded myself. This time, I didn’t react fast enough and nearly drowned in the fear that was a natural by-product of his mothman form. Once the shift was complete, he could control it—stifling it or cranking it up as a weapon. During his shift from man to mothman, he couldn’t do anything about it.

His voice rumbled in his chest before projecting from the nothing where his mouth should have been. “My apologies, Aegis. Sunset caught me by surprise. I was paying attention to you, not the time. I’ll be more careful.”

I shot him a good dose of the stink-eye, then scanned the row of cars. They were eerie in the half-light of twilight.

Do I search all the cars in the dark
,
or do I wait till morning?
Come on
,
Zoey.
You know there’s something here.
Concentrate.

Riley stood behind me with his hands on my shoulders. “What do you want to do?”

I sighed. “If Kam and Darius didn’t find anything in broad daylight, chances are slim we’ll come up with anything by stumbling around in the dark. Let’s find a hotel for the night and come back at the crack of dawn before the tourists start pouring in.”

The four of us made our way up the dirt path toward the cars. I dragged my feet, depressed. I’d so wanted to find something important. Something that would lead me to my mother’s kidnapper.

Instead, I was no closer than I had been two months ago.

I glanced over my shoulder at the ten sleeping monoliths and stopped short.

“Holy shit,” I said.

Everyone else turned to look and stopped, too.

Up close and in daylight, there was nothing to see. From a short distance away and in the dark, the message lit up the night.

Each car had a single letter sprayed on the roof in glow-in-the-dark paint.

P-U-N-C-H-B-U-G-G-Y

Chapter Seven

I knew what a punchbuggy was. Of course, I did. Up until a thunderbird squashed it like a grape on a sidewalk, I’d owned one. Knowing the word didn’t explain what the hell it was doing painted in glow-in-the-dark letters on the row of Cadillacs. But we’d been late to the party that evening. Kam and Darius were ahead of the game.

“There’s a place on the other side of the city,” Darius said. “That family you saw talked about going there. It’s called The Bug Ranch.”

I frowned. “Bug Ranch. Like Cadillac Ranch but with VW Bugs?”

Kam nodded and pulled out a shiny new phone. “That’s what they were saying, yeah.” She used her thumbs to tap information on the screen. I was impressed.

Here was this woman who’d been in the modern world all of a month, and she was miles ahead of me technologically. I only managed to use mine for phone calls and the occasional, frustrated texts.

“I hope this isn’t going to be some sort of cross-country scavenger hunt,” I said, folding my arms. “I will not be amused.”