He let go of the keys and sat back.
“There are people called Frank in Babylon,” he said. “For what it’s worth.”
Deborah glanced over his shoulder atsomethingin the street. There was nothing there, but it didn’t matter.Shesay something clearly enough, and it made her go grayish under that farm-girl tan. She took a quick, long stride toward the pickup and leaned in to kiss him.
Her mouth tasted of bad coffee and the glazed donut she must have grabbed the last one of. It was sweet enough that it made Jonah’s teeth ache. Her skin smelled like old ash and honey. The last time Jonah had kissed a woman on the mouth, it had been his granny. And this was weirder.
He recoiled and cracked his elbow against the steering wheel. Deborah leaned in after him, one hand braced on his thigh. Her breath was hot and a little too fast. He grabbed her shoulder to hold her back.
“Something bad’s going to happen,” she hissed into his mouth. “I can’t stop it. I’m sorry.”
He shoved her away from him. She stumbled back a step and stared at him. All that easy good ol’ girl confidence had slipped and exposed the face of a woman scraped down to raw nerves and fear. Just for a second. Then she licked her lips and pulled that facade back up from her boots.
“Maybe another time,” she said as she checked her expensive watch. When she looked up, her eyes flicked briefly to the shadows and then back to Jonah. “Duty calls.”
She tapped the tips of her fingers to her temple in a tossed-off salute as she turned to walk away. Jonah watched her go and—in defiance of the atavistic chisel his survival instinct had taken to the inside of his skull—didn’t look at the shadows to see if he could make out what she did.
Instead, he slammed the car door, turned the keys in the ignition, and—after a couple of misfires—started the engine. He pulled away from the curb, one hand hung over the steering wheel, and headed down the road. As he passed the church hall, he saw Luke at the door showing the last AA member out.
The dark-haired man raised his hand as Jonah passed.
For a second, the echo of Jonah’s earlier attraction prickled under his skin. That little bit of ordinary had felt like a reward, Jonah’s version of a thirty-day-sober chip. Even if it had taken him 300 days to get there.
Now his old life had kicked its way back in and taken a crap all over normal.
Again.
The worst thing was that, even after a year of chasing it, Jonah couldn’t deny that this interruption of his day-to-day mundane life made him feel…
Alive?
Useful?
Something like that.
He took a left at the end of the road and passed the road sign that pointed the way to Babylon. The tug was nearly physical. He could feel it in his hands, as if it wanted him to turn the car and let the road take him home. It would be easy to give in. At least at first.
That was how it got you. Magic was always easy at first. It was only once you were neck-deep that the bills came due.
Jonah left Babylon in his rearview and headed back toward the plasterboard box in the lot of dead grass he rented from a sweaty man in Bermuda shorts and sliders. As he drove, he curled his fingers around the square of paper Deborah had slipped him along with her tongue.
It crinkled under his fingers, dry and brittle and sharp at the corners.
If he was honest, the intrusion of his old life made him feel just alittlelike Jonah Carrow.
So when he saw the motorbike on his tail, he didn’t do anything about it.
