Page 40 of Some Kind of Haunted

If Nora dreams like I do, I pretty much want to know everything about her, but I know better than to come on too strong with people. Especially with my brother here acting so prickly for no good reason. One benefit of having been considered a fringe human all my life is that I’ve had the opportunity to observe how so-called “normal” people interact. And I’m not bad at mimicking it.

“Hi, guys,” Nora says, with what feels like excessive brightness, but that could be a perfectly reasonable reaction to the Midas night outside, thick and heavy. “My car’s parked back this way if you want to follow me.”

When we both nod, Nora closes and locks the door behind her and then leads us around toward the alley Logan and I walked down that first night. Instead of following it up to Main Street, she follows a thin pathway of light toward a parking lot behind the building across the alley.

There is something very careful about the way she walks, like she won’t dare to step one foot into shadow. I find myself following suit. Like something about the light makes it safe.

“It’s about a twenty-minute drive,” Nora explains as we climb into her old but very well-tended sedan.

Logan takes the backseat, another strange choice from the man who’s always in charge of everything, so I slide into the front passenger seat and smile winningly at our new friend. Or my new friend anyway. I hope.

“The airport isn’t in Midas proper,” Nora continues as we buckle in. “That’s why Jack wanted to meet there.”

“Because that way the demons won’t eavesdrop?” Logan asks, somewhat sarcastically. Okay. More than somewhat.

I shoot him a disapproving glare over my shoulder, especially considering he just told me he’s buying in to all this, but he doesn’t meet my gaze.

“Something like that,” Nora replies. Carefully, I think. And with only a glance at Logan through her rearview mirror. Then she begins to drive.

“I thought people couldn’t just leave Midas?” I ask her.

Shadows seem to loom and gather as she pulls onto Main Street, drives for a moment, and then turns off onto a side street. When I look at the broken-out windows of the abandoned, crumbling buildings just a few yards behind the cheerful storefronts on the main drag, I swear I see flashes of something . . . viscous dripping down the jagged edges.

I would ask myself what the hell that could possibly be, except I have a personal policy never to investigate anything that could possibly be described as viscous. Because you know going in that it can’t be good. Especially as we pass what is clearly the lump of a dead animal on the side of the road—normal, probably, but the ears were decidedly . . . cat.

“Well,” Nora hedges, still driving along, “it’s complicated.”

A big black dog lunges into the street suddenly. It stops in our path, directly in front of our car, illuminated in the headlights. It’s big and hairy and bares its fangs, but Nora doesn’t slow or stop. I brace myself in my seat—

But just in the nick of time, just before we hit it, it darts away.

I’m halfway to convincing myself it was a hallucination when it dawns on me that if my dreams at night are real, the waking ones probably are, too.

“Was that a—”

Before I can find the right word for what I just saw, a car comes careening out of nowhere like it’s trying to hit us. It swerves around us on the narrow street and races ahead—then swerves again and crashes right into the side of an abandoned brick building.

I think I scream. Logan swears.

But Nora doesn’t even flinch. She doesn’t stop for the crash or make a move to grab her phone and call the police. She keeps her eyes straight ahead.

She doesn’t even slow down as we pass the wreck.

“What the hell was that, Nora?” Logan demands.

Nora seems flustered then, but I’m pretty sure it has more to do with Logan saying her name than what just happened. Or maybe the fact that they actually looked at each other in the rearview mirror. “Oh, that happens sometimes. The crashes. People blame it on all sorts of things—these dark, old roads. Bars open late. The old mine leeching lead into the water. Meth.”

Logan is still glaring at her, I note. “And what do you blame?”

Nora laughs at that, maybe a little uncomfortably. “Midas doesn’t let anyone out if it doesn’t want to. Like I said, it’s complicated, and as the demons don’t communicate with us these days, we can’t get specifics. The prevailing theory is that if Midas knows you want to leave for good, but it wants to keep you here, you can’t leave. I’ve never had a problem running an errand or going to the airport, but I’ve also never wanted to leave for good.”

“Because the town is sentient and just knows?” Logan says from behind us.

In a world full of demons, it makes as much sense to me as anything else, but he sounds decidedly caustic about it.

“Maybe,” Nora agrees equitably. “It hasn’t come out and told us. There’s just . . . that kind of thing,” she says, referring to the crash. “And the fact we’re fine. Because we’re just going to the airport and coming back.”

It’s quiet in the car then. I am staring straight ahead at what feels like a maze of roads, all decrepit and encroaching, with precious little light to help me make sense of what I’m seeing. Old buildings, crumbled brick. Gnarled trees that seem to reach at us. The shape of historic houses, shuttered and dark. And I swear to God, another lump of dead cat on the side of the road—not something I need to see.