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“Speaking of your vampire lives…” he started and then seemed to lose his train of thought for a few seconds before he glanced back at me. “Are you immortal now?”
It was a question I’d asked myself many times. “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But I really hope not.”
“You hope not?”
I nodded. “What mom wants to outlive her child?”
He nodded. “Good point.”
That was a topic I didn’t want to think about and one I regularly pushed to the dark recesses of my mind. “But getting back to Sicily… shehasbeen helpful. Like you said, she’s a genius, so she’s managed to make some pretty good hypotheses on how people’s biology’s changed. With her research, we ended up not having to starve half of the population because we didn’t know what they fed on. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t race me against almost every damn monster from here to the edge of Damnation County.”
For a moment, Dean was silent. Then, he leaned toward me, a smirk playing on his lips. “Did you win?”
I smiled. “What do you think?”
We both laughed and he stepped closer to me, reaching out to put his hand on my shoulder, running it down my arm before letting go. I did my best to hold back a shiver at his touch—it was gentle, but he had calluses on his fingers that left a rough edge, like something straight out of a romance novel—the bodice ripping type. It really wasn’t fair how easy it was to talk to him and it was even easier to look at him. He wasn’t judgmental—mostly just curious. He never tried to speak over me to get his own word in, and when he did speak, it was usually to ask more questions. And yet… how much did I really know about his life after he’d left Damnation County? Not a whole heck of a lot.
“So… how are you liking being back in this circus you left all those years ago?” I asked, just so I could focus on something else as we continued to hike. The Thatcher house was supposed to be on the top of the next hill over, but it was still quite a ways away from where we were. “I can’t imagine it’s easy knowing all your neighbors are monsters.”
“It’s been… interesting,” Dean chuckled, reaching to scratch the back of his head.
I glanced over at him. “How many times have you gotten scared out of your skin?”
“Dozens,” he laughed. “One time Deputy Drayton came in after having a drink at the water cooler and I screamed so hard, I spilled coffee on my paperwork.” He shook his head. “I didn’t realize merpeople looked like… that.”
I put a hand on his shoulder, giving him a look of complete understanding. “Oh, yeah, they’re terrifying, aren’t they? You never know how scary fish people are until they have teeth. One time, we were investigating a disturbance by the river and found a family of octopus people. They turned out to be pretty nice, butman,was I thinking about that for days afterward.”
Dean looked at me, horrified. “Oh, God. Did they have…”
“Tentacles?” I grimaced. “Oh yeah. But not on their arms. On theirfaces.”
Dean shuddered. “Imagining that genuinely makes me feel a little sick. Y’know, before I moved down here, I thought I’d seen the strangest of the strange. This… this definitely changed my mind though.”
I laughed and nodded, but in my head, I’d caught an opportunity. I stuck my hands in my pockets and tried to act as casually as possible as I glanced at him, biting my lip nervously. “How come you came down here, anyway?” I watched Dean closely. Secretly, I’d hoped the rhythm of conversation would have put his guard at ease and I’d be able to sneak in a question or two before he clammed up again.
He seemed taken aback by the question, though, and noticeably stiffened when he looked back at me.
“I… already told you, didn’t I?” He cleared his throat. “When Sheriff Grover died—”
“You mean—disappeared.”
“Right,” he nodded. “Disappeared… well, I volunteered to take his place. That’s all.”
“Sure, sure.” I pursed my lips. It felt bad to pry, but something about his hesitation put a bad taste in my mouth, like I could sense the secret that was just past his lips. And whatever Dean and I were to each other or whatever we might become to each other, I felt I needed to know the real truth. That kiss at Slim Jim’s welcome-back party wasn’t nothing. “I meant more like… why’d you choose to leave Branson?”
“Um,” he started and looked away again before facing me with that poker face expression back in full effect. “Twila, I don’t… I really don’t like to talk about my time in Branson, okay?” Dean stopped in his tracks and faced me, placing his foot just far enough that I had to pause, too.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I started, feeling stupid.
“I know you’re curious,” he added quickly. “But I… would you mind just not asking me about it anymore? Some things are just better left… in the past.”
“Sure,” I answered quickly on a nod.
He looked at me and I saw a hardness in his expression I didn’t recognize, and though the look softened as he quickly hurried on, I already felt the cut of it drive straight into my chest. Something in me seemed to hollow out, leaving a cold spot that felt misplaced and wrong. All of a sudden, I felt like a child who had been reprimanded by a parent over something I didn’t quite understand.
I stared at his back as he overtook me and continued to hike straight up the hill before us. The feeling inside me was hard to describe—embarrassment for pushing him, anger over the fact that he was so closed off when he knew so much about me, confusion as to what could have possibly upset him in Branson so much, and then just… hurt. I let all the feelings die down before following him again.
We stayed several feet apart for the rest of the hike. The incline soon turned to a decline, and over the proceeding hilltops, we could see the beginning signs of life in the form of a single sign hammered into the ground. My gut twisted when we got close enough to read it. The letters were painted in sloppy, big, hasty strokes that spelled:TREZPASSERS GONNA BE SHOT.Worse still, the wood was riddled with bullet holes, which didn’t put much confidence in either one of us.
