Amanda kept her word about that being the last beer. The others had joined them and for a time they’d chatted about all sorts of things as if the events of the day were far in the past and tomorrow was a world away.

  “I could drive that road,” Indi insisted.

  “I know you could.” Falco stroked the back of her head.

  To Amanda, he sounded patronizing but she didn’t think Indi noticed.

  “You could drive back,” Kass said, far more sincerely.

  It was probably a good thing Cat had already headed off again, to make the most of the light and check the cars before tomorrow, or she probably would have had something to say to that.

  Wolf had also left early, to try and note down what he could remember from his lost books.

  Indi got a look on her face like driving that road wasn’t something she had actually considered as an option but the way Kass had said it made it one. It was a look like her world had just opened up, like she’d discovered the existence of a new species of something.

  “Could I drive?” Lily piped up.

  “I think you’re a little young, and it’s probably getting close to your bedtime,” Amanda told her. To the others she said, “we might head off. We’ll see you in the morning, say around seven.”

  Indi groaned and then checked her watch. “It’s so early. Do you think they have internet here? I need to order some new cards.”

  “I’m surprised you haven’t checked already,” Falco replied.

  “I got distracted.”

  Amanda and Sirius left them chatting as they escorted Lily out of the diner. Lily trotted on ahead, skipping along, and taking in the new sights and sounds. The sun had set and the night air had given her a new burst of life.

  Amanda watched as the girl hopped up onto a low-lying wooden beam and playfully walked her way along it. It was a good sign that she still had such good balance. Fully turned zombies were rarely very coordinated.

  The moon was bright tonight, and the air a little nippy. Amanda looked out across the valley at the distant peaks. Dark gullies hid what she knew were epic waterfalls. And twisty canyons. The snow-capped peaks gleamed in the moonlight.

  Does it make you want to climb them?” Sirius asked in a voice that suggested that was exactly what he wanted to do.

  Amanda laughed. She’d looked at the topos and guidebooks for this area before. “Not those ones. There’s not a route up there that’s less than a grade 25.”

  “You’ve climbed a 25,” Sirius reminded her.

  “Once, and it was a slab, with one tricky section. And the entire climb was no more than 30 metres, as opposed to several hundred. Also I’m pretty sure whoever graded it graded it high even considering the crux.”

  “What about Beartooth Wall, where we took the kids that one summer?”

  “That was aid climbing.”

  “Yeah,” he said a similar tone that one would say ‘so’.

  She paused to look at him, trying to gauge if he really was serious about wanting to climb those peaks. She decided the answer was a maybe but she got the impression he was just making conversation to avoid what he really wanted to talk about.

  She raised her eyebrows at him and he sighed.

  Looking down the street to where Lily was balancing along another wooden beam, he asked, “How far are we going to take this? If there’s nothing in Witchaven...”

  “There will be.”

  “If there’s not... we can’t keep killing unicorns to keep her alive, and you know, the longer it goes on, the more blood will be needed, the more often it will be needed, just to sustain her.”

  “We’ll figure something out.” Amanda didn’t look at him. She knew if she did that she wouldn’t be able to lie anymore. She knew this was a long shot, but it was all they had. She had to hope it worked, because if it didn’t...

  Sirius didn’t let things lie this time. “If we don’t-”

  Amanda closed her eyes and tried to block his words out.

  “-do we end things early or do we let her turn under supervision?”

  Amanda refrained herself from answering with ‘the latter’ because she knew that wouldn’t be a nice option for Lily. But nor could she quite bring herself to commit to the former either. Not yet. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

  Finally she met his eyes. He was giving her a knowing look, one that said he could read her just as well as she could him.

  “And that’s not tonight,” she insisted.

  If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Sirius said no more for now, but she had no doubt that he would bring it up again in time.

  In the middle of the night, Lily awoke felling as hungry as could be. She tried to go back to sleep, knowing that tomorrow morning there would be pancakes. Amanda had promised.

  But the hunger would not settle.

  She slipped from her bed and out into the night, remembering that there had been a vending machine on the way to the motel. She clutched in her hand, some coins she’d taken from Amanda’s purse. She didn’t think Amanda would mind. If she did, Lily could always find a way to pay her back later.

  She skipped up the street, past a white van that hadn’t been there when they’d come by this way earlier. The van had curtains and the sliding door looked to be ever-so-slightly ajar.

  Lily thought little of it, her hunger pulling her onward with little thought for her surroundings.

  She nearly tripped over a loose stone but managed to stay on her feet with only a small stumble.

  She reached the vending machine, only to find there was someone there already. A lanky looking man wearing loose colourful pants, bare feet, and beanie. He was bent over with his arm half-way into the vending machine.

  “Are you stuck?” Lily asked, slightly annoyed that her way to the food was blocked.

  Then she caught a whiff of something amazing. A scent that made her mouth water. She didn’t know what it was, but it was coming from the direction of the vending machine.

  The man looked up in surprise. “Oh, hello,” he said. “I didn’t realise anyone else was out here. You won’t tell will you?”

  Lily shook her head, excited to be a part of something. But her hunger quickly overruled her and she asked, “Can you get me something out?”

  “Sure, what do you want?” asked the man.

  “I don’t know. Anything,” Lily said. She wanted whatever it was that she could smell but she didn’t know what that was.

  The man laughed. “Alrighty then.”

  He fumbled about some more but it quickly became apparent that he wasn’t doing a very good job of reaching the food.

  And Lily was hungry.

  “Maybe I could try?” she suggested.

  “Sure, kid, you got smaller arms than me, and probably more bendy.” He started to pull his arm out but then he stopped and frowned. “Huh, I guess I am stuck after all.”

  “I can help.” Lily knelt down next to him, fully intending to do just that. But then the smell hit her again and she realised, that it wasn’t anything from the vending machine that she’d been smelling. It was him.

  Kneeling next to him was like being right next to the most delicious food you’d ever tasted in your life right after a school swimming day where they hadn’t fed you. To Lily, he was the largest pink marshmallow she’d ever seen or smelt.

  “What’s wrong, kid?” he asked when he noticed she’d stopped.

  Lily turned her head slowly toward him, and then she bit him.

  She leaned forward and, with her teeth, she tore a chunk of flesh from his wrist.

  He opened his mouth to scream but found he couldn’t. With his face locked in a painful contortion, he suddenly found he could not move at all. But he could feel, every single bite that Lily took out of his arm; every torn nerve, every punctured vein.

  Then Lily found herself being yanked backward. She tried to turn toward the person, to bite them. She half managed it, but her teeth found only leather. And then the hand was pulled from her reach. The person who had held her let her go.

  But Lily was still stuck. This time by magic.

  The figure walked around in front of her where Lily could see they were wearing a motorcycle helmet and full leather motorcycle suit.

  Lily struggled against the force that held her to no avail. She thought only of the hunger that consumed her, but she could not get to it.

  The motorcyclist knelt by the man and pressed a cloth to his injured arm. The woman said, “Here, best you don’t lose anymore of that precious blood.”

  “Oh, thank you, thank you,” said the man.

  “Don’t thank me just yet.” The motorcyclist told him. She handed him a knife.

  “What’s this for?”

  She didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled a bag from her pocket and reached into it. From it, she pulled out a jar of sugar. She tipped it onto the ground until it formed a pattern that Lily found very familiar. Then from the bag came a handful of brown dust that smelt like cinnamon. Finally, the woman emptied the last of the contents into the circle. To the ground fell, half a dozen ribbons in reds and pinks and burgundy, and several star shaped spices.

  The woman mumbled something, then with the wave of her hand she brought Lily into the circle and she stepped back.

  Lily fell to her knees. At the same time, with bulging eyes, the man slit his own throat.

  Lily could taste the blood in her mouth. She fell away into bliss.

  She awoke later back in her bed, all washed and clean, with a blank hole in her mind as to how she had gotten there.

  She wrote it off as a dream, until the next morning when, on the way to breakfast, they passed a white van.

  A young woman was standing beside it. As they walked by her, she thrust a photo their way. “Has any of you seen this man? His name’s Billy.”

  Everyone shook their heads except Lily. It was the man from her dream. She tried not to think about what that meant.

  Behind the diner, Stella sat perched on the front bumper of an extremely expensive red soft-top sunning herself in the morning light. She was wearing a red dress, the same colour as the car and completely inappropriate for the cooler weather, along with some strappy black shoes.

  It was the sort of car made to be fast, but done in such a way that no compromise on style had been made. It suited Stella, and it bore her name in the brand, well, not so much hers but her fathers. She had helped design a small section of it, a single subtle curve. A curve she both loved and hated. The wing mirrors, such a simple thing, yet their design had taken her weeks to get perfect during her internship, a job she hadn’t earned but had simply been given. Hours and hours to get the wind flow just right.

  All her life she had wanted to drive her father’s fancy cars, his passions and life’s work. All her life, she had been denied, right up to the point that she had no longer wanted it. Right up until the point that Bambi had set her free. But she had gone back, for a bit. She still did from time to time. It gave her yet another life to jump into. Unfortunately, it was one she found difficult to leave behind. It haunted her.

  The roar of a motorcycle interrupted Stella’s thoughts. It pulled up alongside her and came to a stop.

  Bambi took off her helmet and shook her brown hair loose. “That’s not exactly an inconspicuous car, Stella. If Cat sees that thing, she’ll want to talk.”

  “They won’t come behind the diner,” Stella replied with the confidence of one who knows the future.

  “And in Witchaven? Murphy says, you are to observe and to help without being seen.”

  Stella nodded. “I’m not driving into Witchaven. I’m going over the mountain.”

  “In those shoes?”

  Stella didn’t answer. Physical pain was nothing to her. Bambi had seen her do such things before and Bambi would also know from reading her mind, that she had brought a change of clothes along.

  “Did you fix Lily?” Stella asked once she felt Bambi’s touch leave her mind.

  “She should last long enough now, I hope. Assuming there are no delays. I was too late to save the guy. She’d already bitten him.”

  “I told you you would be. He won’t be the last either.”

  Bambi scuffed her boot against the ground. “You aren’t always right.”

  Stella stared off into the distance, seeing far more than the scenery ahead of her. “We’ll see,” she said as she delicately unwrapped a peppermint and put it in her mouth.