He shifted again without warning, into that black-skinned, horned demon, and he snarled in irritation and immediately reverted to his normal self.
“That was weird,” he muttered, then looked at her. “You’re going to have to change back.”
“But it hurts.”
“You have to change, and then you’ll have to fight against the impulse to shift again. It’s strong. It’s very strong.”
“For Christ’s sake …”
She gritted her teeth and reverted, and fresh pain sprang from her fingers and blinded her to her own thoughts and there was another flash of pain and she was a demon again.
“I can’t do it,” she gasped. “I can’t.”
“Revert,” said Milo. “And hold.”
“Give me a minute.”
“Now, Amber.”
“I’ll try again in a minute, you dick!”
“Now,” Milo snarled, his eyes starting to glow red, and Amber snarled back and reverted and this time she held it, despite the pain, and she focused on staying a normal, clumsy, ugly human …
And when the pain retracted far enough she took a deep, deep breath.
“Well done,” Milo said, settling back into his seat.
“This is horrible,” said Amber. Every inch of her wanted to shift. Her nerve endings jumped. Her skin was electric. The human form she inhabited was all wrong. “I feel like I need to pee,” she said. “I don’t need to pee, but you know that feeling? When you’re about to burst and you know that all you have to do is relax and it’ll suddenly feel so much better? It’s like that, times a thousand.”
Milo looked at her for a while. “Right,” he said at last. “Not the analogy I’d have used, but fair enough.”
“What’s wrong with us?”
Milo didn’t answer. He just got out of the car. Amber turned in her seat, watched him walk to the sign. He passed it and turned, a curious look on his face. He took a big step back to the Charger and shifted.
He stepped to the other side of the sign and reverted.
Scowling, he walked back to the car, shifting as he did so. By the time he got behind the wheel, he’d reverted again.
“This town is a curiosity,” he said.
“You think whatever shielded Buxton from the Shining Demon is the same thing that’s making us shift?”
“It’s likely the reason, yeah. Pity he didn’t mention this to us before he flew off.”
“I don’t like this,” said Amber. “I don’t like this feeling.”
“How’re the hands?”
“They hurt. Like, a huge amount.”
“We’ll get to that motel you found on the map,” said Milo. “You’ll be able to shift behind closed doors, and you’ll heal faster as a demon. A day or two, tops.”
He was probably right. The swelling had already gone down and her fingers were returning to their normal colour. Being a demon had its advantages.
“Sorry for calling you a dick,” she said.
“That’s okay. Sorry I snarled.”
“Guess we’re a little ruder than we’d like to be when we’re horned up.”
Milo looked at her.
“I should probably use a different word for that,” she said.
“Probably,” he agreed, and they started moving again. The town was affecting the Charger, too – its rumble was deeper, and somehow even more menacing, than usual.
Amber had examined the map online a dozen times before now, and as they drove she did her best to match it with her surroundings. They passed a used-car lot (TODD’S NEARLY NEW CARS! BEST PRICES!) hemmed in by a chain-link fence. The cars stood in their rows like prisoners in an exercise yard, their gleaming potential bridled by circumstances beyond their control.
Beyond the lot was a gas station, complete with small convenience store, and then they were in the town proper. Main Street was the widest street the place had, and the longest, and it boasted a church and a healthy array of businesses. The Hill Hardware Store was next to Lucy’s Laundromat, which stood opposite Doctor Maynard’s office, which in turn stood next to Reinhold’s Pharmacy. Moraga Discount Store was the massive building on the east side of the square, a slightly raised public meeting place in the exact centre of Main Street that the road itself circled. The west side was taken up by the grander Desolation Hill Municipal Building, which had eighteen steps leading up to its doors and pillars on either side, marred only by the scaffolding that scaled it from ground to peak like the skeleton of a building that had been left there to die. There was nothing on the square itself except what looked like an old wooden mailbox on a post that had been set into the concrete.
The Charger drew some curious looks as it passed. Amber was used to that – it was certainly an impressive car. But today she thought the attention they were getting was different, somehow. Not hostile, exactly, just … wary.
Milo turned off Main Street, passed a bar named Sally’s, and kept going through a residential neighbourhood. The town itself continued up into the hills, into all those trees and all that snow, but they took a narrow blacktop without a yellow line up to a tall building that looked like it should have been perched on the edge of a cliff somewhere. The Dowall Motel was the only place to stay in the area, not counting a few bed and breakfasts, and the sign said there were vacancies.
They parked outside and got out. It was the beginning of May and there was a startlingly blue sky and yet Amber’s breath still crystallised in the air. She doubted it was much above forty. On Main Street there had been no snow, but up here, elevated slightly, it was still packed tightly at the sides of the road.
Amber had spent her whole life feeling miserable in the heat, so she wasn’t about to start complaining about the cold. Even so, the temperature was making her hands throb with a renewed vigour, and she hurried into the motel while Milo carried in their bags.
Inside, it was warmer. The wooden floorboards creaked under her weight. A moose head hung over the front desk, its terrific antlers rising to the high ceiling. A man came out of the back room. He looked young, in his thirties, but his side-parted hair had already gone grey and he held himself so stiffly that a sudden draught might possibly have snapped him in half.
He saw them and looked confused. Amber smiled, and led Milo to the desk. The man wore a little badge that identified him as Kenneth.
“Hi, Kenneth,” said Amber.
Kenneth didn’t answer. He had a mole under his right eye.
“We’d like a couple of rooms, please.”
Kenneth looked at them for quite a long time before speaking.
“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” he said.
This struck Amber as a somewhat strange thing to say.
“This is a motel, isn’t it?” Milo asked.
“Indeed it is,” said Kenneth.