Megan Kineally usually liked driving at night. The
silence, the empty roads, the darkness surrounding her car
made her feel like she was the only person on the planet.
Driving in darkness calmed her-usually.
But she wasn't calm tonight.
She blamed the road. Interstate 15 between San Bernadine
and Las Vegas had become a superhighway. Well-lit,
congested, a gazillion lanes wide, it ruined the effect of
night driving. Trucks zoomed by her Mini Cooper, shaking
it. By the time she reached Barstow, her hands had formed
new grooves in the steering wheel. Another hour later, she
wished she had taken the back roads and risked breakdowns,
desert heat, and the occasional wild-eyed loner.
Her best friend Conchita had tried to convince her to rent
an SUV. You're gonna be driving your nephew around Vegas.
The last thing you want is a teeny tiny car.
Rated best in its class for safety, Megan said.
In its class, Conchita said. The class of David, not the
class of Goliath. Not even David would survive getting
smushed by really big tires.
Megan was beginning to agree. Half the trucks that passed
her-all of them doing at least twenty over the speed limit-
could've crushed her tiny car with little more than a
thought. Some careless trucker dozing at the wheel could
drive over her and not even notice.
She blew an errant strand of red hair out of her face and
shrugged her shoulders, trying to loosen them. She'd been
unsettled ever since she had spoken to her brother a few
hours ago. Travers the Unflappable had sounded flapped.
She'd teased him about being in Sin City-Vegas, a place he
hated-and he hadn't risen to the bait.
Instead, he swore and confessed that he was in trouble.
Travers the neat freak, Travers the accountant, Travers
the exceptionally cautious was never ever in trouble. The
trouble role in the family had gone to their oldest
sister, Vivian, who had blackouts and strange psychic
moments and crazy friends.
When Vivian had gotten married in Oregon a few weeks ago,
the entire family had breathed a sigh of relief.
Then Travers, who had vowed he was heading straight home
to L.A., had somehow ended up in Las Vegas, and now he
needed his baby sister, not to help him out of whatever
crisis he was in, but to baby-sit his precocious son,
Kyle.
Megan loved Kyle more than anyone else in the world. They
were both misfits-Kyle because of his big brain and his
strange interests and Megan because-well, because she was
Megan.
She sighed, straightened her spine, and heard her back
crack. She flicked on the radio for company, spun through
the dial, and heard talk, oldies, talk, rap, talk, hip-
hop, talk, talk, and more talk. Finally she shut the thing
off, preferring the sound of her own worries to the
constant nattering of people who thought they were in
great trouble.
She had enough of that at her job, which was why she was
shutting down her practice. She was a child psychologist
with a boatload of rich clients who all thought Little
Johnny or Little Suzy needed a little talking-to to go
with their Prozac.
She had become a psychologist to help people. Instead, she
couldn't convince Johnny and Suzy's parents that when the
kids had trouble, the troubles ran through the entire
family. Usually, all Johnny and Suzy needed were some time
and attention (and love would be nice too), but nothing
Megan did could get that message through to the parents.
So she tried to patch the holes where she could.
And she was getting tired of patching.
Three more trucks zoomed by, their horns blaring in the
night. She squinted but couldn't see anything ahead.
In fact, the long stretch of interstate had cleared.
Either everyone had vanished, or her speedometer was
screwed up. She'd been keeping pace with the traffic
before (not the trucks-she didn't want the ticket), but
now there was no one ahead of her.
She glanced in her rearview mirror. No one was behind her
either.
The road was empty, and even though it was what she'd
wanted, she was a little freaked out.
Ahead, the street lights (unnatural looking things on a
desert highway) winked out.
Darkness surrounded her. Darkness and silence and long,
empty stretches of road.
The hair rose on the back of her neck.
She rolled down her window, hoping a little fresh air
would calm her. Cool and dry, the air smelled of sage
brush and sand.
Maybe she should pull over. Maybe she was asleep and
dreaming. Maybe-
A creature ran into the road so fast she couldn't see what
it was, only she knew it was in front of her. She slammed
on the brakes, and the car skidded for a moment on the
empty pavement before coming to a stop.
Ahead of her, the creature-a rabbit?-had frozen in her
headlights, its round eyes staring at her as if she were
the very image of death.
Then, out of nowhere, a falcon swooped down, caught-the
rabbit??-in its talons and carried the thing, screaming,
into the air, disappearing in the darkness.
Now Megan knew she was dreaming. There weren't rabbits in
the Nevada desert. Nor were there falcons. And creatures
being carted off to certain death didn't scream like that,
did they? Not unless they were human creatures.
She glanced in her rearview mirror. Still no cars. She
took a deep breath, and limped her vehicle to the
shoulder. Then she got out, and slapped herself hard
across the face.
Didn't work. Nothing had changed.
Except now her face hurt.
A man stepped onto the shoulder from the side of the road.
He had a leather glove on his wrist, and he held a tiny
hood in his hand. In the swirling dust illuminated by her
headlights, he looked like a ghost.
"Did you see a bird?" he asked.
He was tall but slightly built. His hair was long and
brown, tied into a ponytail with a leather cord. He seemed
to like leather-not the shiny black leather that bikers
wore but soft brown leather, maybe even some kind of
suede. If she had to label his shirt, she'd call it a
jerkin-it even looked handmade-and his tan pants seemed
just as crude. Even his boots looked medieval-all fabric
with soles too soft for the desert on a cold summer night.
He was looking at her like he expected something from her.
Then she realized that he did-an answer. To his question.
About a bird.
"Um, yeah," she said. "I think it ate a rabbit."
"Nonsense," he said.
"That's what I thought," she said. "But it took the rabbit
in its claws and flew off-"
"You didn't see it eat the rabbit then, did you?"
"No." She couldn't believe she was having this
conversation. "I saw it capture the poor rabbit and cart
it away. I think the rabbit was screaming."
He nodded. "They do that."
As if it was the most normal thing in the world.
"Which way did they go?"
She pointed.
He stepped out of the headlights and into the darkness of
the road. By reflex, she looked over her shoulder. Still
no trucks or cars or SUVs. No sign of anything but her,
the mighty hunter, and his bird.
Only she hadn't seen the bird for nearly five minutes now,
and the screaming had ended long ago (except in her
memory) and even though she squinted, she no longer saw
the man on the road.
The streetlights flicked on one by one, and then a truck
whizzed past, the wind in its wake so strong that she
nearly toppled into her car.
Standing on the shoulder was not the brightest thing she
could do.
She got back into her car as more trucks, and SUVs, and
sedans went by-all the things she had thought she missed.
Her breathing was hard, and she wasn't quite sure what had
happened.
She'd have said she had fallen asleep at the wheel, but
she had felt the wind and smelled the truck exhaust. She
knew she hadn't taken any drugs, so she wasn't
hallucinating. And she wasn't prone to wild flights of
fancy-those were reserved for Vivian and their late Great-
Aunt Eugenia.
And Kyle, of course.
Kyle, who saw superheroes and monsters behind every tree.
Kyle, who kept saying that Vivian's new husband looked
just like Superman.
Megan could not see the resemblance. But then, she rarely
read comic books. Relaxation wasn't her forte.
Maybe it should be. Maybe this was some kind of psychotic
episode.
Because it certainly hadn't felt like a dream. Her cheek
still stung from her self-administered blow, she was a
little chilled from the night air, and her eyes had taken
a minute to adjust to the increased light.
And somehow, she had gotten to the side of the road.
Somehow.
She couldn't quite believe she had driven there in her
sleep, without hitting anyone, without being hit.
That was as much of a miracle as seeing a medieval hunter
in the darkness, following the trail of his falcon into
the desert.
She glanced at her watch. Somehow, she'd lost about
fifteen minutes.
If she were being logical and practical, she would find a
place to turn off and get some sleep before going any
farther. But she only had an hour to drive, less if she
kept up with the trucks, and the way her heart was
pounding, she wouldn't get any sleep anyway.
She'd known the stress was getting bad, but she'd had no
idea it was this bad.
Maybe she should call Travers and flake out on Vegas. She
wasn't in the best shape to deal with trouble.
But Kyle needed her. And just as a baby-sitter, Travers
had said.
She could baby-sit her only nephew. That couldn't be
stressful, not compared to life in L.A.
She'd be all right.
At least for the time being.