“Convince him to come with us,” Milo said. “Go get him. We’ll take him as far as Springton and let him out there. If we have to tie him up and throw him in the back seat, we’ll do that, too.”
“I don’t think convincing him will be a problem,” said Amber. She turned, and started walking for the woods again.
“You have five minutes,” said Milo. Amber didn’t respond.
She retraced her steps until she found him. He was sitting on the same log she’d been sitting on, his elbows on his knees and his head down.
“Glen?”
He looked up quickly, but his hopeful smile vanished. “How do you know my name?”
She walked forward a few steps, and took off her cap. He regarded her suspiciously. Moments passed. His frown deepened, and then his eyebrows rose.
“You?”
“My name’s Amber.”
He jumped up. “But … but where’s … what happened to you?”
“I told you, the skin and the horns are new. This is what I look like without them.”
He couldn’t take his eyes off her, but for entirely different reasons than before. “But what happened?” he asked. The look on his face was pure dismay.
Amber flushed with embarrassment and hurt. “I changed back,” she said, putting the cap on again. “It doesn’t matter. If you want to come with us, you can.”
If she had asked him that while she was tall and red and beautiful, she knew he would have leaped for joy at the offer. As it was …
“Where are you going?” he asked doubtfully.
“Springton, Wisconsin,” she said. “I told you.”
He shrugged. “I’m terrible at place names. I forgot it the moment you said it. Couldn’t have remembered it at gunpoint.”
Amber stared at him. “Seriously?”
“I won’t forget it again, though. Springton, Wisconsin. Springton, Wisconsin. Okay, it’s embedded. Why are you going there?”
Anger coiled. “Because we are, okay? We’re on the Demon Road, you’re on the Demon Road, the Demon Road is taking us to Wisconsin, and we thought we’d be nice and offer you a lift that far. But hey, if you’re inundated with other offers …”
She turned, started walking away, and after a moment she heard his running footsteps behind her, hurrying to catch up.
“THIS IS REALLY COOL OF YOU,” said Glen from the back seat for the fourth time.
Milo nodded, and Amber felt him glance sideways at her. She didn’t respond. She kept her eyes on the road as they drove past endless fields of white cotton pods, bursting like tiny puffs of cloud from all that green.
“So Amber tells me you’re her guide,” Glen continued. “You’ve travelled the Demon Road before, then?”
“We try not to talk about it,” said Milo.
“Talk about what?”
Milo sighed. “When you’re on the Demon Road, you don’t really talk about the Demon Road. It’s considered … crass. You can mention it, explain it, all that’s fine … but just don’t talk about it. And don’t call it that, either.”
“What, Demon Road?”
“Yeah. Try to be, you know … a little cooler about it.”
“Oh,” said Glen. “Yeah, sure. Blasé, like? Yeah, no problem. Kind of a nudge nudge, wink wink kind of thing, right? If you have to ask, you’ll never know. First rule of Fight Club, that sort of vibe? Yeah, that’s cool. I can do that.”
“Good.”
“So how long have you been on it?”
Amber turned in her seat. “He just said we don’t talk about it.”
“But how am I supposed to ask questions if I’m not allowed to talk about it?”
“Don’t ask questions, then.”
“But how am I supposed to learn?”
Amber went back to glaring out of the window.
Milo sighed again. “I haven’t travelled these roads in years.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t need to.”
“Do you know them well?” Glen asked.
“I did. Once upon a time.”
“So what are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, Amber can transform into this beautiful demon girl, I’m dying of some monster’s creepy Deathmark … how come you’re here? What did you do or what was done to you?”
Milo didn’t answer.
Glen leaned forward. “Could you not hear me?”
“He’s ignoring you,” said Amber.
“Why? What’d I say?”
“You’re asking a whole lot of questions,” said Milo. “I like to drive in silence.”
“So do I,” said Amber.
“You do?” said Glen. “I hate driving in silence. I always have to have the radio on, even if it’s country music or something horrible like that. God, I hate country music. And I don’t mean the country music you have here in America, I mean the stuff we have in Ireland. Country singers here sound like they’ve been in a few bar-room brawls, you know? Back home they’re just blokes who walk around in woolly jumpers.”
“Woolly what?”
“Sweaters,” Milo said.
“Oh,” said Amber.
“My dad was a country-music fan,” said Glen. “At his funeral, they played all his favourite songs. It was awful. I wanted to walk out, y’know? Only I didn’t because, well, I’ve never been one to walk out of places. Well, no, I mean, I walk out of places all the time, obviously, or else I’d never leave anywhere, but I’ve never walked out of somewhere on principle. I can’t even walk out of a bad movie. My dad used to say I was just too polite for my own good. Suppose he was right.” He quietened down for a moment, his cheerfulness dimming, then looked up again, smile renewed. “So, Milo, how’d you get to be a guide? What qualifies you? Do you have, like, a dark and tormented history or something? Are you a demon, too? What’s your angle?”
“You writing a book?” Milo asked.
“Uh no. Just making conversation.”
They lapsed into a short-lived silence.
“You know what this car reminds me of?” Glen asked. “You ever hear of the Ghost of the Highway?”
Milo was done talking, so Amber took up the reins. “No,” she said. “Never have.”
“It was this guy who drove around, years ago, with his headlights off,” Glen said. “He’d drive up and down all these dark American roads at night, looking for his next victim.”
“That’s an urban legend,” Amber said. “When someone