"Gotcha."

Granuaile had to be inside the car for this or the glass wouldn’t fall around her body properly. She’d get a few scratches, but that was okay. She did hold the backpack up between the window and her face, though; neither of us wanted that to get cut. She locked the door using her key fob, activating the car alarm, and then left the keys in the ignition. Let them puzzle out why she was parked here in a locked car. I didn’t care.

Standing outside the car, bough held like a bat, I began to count down. Granuaile picked up her old cell phone and dialed 911. And I started beating the hell out of her window, which was a bit more awkward with a neck brace on than I’d expected. She screamed at the dispatcher that she was being attacked, Shultz Pass Road, oh my God, no, etc. And she didn’t have to fake being terrified about glass exploding next to her head. While she yelled into the phone, I reached over the broken glass, careful not to cut myself, and unlocked the door manually before pulling it open. That caused the alarm to go off; it was Oberon’s signal to leave his post and meet us at the rendezvous point and would also provide us some cover noise for the remainder of the call.

“Shut up!” I growled, trying to sound like some road-rage goon, then I swung the bough to thunk noisily into her steering wheel. Granuaile gave a startled yelp and dropped the phone, connection still live. She wordlessly handed me the backpack and I shrugged it on one strap at a time, switching the bough between hands as I did so. Granuaile had a few cuts on the legs of her jeans but otherwise looked to be in pretty good shape. I retrieved the blood bag from the top of the trunk and poked a hole in it with the needle I’d been holding between my lips. I sprayed some blood on one side of the bough and Granuaile helpfully stuck a couple of her hairs onto it. I dipped my gloved fingers into the blood, leaned into the cab, and carefully flicked a few drops around on either side of her head, pointing my fingers in the direction she was facing—because a blunt force blow to the face would hardly splatter drops behind her head. Satisfied, I dropped the bough into the dirt near the rear tire and then handed the blood bag to Granuaile, hole at the top so it wouldn’t leak. Now came the tricky part. I had to drag her out of the car, presumably unconscious or even dead, and she’d get raked across some of the broken glass as she left the vehicle. She couldn’t cry out if she got cut, because the phone call was still live, the 911 operator distantly calling out for her to respond.

She held the blood bag up near her right cheek, sort of like a squishy red shot put. I grabbed her left arm with mine and pulled. Then, as she went horizontal, I supported her rib cage with my right. Granuaile let the hole in the blood bag point down and she squeezed gently to create a trail out of the car. She kept her legs limp and did get lacerated through the denim on her left calf as she got dragged out, but that would just add verisimilitude at this point. With Granuaile now on her back in the dirt outside the car, I began to drag her by her left arm along the ground. She moved the blood bag just over her right shoulder and continued to let it flow out slowly. If she was being dragged, unconscious, by the left arm and had suffered a hit to the face, her head would loll to the right and bleed on that side. Once around the rear of the car, I pulled her downhill toward Shultz Tank. It was extremely uncomfortable for her, but the best way to accurately simulate dragging a body on the ground is to actually drag a body on the ground. Besides, we wanted stray threads and hairs and other trace evidence to be left behind in the path she was making through the pine needles.

Speaking of needles, I had to ditch the one I’d been carrying between my lips. Halfway down the hill and well outside the range of her cell phone’s microphone, I took it out of my mouth and said quietly, “You’re doing great. How you holding up?”

“Promise me I’ll get to do this to you someday?” she asked, her voice all sweet and sugary.

“Sure, except maybe what’s coming up next. I think that’s really going to suck. The water looks foul.”

“Great. Well, can you at least heal up my cuts before I go in? No telling what kind of bacteria are growing in there.”

“Yeah, I can close up the skin, no problem. We’ll get you on antibiotics as a precaution anyway. Hold on a sec.” I knelt quickly and asked the earth to hold on to this needle for me. It accepted it, closed back up, and now the police would never find it—and even if they did, it was unlikely they’d connect it to the assault on the road when there was a giant bloody bough sitting next to the car.

"Hey, Atticus, I think I hear sirens on their way," Oberon said. "You should hear them when your human ears get around to it."

Okay, thanks for the heads-up, I told him, continuing to drag Granuaile downhill. “Oberon says the police are coming. We need to hurry.”

A few yards from the waterline of Shultz Tank, I stopped and let Granuaile’s arm go. She allowed it to flop down in the dirt. I walked around to her legs and looked for the cuts. The tiny punctures on her thighs were not much to worry about; the piece of glass that had dragged down her calf and shredded the denim had left a much more significant wound. Removing my gloves, I stuffed them in the pocket of my jeans and put a gentle hand on her leg. I usually don’t like to do direct healing on other people, because the risk of screwing something up is too high, but convincing the skin to grow back quickly is harmless.

“Go ahead and continue to squeeze some blood out here to reflect a pause,” I said, “and then empty the rest out when you’re facedown and then in the water.”

“Okay,” she replied.

“All right, done here. You’re closed up.” I stood, gathered her feet in my hands, and pivoted her around so that she was lying parallel to the waterline. “Ready?”

“Let’s get it over with,” she said.

“Remember not to drop your feet once you’re in. Dead people don’t stand up in the shallows.”

“I’ll remember. Just get me out fast.” We could both hear the sirens now. We needed to get out of sight before the police spotted us.

“All right. Here we go.” I knelt down next to her torso and began to roll her down into the tank. Every time she was facedown, she squeezed out more blood into the earth. And then she took a breath as I rolled her into the scummy, stagnant water. I kept pushing her out so she’d be able to float freely, and I waded in up to my hips, careful not to soak the backpack.

I tapped her on the shoulder and shouted, “You can do a shallow tread,” so she’d be able to hear through any water in her ears. Her head came up and she gasped, delivering her assessment of the water’s freshness as soon as she could.

“It’s f**king nasty!” she said.

“Sorry,” I said. She really did look miserable, with fungi scum and who knew what else in her hair. I turned around and shrugged off the backpack, holding it in front of me. Granuaile threw her arms around my neck and pulled herself up, piggyback, the now-empty blood bag clutched in her right hand, and I waded out of there, making a glorious set of muddy footprints for the police to follow. They’d assume Granuaile’s body was in the tank at first and figure out only a couple of days later that I must have carried her out with me. I jogged around the edge of the tank to the far side and then began climbing up, where Oberon waited for us in the shadow of the pines. Once on the relatively track-free surface of the pine needles, I dropped the backpack and asked Oberon to carry it for us between his jaws. That allowed me to hook my arm under Granuaile’s legs and make really good time running. We heard the police pulling up to Granuaile’s car after we were only a hundred yards or so into the woods. We’d cut it pretty close.

We ran east through the forest for about three miles until we found a nice outcropping of boulders. “This will do nicely,” I said. Once on top of the rocks, I let Granuaile down and asked Oberon to bring me the backpack. There was a change of clothes inside for both of us, as well as our assumed IDs and other assorted goodies like sunglasses and baseball caps. We retreated to either side of the outcropping to change and then stuffed the wet clothes into the backpack.

“We have to do something about my hair,” Granuaile said. It still had funky alien chunks of something in it, pine needles, and a film of green algae on top. The rest of her looked great in a fresh shirt and jeans with brand-new sneakers. “It’s utterly gross and I can’t be seen in public like this.”

She was right, but I thought it best not to agree too enthusiastically. “Okay, we’ll get a hotel room so you can clean up before we go to the dealership. Sorry again.”

From here on out she would run with me and I’d feed her energy so that she didn’t get tired. We were going to head south and drop back into town on the east side of Flagstaff, where the auto dealerships were. Colorado graciously agreed to cover what tracks we made for a mile past the boulders; it didn’t matter to me if my single set of prints was traced up to them.

After a half hour’s stop in a cheap hotel room so that Granuaile could wash her hair and dry it, we walked onto the lot of a car dealership and told the salesman we’d pay cash for a hybrid SUV as long as he could guarantee delivery in a couple of hours. We used my neck brace as an excuse for why we needed a new vehicle and didn’t have one to trade in.

“He totaled my old one in an accident,” she explained, and the salesman pretended to be sorry about that. She told him explicitly that he was not to run a credit check, because she didn’t want to take the hit on her credit score. We’d pay cash via wire. We gave him Granuaile’s account number at the bank, he made a call, and then he moved as quickly as he could to please Ms. Caitlin Collins. He even offered a few free hot dogs to Oberon, who was waiting patiently outside.

"Mmm, tubes of Grade C meat!" Oberon said. To keep him entertained, I drew a sign that said, My name is Snugglepumpkin. I am friendly! and propped it up next to him so that he could collect data as people walked by.

The salesman waved fondly at us as we drove off the lot a couple of hours later, no doubt thinking we were the biggest pair of suckers to ever walk into the dealership. We hadn’t even tried to negotiate.

The sun said farewell with patches of pink and purple clouds. I felt fully healed now, so I took off the neck brace and chucked it into the backseat, where Oberon regarded it uncertainly.

"Is this a new chew toy?"

If you like, but there are plastic bits and I doubt those will be very yummy.

It was dinnertime, but we had a couple of hours before we had to meet Leif at Granny’s Closet. I asked Granuaile if she was up for a gustatory challenge.

She eyed me suspiciously. “What do you mean? Chug a jar of habañero salsa or something like that? Because I’d rather save time and set my ass on fire with a match.”

“No, much more interesting than that, not so painful. Do you like to try unusual foods? Stuff that you’ve never eaten before and probably never will again?”

“Ah, stuff you eat just so you can say later, ‘I ate that once’?”

“Precisely. There’s a place in town with a very unusual menu. We can try that and then head to Granny’s to chase it with some beers.”

“Okay.” Granuaile shrugged. “I’m game. Sounds fun.”

"Hold on. Are you taking her to that one place that serves bizarre meats and cheeses made from mammals that aren’t cows?"

Heh! Yes, I am. Remember the Nicaraguan chupacabra cheese?

"Okay, I’m betting five sausages that Granuaile can’t make it to the fifth course."

You’re on. Say good-bye to those five sausages. I know she’ll make it. She has a proud streak.

Chapter 16

The place in question was called the Double Dog Dare Gourmet Café. It’s the only place I’ve ever found that provides patrons with a barf bag—and it’s not because the food is ill prepared. To the contrary, it’s exquisite. They just serve items that most Americans cannot fathom putting down their throats, and the reactions, when they happen, are all psychologically based. That being the case, they have a rather unique ordering system and service style.

Everyone gets a different menu from which to order, and you don’t order for yourself—you order for your dinner partner. You pick five items from the menu by silently checking off a list and handing it to the waiter. All five of them are put on a single plate in very small portions, and then you get the plate put in front of you that your partner has dared you to eat—and vice versa. You don’t get told what each item is until after you eat it. Hence the barf bags. It’s all part of the charm.

The waiters are very careful to inquire about food allergies beforehand, and in some cases you have to sign a waiver before you get served.

When the ordering system was explained to Granuaile, she smiled and then she perused her menu with relish, determined to put me off my dinner. My smile mirrored hers; ordering was one of the best parts of the process. I toyed with the idea of having mercy on her, but I knew she wasn’t going to have any on me, and, besides, I wanted to give Oberon a decent shot at winning his five sausages. Remembering that Granuaile was a bit sensitive to smells, I ordered the most pungent items I could think of, except for one fried item.

It was probably a bit unfair. I’ve been around and tried some unholy culinary atrocities in my time, so I knew I’d be able to hold down everything. She might surprise me with something, but nothing was going to make me ralph at the thought of it.

We took it easy on the drinks, ordering iced tea. Oberon was outside, camouflaged, sitting down out of the way of the door. I ordered him a full order of yak liver to go and let him know.