"Kill him," the Boss snapped. "And bring me the proof that you did it. A picture, his head, a sample of his remains, it matters not. Kill him, or I will eviscerate your sister while you watch and then I shall do the same to you."
The phone clicked dead.
She stared at it with her heart pounding in her ears.
Quinn emerged from the office. He was actually smiling beneath his dark sunglasses. "That woman was really helpful. Who knew asking for directions could actually be a good thing?"
She didn't reply.
"She gave me all of these pamphlets." He handed three tri-fold brochures to Janie. "And on top of that,
she originally thought a ghost might represent a psychic fair, but then she changed her mind when she remembered that there's a closed-off ghost town called Semolina that's a little north of here." He paused.
"Janie? What's wrong?"
She shoved the pamphlets in her purse without looking at them and stared at him, wondering how she would do it. Wooden stake? Silver bullet? She felt her eyes moisten and squeezed off her emotions so she wouldn't cry. Not here. Not like this.
"A ghost town," she repeated. "Well, that makes sense."
He studied her with concern shadowing his expression. "Who was on the phone? Why do you look like somebody just died?"
"Nobody died."Not yet, anyhow . "It's nothing. Let's go."
She got into the truck and sat there with every muscle in her body tense. Her boss hadn't been kidding.
If he said he wanted evidence of Quinn's death, then he wanted hard proof. There was no wiggle room for deception. Besides, his damn seers would know if he was really dead.
She had no choice. She had to slay him and she had to do it before she got to Vegas.
Just another vampire to add to her list of kills. It had to be done. But she could wait a bit longer.
First she wanted the Eye.
Then Quinn would have to die.
Ah, a rhyme, she thought.Lenny would be so proud .
Ghost towns were called ghost towns for a reason, and that's because they were deserted and run down. Semolina was no exception.
However, Quinn finally got to see his tumbleweed.
Time well spent, he thought absently.
The tumbleweed blew past a sign in the road that blocked off access to the heart of the ghost town.
It read: DONOTPASS —DANGER—PRIVATE PROPERTY.
He shifted into park and glanced over at Janie. "Now what?"
She turned to look at him and blinked. "What?"
She'd been acting really strange ever since he'd come out of the tourism office. As if something big and dark was hanging over her head that made it hard for her to concentrate. He wondered who'd been on the phone and what they'd told her. He was willing to bet it had been this boss of hers, whom he hated more with every passing minute.
He nodded at the sign ahead of them. "What should we do?"
She took a moment to look at the sign. "We have to drive around it. The map leads north of the town,
and that's where this road seems to go. Otherwise, we might get off track."
"Can't we just figure out what the next landmark is?"
She studied the map, tracing a finger along the lines. "It's looks like a tree. Or a huge black monster."
"I hope it's a tree."
"There's writing under it that saysAsesinodelMonstro ."
"Yeah. I saw that already. My Spanish is rusty, but doesn't that mean 'the killer of monsters'?"
"Something like that."
"Sounds like a fun tree."
She nodded at the small collection of dilapidated buildings. "Let's go."
Quinn backed up and maneuvered the truck around the sign. He began driving toward the town on the very bumpy and rocky dirt road.
It looked very similar to what he'd expected. The buildings were all brown and tan from the dust and sand in the area. Very little vegetation other than a few cacti. Old wagon wheels as tall as the truck were up against the sides of the buildings. He half expected Clint Eastwood to emerge out of one of the doors,
wearing a duster and a cowboy hat, a cigarillo clenched between his teeth.
He remembered learning about the gold rush back in public school before his father had pulled him out tohomeschool him using humorless, personality-deficient tutors who couldn't have cared less if Quinn understood what they were teaching him or not.
So he knew that this is where, more than a hundred years ago, the town would have been erected to support all the men who had gold fever. Searching the mountains and caves and riverbeds for their fortune. They either found it or they didn't, but sooner or later they grew weary of Semolina, and it was deserted, ravaged by nature for the next century, and left as this sad, rather eerie shell.
A shiver went down his back. He didn't like it here. Not at all. It felt almost as if someone was watching him from behind the dirty, broken windows of the ramshackle buildings in the middle of the town.
The creepy feeling was getting worse. What did the sign mean by "Danger," anyhow? He understood
"Do not Pass" and "Private Property." But "Danger"? For a ghost town?
Once they'd rolled into the dead center of town, the truck chugged and coughed and came to a rolling stop. Quinn tried the ignition, which produced only a sad, metallic chewing noise.
He looked at Janie. "You don't know how to fix cars, do you?"
"Of course I do."