Dear God!

I screamed and buried my face in my pillow.

“What?!” I heard him ask. “Did you see a roach?”

“Why are you naked?!” I did not dare lift my red face.

“Huh. Is that all?” he asked. “I always sleep in the buff. I don’t know how you can stand all that clothing.”

“Unbelievable,” I said. I pulled myself up and stomped to the bathroom.

We’d been on the road for over one hundred miles and had yet to speak. Kaidan rummaged forever through the local radio pickings. When we heard, “I’m bringing sexy back...” he gave a small chuckle and shake of his head before turning the station again and settling on an angsty female rocker.

I stared out the window at the edges of I-40 lined in green brush. We passed ranches and farms, some modern, some leaning and abandoned. We must have seen every breed of cattle known to man along the way.

“Hungry?” Kaidan asked. I shrugged, then nodded.

He pulled into the almost empty lot of a pancake restaurant. Inside, we seated ourselves in a booth with cracked cushions. A tired-looking waitress, not much older than us, approached. A heat of contentment rose from her womb to greet me.

“What can I get you to drink?” she asked, unfriendly.

“Coffee,” said Kaidan.

She looked to me.

“Hot chocolate, please.”

She walked away to get our beverages.

“She’s pregnant,” I whispered.

He looked at her and shook his head.

“Doesn’t look like it,” he said.

That didn’t mean anything, though. Sometimes people didn’t show until the middle of their pregnancies. A girl at school hid it from everyone until her sixth month.

“I can sense the baby, can’t you?”

“No.”

Maybe it was my imagination, but he seemed a little put out that I could do something he couldn’t. We both watched her from behind as she filled the mugs. She herself was not content, shrouded in gray.

She brought our drinks and took our orders. I tried to smile at her, but she avoided my eyes.

Kaidan drank his coffee black. I skimmed the whipped cream off my cocoa with a spoon and ate it all before speaking. I was already dreading what I had to say.

“Kaidan... do you think you could try to be a gentleman, at least while we’re traveling together, and maybe wear shorts to bed?”

“Ahh... I see.” He sat back. “The sight of my arse gave you quite a fright, did it?”

“I’m being serious,” I told him.

He took a drink of coffee. “For the record, I’m not a gentleman, but I’ll make an exception this once. No more sleeping nude while traveling together. Satisfied? Now you can stop with the evil eye. Look—here comes our food.”

My stomach growled at the sight of my pancakes with a big scoop of butter melting on top. But it was Kaidan’s meal that made my eyes bulge. Pancakes, scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, ham, grits, and toast! It took three plates to accommodate it all. He grinned at me and dug into it.

I was famished. We ate every bite, and then leaned back in the squeaky booth, feeling dopey on food overload.

Kaidan sat up abruptly and a look of gloom passed over his face. He motioned at me to duck lower in the booth, so I slid downward. The fearful look in his eyes reminded me of when his father had come home.

“Here comes trouble,” he whispered. I started to turn my head but he hissed, “Don’t look!”

“Where?” I asked. I was looking just at him now. He tilted his head in the direction of our waitress behind the nearby counter.

“Cover your badge,” he whispered. I looked around and snatched up the dessert menu, holding it in front of me.

I waited a second, then moved my eyes toward the waitress. She was pouring water into the coffeemaker. Her hand shook as she poured. Then she stopped to steady herself on the counter. Her hazy gray darkened, and her chin quivered. The thing that struck me most was that her white cloud, her guardian angel, was erratic, jumping around in agitation. I’d seen them do that before on occasion, but I didn’t understand why. After a moment it calmed.

The cook behind the window asked the waitress a question about an order and she snapped a response.

“It’s gone,” Kaidan whispered with relief.

“What just happened?” I asked.

“The demon spirit. You couldn’t see him?”

“I didn’t see anything.” I looked around, pressing myself smaller into the booth.

“All Neph have the ability to see them. You must not be willing.”

Our waitress came to us with undisguised impatience.

“Anything else?”

“No, thank you,” I told her. “Everything was good.”

She smacked the check on the table and took away our dishes without another word. Kaidan dug his wallet from his back pocket and laid a twenty on top of the check.

“Do you think she’s mad at us?” I asked. Although I could see emotions, I had no way of knowing their source.

“Why would she be? She’s frustrated because she can’t comprehend why she’s feeling a surge of dark emotion out of nowhere. She’ll most likely try to place the blame on something—usually another person, lack of sleep, hormones, anything—rather than dealing with the emotion. And thus begins the cycle.”

“So you’re saying”—I leaned toward him to whisper across the table—“that our waitress was just visited by a demon?”