GAME ON - GoM 2

4

Claire watched Alex ready her backpack for the weekend, and she had to fight back her laughter at her aunt's resigned fatalism.

"You'll be back in three days, Al," she said. "You're not leaving for good. And not like staying over at his place is getting married, y'know?"

Alex only needed to glance at her-empathy made warnings easier.

Claire threw up her hands. "Just saying."

"It's not a good time to do weekends off."

The girl shrugged. Maybe Alex was right, considering that weird dream they sort of shared after hunting the feeblers. The dream about a demon talking openly to them. But nothing had happened since, and Claire wanted Alex to understand that she didn't need to babysit her niece around the clock anymore.

Alex already knew. That was why she hadn't cancelled her visit to Newhalem. Especially because Tom would take her to see the Skagit Elder in the morning. She'd already asked her questions to Miss Parker. Father Jason would bring that Thames guy to town next week and she would meet the Elder. All that should give her a better picture about channeling by the end of the week. Hopefully in time to be prepared in case the demon from their dream showed up.

She grabbed her backpack and headed out. Claire followed, so she started listing on purpose all kinds of embarrassing advices to her niece. It worked to distract the girl. Claire forgot her empathy to blush in a furious red and cry her name out in a hundred different tones, from pleading to menacing, in a vain attempt to silence her up.

A few minutes later, the Hilux cruised down the road by the lake. Claire's farewell text came in as Alex drove past the welcome wooden sign and Markus' new house on the cliff. She read the text and dropped her phone on the passenger seat, scoffing. But she turned on the radio.

Colby, the resident around-the-clock host and DJ at the local radio station, was speaking in his usual quick, energetic way. "...so this goes for you, Crazy Al: Feels Like Tonight, the last cut from Daughtry's debut album. Enjoy your weekend, my friend!"

Alex turned it louder, laughing as she made a mental note to kill her niece when she came back home on Monday. She hit the gas, singing along on top of her lungs. And when the song was over, she pushed Daughtry's CD into the stereo and kept singing.

However, when she left Concrete behind and turned north on Route 20, she started to get more and more distracted from the music. All of a sudden she was so close to Newhalem. To Tom's house. To Tom. It'd be the first time they'd meet at a place other than Bold Peak-her turf. And it meant so much only because she'd taken so long to do it. Which didn't make any sense, but that was how she felt about it.

She'd tried to play casual and even detached all those months. But the plain truth was that her feelings for Tom had only grown deeper and stronger. She'd never told him anything about it basically because she'd never had such a conversation with a man in her whole life. So she just didn't know how to handle it.

Yet every time they talked over the phone, every night they spent together, it was just like that first time at the motel: she had to bite her tongue to keep from telling him she loved him.

It didn't matter that Claire swore time and time again that he loved her too. She sort of knew that: she could feel it when they were together. Or at least she thought she did. However, now she felt that coming to stay at his home was some kind of step further for them. And this step required her coming clean.

Lost in her musing, she almost missed the access to Newhalem's only street.