“That’s not safe.”
“I’ve done it five times a year for three years now. I’m still alive. Where are you headed?”
“I’m going as far as Cairo.”
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m going to El Paso. Staying with my aunt for the holidays.”
“I can’t take you all the way,” said Shadow.
“Not El Paso, Texas. The other one, in Illinois. It’s a few hours south. You know where you are now?”
“No,” said Shadow. “I have no idea. Somewhere on Highway Fifty-two?”
“The next town’s Peru,” said Sam. “Not the one in Peru. The one in Illinois. Let me smell you. Bend down.” Shadow bent down, and the girl sniffed his face. “Okay. I don’t smell booze. You can drive. Let’s go.”
“What makes you think I’m giving you a ride?”
“Because I’m a damsel in distress,” she said, “And you are a knight in whatever. A really dirty car. You know someone wrote ‘Wash me!’ on your rear window?” Shadow got into the car and opened the passenger door. The light that goes on in cars when the front door is opened did not go on in this car.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t.”
She climbed in. “It was me,” she said. “I wrote it. While there was still enough light to see.”
Shadow started the car, turned on the headlights, and headed back onto the road. “Left,” said Sam helpfully. Shadow turned left, and he drove. After several minutes the heater started to work, and blessed warmth filled the car.
“You haven’t said anything yet,” said Sam. “Say something.”
“Are you human?” asked Shadow. “An honest-to-goodness, born-of-man-and-woman, living, breathing human being?”
“Sure,” she said.
“Okay. Just checking. So what would you like me to say?”
“Something to reassure me, at this point. I suddenly have that ‘oh shit I’m in the wrong car with a crazy man’ feeling.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ve had that one. What would you find reassuring?”
“Just tell me you’re not an escaped convict or a mass murderer or something.”
He thought for a moment. “You know, I’m really not.”
“You had to think about it though, didn’t you?”
“Done my time. Never killed anybody.”
“Oh.”
They entered a small town, lit up by streetlights and blinking Christmas decorations, and Shadow glanced to his right. The girl had a tangle of short dark hair and a face that was both attractive and, he decided, faintly mannish: her features might have been chiseled out of rock. She was looking at him.
“What were you in prison for?”
“I hurt a couple of people real bad. I got angry.”
“Did they deserve it?”
Shadow thought for a moment. “I thought so at the time.”
“Would you do it again?”