“No one’s at the loading dock. No Jeeps in the parking lot. And look, there’s a giant wooden crate in the back—you can see it through the cracks in the window tint.”

“Shit.”

Lon swerved back into his lane and trailed the Jeep through Ontario.

Through Riverside.

Through San Bernardino.

And into the desert.

A steady rain fell on the SUV as we continued east on I-10 through miles of flat, lonely land. Thousands of white, leggy turbine windmills stood sentry between the freeway and long chains of crinkly mountains in the distance.

“He’s going back to Joshua Tree,” Lon finally said.

“No sense in turning back now.”

He nodded in agreement and kept driving.

So far, no new random knack had popped up to replace the super-smell, so that was good, I supposed. But now that the sniffing was gone and our normal conversation had gone off like old cheese, all we had to occupy our time on the drive were the radio and the dreary rolling landscape.

Yippee.

Two hours passed, along with my bedtime. I knew Lon was tired, too. Nothing to do except buck up and hope this was worth it. The rain gradually stopped, but the ominous dark clouds hung around. Signs for Palm Springs appeared, but we turned north, skirting around the western edge of Joshua Tree National Park. The rough ground was barren except for spotty clumps of desert grass and outcroppings of burnished wind-hewn rock; the park’s ubiquitous namesake, with its twisted branches and spiky tops, dotted the landscape between.

Somewhere before we’d hit the oasis community of Twentynine Palms, the brown Jeep pulled off the freeway onto a side road. If the land was lonely before, it was pretty much depressing here, and it was harder to stay far enough behind the Jeep that we weren’t noticed. A few houses and buildings stood near the turnoff. But a couple of miles past the last gas station, the Jeep turned again, this time onto a dirt road. It dead-ended after a mile.

The Jeep slowed to enter a long unpaved driveway, guarded by two crumbling stone posts. And arching between them was an old painted sign that had been turned upside down: SOPHIA RANCH.

It wasn’t the only sign. Several no-trespassing warnings were posted around the gate and on the weather-faded fencing that banded the property.

“Christ, I really don’t like this,” Lon mumbled.

The Jeep came to a stop just outside the gate. Maybe to check the rickety mailbox. Lon pulled up next to him and lowered his window halfway. Cool air rushed across the front seat. The Jeep’s driver’s-side door creaked open. I craned my neck to get a glimpse of Parson Payne and instead found myself looking down the barrel of a shotgun.

Lon raised his hands.

“This is private property,” a rough voice said from the Jeep.

“I can see that,” Lon answered evenly.

“You followed me from Ontario.”

Lon kept his hands in the air. “We just want to ask some questions.”

“I don’t think I’m in the mood for chatting.”

I raised my voice to be heard over the wind. “Please. Are you Parson Payne? We need to talk to you about an occultist who visited here twenty-five years ago. Her name was Enola Duval.”

The shotgun lowered, and the man leaned out of the Jeep. I saw the halo first. Dark green, the darkest halo I’d ever seen. My mother was conferring with an Earthbound? She hated Earthbounds. Not that she could see their halos—most humans couldn’t. Only me. And in hindsight, I supposed my humanity was up for debate at this point.

“We’re trying to track down the origins of a ritual,” I added. “We know she spent some time here, and we were hoping you might remember some things.”

I shifted so I could see the man better. The disgruntled warehouse worker at the reptile store wasn’t wrong: Payne was an ugly son of a bitch. Leathery sun-damaged skin rippling with wrinkles. Long white hair pulled tightly back into a long braid. In his seventies, I guessed. When his dark eyes flicked from Lon’s halo to mine, surprise blazed across his face. Just for a moment.

“Who are you two?”

“I’m Butler,” Lon said. “This is Miss Bell.”

Payne blinked several times and then tossed his shotgun into the Jeep. “Storm clouds followed us from the city. Come on through to the house before they break. We can talk there.”

Lon raised his window and idled the SUV, waiting for Payne to lead the way. “We need to be careful,” he said to me, without moving his gaze from the road. “He was shocked to see you.”

“Did he recognize me? Could you tell by his emotions?”

“I don’t think so. But keep in mind that we don’t know the last time he had contact with your mother. They could’ve been friendly all these years.”

The flat land became rockier and dipped into a small canyon. A large, flat-roofed adobe-style house sat at its entrance, surrounded by several other smaller bungalows, which all looked run-down and unoccupied. The compound was backed by a ridge of enormous boulders that stretched into deeper canyon walls in the distance.

Next to the main house, the Jeep backed into a carport otherwise filled with scrap metal and a variety of junk. I watched Payne exit his car and wondered if he was going to retrieve the illegal boa he’d bought. But he just marched to the house’s front door and stood there waiting while Lon parked at the side of what might have been a nice driveway fifty years ago.

“No other cars here,” Lon murmured. “You think he’s alone?”