Page 91 of Turn That River Red

“Damn, he got here fast,” Ambrose mutters. “Or I was just too distracted to notice him when I should have.”

I blush. The light bounces off the top of the gravestones.

“Who’s out here?” A man’s voice cuts through the night. “Cemetery’s closed!”

“Oh, Jesus, I really was distracted.” Ambrose laughs and pulls me forward. “Run, baby!”

The man shouts, and the lights flash, and Ambrose and I take off together through the graveyard. The wind pushes my hair back so that it streams off my shoulders, looking like moonlight. I feel like moonlight, actually, something effusive and untouchable and beautiful.

“Hey!” the man shouts. “Stop right there!”

I pump my legs faster, although I’m still not fast enough to catch up to Ambrose, who’s already shoving the entrance gate open. I glance over my shoulder at our pursuer, but all I can really see of him is the bobbing flashlight.

“Come on, humanita.” Ambrose grabs my hand and pulls me through the gate and kisses me, all in one motion. Then he’s dragging me toward his car, and I don’t know why, but I can’t stop laughing. Because I’m being chased through the night, but it’s not by the man who has killed three people that I know of. Because I just went to a funeral and had sex in a graveyard. Because if you had shown me all this a month ago, I would have never believed it.

But I feel better than I have since the day Reverend Gunner took me as his wife.

I fling open the passenger door of Ambrose’s car and leapinside just as the man slams up against the gate. “Stop!” he shouts. “You’re trespassing!”

Ambrose ducks behind the wheel, revs the engine to life, and slams backward, grinning wildly. “That was fun as hell,” he laughs, peeling out of the parking lot. “I haven’t run from a human in a long-ass time.”

A human.The word jars at me, a little, that reminder that Ambrose is a demon in a man’s skin. But I’m still smiling. Still exhilarated. Maybe I belong with the demon.

The man chases us down the road, our taillights washing him in red light. “He’ll get your license plate number,” I say.

“Let him. It’ll be a dead end.” Ambrose turns the car sharply to pull us out onto the highway. I flip back around and sink down in my seat, still giddy with excitement. Giddy with confusion, too.

“What name is the car under?” I look over at him, wondering if he trusts me enough to share it.

“Vincent Fita,” he says, his eyes fixed on the road. He’s driving too fast, the buildings and street lamps blurring beside us. Chasing death, I think idly. Just like I did when I let him throw me into the graveyard grass.

“You’re not afraid I’ll take that name to the police?”

Ambrose glances at me. “Will you?”

His question catches me off guard. Because the first answer that pops into my head, the one that feels the most right, isno.

Why would I? He just held a funeral for Raul because he thought it would make me feel better. He didn’t throw me to the cemetery caretaker so he could get away.

He’s shown me pleasure and a strange sort of a kindness and isn’t that all I’ve ever wanted but couldn’t get, not in the church?

“That quiet is making me nervous,” he says lightly. I know it’s a lie. Nothing makes him nervous.

“I want to stay with you.”

I hadn’t realized that was how I was going to answer until I say it, the words erupting out of me. I go tense, but Ambrose seems to soften. The car slows, too, even though we’re reaching the edge of the Cocana city limits and there’s nothing but the highway from here on out.

“I really was going to let you go,” Ambrose says softly. He doesn’t look at me. “I had it all planned out—I was going to give you some money to get you started. Drive you into Dallas and leave you there. Easier to get by in a big city.”

I stare at him, at the highway shadows melting across his face. “Why?”

Ambrose frowns. “Why what?”

“Why would you do all that?”

Ambrose doesn’t answer right away. There’s just the highway and the night, the soft purr of his engine, the frantic thudding of my heart.

“Because I like you, Mercy,” he finally says. “And you deserve to be happy.”

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