His left foot stirred. He rubbed it across the floor mat. “What bit me?” he muttered. Instantly changing her tactic, Fiji imagined a big snake, though she wasn’t educated enough about snakes to make it a particular pattern. She figured with the gathering darkness that Eggleston couldn’t see down by his boot very clearly, and in this she was right. He could see the coiled shape and feel the intense heat she generated in his heel, and that was enough to make him yelp, swerve violently onto the shoulder of the road, throw the truck into park, and leap out.

Here she had a choice—if the snake flowed out after him, would he run? Or should she “keep” it in the truck with her? When he drew a gun, Fiji’s choice was made for her. She didn’t want him firing into the truck. So out the snake went, slithering right for her abductor. The man made a sound that combined fear and incredulity, and he shot at the imaginary snake.

Fiji congratulated herself and began thinking of ways to keep him out of the truck, but she wasn’t able to come up with anything good while her abductor was frantically searching the ground to find the corpse of the illusory serpent. This was made nearly impossible by the pouring rain and the dark sky. Lemuel will be rising soon, she thought, and though some of the feelings she’d had for Lemuel lately had not been kindly, she looked forward to seeing him now with a passionate longing.

She tried to build an illusory wall between the man and the truck while he was still searching for the snake, but she was too uncomfortable with her wrists strained behind her, and too upset, to concentrate properly. I should have made the snake bite him, she thought. Perhaps he would have been upset enough to manifest the symptoms of snakebite. Perhaps the “venom” would have killed him.

Fiji’s wall did not manifest successfully. All too soon, her abductor became convinced that he’d either wounded the snake or frightened it off. He holstered the gun, and after a few more seconds of looking around—during which she prayed someone was making progress in tracking her—he pulled her up onto the seat and buckled her in. He went around to his side and climbed in, and the truck lurched back onto the road.

“You’re lucky that ole snake didn’t bite you,” he told her. “I got no idea how the damn thing got in here.”