Ampersand was hunched over with his back flat like a table, his head turned to her like a cat, his eyes on fire from the light of the headlights. She could see Enola now, the creature’s legs folded under him, his arms jammed up behind him like the wings of a Christmas turkey. Then the fluid of his plate slid out of his back, over both him and Enola, and they disappeared.

Now she was alone. Alone with her murderhostage.

She took a minute to center herself, but this time, she noticed something—his iPod, plugged into the speaker of the car, that it was plugged in and playing, but the volume was low. Out of curiosity, she turned up the volume, and a white-guy-with-an-acoustic-guitar version of David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” met her ears. It took her a second to really comprehend that, yes, someone would elect to listen to a sad guy with a guitar bastardize David Bowie. Seeming to intuit that she was looking at him, Murderhostage craned his head in her direction and shrugged. Th e motherfucker shrugged.

Maybe she should have killed him.

His entire playlist was like that. They were about halfway through Old Crow Medicine Show’s “Wagon Wheel” before she found a side road near the cave. She hopped out of the car, opened the gate, and drove to the other side, closing the gate behind them and parking the SUV well out of sight from the road. Then she pulled him out of the car and started marching him into the woods.

Even though she now had a flashlight, it was difficult to march a grown man through hilly, wooded terrain when he wasn’t able to see where he was going. He was breathing heavier now, perhaps from the exertion, but more likely because he was afraid. It certainly felt like a mob hit was imminent.

The second she had that thought, he slipped and fell down the hill a few feet, balling up on instinct, his back landing him against a tree with a strained “Mmph!” She gasped, instinctively moving to help him before remembering that he was supposed to be in fear for his life. “I guess that’s far enough,” she said.

She sat him up against the tree, now getting close enough to smell him. Whatever he was wearing smelled . . . expensive, like vanilla and leather. She tied him to the tree, a few strands around his waist, a few around his chest, and then a few around his neck. Was there a way one was supposed to tie men to trees? A method? Should she have googled it?

“Don’t move,” she said, as satisfied as she could be that he couldn’t get away. The twine around his neck she had tied particularly tight, probably too tight; one wrong move and that twine could strangle him. She turned from him, heading back to the cave, hoping that the wrong move wasn’t hers.

* * *