The Demon Road Trilogy: The Complete Collection: Demon Road; Desolation; American Monsters

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WHEN AMBER CAME DOWN for dinner, her place was set at a large, long table, next to Glen’s and across from Milo’s. Another guest was joining them, an attractive, dark-haired woman in her thirties.

“Company!” the woman said, clearly delighted. “I haven’t had company while eating for ages! Are you staying long?”

“Probably not,” said Amber. “We’re on a family road trip. This is my cousin Glen, my dad Milo, and I’m Amber.”

“Very pleased to meet you,” said the woman. “I’m Veronica. Have you travelled far?”

“We’ve been on the road for a few days,” Milo said. “What about you?”

Veronica gave them all quite a beautiful smile. “I actually live here. Not in the hotel, but Cascade Falls. Well, I did. I thought I’d bought a place but it fell through at the last minute, and I’ve already sold my old house, so here I am, destitute. Destitute in a lovely hotel, but still … destitute.”

“Why are you moving?” Amber asked. “It’s such a beautiful place.”

“It is,” said Veronica, “it really is. And I’m going to miss it, but sometimes you just have to –” she fluttered her fingers – “leave.”

“I noticed some closed-down stores,” Milo said. “Does that have anything to do with it?”

Veronica shrugged. “Maybe. A few of my friends have moved away recently, a few more are about to follow them … No single reason, though. It’s still a great place to live. We just … I don’t know. We want somewhere new. So where are you from?”

“Georgia,” said Milo. “My wife and I split up, and this trip is our father-daughter time.”

“Father-daughter and cousin,” said Glen quickly.

“How nice,” Veronica said. “And your wife was okay with taking Amber out of school for this?”

Milo hesitated for just a moment too long, and Amber jumped in. “When he says they split up, what he means is, Mom passed away last year. Visiting all her favourite places is our way of saying goodbye.”

“Oh no,” said Veronica. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“Not at all,” said Milo, shooting a look at Amber.

“I’m from Ireland,” said Glen.

Veronica nodded and smiled, and didn’t say anything to that.

Glen looked mystified. He started to speak again – probably to repeat what he’d just said in the hope of a different reaction – when the doors opened and a man entered. Tall, astonishingly so, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, accentuated by the grey fitted coat he wore – tight around the midsection, then flowing to the floor. His trousers were black, his legs long, his arms long, even his fingers were long. He was handsome, had the complexion of a man who spent his time indoors, and his black hair was swept off his high forehead in an exaggerated widow’s peak. He had a long nose, cheekbones like knife cuts, and twinkling dark eyes under a heavy brow.

“Miss Cartwright,” he said, smiling. His accent was foreign, and unfamiliar to Amber. “It is a pleasure to see you, as always. And our newest guests – my deepest apologies for not being here to greet you upon your arrival. My name is Johann Varga, the owner of this hotel. I trust your time with us so far has been pleasant?”

“It has,” said Milo. “Thank you.”

“Have you travelled far?” Varga asked.

“It doesn’t seem like it,” said Milo, sounding genuinely friendly. “We’ve only been here a few hours, but even we can see that a town like Cascade Falls really rejuvenates a person, body and soul.”

“Doesn’t it?” Varga said. “A most peaceful place we have here. We are all quite rightly proud.”

“You should be,” Milo said, smiling.

Varga nodded his appreciation. “Alas, I have business to attend to. I hope to talk to you all again. For now, I bid you goodnight.”

Amber joined the polite chorus that responded, and Varga left, drawing the doors closed behind him.

“Lovely man,” said Veronica. “He does a lot for the town. It wouldn’t be what it is today without him, and he never asks for anything in return. Sometimes I wonder what it must be like to be that selfless …”

“I like to do charity work,” said Glen.

Veronica took her eyes away from Milo, and smiled like she was interested. “What kind?”

Glen shrugged. “It varies. I volunteer at homeless shelters and animal rescue places, mostly. Cancer research. That sort of thing.”

“You have no particular charity that’s close to your heart?”

Glen adjusted his sitting position. “Well, I mean, yeah, I do. The main one, the main charity I do work for, is oil spills. Y’know when you see all those people in waterproofs cleaning seagulls and wildlife? That’s me. I’ve always loved wildlife and I live near the sea back in Dublin, so it’s pretty handy.”

“Do you get a lot of oil spills in Dublin?”

“Uh, well, not really, no. But I’m always there if a whale gets beached, or whatever.”

“Oh? What do you do when that happens?”

“Well, I … I push it back into the sea.”

Veronica nodded, and waited for him to say more. When it became clear that he had nothing else to add, she turned back to Milo, and Glen frowned and sank a little lower in his chair.

After dinner, Amber took a shower in the bathroom down the hall from her room. It was a quaint affair and while, on the whole, she much preferred hotels that had bathrooms, it was still better than some of the motels they’d had to stay in so far.

She dried herself off, dressed in pyjamas, and bundled up her clothes, balancing her shoes on top. The carpet was soft under her bare feet as she walked to her room. Rounding the corner, she heard voices, and Milo and Veronica came into view, headed for Milo’s room. They saw her and stopped. She blinked.

Eventually she said, “Just had a shower.”

Milo nodded. “Good.”

“How was the water?” Veronica asked.

“Hot,” said Amber.

Milo nodded again, like this was an important piece of information he needed to file away. “Okay, well, see you in the morning.”

“Yes, you will,” Amber replied. “Goodnight.”

Veronica gave her a beautiful smile, and Amber watched them both disappear into Milo’s room.

She got to her own room and locked the door, then put her clothes on the chair. Then she stood in the middle of the room and frowned.

She had to admit, it was weird seeing Milo and Veronica … together. She found herself actually surprised, probably because the kind of things she associated with Milo were danger and fear and, to a possibly worrying degree, death. It had never occurred to her that he might have normal feelings behind all that alert coolness. She was even disappointed, in a way. She would have thought that someone like Veronica, as undeniably sexy as she was, would have had no effect on him. Amber had expected him to be above that sort of thing.