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They’re sitting at a bar in the middle of fuck-knows-where, Wyoming, biding their time until midnight, when the alleged banshee is supposed to make her rounds. Deanna gets up to buy them each another drink, gait constrained and purposeful as she makes her way from table to bar so that she won’t send out the message that she’s looking for anything. It doesn’t entirely work — Sam’s stomach clenches when she sees the look that the scruffy bartender gives her sister — but no one tries anything else besides looking, so there’s nothing Sam can do. (It would help, she thinks, if Deanna wore something a little less skintight and revealing, but after what happened in Salvation, Deanna had thrown away the few pieces of clothing she’d amassed that hadn’t fit into the femme fatale look that their mom used to remind them was the best way to get people to tell them what they needed to know. Sam had hidden her sister’s favorite t-shirts and pair of jeans for when she came to her senses.)
Deanna comes back with two bottles of a local brew that taste grainy and bitter, and stares speculatively into the air over Sam’s shoulder. Sam puts up with it for a couple of minutes while she lets herself daydream about the life she’d have been living if Deanna hadn’t showed up (if Amit hadn’t died): it’s Friday, right? No, Wednesday — close enough. She’d be comfortable, toasting the end of her first successful year as a law student at a bar near Stanford and sitting with Amit and the new friends she’d have made; not sitting on edge, sweating in an acrylic vest under her clothing that’s supposed to flatten her chest, because it’s after-dark in the middle of nowhere and they don’t need anyone asking why two women are traveling by themselves.
Which brings her straight back to the dingy present. She gives in to temptation and turns around to see what Deanna is looking at. Her gaze lands on a pretty blonde girl, jeans low on her hips and blue shirt draping around her torso. She leans against the bar, talking to a friend. Sam sighs. ‘Just go over and introduce yourself,’ she tells Deanna.
Her sister takes another sip of her beer, slamming it down with more force than is necessary. ‘You notice anything funny about her shirt?’
Sam risks another quick look. The blonde girl slaps her friend’s hand playfully. ‘It’s too small?’ she ventures.
‘Just because you like to look like a lumberjack all the time doesn’t mean every woman’s got to hide what she’s got,’ says Deanna. For a moment, her grin is wicked. Then it fades, and she’s all business again. ‘I’m talking about the design on the front. Remind you of anything?’
This time, Sam gives up on subtlety: she simply scoots her chair around over to the next side of the table, crossing her legs before she remembers that she’s supposed to be the dude here, and spreads her knees under the table instead. She has to crane her neck a little to see, but when she does, she understands Deanna’s point.
‘You think she could be the one controlling the banshee?’ she asks Deanna in a low voice.
‘Why else would a random girl in a town with an infestation walk around wearing a shirt that just happens to tell a banshee that she’s off-limits for soul-sucking?’ Deanna tilts back the bottle in her hand, and studies the label. Her studiously plucked eyebrows knit together in a scowl. ‘Why are the hot ones always evil or possessed?’
‘I am not evil,’ says Sam without thinking.
Deanna’s smile flickers for a fraction of a second before she forces a laugh. ‘Okay, one: hot, in my book, means curvy, nice hair, and under eight feet tall. Two, you’re my sister, and that’s just disturbing.’
Sam elbows her. ‘You’re the one cheerleading my future relationship with a guy who turned out to be a demon. You are equally disturbed.’
Deanna snickers and raises her bottle. ‘I’ll drink to that.’ Then she jerks her head at the blonde girl. ‘Hey, her friend just went to the bathroom. How about you go over there and use your gentlemanly ways to see if she’s our girl?’
Sam rolls her eyes. ‘’Gentlemanly’?’
‘Come on. Think of the greater good here, Samantha.’
‘We need to find a hunt in San Francisco or something; this is getting old real fast.’ Sam gets up and twists her shoulders to surreptitiously shift her binder back into place. ‘Wish me luck.’