Excerpt

Rude turned onto a dead-end street tight enough to be an alley, red brick warehouses with boarded-up windows growing up three stories on either side. All dark, no sign of life that I could see except for the rusted yellow school bus that rested at the back of the alley. Faint light shone inside the thing's windows and open door.

"Oscar sent us to a school bus?" I asked.

Rude killed the radio and the ignition. He lit up a smoke with trembling fingers. "It's a very special bus, dude."

I stepped out of the car, Rude scrambling to catch me. In the shadow of the warehouses, I saw hardly any stars, fewer even than at home. The red light of a passing plane winked overhead. A breeze kicked up, sweeping a crumpled newspaper across the asphalt. My sneakers crunched on broken beer bottles. The temperature dropped the closer I drew to the bus. The cold knifed through my clothes.

Just like a horror movie. Any second now, we'd get our guts handed to us.

Rude jogged past me, stopping before he got to the door and motioning for me to do the same.

"Oscar sent us," he called.

No one answered.

I stepped closer to him. "You sure she's home?"

"Just wait, dude."

A wind blew again—this time from inside the bus. The hairs on my arms stood up.

"That's our cue." Rude climbed the steps.

I half-expected him to get struck by lightning or vanish into thin air or get stabbed.

None of that happened.

Rude glanced over his shoulder. "It's all right, Kevin."

He climbed the steps into the bus, and I didn't wait to be told twice to follow. No way was I staying out here by myself.

Walking into the bus felt like stepping into a time warp. The girl who lived there had to be a hippy. Or else hippies had exploded all over the inside of the bus.

The sweet scents of pot and patchouli incense permeated the whole place. Tiny, tinkling wind chimes hung near the windows. Every available ceiling space had been papered with black-light posters, so many I couldn't make out the images on them. Along the edges of the center aisle, candles burned in deep glass jars, their glowing wicks almost drowned in melted wax.

Bicycle handlebars and chains and pedals lay strewn on the ripped vinyl bench seats. Except on every third seat, where pillows and blankets had been gathered into piles to protect unframed oil paintings on stretched canvases. Good paintings.

The longer we stood there, the thicker the air got. And charged. With electricity. The kind that shocked. Or if it got strong enough, the kind that could do some damage. It wasn't enough that the hair on my arms stood up. All the hair on my head did, too.

Rude cocked his head, listening. To what?

"She wants a song," he said. "She wants it like an offering, or we have to leave."

Without another word, he launched into an off-key version of Linkin Park's "No More Sorrow."

I'd never heard him sing before, and never wanted to again. The whole thing couldn't end fast enough.

When it did, the quality of the air had changed. I could breathe better. I didn't feel like I might be electrocuted any minute.

And there was a girl at the back of the bus. A girl with gossamer wings.