Read Online Dead Letter Day by Eileen Rendahl - Free Book Online Page A

shrugged. “Quirky. Eccentric. Unique.”
    Not necessarily what I’d choose for myself given my druthers, but a whole lot better than crazy and next in line for the ice-pick lobotomy. “Can we back up a second?” I asked.
    “Conversationally, right? Because I don’t think you should back up on this road.” Sophie glanced behind us.
    “Yes. Conversationally. What you said about other people having to stay normal. Is that really how you feel about this? Like it’s some kind of reward?” I kept my eyes steadfastly forward.
    “Of course. Don’t you?” She sounded surprised.
    “It doesn’t bother you that we have to hide so much? Thatwe have to lie? That we never know what’s coming around the corner?” I didn’t want to lead the witness, but surely she experienced a few of the frustrations that I did.
    “I don’t see it like that. I see that every day is an adventure. That each day I might find out about a creature that I never knew existed or an object that someone created that’s unlike anything else. My life will never be boring.”
    Or predictable or easy to plan or stable or calm. I turned onto Knights Road.
    “Arriving at destination,” the GPS lady said, a few minutes later.
    I pulled the Buick over to the side of the road and got out. Sophie got out on her side and looked around. “There’s not a lot of destination to our destination.”
    She was right. There wasn’t much of anything. Most notably, any light. It was black as pitch and without a moon, too. I waited a moment or two for my eyes to adjust. I don’t need much light to see, but this was difficult even for me. “Do you see anything?” I asked.
    Sophie shook her head. I sensed the motion more than saw it. “No. You?”
    My deliveries often take me to places that don’t feel safe and comfy. It’s in the nature of the beings that I fetch and tote for to live in the shadows and lurk in the dark corners. This place, however, felt especially creepy right now. I turned in a slow circle, squinting into the murk, but didn’t see anything. Nothing to hear or smell either. I reached out with my other senses. For a second, I got something. It was fast and it flickered.
    Nothing I could nail down and examine, but someone or something was out there.
    A darker shadow emerged onto the road ahead of us maybe twenty-five yards away. I turned toward it, trying toget a sense of its shape and size. It seemed big and blocky. I peered harder into the darkness. Nope. I wasn’t mistaken. It had four legs. “Is that a cow?”
    Sophie stared, too. “I think it is.”
    I turned around. It was hard to see much in the darkness, but I couldn’t make out any barns or houses. “Where did it come from?”
    “I don’t know. The fields over there, I guess.” She gestured off to our right.
    Another shape appeared next to the first one. “There’s two of them now.”
    “No,” Sophie said. “Three. Look behind you.”
    She was right. Another cow had appeared about twenty-five yards behind us.
    “They’re just cows, right?” Sophie asked, her voice getting a little higher than normal.
    “I’m not sure. They seem sort of…big.” Actually they seemed huge, but it was dark and it was hard to calculate distances.
    “Four, now,” Sophie said.
    Great. “Do you have the package?”
    “It’s in the car.”
    “Go get it. Let’s leave it right here and go.” It seemed ridiculous, but those cows didn’t seem normal to me. I didn’t like the way they’d appeared out of nowhere or how big they were or, frankly, how they seemed to be blocking the road in both directions. Or the weird prickly feeling I was getting.
    Sophie started for the car and that’s when they charged. Not only were they big, but they seemed darn fast for cows. “Run!” I shouted at Sophie and we both dashed for the car.
    I jumped into the driver’s seat, gunned the engine and fishtailed out of the dirt onto the road.
    “What about the package?” Sophie gasped, trying to get