Page 73 of Soft Flannel Hank

“Hey, Shannon,” Esther said, answering her cousin’s fifth call.

“Jesus, you’re hard to reach, Esther Marie MacLaren,” Shannon scolded.

“I was—” There was no polite way to finish that sentence.I was getting dry humped to within an inch of my life on a kitchen counter by the depressed love child of Tom Selleck and Andre the Giant.

“I didn’t have my phone on me. I forgot I’d put it on silent.”

“Are you okay?” Shannon was five years older than Esther, but for the way she sometimes mothered her, she might as well have been twenty.

Esther sighed. That was a question with many different answers. “Yeah. I’m alright. So, they know I’m here.”

“Yea.”

Esther stroked her fingers over the quilt pattern on Hank’s bed. Tiny triangles that formed starbursts. “I can’t keep running, Shann.”

“I don’t think you need to. I don’t get it, but I still feel like you’re safe in World’s End.”

“But they know I’m here.”

“I know. I know. And it doesn’t make sense to me either, but I’ve never been wrong when I’ve felt this sure. I really think you’ll be okay there.”

Esther wanted to believe her. With everything she had, she wanted to believe that she could just stay. That she could go back to the cabin behind Magda’s house or maybe stay in Anna’s room for a while. Start over with Hank. Start over with her life. Be safe.

But she just couldn’t believe it.

“Did you send it?” The grimoire. Her last hope.

“Yeah. The tracking says it got delivered about an hour ago.”

That was good. Maybe she could ask Hank to go get it for her.

A soft knock reverberated against the bedroom door.

“Esther?” Hank said from the other side.

“I’ve gotta go, Shannon,” she said. “Sorry. Call you later.”

She hung up as Hank eased the door open an inch at a time, as if he was afraid to spook her. “You don’t have to do that, Hank. It’s your room,” she said.

Hank opened it the rest of the way and stopped dead in his tracks when he looked at her. Esther could almost see the wheels turning in his head. She was there. On his bed. In his room. He was still aching and unfulfilled, and if she was honest with herself, so was she. He took in a deep, shuddering breath and took a step toward her but stopped himself.

“Everything okay?” She asked.

He looked confused.

“With Nat?” she pressed on.

That seemed to snap him back to himself. “Oh. Yeah. But we’ve got to go.”

“Where are we going?” Esther asked, sitting upright.

“Magda’s. Nat said she’s got wards or spells or something. We’ll be safe for tonight.”

“And then?”

“And then we’re going to Nat’s hunting cabin up near the Canadian border. We’ll lay low there for a couple of weeks. Let him figure out what’s going on here.”

The timeline made her body go tense all over before a crushing sort of fatigue followed immediately in its wake.