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she asked.
    “I’m not sure if I trust -.”
    “Let’s worry about that later. Someone might be in trouble.”
    I formed an invisible force field. We climbed aboard and zoomed across the desert. Brodie was right. By the time we flew over the crest of the hill we could see what had caused the fire. A car lay overturned by the side of the road.
    “Hell,” I said.
    “Bring us in close.”
    We came in to land directly next to the vehicle. Cars rarely came this way. It was one of those roads that literally led nowhere. Brodie and I had followed it one day. It simply trailed off after a couple of miles into the desert. I’m not sure it even had a name.
    The car was alight and had been in flames for some time. Maybe this was what had awoken us; the sound of the car flipping on the road. There was no-one in the vehicle. Maybe they had been thrown free.
    We started searching all around the area looking for the driver. We should have brought torches. At that moment the sound of footsteps crunching across the dry earth caught our attention.
    “Thanks for waiting!” Chad yelled. He had brought two torches with him so we started to systematically search the area by dividing it into a grid pattern. The minutes passed slowly. The car continued to burn. We extended the search area and searched that too.
    This made no sense.
    “Where is the driver?” Brodie asked.
    “Maybe he was able to walk away and he’s walking back to Vegas,” Chad said. “Sometimes people walk away from some pretty bad accidents.”
    “Maybe.” I was still unconvinced. We went back to the car and searched for footprints around the wreck. If they existed it was too dark to see them. The driver’s side door had broken off in the crash. I turned it over in the darkness.
    “Bring the torch over here,” I asked Chad.
    He shone it on the door. All three of us peered at a mark in the centre of the door. There was no denying what it looked like, but that was impossible.
    “It looks like a footprint,” Brodie said.
    “So the driver crashed his car,” Chad said. “And then kicked the door off its hinges.”
    “That would take superhuman strength,” I said. “How is that possible?”
    “Something else makes no sense either,” Chad said. “What’s this car doing out here? No-one comes out here in the middle of the day let alone at night.”
    “Maybe someone wanted to draw us out here,” Brodie suggested.
    A chill ran up and down my spine. “Not to draw us here.”
    “What -.” Chad started.
    I looked back towards the house. “To draw us away.”
     

Chapter Nine
    Ebony had awoken in the darkness with no idea as to what roused her from her sleep. At first she thought it was someone using the bathroom, but there was no sound of the toilet flushing. All the lights were out. The entire house lay in silence. She glanced at the clock.
    3:30am
    What the hell?
    This was way too early to be awake. Lying on her side, she closed her eyes again. Time to go back to sleep.
    Except a noise was coming from the door.
    She always slept with her door open. She liked air to circulate through her room at night. She kept her window open too, but it was permanently locked so that only two or three inches were open at the bottom.
    The sound coming from her door sounded like scratching. Could it be a rat? There were various types of small animals that lived in the desert. Maybe something had come in from outside. Tilting her head ever so slightly, she peered over towards the door and saw only blackness.
    Something hit the side of her dressing table.
    What the -?
    Moving her line of sight away from the doorway, she tried to see her dressing table, but found it impossible without moving her head. Now the sound seemed to find purchase on the wall. It slowly ascended until there was a slight bump as it reached the ceiling. She dared not move a muscle. She had no idea what it was, but it was large. She knew that by the way it collided with the ceiling.
    Could it be a bird?