Free Strange Country by Deborah Coates

brand-new passed her, and she could see the lights of another car maybe half a mile back, but otherwise the road was empty. She didn’t pay much attention, couldn’t stop the progression of thoughts—Prue and Death and the note she’d gotten that morning. Laddie too. None of it the same thing, but none of it a problem she could solve the way she liked to solve problems, by running straight at them.
    As soon as she turned into the driveway, she saw it, something fluttering in the breeze like a trapped bird. Same spot—hell, the exact spot—where the note had been that morning. Same fence post—or, at least, another fence post that looked exactly like. She slowed, then stopped, sat with the engine idling and looked at the post, at the surrounding fields, all the way up to the house and the barn. Nothing moved. Nothing except that damned note on its post.
    She left the truck running and got out, carrying the prybar from under the seat.
    It was the same as before: heavy paper, note lashed to the fence post with baling twine. Despite the overcast, she could read this one fine right here.
    FACE YOUR FEAR.
    And then the coordinates. The same set as before—+43° 46' 22.85", −102° 0' 17.38".
    What the hell? No, really, what the hell?
    She hadn’t decided if she was going to take it or if she was going to leave it right there and see what happened, when she heard a car slow on the road and turn up into the drive.
    She grabbed the note off the post, watched the post crumple into dust again, stuffed the note in her jacket pocket, and kept hold of the prybar as she stepped to one side so she could see who was approaching.
    The car, a thirty-year-old gold Buick with a vicious dent in the rear passenger door, stopped behind Hallie’s pickup; the engine turned off, then dieseled for a moment, like it was trying to come back to life on its own. Which wouldn’t surprise Hallie, because it turned out things did come back to life. Hell, she’d come back to life. But this was just a car. Probably. It was probably just a car. Sometimes things actually were just the ordinary things they appeared to be.
    On the other hand, she’d just received a note that had come fastened to a post that no longer existed. And if she’d learned anything from Afghanistan, from Death, from Martin Weber, it was that it paid to be prepared.
    The car door opened. Beth Hannah stepped out.
    Beth Hannah, sister to Boyd’s murdered wife, Lily.
    Beth Hannah, Death’s daughter.
    Who’d been stalked by a reaper and who’d turned to Boyd for protection.
    Hallie hadn’t seen Beth in months, not since the reaper, Travis Hollowell, had come out of the under to find her, to convince her to marry him because marrying her would make him human again. And immortal. Because Beth, and Lily, who’d been married to Boyd before she’d died, were Death’s daughters. Marrying one of them conferred immortality on their spouse—sort of.
    Beth had disappeared after the final confrontation, after Hallie had stopped Travis Hollowell, after Lily and Pabby had rebuilt the wall between the worlds. Boyd looked for her, put out calls to sheriff and police departments all over the country. But he hadn’t found any trace of her. Beth was maybe not precisely the last person Hallie had expected to see coming up her driveway on a dry, cold March afternoon, but she was pretty damned close.
    She was recognizable and yet, she looked different from the last time Hallie had seen her—hair still curly but pulled back into a tight ponytail, black jeans, black T-shirt, hiking boots, and a black hooded Carhartt jacket. She had dark makeup around her eyes so that the irises looked darker and larger. She had a messenger bag slung across her chest and black biker’s gloves on her hands.
    “What are you—? Where have you been?” Hallie asked.
    “I need your help,” she said, just like that, no preamble, not hello or What have you been up to? or even, How did it all turn out, there, at