Free The Witches of Dark Root: Daughters of Dark Root: Book One (The Daughters of Dark Root) by April Aasheim Page B

in the room. The closet or under the crib. She would scout them out later, when she was alone.  
    Or maybe, if she was lucky, the ‘thing’ that was looking for her, would go after Eve instead.
     

     
    Somewhere in Central Oregon
    September, 2013
     
    It was another dream. I rubbed at my eyes trying to push back the past. It was bad enough that I was forced to return home. I didn’t need the constant reminders of why I left.
    I tried to wiggle my legs but they were locked in between the seat and my suitcase on the floor of the bus. Our last bus had broken down, and a new one had been sent for us. Unfortunately, the luggage compartment was already full, and so I had to finish the ride with nowhere to put my feet. But I didn’t dare let it out of my sight; a man across the row had been eyeballing it since I boarded, licking his lips and twitching his eyes.
    The rest of me was achy too, courtesy of the potholes and poor road skills of our new driver, who I was sure was out to get me ever since I demanded he pull over and let me use a real bathroom because I wasn’t going to pee in their courtesy cesspool.
    “If yer too good for our facilities, you can piss yer pants for all I care,” he growled, purposely aiming the bus into every hole and divot in the road thereafter.
    I glared at the back of his head from my seat. He glared back through the rear view mirror.
    It was a standoff and he was winning.
    “Piss break,” he finally hollered as we rolled into the parking lot of a run-down, roadside bar. I watched my fellow passengers––an old couple with a squawking bird, three teenaged boys who kept referring to my rack, and a young man who kept his face buried in a book––slush past me on their quest to find a real, working toilet. The twitchy man across from me rubbed his greasy palms through his even greasier hair and offered to sit with my suitcase if I needed a break.  
    I dislodged it from its spot and hefted it out of the bus, giving the driver a dirty look.
    “Where are we?” I asked one of the teen-aged boys, who shrugged in response. I then asked the book-reading man, who informed me that if I had kept my paper itinerary, as he had, I would know exactly where I was.
    I should have taken a plane, I thought, then dismissed the idea.
    I had never flown anywhere in my life, and as much as I now hated traveling by bus, the thought of sitting in a metallic floating machine made my knees weak. No matter how many people explained the science of it to me, it didn’t seem possible.
    And at least the scenery had been pretty. I had spent hours leaned up against the cool glass window, watching as California faded into Oregon. The landscape was lush, green, rolling, straight out of a portrait. A man I sat next to for awhile had been tracking Big Foot, he said. Looking out the window, staring at an endless horizon of nothing but trees, it was hard to discount his beliefs.  
    Anything might live in these woods. Fairies, elves, even a Sasquatch.
    “Twenty minutes,” the driver called to us, shutting the double glass doors behind him. I was near the last in line for the bathroom, slowed down by my over-sized suitcase. The twitchy man leered at me through the bus window.
    I looked around as I waited my turn.
    A neon sign announced that we were at the Fat Chance Bar. Only a few beat-up cars and trucks dotted the parking lot. A wooden door led into the main bar. The busser’s bathroom, according to a crudely-written sign, was located on the side of the building.  
    I grabbed a Pay Day bar out of my purse and gnawed on it while waiting my turn. A gust of wind caught my skirt, sending it floating above my thighs and the teen-aged boys elbowed one another.  
    I was startled by the ringing of my newly-acquired phone.
    I removed it from my bag and answered it.
    “Hello?”
    “Maggie! Are you okay? I heard you were coming home by bus.”
    I was surprised to hear Merry’s voice. I wasn’t sure how she had gotten this