Free Demon Lover by Kathleen Creighton

walk in that direction, and Rita’s house is in the other. And I’m sure she’d welcome a little help with the cooking."
    Julie gave her head a bewildered shake. "I don’t understand. I thought I was a prisoner here."
    His face and voice were bland enough, but his eyes were hard. "Oh, you’re a prisoner, all right. But you’re free to come and go as you please. And if that seems like a contradiction, just remember that you’re bordered on three sides by desert, and that there’s no way on earth you could carry enough water to get you to the nearest settlement. And," he added, seeing the thought in her mind, "I’ve taken the precaution of removing a few vital components from the truck’s engine. Of course," he purred, "there’s always the sea. But even if you could manage to launch one of the fishing boats by yourself, I wouldn’t recommend it, darling. You’re the lady who wants to live, remember?" He waited, but Julie only glared mulishly at him, and after a moment he touched two fingers to his temple in a mocking salute and murmured, "
Buenos dias, Guerita
," and left her.
    Buenos dias. The Spanish equivalent of "Have a nice day." Damn him. And why does he always call me that—Guerita?
    It wasn’t an expression she was familiar with.
Guero
, she knew, meant "fair" or "blond," and the diminutive, technically, meant "small blond one." Or…
Blondie. Well, of course.
    He was calling her Blondie. Not so different from Cottontop or Dandelion. Her father had called her Blondie when she was very small.
    She found that she was smiling, inexplicably cheered.
    Once her jailer had gone Julie could hardly wait to be up and dressed and out of doors. This freedom might be only an illusion, but after the day and night she’d spent confined in that horrible camper, even an illusion was to be savored.
    In the doorway of the adobe she stood with her head thrown back, glorying in the feel of the sun on her throat and on her toes, bare in the borrowed huaraches. A warm wind laden with strange, pungent odors whipped around the corner of the hut and ruffled her hair before scurrying on like a mischievous child, raising dust on its way to the water. Julie lifted her arms high in a bone–cracking stretch and almost laughed aloud with delight in being alive, breathing in great gulps of perfumed air, reveling in the aching brilliance of morning sun on the water—
    Morning sun?
    Julie lowered her arms slowly to shade her eyes as she watched the ripple and sparkle of sunlight on blue water.
Of course. No wonder I felt as if my directions were turned around!
She had seen a thousand sunsets over the ocean, but not one sunrise. She wasn’t looking over the Pacific Ocean; this was the Gulf of California. The fabled Sea of Cortez.
    I know where I am!
Julie’s spirits took another dizzying leap. Those hazy blue shapes on the horizon were islands; therefore, she had to be somewhere in the "midriff’ of the peninsula, south of San Felipe. And not so very far south, either, if they had made it over Baja’s appalling roads in one day.
    He’s bluffing, Julie thought exultantly.
With a boat and a little luck I can get out of here.
    She drew in her breath and looked around guiltily, afraid that the excitement of her discovery might show in her face. But although she could hear the far–off sounds of voices raised in Spanish conversation and laughter, the only living things visible were the wheeling seabirds and a thin brown dog jogging aimlessly along the beach. Julie smiled grimly after him and set off to find the latrine.
    The adobe hut she shared with her jailer had for some reason been placed away from the others, in a little depression that gave it a certain degree of privacy. Behind it and over a rise was a crude outhouse, and beyond this the terrain rose steeply, an escarpment of granite from which boulder–strewn ridges stretched toward the water like the desperate fingers of a thirst–crazed wanderer. The other huts—some of