“Too tangible, ha ha. I can’t touch anything, remember?”

Jaelle slipped from the red world and into the too-bright Louisiana sun. It was hot enough that the air above the asphalt road shimmered in the distance, though she couldn’t feel it, and those at the gas station were beaded with sweat from the few moments outside that it took to fill up their cars. Despite her sarcastic remark, Jaelle kept herself carefully invisible to mortal eyes—she was just too irritated with Mal to be nice about it.

“We’ve [i]talked[/i] about this. Just because I’m tied to that damn staff doesn’t mean you can go haring off on whatever plan without telling me. I might have useful ideas! Insights! Opinions! I’m not a dog that you can pull around on an invisible leash.”

Mal was like a brother to Jaelle. He had saved her from the void of indeterminable years and helped her find a much more interesting existence with the Sunday Group. When he wasn’t trying to show off, he was funny and nice and fun to be around. But damn her fading remains if he wasn’t so self-absorbed that he forgot the people around him were intelligent beings as well.

The gas station was of the typical, back-roads sort. Two old pumps sat beneath a cover that looked to have been half-blown away by the last hurricane. A sizable corner was missing, the rough edge showing the frame and torn plastic. The car at the pump left with a fuller belly, leaving the lot empty except for two vehicles parked to the side. The windows advertised The Double Gulp for 89 cents around a big plastic cup spilling soda, and the over-stuffed cigarette disposal was surrounded by a halo of fallen smokes.

They stepped inside to the distorted jingle of an electronic bell, and three sets of eyes turned towards Mal. A middle-aged couple leaned against the far wall, exchanging anxious looks, and the decidedly unhappy store owner glared at Mal over her glasses, her curly hair pulled back in a tight, frizzy ponytail. “Welcome to 7-Eleven. Do you want gas or tobacco?”

Jaelle floated up a couple of inches to whisper in Mal’s ear. “I guess those are the Petersons— Primrose’s witnesses. I’ll go see if I can find where they keep the cameras.”

She sped off through a series of poorly-stocked shelves of cheap chips and candy. There was a shut door to one side of the garish Big Gulp machine, but she didn’t bother trying to see if it was locked. Jaelle just slid through, her body warming slightly with proximity to the mortal plane. 

The hallway behind the door was disappointingly mundane. A bright yellow rolling mop bucket sat overturned in a square basin, its mop hanging above so that the discolored head dropped the occasional plop of murky water. Other cleaning supplies cluttered once-white shelves next to bulky wheels of toilet paper and paper towels. The door to an employees-only bathroom was open, showing stained tile, and crates of merchandise stacked against the walls in lopsided towers.

So much stuff. They’d never be able to take it with them if they left.

Just before the emergency exit on the far end, there was a second door. Jaelle went through into a closet stuffed with a desk stacked with old papers and an HP monitor showing the paused video of their victim’s car. She could see Mal and the witnesses in the live feed minimized in the bottom left corner, but none of the angles caught the edge of the crime scene down the street, and she could tell nothing about the victim’s car from the stilled image.

“Play!” she said, but nothing happened. “Google Assistant, play!”

Jaelle growled. The thing was too outdated for such useful features, and chances were they wouldn’t necessarily work with the program anyway if she’d been listening to Flint right. Hopefully, Mal would have more luck with the Petersons, or the others would find out something about the magic.