Another car eased into the lot. “Oops! Gonna get replaced if I don’t get back to it, hon,” the attendant said as she pulled back with a cheery wave.

Ash held up the glossy map she had been handed. A postcard style picture of the town’s main street was emblazoned on the front. She opened it to a cartoon map of the town with yellow roads surrounded by green forest that made her think of the Wizard of Oz with the same dancing cicada from the banner in each corner.

Wiping a hand across her forehead, already sticky again, Ash wondered at the going rate for souls because she was very close to considering offering hers for a shower. But maybe demon deals were best made on a full stomach. “That restaurant is right around the corner. The one that the gas station attendant mentioned. Do you wanna go there?”

Richie was sucking on a cigarette, cheeks hollowed out. He looked worn and Ash actually felt a little bad for how much they were fighting. “Whatever,” he said, coughing a little, smoke clouding the air around him.

When he didn’t move, she tried again. “Should I go on ahead and get us a table?”

“I said, ‘Whatever.’ I’m finishing this first.”

She felt a little less bad.

She stalked across the blacktop, weaving between cars, looking back to see Richie pull out his phone and start swiping his thumb around on the surface. A familiar prickle of annoyance struck her. She’d seen the texts. She wasn’t an idiot. Well, she was an idiot, but she wasn’t ignorant. For whatever reason, she’d let herself get roped into this road trip thinking it would fix things. It had made them worse. And, even though she had already mentally checked out of the relationship, it stung to think he was also ready to jump ship. That he actually had another ship on standby.

He had obviously forgotten the lack of service because she watched him scowl at the phone, holding it up high above his head as he sought a signal. She could see his mouth moving around the cigarette, mumbling curses most likely. Good. Piece of⁠—

“Shit!” Ash yelped as she rounded the corner and slammed right into someone, sunglasses falling to the cracked sidewalk.

“Sorry,” came a low, bass voice that was more of a rumble than anything else. “You ok?”

Ash blinked, gazing up, up, up. Well over six feet tall with dark hair, curling and coiling round his ears and over his forehead was a man plucked from the cover of those old romance novels her mom used to read, complete with dark, sleepy eyes, full lips set in a lopsided smile, and a solid jaw. Actually, everything looked pretty solid from where Ash was standing, all muscle and smiles compared to Richie’s angles and scowls.

“Huh?” Ash said, staring and unable to stop.

His smile only grew, as if he was used to such behavior. She would have bet all of her worldly wealth—which was admittedly not much—that he was. He leaned down, down, down to pick up her pink glasses from the sidewalk. “Sorry about the collision.”

Ash tried on her own smile. “I’m pretty sure I ran into you. So, I’m sorry.” She wasn’t. She was not sorry.

He shrugged those giant shoulders. “Do we trade insurance information now?”

Was he flirting with her? This man, who looked like God had not so much as broken the mold as shattered it completely and declared creation perfected, was flirting with her when she was sweaty, gross, and still technically in a relationship? And was she thinking about flirting back? Yes, yes she was. Maybe the universe was throwing her one.

“I thought you were getting a table.”

Dammit, universe!

Those sleepy eyes shifted from Ash to over her shoulder where she could smell Richie’s cologne of funk and cigarettes as he eased up behind her. He threw a possessive arm around her shoulders, tickling her with the sweaty wad of hair in his pit. GROSS!

“I’ll watch where I’m going. Sorry again,” the guy said to Ash, shoving his hands in the pockets of perfectly fitted jeans before strolling past. She was sorry, too. So, so sorry.

“Like I said,” Richie drawled, arm still round her shoulders as if it belonged there.

Fighting suddenly felt like a great idea. She hadn’t flirted with the cop, and she hadn’t flirted with the perfect specimen just then. She’d wanted to flirt with him, but Richie had ruined it like he did everything else. “Whatever,” she said lamely, throwing off his arm and rushing ahead, needing space.

She had to step into the street to avoid more collisions, the sidewalk packed for such a small town in the middle of nowhere. Everybody was taking pictures or laughing. Having a good time. Jerks.

A striking girl in her early twenties was standing in the middle of the road, talking and gesticulating excitedly at a phone mounted on a tripod in front of her. After a minute, she tapped a button, grabbed the rig, and moved into the shade, shaking out long dreads, some dyed turquoise, pink, and russet, woven through with colored lace and wooden beads that clicked against each other. Her crocheted crop and low-cut shorts showcased a lot of warm, brown skin and she looked so effortlessly put together. So cool. She used a bamboo towel on her forehead, dabbing at the sweat beaded against her hairline, checked herself in her front facing camera before again taking up position in the street.

A vlogger or an influencer, then. Ash turned away just before she ran headlong into a light pole draped with more of the dried flower garlands she had spied from the car. They really were pretty. She liked the look of them, the long, gathered stalks of dried grass interlaced with fluffy, pink pampas and preserved lavender. On closer inspection, she saw seed pods and twigs used to make crude bugs. She touched the wings of a cicada crafted from helicopter seeds, listening to the soft, papery crinkling. She used to throw them around the yard as a kid, chasing them as they spun and fell.

“You like ’em?”

An elderly gentleman was sitting on a bench in the shade of a hardware store behind her and she pointed to the garland and the little cicada. “They’re very pretty.”

The old man gave a lazy nod. “The ladies from the Rotary Club make ’em. You can buy ’em right at the center of town. Think they are set up near the fountain. Big white tent. Did Annaliese give you your map in the lot?”

“Annaliese? The parking attendant? Yea.” She waved the map.

“Yes, ma’am. That’ll show you where everybody’s set up.” The old man leaned forward, putting one hand to his ear. “You hear that?”

People talking. Motors. Foot traffic. The sound of a small town. But underneath it all—or maybe overtop—a steady hum of noise. The same buzz of insects from outside the gas station.

“Cicadas. Thousands of ’em. They stay burrowed underground for years and years, drinking from roots with their straw mouths. Sluuuuuuuuuuuuuurp!” He sucked wetly through puckered lips. “A probiscis. That’s what it’s called. And they just live buried in that dirt until they crawl their way out and climb up trees to latch on and start moltin’; sheddin’ that outer layer. That ex-O-skeleton. You’re hearing the adult males. That buzz like an electrical hum is them callin’ around. Fascinatin’ stuff. Livin’ almost your whole life underground and then comin’ out after almost twenty years just to sing and breed and die. The pine forests around Revelation has the world’s biggest population of cicadas. People like us? We keep ’em safe.”

Something about the conversation was making her uncomfortable, like how she felt on edge outside the gas station.

“Right over there is where they’re playin’ that movie all day.” He pointed a wobbling finger across the street where an old marquis displayed CICADA on both sides. Ash could see the walls covered with framed movie posters of the same VHS cover from the gas station. A bunch of people were filing in, some wearing antenna headbands or red googly eye goggles, most in black or horror movie t-shirts. “You seen it yet?”

“No,” Ash admitted. “Never even heard of it before today.”

“Well, you’re in for an experience then.” The man sat back with a chuckle, laying a finger on the side of his nose and tapping. “You go on and have fun, darlin’. And you tell ’em at the Rotary Tent that Mr. Danton said to set you up with the prettiest garland they got.”

“Okay,” Ash managed. “Thank you.”

Ash continued on towards the restaurant, throat dry. A strange sense of unease swirled in her belly, but she chalked it up to hunger and heat and the incessant drone of the insects drilling into her brain.