"What the...?"
It's breaking the rules that gets you in trouble, and whatever this is, it's sure as shit breaking the rules. My heart hammers with almost-living fear as I turn and run for the door. I need to get out of here. Something about this place is breaking all the rules of the road, and that means I can't stay here.
The air turns solid and stops me almost a foot and a half from safety. The door is still open; I can see the outside, see the rain sheeting down, but I can't get there. All I can do is bounce off the air. I back up, run for the invisible wall, and throw myself against it, to no avail; it's too solid, and I can't break through. Panting, I step back, and feel every drop of blood in my suddenly-living veins go cold as my gaze falls on the floor beneath the unseen barrier. "Shit," I whisper, feeling very small, and very vulnerable. I was careless. I'm about to pay for it.
The edges of the vast Seal of Solomon painted on the diner floor are clearly visible near the open door. It's no wonder that I didn't see it when I was coming in--I was walking away from the light, not into it--and the lines are done in red and black paint, detailed with what looks like silver Sharpie. Only the metallic parts would have been at all visible, and even if I saw them, I just dismissed them as broken bits of glass or metal. I sure as hell wasn't expecting a trap. Not here, not now...and not for me. Traps are for the dangerous things, the strigoi and the goryo and the shadow people. They're not for hitchers. We're harmless.
"Fine. So they caught me by mistake. Great. Okay." I rake my fingers through my hair--dry still, since the rain is outside and I wasn't solid until the trap made me that way--as I squint to follow the outline of the Seal in its path around the room. Whoever did this knew their demonology well. It's not the most intricate Seal I've ever seen, but intricacy doesn't always equate to strength, and this one is made to be strong. There's gold ink in the pattern, as well as the silver, marking the cardinal points, and there's a second ring around the first, this one of pure salt. The salt ring is only open at the diner door, to allow the spirits foolish enough to get caught to make their way inside. I rake my hair back again. This isn't some teenage routewitch prank. This is serious hoodoo.
After an hour of throwing myself against the seal, I give up and sit down at the center of the circle, cross-legged, propping one elbow on my knee and resting my chin atop my knuckles. Whoever set this trap has to come along eventually to see what they might have caught. Part of me keeps screaming that it's Bobby, it's Bobby, he's changed his ways and he's coming for me, but I'm still calm enough to know that for the nonsense that it is. Bobby Cross could no more draw a Seal of Solomon than he could walk past Saint Peter and through the pearly gates of Heaven. This isn't him. This is something else.
The rain outside keeps falling as the hours trickle by, adding an element of psychological torture to a situation that really doesn't need help scaring the crap out of me. I know what happens if I'm wearing a coat when the sun comes up: the coat loses its power and I fade back onto the ghostroads, dead as always. But what happens if the sun comes up while I'm trapped in a Seal of Solomon that's somehow doing what only a coat's supposed to do to me? Do I get free? Or do I get sucked into a bottle like some fairy tale djinn, Barbara Eden with a bad attitude and better fashion sense?
"I would kill for a routewitch about now," I mutter, and go back to waiting.
Enough time has passed by the time the door swings all the way open that I almost don't notice; I'm staring off into space, thinking about how much I'd be willing to do for a cup of coffee. It's the sound of footsteps on the linoleum that makes me realize I'm not alone anymore. I scramble to my feet, the scrapes on my hands and knees complaining at the rough treatment. I don't care. I don't my captor to see me looking that defenseless.
The woman who's just stepped into the diner doesn't even look at me as she pulls a canister of salt from her pocket and closes the break in the circle. This accomplished, she starts walking around the edges of the Seal, lighting candles I didn't even notice in the gloom. Each one beats back the darkness just a little; nowhere near enough. I turn, watching her, but I don't say anything. I'm not going to be the first one to speak.
I see her more and more clearly as the candles flicker to life. She's in her late thirties, with long, straight hair that shade of dirty blonde that means she's been blonde all her life, too proud to start dyeing when it started to darken. Her glasses glitter in the candlelight, making it impossible to tell the color of her eyes. She's pretty, in the dark, in the candlelight, but it's hard to focus on anything but the book she's holding under one arm, the thick, leather-bound book with the Seal stamped on its cover. That sort of book never means anything good to midnighters like me, especially not in the hands of someone like her, someone who carries the twilight with her like a sour perfume. She was born a daylight girl, but she's burrowed her way down, I can taste it. I just don't know why.