"You're scaring me, Pon," Critter said, looking very scared indeed. As if her lover had vanished into thin air and a rather butch Martha Stewart had appeared in her place.

She shot us a look that was the epitome of the word 'withering', and put some final touches on her masterpiece. "My father was a barber and my mother owned a beauty shop. I can't help it if some of the shit they tried to teach me actually sunk in."

Finishing her masterful transformation of the first wig, she held out her hand for the second. "Gimme."

"With pleasure," I replied, pulling the wig off of my head and handing it to her, watching as she applied her talents to that one as well.

The wigs were Ice's idea. And it was a good one, to be sure.

From what I was told, the area called the Scorpion's Nest was a rather large, and mostly empty, part of the desert, dotted here and there with tiny towns. Trying to find one man in such a place was akin, I was told, to searching for crystal of sugar on a white sand beach.

To find him, we'd need the help of the townspeople. We'd also need to remain as anonymous as possible so as not to arouse undue suspicion. Suspicion which could get back to Cavallo and cause him to either go deeper to ground, or come out, full force, against us.

Suspicion which would be raised if a couple of blonde-haired, light-eyed women just suddenly showed up in the middle of nowhere and started asking questions.

Of course, the wigs wouldn't cure all of the difficulties inherent in such a task. Such as the fact that neither Critter nor I could speak more than a couple words of Spanish.

Still, Rio, Pony and Nia were all brunettes, like Ice, though unlike my lover, their eyes were brown or a dark hazel. All of them also spoke fluent Spanish. Since Critter and I would be with them like bees on honey, it was my hope that we'd go unnoticed in that particular crowd. Unless, of course, we came off looking like a couple of cast extras in a grade B horror flick.

Beckoning me to her, Pony replaced the wig on my head just as the door opened and Nia stepped through, her arms full of clothing. "Cool!" she remarked, grinning at me. "Cher-ette on an acid trip!"

Pony and I scowled at her, which, of course, did absolutely no good whatsoever. In fact, the twin scowls only caused her to launch into a particularly horrid rendition of "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" that nearly cracked the mirror in my hands.

All of my life, I was sure that there was no one more tone deaf than my own dearly departed father. Pretty crappy time to find out just exactly how wrong I was on that particular subject.

Mournful pleas for silence only spurred her on until finally Pony had had enough and shoved her bodily out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind her, and locking it tight against further intrusion. Nia's laughter echoed in the hallway, but that soon faded away, leaving only blessed silence in its wake.

"That woman is in serious need of a shrink," Pony groused as she turned Critter away from her and replaced her wig over her lover's blonde hair. After fussing with it, she stepped back and appraised her lover, a wide grin curving her lips. "The gypsy fortune-teller look. I like. I like!"

"Down, Fido," she joked, turning to me. "Well? What do you think?"

I grinned as she faced me. In actuality, Pony wasn't all that far off in her assessment. "Would you read my palm, Madame Fifi?"

Slapping my hand away, she grabbed for my mirror instead. "Hopeless, the lot of you. Just hopeless." Looking in the mirror, she scowled as she straightened her bangs. "I look like an idiot."

"No, that would be me," I assured her, remembering my own image in the mirror.

"You don't look like an idiot, Angel. You look...um... ."

"Freakish? Demented? Insane?"

"Groovy!" she shouted, grinning. "Nia was right, now that I think about it."

My hands went to my hips. "Sing one word of one Cher song and I'll tie your lips in a knot."

Pony snickered, which earned her a growl from Critter. No fool, Pony, she shut up mid-smirk. Clearing her throat, she offered up the pile of clothes Nia had left behind after her unceremonious eviction. "Try these on and come outside after you're done," she stated, obviously trying to regain some sort of control over the situation. "We'll be leaving as soon as Ice and Rio get back."

"Where'd they go, anyway?" Critter asked as she picked out a garish purple wannabe silk top and held it up against her chest, eyeing me with eyebrows raised.

I shook my head in a very definite and vigorous negative. Sighing, she threw the shirt back into the pile, and rooted for another one.

"To pick up another car, since the other one got trashed to shit yesterday."

Shaking her head in mock disgust, Critter grabbed another shirt, this one a teal number that was slightly better than the purple one. Slightly. As in the width of a hair. "Sometimes, Pon, I wish I was your mother. I'd have you over my knee for that mouth of yours."

"You can have me over your knee any time you like, babe," Pony replied, waggling her eyebrows and leering. "You bring the paddle, I'll bring the edible soap."

Snorting, I turned and rooted through the pile of clothes for something to wear while Critter pushed her leering lover out of the cramped bathroom, closing and locking the door behind her and ignoring the indignant pounding that issued forth soon thereafter.

"Why I put up with that woman, I'll never know."

"Cause you love her."

She grinned. "Yeah. I do."

"I've been through the desert on a horse with no name. It felt good to get out of the rain. In the desert... ."

"Nia... ."

"...you can remember your name, cause... ."

"Nia!"

"...la la la la la la la, la la la, la, la..."

"Nia!!"

The discordant voice trailed off and I was shot a sullen look through the rearview mirror. Under other circumstances, being the cause of a friend's upset would have concerned me.

These weren't those circumstances.

Four hours into our trip through a featureless, monotonous desert, and the little men with jackhammers were just about to break out of my skull through my temples.

It wasn't so much the absolute and utter boredom of the trip thus far. It wasn't the "hair-trigger" shock absorbers that did everything but absorb the shock of the rutted and broken road. It wasn't even the blinding sun which insisted on glaring at me through the window, forcing me to squint so hard that my cheek and eye muscles threatened to freeze that way permanently.

No, it was something worse than all of those things put together.

It was the grating sound of Nia's voice as she ran through her rather extensive mental and vocal catalogue of what she called "traveling songs". I rather thought that "songs to commit suicide by" was a more apt title, since that is certainly what I was contemplating doing after the third encore of "Send in the Clowns" assaulted my eardrums.

When that was swiftly followed up by "Don't Cry Out Loud", thoughts of merciful suicide gave way to thoughts of vengeful homicide, complete with vivid (and curiously satisfying) mental pictures.

Ice seemed totally unaffected, but I really expected nothing less. Her focus on the task at hand was the stuff of which legends are made, and this task was no different than the rest.

As blessed silence descended, I leaned my throbbing head back against the cracked vinyl of the bench seat and closed my eyes against the harsh desert sun, willing my headache away.

With only the sounds of the humming motor for company, I felt myself begin to drift into a light sleep, the pain behind my eyes dimming as my breathing evened out.

Just before sleep could fully claim me, however, I felt a not so gentle prod to my kidney area. Thinking that Nia was just shifting her legs, I ignored it.

Until the prod came again, and then again, becoming less gentle with each repetition. Then the humming started, softly at first, though discordant and grating in my ears. As my eyes opened, I could feel my fists curl tightly of their own volition to match the clenching of my jaw. Anger welled within me, deep and strong, banishing the last of my sleepiness with its searing heat.

I could tell my eyes were flashing, even without benefit of a mirror, and I could feel my body, stiff from so many hours in the car, start to turn toward the back, where the source of my frustrations sat, in her own little world.

Whatever I might have done (and truthfully, I don't think it would have been all that much) was stopped almost unborn by a firm, warm hand on my thigh. My anger drained away like water through a sieve as I gazed into liquid crystal eyes peering into my own over the rims of mirrored sunglasses.

The look in those eyes convinced me to think up a different plan. So I did. Quickly.

"Nia?" I said, calm as I could.

"What."

"I was thinking." Oh boy, was I.

"About what."

Was it possible for her to sound more petulant?

"Well...since we're in Mexico and I need to fit in here... ."

A derisive snort.

"Yeah, right."

It was possible alright.

Calm, Angel. Be calm. Think happy thoughts. Happy. Happy. Happy.

"Do you think you can teach me some Spanish? You know, just enough to get by?"

Mercifully, the kicking stopped, followed shortly thereafter by the humming.

"Really?"

"Yes, really. I know hello, goodbye, thank you, a few swear words, and I can count to ten... I think. None of which is going to get me very far."

She laughed softly.

"So...could you help me? Please?"

"Sure! That would be cool!"

Thank you, God.

"Hey! There's this great song my Spanish teacher in Elementary School taught us. Let me see if I can remember how it starts."

I sagged back against the seat, defeated.

In a deliberate ploy for sympathy, I rolled my head in Ice's direction, just in time to see her turn attention back to the road, the corner of her mouth lifting just slightly.

I scowled at her, knowing she could feel it.

Just you wait, love of my life. You'll pay for that smirk. Later.

Two hours and one crash course in "Spanish for the tone-deaf" later, my grateful eyes spied a town coming up quickly on the left. If two houses sandwiching an ancient gas station could be considered a town, that is.

"Ice, do you think we could... ."

She had already started to pull into the gas station before I could even finish my question, a small smile playing over her lips.

"If I didn't know you any better, I'd think you were enjoying this," I muttered out of the corner of my mouth.

Silence was my only reply.

Sighing, I turned my head and peered back out the window, only to have almost half my face taken off by Nia's swiftly thrust hand pointing forward.

"Where are they going?"

Blinking and shielding my eyes from the glare of the merciless sun, I could see Rio's car shoot past in a long cloud of desert dust.

"Yeah. Where are they going?"

"There's another town about fifty miles down the road. They'll scout it out and we'll all meet up beyond that and compare notes."

"So I guess this isn't just your average 'potty break and stretch your legs' type stop, is it."

She laughed softly, turning to face me as she pulled the car smoothly in front of some antique gas pumps. "It's that, too."

I returned her chuckle with one of my own. "Good, because my kidneys were getting ready to file a grievance with their union, and I don't think either one of us would like it if they went on strike."