Page 21 of Carnival of Crows

He held out his arm. The Ringmaster’s gloves were gone. I looked from his arm to his face. Every sensible instinct told me I should hesitate. So, I did. For approximately two seconds.

Then I slipped my hand around his forearm. The muscle beneath my fingers tightened.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

The Ringmaster act returned with a lifted chin, a secretive curve of his mouth, and a mischievous sparkle in his green eyes.

“Behind the curtain, little bird,” he said.

As he guided me away from the benches, I glanced over my shoulder.

Amber gave me two enthusiastic thumbs-up. Catherine was filming, because, of course she was. Sam mouthed, Be safe. Mary clasped both hands beneath her chin and pretended to swoon.

I faced forward again. Damien’s arm remained steady beneath my hand as he led me away from the crowded midway and toward a narrow path beside the old carousel.

Above us, the crows lifted from the rooftops one by one. Black wings crossed the carnival lights. For several seconds, they seemed to follow and then they disappeared into the night.

CHAPTER 9

Damien

Nine fifty-eight.

The pocket watch tucked inside my coat had become less of a timepiece and more of a ritual over the last five seasons.

One of the promises we’d made each other when we reopened Graves Park was that we’d honor the people who built it. Our grandparents ended every Friday with fireworks over Butcher’s Bay.

When I was a kid, people would drag lawn chairs down to the shoreline just to watch them bloom over the lake. The town’s noise ordinance was eleven. So, at exactly ten o’clock every Friday night in October, we put on a show. Some traditions deserved to survive.

“Almost there,” I told Luci.

Luci glanced up at me.

“Almost where?” she asked.

“You’ll see.”

She accepted the mystery with a smile, her hand still looped around my arm as we wandered deeper into the park.

Past the abandoned coaster. Past attractions the public never realized sat this far back on the property. The crowds thinned until the only sounds were distant screams, warped calliope music drifting through the trees, and our footsteps crunching over gravel.

Then it appeared.

The watchtower.

It rose above the tree line, its weathered timbers silhouetted against the October sky. Most people assumed it had been built for the amusement park. It hadn’t.

Long before Graves Park existed, Butcher’s Bay had been a logging and fishing town. The tower overlooked both the lake and the surrounding forest. Decades ago, volunteers climbed it to watch for smoke during dry autumns, spotting forest fires before they reached town. During storm season, fishermen’s families gathered below, waiting for word that boats had made it safely back into the harbor.

When my grandparents bought the land, everyone expected them to tear it down. Instead, Arthur Graves built the midway around it.

“History belongs where people can see it,” he’d said.

So it stayed. When we inherited the park, it was one of the first things we restored.

We put in new stairs, fresh supports, and fastened the iron railings. Everything else could look abandoned, but the tower deserved to stand proudly.

Jack, unfortunately, had discovered it also made an excellent place to impress women. He’d been taking dates up there for weeks.