Page 35 of Carnival of Crows

Nothing.

A little louder.

“Good morning, little bird.”

Her eyelashes fluttered. God was she pretty.

“We’re here, baby,” I told her.

The term of endearment slipped out as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

She didn’t say anything coherent but answered me with a sleepy little, “hmmph.”

“I was going to carry you inside but I can’t if your front door’s locked,” I told her. “And I hope your door’s locked.”

She frowned thoughtfully, as though solving the world’s most difficult puzzle.

“The…” A yawn interrupted her. “hide-a-key…”

“Mhm?” I waited for her to finish her thought.

“under…” she paused again and sighed sleepily.

“Where’s the key, little bird?” I said gently trying to coax the answer out of her.

“Under Jason,” she said.

I blinked. There’s no way I heard her right.

“Jason?” I repeated.

“The gnome.”

She was asleep again before the sentence finished.

I laughed quietly. “Of course.”

I eased the passenger door shut and wandered until I was on the side of the house.

Sure enough, nestled in a raised bed of little sugar pumpkins sat an entire collection of horror-themed garden gnomes.

Freddy, Ghostface, Michael Myers, Pennywise, and, the man of the hour himself, Jason Voorhees.

I crouched beside the hockey-masked little psychopath and lifted the ceramic figure. Covered in soil was a gold key. I picked it up, brushed the dirt off of it and made my way back around her house. I unlocked the front door and then carefully returned the key beneath its terrifying little guardian.

When I returned to the car, Luci hadn’t moved. I slipped one arm beneath her knees, and the other around her back. She melted against me before I’d even lifted her fully from the seat. Instinctively, her arms slid around my neck and she nuzzled into the crook of my neck.

“You smell good,” she murmured.

The front door opened with only the faintest creak and warm air wrapped around us immediately. The house smelled like vanilla candles, old books, and something baking earlier in the day.

“Hallway,” she mumbled.

A sleepy finger pointed vaguely to the right. I followed the narrow hall until I got to the end. Two doors waited, so I looked in the one that was open the most.

“Wow.”

It wasn’t her bedroom and it was so much more than her office. It was a love letter to horror. Vintage movie posters covered the walls and shelves overflowed with worn VHS tapes. A black coffin-shaped bookshelf reached nearly to the ceiling, crammed with novels whose spines had clearly been loved. Developed photographs were pinned to corkboards. Every inch of the room told the story of someone who had turned passion into a career.