Page 4 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Behind us, the ghost of the town watches from the high point of Wentworth Street. The listing, sharp points of a wrought iron fence separate the sidewalk from the hillside park, and the flat spot below that floods in the spring.

Nightshade Hollow puts on the festival annually with booths, games, and a long boat race. It’s an excuse for white men who are bored with their lives to claim their Viking heritage that they may or may not have, and drink beer. Lots of beer.

It’s LARPING without calling it LARPING, the same way a man wearing a football jersey while watching an hours long game is actually cosplay.

Where is the magic?

My chill deepens.

Where is the lifeforce of this entire damn town? Is it hidden in the forest, a path or a bog or a change in terrain hiding historic markers?

It’s definitely not in the updated cement monstrosity of a pavilion like Athena’s temple. Right now it’s filled with picnic tables and food vendors, jostling lines snaking out like varicose veins.

I skid to a stop, angling Audra around the crowds.

“One hundred points if you get the woman and her dog.” She's breathless for an entirely different reason when she indicates with her book at our next victim.

Unlike the elderly retiree, the woman and her poodle both have the same clipped pace. The woman saunters her hips a bit more than the immaculately manicured poodle’s butt.

I groan. “No. No more.”

“Okay, two hundred,” she adds. "Final offer."

I pull the chair to a stop when the sidewalks fill. Too many people mill around, too much laughter. The clouds part, and a steely cut of sunlight clips the orange edges of the stubborn maple leaves.

My head spins.

It might be the most sun we get today but the air is crisp. The heat of summer broke a while ago, and as the trees change, the world holds a hint of a bite to it.

Midnight feathers ruffle and stir the foliage. The raven’s beady eyes meet mine, the bird tilting its head to the side to watch my struggle in silence.

Ravens and crows always circle this town that doesn’t know it’s already dead. The birds understand what the rest of us labor to figure out.

I mince forward—what use is a fucking motorized wheelchair without a working motor? —and sidestep a burly dude with a beer gut poking out over his weapons belt.

He bares his teeth to tell me off, then notices my cleavage, which puts a stop to the snarl.

“Get back to your story, Audra,” I murmur, hunching, which only pushes the girls closer together.

Ignore him.

"You have to admit it's an epic tale. Whoever wrote this knows how to keep a person on their toes."

"Some fiction is a work of art," I say.

The vendor tents are right in front of us now. Mine is the farthest from the asphalt lot or street parking on Wentworth, of course, and tucked against the trees ringing the park.

They’ve stuffed us between the sewing club selling crocheted dreamcatchers and macrame bikinis on the left, and Mitzi Jones and her informational brochures for everything Nightshade Hollow on the right.

Audra grits her teeth. I know it without looking at her, from the way her shoulders go tense and how the frail line of her leg bobs once before falling still again.

Pain. Do I have ibuprofen? No pockets in this getup, but I should have some in the first aid kit at the tent.

She pulls open the book, the journal, whatever it was mom collected, and reads, “In blinding rage, Odin ripped her wings from her body. He imprisoned her until he brewed up a worthy punishment for her act of rebellion.”

He could try my life, if Odin wanted to talk about discipline and karma.

Ah, shit, that’s not fair. Guilt ate away at the inside of my ribs and mottled them the way it always does. When I glance at the maple tree again, my progress halted to a crawl by the throng, the raven is gone.