Page 41 of Veil of Blood and Bone

“The authorities are calling it a tremor, or some nonsense. Town didn’t lose power, so it couldn’t have been all that bad.”

He says, like a troll crashing the festival happens every other day. Where’s the gossip? Where’s the paranoia?

“Now that you’re here, Blake, I need you to restock the dried yew berries and start an inventory for the products we lost.”

I slide behind the desk and stash my purse in one of the squeaky drawers, shaking the whole conversation free. But it clings, sticky, like sap on the inside of my head.

“I figured. Do you still want the yew with the brass keys?”

The keys no one remembers the locks for are always a big draw. I love the scent in this place, old paper, beeswax, a faint tang of iron and incense. At least Barnes got something right. The bulbs in the old chandelier overhead flicker like they resent being electric.

The shelves creak under the weight of old books. Thorn & Candle’s got its own rhythm, a heart still beating beneath the floorboards.

Barnes has a small old timey radio blasting with media reaction to the Festival yesterday. With police and public outcry claiming a weather event coupled with unstable grounds.

As though an earthquake was to blame.

Civic consequences will be a long time coming, and I tune out the blur of noise, the voices assuring us everything is going to be okay.

This is stability. This is comfort and claim. I chose the job out of necessity and stayed for the same but even habit can become home if you give it enough time.

I grab the box of inventory to stock and take it to the rear of the shop. Soon muscles warm, movements go mindless, and the knot in my chest relaxes.

Barnes isn’t worried about yesterday because there’s nothing we can do. I need to take a page out of his book.

A faint scruff of boots on wood have me turning and the air shifting. “Hey boss?”

But he’s standing at the front of the closest narrow aisle with our new sign in his hands. He lifts it high. “Hand-painted,” he says with pride lighting his eyes. “Weathered gold leaf on black woodwork.”

Thorn & Candle: Books and Curiosities.

I flash a grin. “It looks great.”

“I’d have gotten it bigger if I knew I’d have insurance money coming.” His grumble echoes, but I’m already rounding the counter.

The dusty burgundy, dark planks, and candelabra gold have been a sanctuary. Yet the wrongness of yesterday permeates this place too. Whether it’s in my head or not.

I take the stone from my pocket, staring at the glittering rune etched into its face, then duck amidst shelves so lofty they bow under the weight of knowledge.

My heart climbs into my throat at a second scuff. We’ve got a customer. But I didn’t hear a bell. “Hello?”

The man’s standing between the stacks. Tall. Still. Too at ease for someone who shouldn’t be here this early. Black T-shirt, black hair catching amber light—and for a beat I can’t tell if he belongs to the living or something older.

I palm the sigil and his gaze drops. I've never seen him before. But the same rune tattooed on his bicep is heavier, more meaningful than coincidence. Black lines etch up his arm and disappear beneath the seams of his tee.

I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.

“You always pull the same rune when you’re about to ruin yourself.”

His first line isn’t a greeting.

It’s intimate, unsettling. And I can’t stop staring at him. His almond-shaped eyes gleam like he knows something I don’t, a smoky gray with flecks of something darker. He’s unreadable.

I shiver, going still, self-preservation kicking in.

Ink-dark hair, long on top and the sides cropped tight, beg for fingers to run through them. He’s lean, graceful, moving like a whisper or a threat.

“Can I help you find something?” I ask.