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Lena.

I see her in flashes I never ask for. Dark hair on my pillow. Bare feet on my porch. A laugh like she knew something sweet about the world I couldn’t see.

Then blood on gravel.

A ring in my palm. A promise turned into a burial.

I shove it down where all dead things belong.

Hyde shuts the door.

The room settles.

Outside, the clubhouse keeps breathing. Motorcycles rumble. Music thumps. Somewhere down the hall, the custom coffin I defiled sits polished and waiting for a corpse with bad taste. Tomorrow, tourists will flood our little Tennessee town for the Grave Prowlers MC annual festival, thinking death is cute when it wears a costume. They’ll drink homemade cider, buy skull candles, race coffin carts down Main Street, bob for fake bones in wash tubs, and cheer while drunk men compete to hand-dig graves the fastest.

They’ll laugh, take pictures and never notice the real graves.

That is how this town works. The dead stay useful. The living stay nosy. And men like me keep the line between them buried deep.

Hyde plants both hands on the table and looks around at every one of us.

“We got a problem,” he says.

My phone buzzes again in my pocket.

I don’t check it.

I look at my president and wait for whatever trouble needs burying next.

Because that is what I do. That is what I am. And whatever soft, sweet, thing the world thinks it can throw at me next, it better learn fast.

Bitter Adams doesn’t fall.

He digs.

Chapter Two

Sweet

First thing I see when I walk into the Grave Prowlers School of the Dead is a deceased fella sitting upright on a motorcycle.

Not laid out peaceful in a polished coffin. No ma’am.

Not tucked in with his hands folded over his chest like he is taking a nap in his Sunday best.

No, this dude is propped on a black Harley in the middle of a funeral chapel, boots on the pegs, gloved hands wired gently around the grips, leather cut stretched over his broad dead shoulders, and a pair of dark sunglasses covering whatever look death left on his face.

A preacher stands beside him reading scripture like this is the most normal thing in Tennessee.

I pause at the back of the chapel with my purse clutched under my arm and my acceptance letter folded in the side pocket. A big black banner hangs over the front doors with silver letters that read RIDE LOW, SLEEP DEEP, BROTHER. The flower arrangements are shaped like skulls, wheels, and one surprisingly beautiful angel made out of white roses holding a tiny bottle of Jack Daniel’s. Somebody has parked three more motorcycles along the side wall like mourners with chrome handlebars.

The dead biker’s motorcycle is set on a wide platform wrapped in black velvet. Under it, carved wood panels make it look like he is already halfway inside a coffin. The front of the platform has his road name painted across it.

RAVEN.

His real name is printed small beneath it, but nobody says that one.

Nobody even looks like they came for that one.