? be your sparrow ?
Deena Spangler had been the city manager of Argentum going on five years now and in that time, she had overseen four Running of the Deer festivals. This was to be the fifth and she was not looking forward to it. Every year, like clockwork, it was her on the phone. She arranged for the police of other precincts to come and direct tourists while praying that they wouldn’t be assholes. She helped organize for traffic and parking. She gathered the correct permits, and soothed the wounded egos of the various vendors and suppliers who got their panties in a twist.
She also—and this, she really deserved a medal for—spent far too much time with George Peters and Nathaniel Cullraven, while the two of them were seething at each other like a pair of overgrown boys, and that was never fun. As little as she cared for George and his folksy Bubba-of-the-North, “I’m just like you, but richer” demeanor, she liked Nathaniel Cullraven a whole lot less. It was exactly as she’d told his son: he had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way.
The whole family was strange, though. Not just small-town strange where any sort of oddity received more comment than it should have, but the type of strange that might make the papers one day—and not in a good way. There was something very much not quite right about the Cullraven family and, unfortunately, since the festival had been started by one of their ancestors, there wasn’t really any politic way of cutting them out.
That’s why we have you to run thingswasn’t a far stretch from the truth. The man was probably parroting his father, which pissed her off, because was more than a regent for an empty throne.
But Nathaniel Cullraven was one of those men who believed that the world had been designed with him in mind. You could see it plain as day in how he talked, whether it was to his staff or to his wife. That woman was the most hunted-looking creature Deena had ever seen, dousing herself in perfume to cover up the smell of drink. Like that had anybody fooled.
Whenever Corrine came into town, which was rarely, Deena found herself looking for traces of bruises or black eyes, even though she knew that a man like Nathaniel was probably too smart for that. Men like him how to wound sight unseen, just like they knew how to make you disappear.
Nathaniel and Corrine mostly kept to themselves, though, when they weren’t at one of their charity fundraisers or attending historical society meetings for other rich people with streets named after them. It was a very clubby set they rolled with and the town was all the happier for their absence. Unfortunately, the same thing couldn’t be said about their children, who had all been homeschooled until they came of age and were then set loose upon the town like furies.
Ben was a lot like his father: cold and severe, with a fondness for hard liquor. Men with tempers shouldn’t drink, and with Ben you could tell it was like throwing gasoline on a fire. He was a lauded architect and had put up buildings all along the western coast, but for whatever reason, he seemed to prefer to stay close to home. Everybody was surprised when he got married to Noelle but nobody was surprised when she went missing a few months later. If the woman wasn’t dead, she was hiding, Deena was sure of it. There was something in that man’s eyes that scared the shit out of her, and she didn’t scare easy.
Odessa was the most outgoing of the three and at times, she was almost sprightly, gleaming with the sort of brightness that hinted at hidden sharpness. Like if you came across the woman in the wrong way, at the wrong time, she might just make you bleed for your trouble. Listening to her talk was equally jarring because she could go from sounding like a pouty teenager to a sullen barmaid, sometimes in the span of a breath. There were people in town who called her slow, but a single look at her face, at those eyes gleaming with a cruel feline intelligence, could have told you she wasn’t. She’d bedded a couple men in town, some married and some not, but never the same one twice, and never seriously.
Caledon, the baby of the family, was possibly the most notorious. He was a flirt, like his sister, but unlike his sister, his conquests had often come running out from the woods crying. Not scared—well, sometimes scared—but mostly just hurt. It was all very dramatic, and apparently he thought so too, because when he had come back from law school, he had come back a very different sort of unavailable: all arrogance and flashing eyes. He was as intense as the rest of his strange, twisted family, but he had a playful deprecation that the rest of them lacked. It wasn’t quite humility, but whatever it was, it gave women ideas that they shouldn’t be having when it came to taming men who couldn’t be tamed.
Deena had shared none of this with Nadine when she had come to visit. For one, the girl seemed anxious enough about her sister (and everything else, Deena privately added). For another, it was town business, and it wasn’t good practice to stir up old dust in front of tourists. Nadine was sweet and pretty, yes, but not the kind of girl anybody looked at twice. Deena figured she’d be safe enough from the viper pit.
She almost hadn’t recognized Nadine when she had walked in with Cal. Seeing the girl in a short little dress on the arm of Cal Cullraven, her first thought had been,There goes another one.
But she had never seen that man look at anyone the way he was looking at that girl. God, if anyone looked atherlike that, she’d jump his bones on the spot.
That’s not far from the truth, you know.
Deena shifted, her thoughts momentarily derailed. Yes, things had changed that night when she had impulsively invited Nadine out for a drink. The girl had been acting strange all night, and then Cal had come in from Killraven Castle, and Rael had also showed up for some reason. And when the evening was over, he had walked her home just like a real gentleman—until he kissed her in a way that was distinctly ungentlemanly.
She shook herself off with a self-conscious frown, circling back to Nadine. Something about that whole situation didn’t quite sit right. The girl had been acting strange for weeks, disappearing out of sight and then texting like she was a prisoner. And then, later, not answering her phone at all. Instead, Deena had received a strange text.
They were far from close and barely friends and Deena didn’t like to pry, but there had been something in Nadine’s face today that reminded her of Corrine.Hunted, she thought.She looks hunted. Which was not a great thing for a human to be during an annual hunting festival.
Nadine didn’t appear to be afraid ofCal—Deena had been looking for that, very closely—but something had rattled her. There were dark shadows under her eyes. She wasn’t sleeping. Neither was Cal.
No, something wasn’t right with that situation, at all.
It made Deena wonder, not for the first time, what was really going on in that house.
She supposed a lot of people wondered that. They certainly seemed to be making bank on tours, despite Helena Peters’s valiant attempts to keep Ravensgate buried beneath the town’s collective memory. It continued to pop up again and again, like an infected sore.
The sun was shining bright as she walked out of the community center, past some of the vintage recipes from an old treasury, and the pictures from Plata County Charter. Helena Peters was out in front of her shop, taping up a sign advertising a discount on bullets and tackle, which was funny, because everyone in town knew she kept the prices artificially inflated year-round, just to make them reasonable now and call it a “sale.”
She headed for the diner, thinking she might get something calorie-laden—maybe that would feed her brain, if Gregg wasn’t being a total dick—and nearly ran into Rael right as he was leaving. His eyes widened in surprised pleasure, twin glints of green. “Deena. Hey.”
She could feel her face heating with a warmth that had nothing to do with the sun overhead and cursed herself for it.Don’t make something out of nothing. He was drunk. You were drunk. End of story. You’re not in high school anymore.
And when youwerein high school, this man was still learning his multiplication tables.
“Hey,” she said back, forcing those inconvenient and unpleasant thoughts out of her head. “Funny thing, I just saw your friend not too long ago. You two traveling in packs now?”
Rael looked confused, and then surprised. “Cal came into town to see you?”
“Well—no. Nadine did. He was with her.”
A wary, guarded look settled over his face. “Uh-huh. And what did they have to say?”
