Page 1 of Death Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

CHAPTER 1

SALIMA

The first thing I registered wasn’t the sound. It was the way my skin went tight, like my body had decided danger lurked before my brain caught up.

Then the screams hit.

They cut straight through the basement suite, through the hum of my laptop that I never bothered to shut off, through the half-dream I’d been having where nothing ever happened and nobody needed anything from me.

I shot upright in bed and immediately regretted it. My head throbbed like I’d been hit with a frying pan. Great. The tincture I’d taken to force myself to sleep must have worked a little too well.

Another cry. Closer this time.

I flung my legs over the side of the bed, bare feet finding the cold floor. My suite always ran cooler than the rest of the house. Mrs. Harriet insisted the heat “was perfectly fine,” which meant she kept it at a temperature suited for a woman who wore cardigans like armor.

A heavy thud sounded overhead, followed by muffled footsteps. Even Harriet was up.

That alone made my stomach drop.

I grabbed my phone off the nightstand. Zero notifications, which meant this wasn’t a normal supernatural flare the council had seen coming. When the magic board went off, my phone usually lit up with a warning before I could blink.

I shoved my arms into the bathrobe hanging on the hook by the door, the fabric twisting over the tattoos on my forearms. I didn’t stop to find shoes. I didn’t stop to think. I just moved.

The back door of the basement suite opened to the yard. Harriet’s rose bushes framed the narrow path as if they were trying to be polite about the fact that her yard was not meant for panicked exits. I pushed through anyway.

Cold air slapped me awake. The night wasn’t fully night anymore. That in-between hour when the sky looked bruised and the streetlights didn’t know if they should stay on.

And the street was chaos.

People poured down Beechward Crescent in a surge of bodies, some in pajamas, some in coats thrown over bare legs, some clutching dogs that barked as if their lungs were going to give out. A kid cried. A man shouted for someone named Lisa. A car horn blared, long and desperate.

The smell hit next. Smoke, maybe. Or something scorched. Underneath it, that coppery tang I associated with blood and bad decisions.

I stepped onto the sidewalk and immediately had to grab the fence post to keep from being knocked over.

“Move!” someone yelled, shoulder-checking past me.

Another person ran by with a grocery bag like it contained the last piece of sanity in town.

Nobody looked back.

Which meant whatever they were running from was behind them.

My chest tightened. The healer part of me wanted to grab the closest person and ask what happened. The other part of me, the part I kept buried under sarcasm and locked doors, already knew this wasn’t a gas leak or a fire.

This was fear.

I pivoted, scanning the crowd.

“Hey!” I shouted, but my voice got swallowed by the panic. “What’s going on?”

A woman stumbled toward me, eyes wide, face pale. She clutched her arm as if she’d hurt it.

“Don’t go that way,” she gasped.

“That way is my way,” I snapped, already stepping forward. “What did you see?”

Her gaze flicked past my shoulder, and her expression changed. Not fear anymore. Pure horror.