Page 78 of Queen of Nothing

My mood is sour for the rest of the shift.

It’s a good thing I’m stuck out back for the bulk of it. For some reason, the customer-facing roles are an unofficial upgrade from storeroom work.

I don’t agree.

Customers agitate me a lot more than a snapped fingernail.

Walker pushes a small parcel across the workbench towards me.

“Check that out,” he says, and his face is pinched, but also twisting with a smirk.

I don’t need to wonder what he’s talking about.

The stink hits me before I can even touch the parcel.

“What is that?” I hiss.

I hide my nose and—with a pen—push it back towards him.

“Probably something dead.” Walker considers the address penned onto the label. “Those Appalachians, man. They order the weirdest shit.”

We all live close to the mountain ranges.

But the ones who live in the forests and the woods, away from the towns, are weird.

They come in to pick up their mail, their parcels, since nothing gets delivered that far out. And those are some krums that pebble my skin with their oozing creepiness—like they were born from rituals, from necromancy, and aren’t altogether real.

I eye over the parcel. “I’m not checking it.”

We’re supposed to.

Part of the job.

But I don’t know what’s in that box, and I am not keen on finding out.

Not with just a few minutes left on my shift.

Walker flashes me a smile. “Hey, if it’s bad, we can plant it in Danny’s car.”

I force a smile back.

But while it’s good to know I’m not the only one who hates Danny, the daytime manager, the smile doesn’t reach my eyes.

I don’t remember the last time I really felt anything, or had a genuine smile, not a performative one.

I don’t remember the last time I felt like I was living.

Walker makes jokes, laughs, smiles, for the last few minutes of my shift—then, as it always does when we’re on together, his face falls when my time is up.

He’s cute for a krum.

Cute for a small town.

But nothing like the handsomer faces back home.

‘Pretty for a villager,’ Grandmother Ethel once called me, and it must be so sick and twisted that I actually miss her at the reminder.

I do miss her.