Page 110 of Veil of Blood and Bone

At least with Audra resting, she won’t agree with me.

Those stories are bullshit. Love at first sight isn’t genuine. How many times did Mom go out and search for it, her dates a disaster, her attempts leading to heartbreak?

She’d cherished Audra’s father with a fierceness that defied logic. It killed her when he left.

She was never the same when we picked up and moved from Sedona. Her degradation led to madness, and the poison leached into everything she touched,

I don’t want that insanity, and so I’ve never found it.

Jamming a finger to the wonky button on the stove has it preheating to 350°.

Love, sure. Companionship and sex. That kind of thing is necessary, self-care. Justified.

Now?

These three strangers who know me, who claim to know me, are pressing closer. They’re crowding me with their energy and their desire and a dormant part of me reacts to them.

I move and discard cracked eggshells in the trash. Behind me, Audra huffs. I glance over my shoulder in time to watch her snuggle under the blanket.

A fierce wind kicks through the open window and brings with it the rich cold of an oncoming snowstorm.

Mid fall is way too early for this level of snow.

Unnatural.

Why am I not surprised?

I mix the brownies until my arm aches, and more tears burn the waterline of my eyes. The strange prickle of eyes on my skin hits along my spine.

I straighten, scraping the sides of the bowl into a buttered metal tin. “Wren?”

There’s no answer, only another gust of wind rattling through the eaves of the house.

My gaze snaps toward the open sill. Please. Not another troll. Or something equally wretched.

Three attacks in three days is too much to handle.

Within the hour I have brownies, melty in the center, cracked along the edges. Audra and I make a feast of them but none of the men have returned with news. Or for company.

My cell remains curiously dead as hours tick away. Seven, eight. Nine.

Once eleven p.m. rolls around, the drape of attention on my skin is a nuisance, and a chill seeps through cracks like October has attention issues. The window is long since closed, there’s nothing freaky about our view.

The roof of The Hollow Grind is already blanketed in white, and the rest of the road shrouded, snow painting the sins of the town clean.

A spike of adrenaline cuts across my collarbone. Misplaced? Maybe. I hope.

Something is waiting out there.

The storm landed too quickly to be normal. But it sure is charming, with the world taking on the blue tint of a blizzard.

Peaceful, and quiet. Even the hum of tires on the street below slows and muffles with the accumulation.

I turn to Audra, curled in on herself, her curls spread over a pillow.

She and Mom always loved winter. We never had much of it on the west coast, but our slow creep east left us in Tennessee for six months.

Mom would take her outside, Audra insisting kids don’t get cold.