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tmkutawrites · 7 months

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A COMMON BOND - FREE SAMPLE!

This is a free sample of my debut lesbian romance novella, A Common Bond, which comes out November 7, 2023. Please enjoy :)

Note: There may/will be some typos in this sample. We like that, it confuses the Overlords of Zon so they don't strike me for contract infringement. I promise in the final, purchased version the typos have been fixed :)

Now, on with the sample!

RFI 1

To: Josie Basurto (May 3, 5:34PM)

From: Carneline Triana

Subject: Site Visit for Mobilization

Josie,

I will be on site with my management team most of Monday morning. I’m sure we will run into each other at some point.

Carneline

***

From: Josie Basurto (May 3, 5:39PM)

To: Carneline Triana

Subject: RE: Site Visit for Mobilization

Looking forward to it!

***

Carneline had known Clover Hill’s old town hall was in bad shape from the bid documents. On her walkthrough with Rio a few weeks ago, even more suspicions had been raised. But now, the disintegrating chunk of limestone that had fallen off the cornice and into her hand confirmed it: she was going to be spending a lot more time in Clover Hill than she had initially planned. “Jesus Christ.”

“I’ve never seen limestone this bad,” Bruno murmured. Oceanic’s chief masonry superintendent carefully set the piece of stone down on the scaffold. “This whole cornice is going to have to be checked.”

Checking the structural integrity of a city block’s worth of limestone was definitely not covered in their contract. Carneline chewed on the inside corner of her mouth as she ran a hand across the sugaring stone and watched millennia-old sand crumble into her palm. “Is this the only bad news?”

“Oh no,” Bruno said in a voice far too cheery for her liking as he pushed to his feet. “This mortar is definitely hot.”

Asbestos remediation was also definitely not in their contract.

She cast a desperate glance along the joints. “Are you sure?”

“Yup.” He pointed to an area where the mortar was exposed. “Look close. You can see the fibers.”

Carneline looked and, sure enough, there were the telltale threads amongst the cement, lime, and sand. Fuck. “Does Rio know?”

Bruno shook his head.

She snapped a couple of photos on her phone and turned for the scaffold stair. “Are xe still documenting in the lobby?”

“I think so.”

“Good. I’ll send xem up.”

The metal stairs squeaked as Carneline made her way down them, eyeing the brick and stone of the Romanesque Revival building with far more suspicion than before. The facade clearly hadn’t been washed in two decades. The window sills were covered in black atmospheric discoloration, and the blue-green haze of cupric staining streaked down major crevices. On the brick and stone walls, there were long stretches of jointing completely devoid of mortar and one of the brackets was missing entirely.

She stopped two decks down and took a moment to admire the town. This was Oceanic’s first project this far south. They mostly stuck to projects in Baymill, but her dad had wanted to expand into other markets, so here she was forty feet in the air above a town she could see the other side of from the scaffold. The five-story town hall towered over most of the rest of the buildings, but fit in perfectly amongst the clusters of various historic structures downtown. Its renovation was long overdue, but Carneline hoped Clover Hill would find it worth it in the end.

From her perch, she could see the expanse of the park, with its quaint little gazebo and beautifully kept grounds. A bit farther she spied the currently unlit marquee of an old movie theater and a neon sign belonging to local diner. It was a beautiful town, and as much as she could lean on the scaffold railing and look out over the little town covered in the fresh leaves of spring for hours, she had a job to do.

She tore herself away from the view and continued down the scaffold to the lobby. The first time she’d seen it, Carneline had been struck almost speechless by the beauty of its wrought iron doors, scagliola-clad pilasters, and massive crystal chandelier. Now it barely registered. She hurried through the plywood-covered lobby until she found her assistant project manager sprawled indelicately across the floor.

Rio was an acquired taste Carneline wasn’t quite sure she had acquired yet; mildly competent, incredibly anxious, and graced with the aggravating tendency to lose the plot at the slightest provocation. Still, xe tried, which was more than Carneline could say of half of Oceanic’s field staff.

“Good morning, Rio.”

Rio startled, and practically levitated off the floor in a cloud of dust almost definitely from the plaster demo. Xe was absolutely covered in the stuff, and Rio hurriedly stuffed xemself back into xyr gloves and sheepishly brushed down xyr front. “Good—good morning, Carneline. I—I didn’t know you were on site.”

“I was walking the cornice with Bruno.”

“Oh.”

“How is it going down here?”

Xe grimaced and gestured at the ground. “It’s—uh. The stone’s really cracked.”

Bits of torn painter’s tape crawled across the marble below them like blown blue cherry blossom petals. Carneline crouched, and Rio angled the beam of xyr flashlight so she could see the spidery lines coursing through. Great. “These are going to shatter the second Bruno tries to take them out.”

“That’s what he said, too.”

Another expensive change order for the growing pile, I suppose. She stood, dreading the prospect of the unending raft of paperwork in her future. “I’ll speak with the NCK team. Have you been up to the cornice yet?”

Rio shook xyr head.

“When you are done down here, I need you to go up and document everything before we touch it. Do you have your profile gauges with you?”

“They’re in my car.”

“Good. Bruno will be up there for a little bit. Find…” She hedged, thinking of the worn-down status of the cornice. “Find the least broken stone and take a profile.”

Xe nodded. “Okay.”

“And wear an N95. The mortar is hot and everything up there is crumbling.”

Rio’s dark eyes got comically wide behind xyr safety glasses. “Oh shit.”

Her sentiments exactly. “Do you have any questions?” Xe shook xyr head again. “Alright. Call me if something comes up.”

“Will do!”

Carneline left Rio to xyr marble documentation and slipped out the west entrance to find the jobsite trailer. When she pulled the door open, she found Josie bent over the conference table—which was really just four folding tables pushed together in the center of the room—studying the reference drawings.

“Good morning,” she greeted as the door snapped shut behind her.

“Good morning,” Josie replied as she turned the page of the drawings. “Headed out? Help yourself to some coffee before you leave.”

Carneline startled at the kind, but unexpected offer. “Oh. Thank you.”

“To-go cups are on top of the fridge.”

“I actually don’t drink hot coffee,” she replied sheepishly.

“Don’t drink hot coffee?” Josie asked, looking up from her drawings with a grin that Carneline had discovered seemed permanently glued to her face. “Don’t tell me…you’re like Baylee and only drink cold brew.”

Carneline gave an awkward little laugh, not liking the familiarity with which Josie talked to her about her sister. People always did that, acted like they knew her because they knew her sister or father. Another one of the ‘perks’ of a family business. “Guilty as charged.”

“Well, I’m one step ahead of you. There’s cold brew in the fridge.”

The offer was tempting. Carneline considered for a moment, but finally decided against it. If she got caught in traffic, which was likely considering the time, she would definitely have to stop and pee. “Not today. I have to drive back to Baymill after this, but thank you.”

“Any time.”

Josie finally straightened up fully and leaned casually on the white plastic folding table, hooking her thumbs into her jeans. She was an unreasonably attractive figure, taller than Carneline, with kind brown eyes and a sharp fade that put every short-haired worker on the site to shame. In some universe she might have been Carneline’s type—if Josie hadn’t worked for the general contractor paying them to fix Clover Hill’s historic town hall.

Carneline hedged. “I…actually wanted to talk to you about something.”

Josie’s voice remained impressively neutral. “Oh?”

“Yes…” She pulled her phone out of her pocket. “We have some problems.”

“Define ‘problems.’”

“That depends, do you want the least expensive issue or most expensive issue first?”

“Least expensive.” Josie flashed a luminous smile. “Warm me up.”

Carneline pulled up the photos she had taken of the floor and passed her phone over for her to see. “The marble in the foyer is full of cracks. It’s going to shatter when we try to take it out.”

“Architects were ridiculous to think we could salvage the whole floor,” Josie said with a disbelieving scoff. “A-hundred-and-twenty-year-old marble doesn’t come up like that.”

“No, it does not,” Carneline confirmed.

Josie handed her phone back, her face suddenly all business. The shift was jarring, to say the least. “How much is this going to cost?”

“I can’t say for certain, but it will be a decent amount.”

Josie sighed. “Great. You submitted replacement marble, right?”

“A few weeks ago.”

Josie ran a hand through her hair. “Submit an RFI and we’ll see what the architects have to say.”

“Was planning to.”

“Thanks.” She took a sip from a nearby thermos. “What’s the bigger, badder bill?”

Carneline gave Josie a significant look. “Have you been up to the cornice?”

“Recently?”

“Yes.”

“I walked it at the beginning,” she replied with a frown. “Is there something wrong with it?”

If only. “The mortar’s full of asbestos and the stone is crumbling. A piece fell off in my hand.”

Josie inhaled in shock. “Oh fuck.”

“I don’t want anyone from my crew touching it until the town knows.”

“Understandable. Do you think it’s going to need to be replaced?”

Carneline glanced around the trailer to make sure they were alone. “Off the record, I think you might want to figure out where Clover Hill has a million dollars stashed for a rainy day.”

“It’s that bad?”

“The building is a hundred and twenty years old,” she said with a shrug. “I’m surprised it lasted this long.”

Josie’s face went grim. “Got it. Thanks for the heads up.”

“Not a problem.” She hesitated, not sure if Josie could handle a third thing on her plate. “There is…one more thing?”

“If there’s a massive structural issue that means we need to evacuate the building, please turn around and leave now,” Josie joked weakly. “Let me die in the collapsed building in peaceful ignorance.”

Carneline gave a dismissive snort. “Nothing so drastic.”

Josie brightened considerably. “Great! What’s up?”

“You need to have someone go into the main hall and put down sweeping compound. Rio’s rolling around on the floor in there looking like the Ghost of Christmas Past. To say nothing of the silica hazard.”

Josie was already grabbing her hard hat off the table. “I’ll do it myself.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

“See you then!” Josie trotted off out the door, Carneline close behind her.

She checked her watch: three-o’clock. Plenty of time to make it back to the city without hitting traffic. She pulled her hard hat off the second she hit the parking lot, shaking her curly red hair out so she could tie it back up once in the car. She’d get out of town, update her dad on the way home, then spend a quiet night with her plants before she had to go to bed.

Her phone rang. The song barely got four notes in before she picked up. “You’re psychic. I was just about to call you.”

“Are you done at Clover Hill?” Warren Triana asked gruffly.

“About to head home now, just have to throw my stuff in the ba—” She stopped dead a few paces from her trunk, eyes taking in the noticeable sink to her right rear bumper. “Fuck.”

Her father’s business tone instantly switched to fatherly concern. “What? What is it?”

She scowled and threw her hard hat in the back a tad more aggressively than was necessary. “It’s nothing,” she sighed. “I just have a flat.”

[END RFI 1]

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#clover hill romance #sapphic romance #lesbian romance #debut author #new author #book sample #romance novella #romance writer

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scifrey · 7 months

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The Untold Tale book one of The Accidental Turn Series

Fandom: Original Fic Pairings: M/F & M/M Genre: Romantasy (Romance & Fantasy), Quest Narrative, Epic Fantasy, Portal Fantasy Warnings: Off-page SA, light dub-con, and on-page consensual sexuality. Please curate your experience accordingly.

Forsyth Turn is not a hero. That's his older brother's job, and Kintyre is nothing if not legendary. However, when a raid on the kingdom's worst criminal results in the rescue of a baffling woman, oddly named and even more oddly mannered, Forsyth finds his quaint, sedentary life turned on its head.

Dragged reluctantly into a quest he never expected, and fighting villains that even his brother has never bested, Forsyth is forced to confront his own self-shame and the demons that come with always being second-best. And when he finally realizes where Pip came from and why she's here, he'll be forced to question not only his place in the world, but the very meaning of his own existence.

New Chapters Drop Tuesdays on Wattpad and AO3.

Read on Wattpad | Read on AO3 | Buy Paperback or eBook (coming 2024) | Read chapter one below

The Sigil that Never Fades The Quill that Never Dulls The Cup that Never Runs Dry The Parchment that Never Fills The Blade that Never Fails The Desk that Never Rots The Spirit that Never Lies With these tools our world was born, And with them can be broken. Or born again.

I am upstairs preparing for bed when I catch sight of the approaching cart and its cargo through the thick glass of my window, and I assume the body in the back is a corpse, brought to me for study and then burial. But no one handles a corpse with such care; the driver is directing the horse to travel slowly, avoiding each hole in the dirt road. They also do not stop to pick up a healer for a corpse. Yet Mother Mouth is in the back, hunched as best she is able over the blanket-wrapped body.

By the time I make it down the grand staircase to the foyer, three of my Men are lifting the bundle from the cart with careful concern. I gesture to the threshold, and they lower it onto my front step. As soon as they set the body down, I can see that my assumption was correct.

It is a young woman.

And she is still alive. But only barely. I contain my shudder of revulsion, clamping my teeth down hard on my tongue to keep from gagging. I think I am only successful because I’ve seen this sort of thing before.

Bootknife has flayed her very prettily.

Artistic tendrils of bloody ivy are torn into the vellum of the young woman’s flesh. I can only see a little of the pattern, however, from between the blanket’s folds. Bootknife has written spells and agony into the muscle he’s carved, into the wounds left by the strips he fileted from her. It’s as detailed as any woodcarving for a stamp—some deep; some wide and shallow; some the merest scrape, only a layer or two of skin absent. Disgustingly beautiful. But it is not art.

It is torture.

She is unconscious. A blessing. I can’t imagine how much the young woman must have been screaming before my Men forced poppy milk down her throat. Well, I suppose I can imagine it—I have seen quite enough of Bootknife’s handiwork to be able to envision her pain. What I mean is that I do not want to imagine it. I can’t bear the thought of the sounds that must have ripped her throat bloody.

She is as wrapped in rough blankets as she can be with such extensive injuries to her back. The blankets are filthy and crusted with blood and other bodily fluids, which means they were probably the only protection against the chill spring morning that her rescuers could find. I clench my hands into fists and jam them into the pockets of my house robe to keep from rushing forward and helping. A Chipping Master does not dirty his hands in labor. I hear the invective in my father’s hateful voice in my head, and I take great pleasure in telling it to go drown itself.

All the same, I stay back. I would only be in the way.

Mother Mouth assesses the young woman’s injuries, and when she is done, we ensure together that there are no Words of Tracing carved into the victim’s skin.

It would not do to give our enemies such advantageous leverage as to lead them here. To the unknowing, my home appears to be no more than the manor of silly, crumpled Forsyth Turn, younger brother to the great hero Kintyre and a man quite stodgily attached to his library. And those on the outside must remain unknowing. Even the slightest slip would bring the Viceroy down on my Chipping, and I will not have the people under my care endangered.

I do not bother to ask why my Men brought the woman to me and not to the king; if the king had the security and ability to protect himself and those in his charge from the Viceroy, he would never have secretly employed me as his Shadow Hand.

There is nowhere safer for the injured visitor than Turn Hall. Not even Kingskeep.

Assessment done, they take the woman inside. I catch the attention of my butler and order a wing of my home that I have not entered in years be opened specifically for my surprise guest.

It has been a long time since there’s been a need for lady’s chambers in Turn Hall. They have remained shut since my mother’s death. It has been even longer still since the need for a lady’s maid; my staff are nearly all men. This is not out of preference, but because there are no women in my household who require women servants, and it made sense to leave the town’s supply of employable young misses for houses where they were more needed.

I am going to have to find a woman. Blast.

We linger in the hallway outside the room long enough for servants to strip the dusty bed linens and replace them with fresh. I dismiss my Men to write up their debriefing reports, and then help Mother Mouth lay the young lady on the bed myself. The only way we figure she will be comfortable is belly-down, her face propped to the side with a feather pillow.

Once she is installed on the bed, I step back into a corner to remain out of the way. Mother Mouth takes a short breather—she is no longer young; her skin is papery thin and scored with laughter lines, but still glows with vitality—and all this rushing and lifting has winded her. She then ties her silver-streaked hair back and begins the careful work of spreading tinctures and ointments, mixing potions meant to neutralize spells and remove pain before she starts cutting away, with gentle knife work, the meat that has rotted from neglect.

My staff moves around them in an orchestrated dance, fetching lamps and candles and water in an ewer; bringing in, using, and then removing brooms and cleaning supplies; opening windows and laying a fire in the hearth. I do as I always do, what I am best at doing: I observe.

When Mother Mouth finally sits back, a smear of blood on her forehead where she pushed a stray tendril of hair out of her face, I offer her a handkerchief. It is russet, the color associated with House Turn, my family. She takes it graciously, though she wrinkles her nose at the fineness of the fabric.

“We’ve had this discussion before,” she says. “Good silk should be saved for dressing wounds, and rough cotton for wiping faces and noses.”

“I agree, Mother,” I allow, a smile sitting in the corner of my mouth and trying so very hard to stretch into the rest of it. “However, there are expectations at court, and when one’s work relies on creating a good impression, the silk must be used for snot.”

“And that’s why I’ve no use for court.”

Mother Mouth rises and goes to the bag of medicines she left on the bedside table. She pulls out phials and jars, each neatly labeled in her spiky hand. She is leaving behind tinctures and syrups to add to my young visitor’s wine when she wakes in pain, along with bandages and ointments enough to cover the whole of the vicious patterns on her back several times over.

“Right, then, my boy,” Mother Mouth says, standing and cleaning her bloody hands at the washstand. “Let the lass sleep it through, and I’ll return in the morning to assess her healing. I tell you, I wouldn’t want to be her right now. Keep her asleep if you’re able, lad. And send for me at once should she turn feverish or her wounds begin to fester and reek,” she finishes.

“No stitches?” Mother Mouth has sewn each of my Men up at one point or another, myself included. There are none among the Shadow’s Men who do not bear the gratefully earned signature of her needle. It seems odd now that she is not doing the same for our guest.

“No,” Mother Mouth agrees. “The slices that remain open are shallow. Where they are also narrow, there is no need. Where they are wide... ” She shrugs. “I could not make the skin meet over the exposed muscle without tearing it. The rest of the deep cuts have begun to scar already. Better to cover it over with the salve, and with Words, and leave it to nature.”

I nod, well used to this particular healer’s pointed and honest instructions—she is the best within an hour’s ride from my keep, and thus my preferred healer. My Men and I call her Mother Mouth because of her bluntness, her willingness to bully us verbally into obeying her commands, and we always do so with a smile, and to her face. She has another name, but has long since gamely resigned herself to this one.

“I will reapply both salve and spells personally when it is t-t-time,” I promise.

“Oh now,” Mother Mouth scolds playfully. “None of that, my boy. No need to be nervous. It’s just a woman and a bit of blood.”

“I’m not ne-nervous of her,” I say.

She pats my arm. “Of course not. You’re a good boy, Master Turn.”

I pretend to bristle at the juvenile endearment, but it secretly pleases me. Mother Mouth has known me my entire life. She pulled both my elder brother and I from our mother. She set my broken arm when Kintyre dared me to climb an orchard tree to the top. She put her hands into my brother’s guts after his first run-in with a goblin brigade and held them in place until the Words of Healing could take hold. She closed my mother’s eyes after a fever took the Lady Turn away. She called my father’s corpse a silly shit while she cleaned it the day he drank himself into a tumble down the foyer staircase and into his own grave. She has more than earned the right to call me her “good boy,” should she so choose. And I always do my best to live up to it.

Mother Mouth packs her small case and takes her leave. When my staff has finished ferrying ewers of both hot and cool water, wine, a modest bowl of broth, fresh candles, towels, my mother’s newly cleaned dressing robe, my mother’s slippers, and my portable writing desk into the room, I dismiss them to their suppers.

One last young lady lingers at the door, and she must be freshly arrived for she does not wear russet livery. I do not know her, and she seems eager to be of help, which is extremely encouraging. She is slim, her hands rough and callused, giving her the appearance of one who looks like she works hard, and her apron is very starched. She resembles Cook—same rigidly marshaled brown hair, same firm lines around her eyes, very competent and very discreet. She waits silently on the threshold, obviously waiting for me to speak first.

“Hello,” I say. “Yes?”

“Sir,” she says and bobs a curtsy. “My mother sent for me when she heard you had a lady guest, sir. Figured you’d want a girl in, sir.”

“Very good of her to take the initiative. Well come, and well stayed.” I take a moment to go to my portable desk and scribble upon a fresh piece of paper. When the ink is dry, I fold up the note. “Your name, miss?” I ask.

“Neris, sir.”

“Can you read, Neris?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

“Excellent. Here.” I hold out my hand. In it are a letter and a small sack of gold coins. She takes both.

“I would like you to return to your usual household with this and give both to your mistress. The envelope contains an apology letter to your employer, and this should be enough coin to replace the wages she’s already paid you this week. I would have you here until you are no longer needed at Turn Hall. And I will pay double whatever your current employer offers. Is that acceptable?”

She smiles, and there must be her father, for Cook’s face does not have such fetching dimples. “Oh, yes sir!”

“And I invite you to move your things into the Hall come morning. Unless you have another billet you prefer?” I ask. She shakes her head. “Very well. Ask your mother for Turn-russet livery when you return, and we’ll get you set up in the maid’s quarters. Though, ah, you may be alone there.”

“I’m not afraid of the dark and the quiet, Master Turn,” she says, dropping a curtsy and vanishing in that lovely discreet way of lady’s maids the world over. It’s a vastly underprized skill.

My new guest and I are now alone.

My skin prickles at the thought of being trapped in a room with a person I know so very little about—I am not used to being the one on poor footing—and I go to the window to try to relieve the pressing sense of claustrophobia. It is silly; she is unconscious and, thanks to the poppy milk, will remain so for a good long while. I have nothing to fear from her.

Still. She is an unknown factor, and I do not like those in the least.

There is a reason I’m the king’s Shadow Hand. Who better for a spymaster than the man who becomes physically agitated when he feels ignorant?

The sky outside has turned an ashy blue. Rain is on the horizon, and the breeze is picking up accordingly. I open the sash just enough to allow in the fresh wet air, but not enough for raindrops when they finally start to fall. The puff of breeze against my chest, fluttering my shirt and Turn-russet robe, gives me a false sense of safety—I have an exit if I need one.

The breeze also flutters the heavy velvet drapes. Dust puffs out of the folds and onto the wooden floor just shy of the bed. My mother was of House Sheil, and so much of the décor in her chambers is a deep, dark purple—the throw rugs, the comfortable upholstered chairs by the hearth, the bedding, all of it is patterned with curling designs of lilac and lavender and deepest indigo. It has been years, perhaps a whole decade, since my father had Mother’s chambers shut up. I suddenly realize how much I have missed purple.

The cloud cover is blocking so much of the sun that the room has become gloomy, and the details of the woman hard to catch. I make a second circuit for candles, which I light with a twig from the small fire in the hearth. Then I set the kettle Cook left on the mantelpiece onto the hook attached to the flume and wait for it to boil. A hot drink on a gray day is always a comfort, and the air in my mother’s chambers is dry from being shut up for so long, so the steam will do us both some good.

Now to take care of this silly fear; I will observe the woman and decipher what I can of her, so that the anxiousness can finally dissipate long enough for me to get some paperwork done. I pull one of the chairs that stand before the fireplace over to the bedside, and settle into the lush padding. Then I look.

The first thing that registers is that she is in pain, despite the sleep brought on by the poppy milk. It is obvious by the creases in her forehead and the set of her jaw. Her hair is matted with sweat and other fluids that I do not wish to consider closely. Perhaps I dismissed Neris too hastily—my guest could certainly do with a wash, if only for her own comfort. But I am not certain that it would not have caused her more agony, so perhaps it is best to wait until the young woman is awake and aware and able to help the maid.

Beyond that, I have no concept of who she is or where she may be from. Any clues that might have come from her clothing were lost when Bootknife cut them off her. Her ears are pierced, but there are no jewels from which to read her origins or history, no rings, no signets, no torques. How galling!

Her features resemble those of no family I know, which is impressive, as I have a very good head for faces. Her mouth is a small moue of pain, neither generous of plumpness nor waspish or thin. She has lines around the corners that indicate that she laughs heartily and frequently. Her cheeks are higher than I am used to and smooth, sprinkled with freckles. Her skin is dusky in tone, quite similar to the color possessed by the outdoor laborers from the Flung Isles after a season’s work, but not so reddish. Hers is closer to the hue of well-cared for honeywood, made even more yellow in tone by the Sheil-purple of the blankets surrounding her. Her nose is short, adorable in a way that many women curse for being too childish looking. Her lashes are dark, and her eyes sweep upward at the outer edges.

I can tell by the curve of her exposed back, where it swells into her hips and the sides of her breasts, that she’s never starved, never seen a rough harvest or overlong winter.

In summary, she must be a well-off merchant’s daughter, and quite possibly yet another merchant’s wife. I would say a nobleman’s, but she cannot be the child of any nobleman I know from court, legitimate or not.

She could be from another, distant kingdom beyond the borders of Hain, but I have met much of the nobility from Urland and Gadot, as well as a few from Brystal, and she does not bear the trademark of any house that I know; her skin is either too light or too dark, her eyes too round or not round enough, her nose too snubbed or too high, her chin too round.

In short, the collection of her features does not come together to spell out her parentage.

Infuriating.

And fantastic. I am intrigued, instantly. How long has it been since I have been gifted with such a mystery? And that she was imprisoned by the Viceroy for so long without my knowing he had kidnapped anyone... was holding anyone at all. It was only an accident of circumstance that she was even rescued, that I even know she exists. The Viceroy had been raiding magical archives and libraries the world over, and when I had put together the picture of the sorts of tomes he was stealing, I ordered my Men to raid and retrieve. That they had also found her was sheer coincidence.

At least, I believe it is an accident. I cannot imagine any person would allow such agony to befall them for the sake of gaining my pity and entrance to my Hall. Spies usually do not bleed.

I cannot recall the last time something like this happened accidentally in my work, and my heart flutters against my ribs.

The entire situation is completely astounding. Magnetic. Incredible. And so impotently frustrating that I cannot know more, cannot have my curiosity slaked immediately. I wish she were awake to answer my many questions.

The only thing I can know for sure is that the Viceroy wanted something from her, and she refused to give it to him. I cannot guess what it might have been, for he has the power to take anything he wants—even her, had he so chosen. Mother Mouth did not say anything about signs of a violation, but perhaps she wanted to be delicate while my staff was in the room and means to discuss it with me in the morning. The woman in my mother’s bed is pretty enough; the Viceroy likes the pretty ones.

To resist the Viceroy for as long as this woman did, to keep her secrets for so many days that the pattern on her back had the time to grow so complex, must have taken real strength of spirit. As much as she must have been screaming, she’d never told him what it was he sought to learn.

I admire her greatly all of a sudden. There are very few who can keep secrets behind their teeth when Bootknife’s art is in their flesh.

That makes her beautiful to me.

It does not matter how her features are arranged; her will is strong. And, as it was Bootknife she was resisting, I can hope that her morals are also true. I allow myself to follow the soft curve of her pain-paled cheek with my eyes, the delicate protrusion of the tendons in her neck, the place where her breast presses into the blankets and is hidden under her body. I am struck with a sudden swelling of attraction, and I stomp it back viciously.

No. A woman as remarkable as this, unexpectedly arriving at Turn Hall? There is only one explanation—she is for Kintyre. Women like this are always for Kintyre.

The kettle over-boils. Water foams into the fire with an indignant hiss, bringing me back to gloomy reality, and I make myself a pot of tea. Then I settle back into my chair, my portable desk on my lap and an afternoon’s worth of tedious paperwork stacked on its surface.

The only sounds to break the silence are the sputtering of the candles arrayed around the room, the slow tap of the rain just beginning to fall against the roof of the manor, and the pained, almost inaudible whimpers my guest exhales with each labored breath.

I dip my quill into my ink pot and add the scratch of a nib on parchment to the quiet symphony of pain.

❧✍❧

“Oh,” the woman whispers, dry lips rasping against the silk pillow casing. “It’s you.”

I have fallen asleep in my chair, and the quiet murmur of her voice yanks me back to wakefulness so quickly that my portable desk clatters to the floor. Ink sprays across the wood and splashes over the Sheil-purple rug beside the bed. I wince. Oh, Mother’s rug! It will take my staff a terrible amount of scrubbing to clean it.

There is nothing I can do about it at the moment, so I right the pot, step around the spreading puddle and toppled papers, and go to her side.

“Greetings,” I say. “Water?”

I’m not certain how I’ll get the cup to her lips without spilling all over the pillow or forcing her to sit up, which will be a special new agony in and of itself.

She nods and presses upward on her hands, grimacing but holding herself there until I manage to tip the earthenware cup against her mouth. She sips slowly, grunting as her arms tremble. When the water is gone, she flops back down into the pillow and doesn’t hold back the yelp that such an action causes. It makes anger froth beneath the surface of my own skin, to realize that she has learned how to move with such injuries in order to drink. That Bootknife must have made her learn.

And that I have been unable to spare her that pain in Turn Hall. I’ve failed my first task as her guardian already.

She shivers all over, and my first instinct is to cover her snugly with the blanket. But that would irritate her wounds and allow fibers into the open ones, so instead I put the kettle back on the hook, stoke the fire back to life, and close the windows. Air that was fresh and crisp at sunset has become biting.

She watches it all with eyes that are a very normal, boring shade of muddy green, yet sparkle with keen observation. As I first noted, they are ever so slightly cat-like, turned up at the outside in a manner that I have never seen; though, it is even more pronounced with her eyes open. I have never been on the receiving end of such an intent gaze before.

She watches the same way that I watch.

I fidget until the kettle hisses, welcoming the excuse to duck out from under her odd gaze. As I pour the boiling water into the bowl my staff has left beside the ewer, mixing in the room temperature water until the heat is bearable, I cannot help but ponder on the strangeness of the young woman’s eyes.

Perhaps it is about her eyes... ? I recall that the Viceroy has a sickeningly obsessive fascination with Sir Bevel, who is plain but has eyes such a dark blue that they are an anomaly. The Viceroy often threatens to pluck them out and have them rosined for a cloak brooch. It would be very much like him to pick this woman simply because of the unique almond-shape of her eyes. But, then again, that makes no sense at all, for what would Bootknife have tortured her for if the Viceroy had only wanted to collect—possibly extract—a piece of her?

This cyclone of reasoning is near to making me dizzy. Instead of dwelling on answers I cannot deduce alone and cannot ask for now, I sit on the side of the bed with the bowl and a cloth.

“May I?”

“Sure,” she rasps. “This is so unreal.”

“Your injuries are, in fact, quite real, I’m a-afraid,” I say.

She stares at me for a moment, and then turns her head back into the pillow, purposefully obscuring her expression. For a brief moment, it seems as if her eyes are wet.

“I know,” she mutters into the muffling fabric. “It’s insane, but I know.”

I dip the cloth into the bowl and begin to bathe her back, careful not to oversaturate it. It would not do for excess water to slip down her sides and soak into the bedding beneath her. The ointment has dried into a yellowish crust and must be wiped away carefully before reapplying. The warm water soothes her goose-pimpled skin, and she alternates between soft moans of gratitude and small hisses of pain caused by wounds suddenly being exposed to the air or jarred.

“I’ve never seen you like this before,” she grunts as I lean close to concentrate on cleaning around a fanciful curlicue carved into the sweet dimples right above where her back swells into her buttocks. The latter are covered with a blanket to preserve her modesty, and I am careful not to jostle it.

“You’ve never met me before,” I counter without looking up, soaking in every syllable of her speech. Her words are queerly broad. “How can you say that you have never seen me like... whatever it is that you mean by ‘this.’”

“That’s also the longest sentence I’ve ever heard from you.”

What a deliciously strange accent! So flat and lacking the jumps and dips that fill the speech of Hain Kingdom’s people. I’ve never heard anything like it before, which both thrills and shocks me. Knowledge is my currency; so how can she hail from a place that I do not know? How can such a place exist, as every clue she gives up suggests?

I am careful to school my expression, to not appear too thrilled or eager.

“Of course,” I agree, “as you’ve only heard six. Eight, if you count the last one, and this one.”

She turns her face into the pillow and groans. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Again, ‘this,’” I say, because it’s easier to look at her back and work on her wounds than look her in the face. I am ashamed to be causing her pain. It feels like a stab in my own gut.

Useless old Forsyth, as usual. But Mother Mouth asked me to have her fetched in the morning, not in the middle of the night. So I will muddle through, try my best, and hope that she does not chide me too much for the attempt at playing healer myself.

“Master Forsyth Turn, the king’s Shadow Hand... boiling his own water and closing his own windows. Elgar Reed would be horrified.”

I feel nauseous immediately.

Oh no, no, how does she know? No one, save my Men and Mother Mouth, is meant to know. The whole village thinks I am no more than the younger son, left behind to be the Master of Turnshire and surroundings, Lordling of the whole of the small but fertile Lysse Chipping; a man soft and slightly useless. That she knows, and speaks of it so casually...

A Shadow Hand must be secret above all else. The king will have me turned out—might even have me killed—for failing to maintain this secrecy. How can I function as Hain’s spymaster if I am known?

“Oh,” she says softly when my ministrations stop. “Oh, sorry. Shit. Sorry. I know, I know, it’s not supposed to be talked about. I won’t say anything else. I just meant, you know, you’re the Master of Turn Hall. Shouldn’t a maid be the one with the cloth? Shouldn’t someone be here to open the windows and boil the kettle for you?”

“I am n-no lay-layabout. I am c-capable of do-do-doing it myself,” I say, and I curse all the harder in my head when she cranes her neck around, wincing as the whip-fast movement stretches her wounds. She blinks at me like a stunned owl.

“Did you just stutter?”

“Of c-course n-n-n-not,” I deny, but my words prove themselves liars. I bite my lower lip and scowl, fingers going so tight around the cloth that it creaks and water splashes down my arms, pooling uncomfortably into the bunches of fabric against the insides of my elbows. I hate that feeling.

“Oh my god, you stutter,” she says, and her expression is a mixture of horror and amusement. “Reed never said anything about you stuttering.”

“I do-do-do not stutter,” I snap.

“Hey, no, it’s cool,” she says, rising up as if to turn to face me, but the motion makes everything in her back pull. She yelps again and flops back down to relieve the pain. “Fuck!” she screams into her pillow. She slams her fist against the mattress, clearly infuriated beyond coherence.

“S-stop,” I say softly, placing a gentle hand on her right shoulder, the least cut up one.

She flinches away from my touch so dramatically that it looks more like a full body spasm.

“Don’t touch me!” she screams.

I flinch myself, springing off the bed to give her the space she so clearly needs.

She goes still, save for her ragged breathing. One of the thin, deep cuts below her left shoulder blade seeps blood. A low coughing sound, muffled by the pillows, fills the air. I realize that she is sobbing.

Oh, Forsyth, you stupid man. You are useless at women.

“P-please s-stop crying.” It sounds as stupid out loud as it did in my head, but I have no other way to convey my concern. Clearly my proximity is unwelcome.

I clench my fists and shove them into the pockets of my house robe, impotent in the face of her misery. Why is it that among spies and the dance of court politics I am assured and suave, but the moment I remove the mask of the Shadow Hand and become simple Forsyth Turn, I am such a useless, stuttering sack of skin? I hate it.

Eventually, the tears wind down and she turns her face to me. Her muddy green eyes have become bright, even though the skin around them is red and swollen.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Why are you ap-ap-apologizing?”

“I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable about the stutter. I was just surprised. You never stutter when you’ve got the mask on.”

I only stutter when I am upset or caught off guard. As a child, I stuttered all the time, worse when my older brother teased. But I learned, through sheer force of will, to suppress it. To think about each phrase as I want to say it, to hear it in my head, clear and whole, before letting my tongue taste the words. The Shadow Hand does not stutter because he is a personality I wear, a costume I conceived. I did not conceive him as a stutterer.

I lean down and pick up the bowl. The water has mixed with the ink on the rug, spreading the stain further. My paperwork is also a sodden mess. I will have to begin that report anew. Resentment flares at the thought of having to waste another evening in correspondence, but I cannot blame my guest. It was my own clumsiness that caused them to be on the floor. I should have picked them up right away. Stupid.

“I’m sorry about scaring you, too,” she said. “I just... don’t like to be touched. Anymore. Don’t surprise me.”

“I understand. No woman enjoys my touch. I will fetch Neris, your maid,” I say, and turn toward the door to do just that.

“Whoa, no, wait,” she says, and I pause. I take a hesitant step back toward her and her hand shoots out, fingers wrapping around mine. I look down at our twined grip with dumb surprise. I can see her frustration at her inability to move. Warmth blooms against my sternum at the thought that she appears to want to touch me, to physically prevent me from departing. “I didn’t say that. Why would you think that? I just meant that it freaks me out when people touch me and I don’t know it’s going to happen. I never said you have cooties. Stay. Please.” I do not know how to answer. She looks up at me and adds: “You’re the only one I know. I trust you. Please.”

This is enough. I do not know how she seems to know me well enough to trust me, but she does. And I cannot betray that trust. Even though I fear that it might be misplaced. I must do my best not to disappoint her.

“I will stay. I’ll put the kettle on again and finish your back,” I say. She lets go, fingers brushing against the insides of my knuckles, and I clench my tongue between my teeth. I memorize the ghosting sensation, trying not to let it get too far under my skin.

I can hear her shifting, trying to find a comfortable position. “God, do you have any painkillers?”

“I can mix you a draught with poppy milk, but it will make you sleep again.”

“That’s fine,” she says. “Sounds perfect, actually. Fuck, this hurts.”

“That word again.” I turn to face her, leaning back against the mantle as we both wait for the water in the kettle to reheat.

It is a good thing it is such a large kettle, or I would have had to send someone to refill it by now, and I believe that the young lady’s pain is something she would like as few people to witness as possible. She said she trusts only me. Knows only me, though how she can know me at all is a mystery. Clearly she knows enough to know my deepest secret, and now my deepest shame, but how?

“Fuck?” she says.

“Yes. What does it mean? ‘Fuck’?”

She giggles suddenly. “Oh my god, I can’t believe I just heard you swear.”

“It’s an expletive?”

She giggles harder, and I take it for an affirmative.

“And what about the rest of it?” I ask. “The things that you say you know and simply should not. Cannot.”

She sobers immediately. She turns her head away and goes silent, her shoulders becoming rigid. She looks like she is preparing for a blow.

“Ah,” I say. “This is what the Viceroy wanted. And what you would not share.” She stiffens further at his name, but otherwise does not move. I walk across the floor to her side, purposefully clicking the wooden heels of my embroidered house slippers against the boards so as to prevent startling her. “I am going to lay a hand on your shoulder.”

She nods once, and I do it, carefully, palm cupped on her whole right shoulder blade, fingers curved along her neck. She sighs into the touch, and her tension eases.

“He doesn’t know,” she mumbles. “I didn’t tell him.”

“That I am the Shadow Hand?”

She nods.

“Is that the only thing he wanted to know?”

“No.” Her voice is scratchy and low, so quiet and ashamed that I can barely make out her words. “But I didn’t say anything. Not a thing, after the first day. He never even knew my name.”

“That is something of which to be proud,” I say softly, and I mean it. “Bootknife is not an easy man to defy. I’ve never seen such an elaborate carving as yours. You must have made him very angry.”

“I did.”

“Good girl.”

She snorts. “Loosey.”

Another strange word. “What’s a ‘loosey’?”

“I am. It’s my name. Ell-you-see-why, Lucy Piper.”

“You gift me with your name when all of Bootknife’s attention could not wring it from you?” I ask. The weight of what she has just done nearly sends me to the floor with shock. My knees shake, and I have to put my other hand on the bed stand to remain upright.

“You’ll protect it.”

“I will,” I vow. “I will, Lucy Piper.” I take a moment to clear my throat and try to keep the tears that have sprung into my eyes from falling. What a great thing she has done. This conversation, her bravery, has left me flayed.

I must turn away, before too much emotion shows on my face. Preparing the promised pain potion is the perfect excuse. Mother Mouth left the concentrated elixir on the bedside table, and it is convenient to turn my back on Lucy Piper as I mix it with a little wine to make it more palatable. Then I help drip some onto her tongue. Lucy Piper drowses.

When the kettle has boiled again, I resume cleaning her back.

Her eyes slip closed just as I have finished. I rinse out the cloth and spread it across what is left of her skin to keep her warm until I can move on to the ointment, and then stand.

“Try to rest,” I say, when the feel of the cloth startles her back to wakefulness.

“Thanks. Hey,” she mutters sleepily, worn out by the pain, both the physical and emotional. “You’re not stuttering anymore.”

“No,” I agree. “I am not.”

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thepedanticbohemian · 9 months

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THE OUDERKIRK HOUSE sample

CHAPTER ONE:

June 23rd

Mason County, Washington

I go down hard, face first, the toe of my hiking boot catching on a gnarled outcropping of cedar root. I land with an oomph amid poplar and oak leaves, evergreen needles, candy wrappers, and cigarette butts. I heave for breathe and inhale the odor of decomposition. I cough to keep from gagging. I know this smell too well but I never get used to it. I know I'm right again. Sadness grips my gut and I grimace.

I ease myself up, taking care not to dislodge the detritus covering the shallow grave. There hasn't been rain in Western Washington for nearly two months. The little mound looks fresh. The decomp odor tells me a week old, maybe two.

Here's just one more thing I wish I didn't know anything about. Experience is a two-edged sword. Sometimes it’s edifying. Right now it sucks a root.

The search and rescue volunteers and deputies gather behind me as I right myself, situate my hoodie, and look around. Their eyes are all focused on me, then upon the grave. I feel their collective gaze and try to get a grip on my anxiety. My skin prickles and I begin to shiver. I clear my throat and pull myself together, arms crossed beneath my breasts.

“Get Deputy Shepherd,” I say, restraining my urge to run away.

We're in a dense forest, slightly north of Shelton, Washington. On any other day, for any other reason, the hike through this wooded terrain would be beautiful. The oak and poplar leaves, cedar, and pine needles crunch under our feet. A warm breeze rustles the tops of the evergreens, their needles whispering as they move together. However, the weather is far too dry for this part of the Olympic peninsula this time of year. Record low rainfall reminds me there’s a burn-ban in effect for most of Washington state. One positive about that. No rain to wash away evidence.

The rest of the forest is a lush pallet of greens despite the lack of rain. Nothing but fern-clotted shade from so many old evergreens and deciduous trees. We're in the thickest part of the forest with no sunny spots to be found.

It can't be more than seventy here. Still, I have soaked through both t-shirt and purple and gold University of Washington hoodie. Like a lathered horse, I feel the wetness in my pits and rivulets trickling down my back. I understand it's all part of my anxiety, but I fidget in embarrassment. I swipe my palm across my soaked upper lip and chin.

No one wants to find a child’s grave, especially not like this. In these cases, my sole responsibility is to do just that. My visions of what the victim went through are unspeakable. Left arm missing below the shoulder, genitals mutilated and the wound…violated. All perimortem. I shudder and close my eyes but the images are all-pervasive.

And somehow, when I get it right, it’s bad and my fault. Just like when I get it wrong. Funny that. Do I like having bad news all the time? Hell no. I wish little Timmy so-and-so would be found alive and skipping around a park somewhere before he takes the candy from that strange man. We all do. It’s never enough for a grieving family, though. I don’t really blame them. What I can do even embarrasses me.

Five-year-old Noah Nixon went missing from the front yard of his parents’ Olympia home just shy of a month ago. Disappearing into thin air, the press trumpet, and not the first child to do so in the region. Rumors of a child killer circulate—fanned by the press—and people are scared. These types of killings have been going on in Western Washington since the nineties. Still no suspects. Law enforcement calls the suspect the Knife and Hatchet Man, because of his M.O. Using the hatchet to sever the left arm of his victims just below the shoulder. He uses the knife to do the rest of it.

Is it just me, or do we have more than our share of serial killers here?

This psychopath knows what he’s doing and is getting better at this shit than we are. Welcome to the age of television true crime. And such perps don’t joke around. They are serious about their work and will not be caught unless they want to be.

When posters and tearful TV pleas from his parents for Noah’s safe return fail, and even cadaver dogs came up empty, Mason County’s Sheriff, Pete Cody, suggested another tactic.

Me.

I’m Ruth Anne O'Neill and I was called into the case to see if I could find the boy. I’m a forensic psychic medium—not a tarot-card-toting, crystal-ball-gazing charlatan—the real deal. It’s not really my job, but it is what I do. I always try to convince myself my gift was bestowed for the betterment of all mankind, or some such high-brow shit. Oh, and I cuss like a sailor. My Dad was Navy, as is my wasband. I come by it naturally. Fuck is my favorite verb, adverb, pronoun, and adjective. As you come to know me better, you might understand why. Police humor is extremely dark and so is mine. Sometimes, in this line of work, fuck is the only word that suits.

Mostly though, my psychic gifts get me labeled as a witch by the elderly, small town Dutch folk where I live on Whidbey Island. That’s the largest island in the continental US, in the middle of Puget Sound. An otherwise neighborly, rural paradise, the folks point, stare, whisper, and generally shun me in the checkout lanes at Safeway. They say my pale green eyes are eerie and my short, sandy blonde hair makes me look like a dyke. I dress the part just to get a rise out of them. A gender non-conforming psychic is easier to swallow than a witchy hippie psychic, right?

Hell, if I’m really honest, this is no gift. It’s a curse I can’t escape even in sleep. I mostly have the respect of the law enforcement personnel I work with but get lampooned by the press and other non-believers.

I have this…thing…in my head, forced on me since I was six years old. All I really want to do is bake cakes and take care of the guests at the Hummingbird’s Nest bed and breakfast. I’m the chef and half-owner there in Oak Harbor, the largest small town on the island only by benefit of its two Navy bases.

The gift or curse argument aside, I’ve found twenty-eight children—three of them alive—with my visions and dreams. Out of two hundred and ten cases perhaps it’s not the greatest track record, but it is something.

No, that’s not right. Noah Nixon makes that twenty-nine totaling two hundred and eleven in the past ten years. At any roads, the press will lambaste the family and law enforcement for involving a flake like me in what is a serious matter; a missing, and now presumed dead, little boy.

More than just presumed, my intrusive inner voice tells me.

With so many days gone by and zero leads, Sheriff Cody knows we’re looking for a corpse. The smell rising from the debris-covered ground will prove he and I are both right.

“Please, please,” I whisper to myself, “just let it be a dead animal. Don’t let it be Noah.”

My gift-curse tells me better, of course, but it’s my mantra every time I find a grave. Don’t let it be little so-and-so. But it always is.

I try to picture a deer killed out of season and quickly buried after its antlers are removed as trophies. I want to think of the blue-eyed, brunette, cherub-faced Noah, running and playing, going to school, tucked in for a night’s sleep. Anything other than tortured and stuffed into the ground like so much garbage.

Of course, with the gift-curse thing, I’m not wrong once I see the final location of the missing person. I saw the grave in my mind before I fell onto it. It’s more than simply tripping on a root. I was in one of my absence seizures again. Goddamned things make me go all wonky and sometimes even blackout. As if seeing the horrors isn’t bad enough.

Deputy Hal Shepherd makes his way through the overgrown ferns and saplings to the grave at my feet. His olive green uniform jumpsuit has large rings of perspiration beneath his armpits. This makes me feel less self-conscious about my own horse sweat. He squats, ink pen in hand, and considers the scene for about five minutes. After that, he silently paces like a caged leopard around the small burial. He stops at the far side of the grave, glaring at me. He gazes icily at the grave, then pulls out his cellphone, hitting speed dial.

“Send in the forensics team.”

The crime scene investigation team is slow to reach our location, two miles in from the end of the fire trail. I chew my inner lip as they cordon off the scene with yellow and black police tape. I found the scene. Hooray for me, my inner voice ruthlessly teases me.

My visions led us here, otherwise, Noah might’ve never been found. The killer probably thinks he’s clever, picking such an isolated spot for his body dumps. Who would think to look in these woods other than some freak psychic like me?

The next hour crawls by with the click-flash-whir of cameras, and CSIs taking measurements. I watch from behind the crime scene tape as they use tweezers to pick up all the candy wrappers and cigarette butts for DNA and fingerprints. A handful of leaves and needles appear to have blood on them. They go into evidence bags, too.

Shepherd keeps himself busy walking the perimeter while speaking to Sheriff Cody on his cell. He lifts the crime scene tape and walks under it leaving the cordoned area. He spares me a hard look before walking father into the forest.

Those involved in evidence collection speak little beyond whispered instructions to the newbie on their team. The rest of us stand outside the perimeter, silent as the grave. No pun intended. Our busy presence has scared off the wildlife, even the birds. I shift from one foot to the other, my right boot feeling a little tight. I think the seam on my sock is rubbing a blister on my big toe. I think of all this to keep my mind off what's going to be dug up any moment.

Finally, one of the CSIs carefully brushes aside debris and dirt to reveal a greenish, naked, and bloated body. Those of us watching collectively gasp. I’d been right about the mutilation.

Then there’s a little girl's voice just behind me.

Ruthie.

More urgently:

Ruthie!

I look around like I’m crazy. I know the voice calling my name isn’t among the gathering. It’s a voice I haven’t heard since I was six years old. I put my hands over my ears to muffle the plaintive calling. Nope, it doesn’t help.

Ruthie!

It’s strident now.

“Stop it!”

I think I only say it in my mind. Then, my voice ricochets off tree trunks and echoes eerily around us. I hear the crackling sound of the white paper suits worn by the CSIs and nothing else as all eyes turn on me.

“Stop what, Ms. O'Neill?”

A tall, painfully lanky volunteer searcher in a red and black checkered flannel shirt looks expectantly at me.

“Huh,” I grunt, looking from his man-bun to his long beard as I stall for time to think up a good lie.

“Are you okay, ma'am?”

Ma'am? I’m not that old you damned hipster! Keep Portland weird I guess.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Was just thinking out loud. It’s nothing.”

“Are you sure,” Man-bun asks.

I wonder hysterically for a moment if he’s coming onto me. I’m not on enough anxiety meds for that.

“I said it was nothing, okay,” I snap and turn awkwardly away.

My right boot squeaks like a fart and I close my eyes on my renewed embarrassment. To say I don’t want to be here now is a vast understatement. I quick march through the overgrown ferns the two miles back to the fire trail and police and CSI vehicles.

The plaintive voice of my late sister keeps resonating in my head.

Ruthie! Ruthie don’t go. You’re not finished yet.

My brain feels like the Vegas Strip. The number twenty-five is flashing there. That’s when I U-turn and drag myself back to find Shepherd.

Twenty-six if you count Noah, my sister’s voice chides.

I look around for her, knowing I’m not going to find her. A wave of torrential sweat hits me again when I get back to the scene. I can smell my stink and want to be anywhere but here. I need a shower, more coffee, well maybe not coffee. I want to be in my kitchen making my famous everything bagels, not helping find dead kids.

I aim myself unsteadily toward Shepherd. He’s all business and seems done with me now that I located Noah. I’m brassy enough, though, I’m rarely ignored.

“You should call Sheriff Cody. You’re going to need more CSI people out of Olympia. There are twenty-five other bodies here.”

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