When I pulled back into the parking lot at Primrose House, Stephen Hastain was walking up the path to the back door. The large white box in his hands looked suspiciously like the kind of thing you might get at a bakery, and I hustled to catch up with him in the kitchen where Graham was pouring fresh beans into the coffee maker’s hopper.
“All right, Mac?” Stephen asked.
“Depends on what you brought and if I can have some.”
“Thought you two might need a pick-me-up.” He set the box onto the table and flipped the lid open, then wafted his hand over it to send the sweet-scented air my way.
The aroma of maple syrup tickled my nose and lured me closer. I slid into a chair and immediately had to put a hand to my mouth to keep from drooling on the twelve intricately decorated donuts Stephen had brought with him.
I swallowed back the rush of saliva. “Where did you get these?”
“New bakery in Moyard. Just opened. I thought you two could use a good treat after rushing home like that.” Stephen raised an eyebrow and peered into the box. “I have to admit, I can’t quite decide where to start.”
He wasn’t the only one. Between the maple-frosted creation that looked like it was topped with crystallized bits of syrup, the glazed donut covered with jagged multicolored pieces of sour Skittles, and the cloudy pink-and-purple fluff that had to be some kind of cotton-candy frosting… it was impossible to know where to begin.
“Let’s slice a bunch up and sample all of them,” I suggested.
Stephen grinned and tilted his head backward to address Graham, who was still getting the coffee sorted out. “Smart woman you have here. You got a knife?”
After several minutes of tasting the designer donuts, ranking them, then retasting and reranking based on the way pairing them with coffee changed their flavor profiles, the general consensus was that the chocolate cake donut smothered with crushed Oreos was the best overall.
Graham dusted his hands off on his coveralls. “Thanks a lot, Stephen. Now I’m going to have to drive out to Moyard twice a week for these monstrosities.”
“Maybe Penelope can get them to have a booth at the Afterlife Festival,” I suggested. A fantasy played out in my mind of the owners falling in love with Donn’s Hill and deciding to relocate here. “And then they could open a shop here year-round.”
“Mmm,” Stephen agreed. “We could use a good bakery.”
“We could use a lot of things.” Graham rested his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair to gaze at the ceiling. “An art supply shop, a bookstore, more varied restaurants…”
“Nah, you don’t want that stuff,” Stephen said. “Donn’s Hill is a perfect little pocket of oddities. If you bring in all that, we’ll be just like everywhere else.”
“I guess we’ll have to wait until Gabrielle comes back for that bookstore,” I said.
Graham pursed his lips but didn’t look at me.
“Do you think she will come back?” Stephen asked. “I’d like to meet her.”
“Of course she will.” I reached for another chunk of the Oreo donut. “This is her home.”
A loud thunk sounded as the front legs of Graham’s chair landed back on the tile floor. He hopped up and rummaged through the pile of luggage we’d left in the kitchen after our late-night arrival. “Mac, where’d you put the jewelry box you found?”
“Oh, with my toiletries.”
A moment later, he found what he was looking for and set it on the table in front of Stephen. The Irishman picked it up and studied it with furrowed brows.
“Is this… for me?” he asked.
“No, there are some runes inside,” Graham explained. “We thought you might be able to tell us what they mean.”
“Oh, thank God.” Stephen opened the box. “I thought this was some kind of weird souvenir you thought I’d like.”
Graham and I exchanged glances, and I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. In all the chaos of our sudden departure from New Mexico, we had forgotten to bring back anything for our friends.
Stephen seemed to notice our silence. “Eh, not that I was expecting anything. Not really.”
I cleared my throat and flicked the red velvet. “There’s something under that loose piece.”
As he pulled back the cheap lining, I found myself holding my breath. I no longer felt the strange pull that had led me into the empty yurt, but I was still fascinated by the little jewelry box. It was like when you walk into a gift shop filled with inexpensive trinkets, but there, among the personalized keychains and mass-produced bumper stickers, you manage to find something truly unique. Something that captures the energy of the locale and the spirit of the moment.
We may not have brought back any souvenirs for other people, but for me, this box embodied everything about our trip—the strangeness, the sadness, even the abrupt way it had ended. When I looked at the box Camila Aster had been clutching when she died, I felt it all.
I mentioned none of that to Stephen, and I was glad Graham left out any context as well. I was curious to see what the rune caster sensed from the box, if anything.
Stephen frowned at the symbols burned into the wood.
“Do they mean anything?” Graham prodded.
“Hard to say. It looks a bit like lathu, but they’re really scratched up.”
I winced apologetically. “Yeah, Striker did that. What’s a lathu?”
“If I remember right, it’s an invitation rune. Well, a word, really. See how it’s made up of these four runes together? But it doesn’t really come up much in divination, so I’m not completely sure.”
“Invitation, huh?” My attempt at casual curiosity was spoiled somewhat as the hand holding my coffee mug began to shake. “Where would you typically see it? Like a slab of stone with a wedding invitation carved onto one side?”
Stephen chuckled. “I suppose it could have. But I’ve only ever seen it in a more supernatural context.”
A sudden chill ran up my arms. “Like how we invite ghosts to speak to us during a séance.”
“Yeah, that kind of thing.” He set the box back on the table. “Where’d you get it?”
From a dead woman, I wanted to say. Instead, I shrugged. “Another guest at the motel in New Mexico left it behind when they, uh… checked out.”
“Odd.” He looked at his watch and stood. “Well, I had better get back down to The Enclave. Penelope asked a few of us to help Elizabeth’s family gather up some photos and things for the memorial service.”
“When will it be?” Graham asked.
“Saturday. I guess Elizabeth had friends all over the country, and her kids want to give everybody enough time to get here.”
Delaying the funeral until the weekend made sense. I supposed we could have stayed in New Mexico longer instead of rushing home in the middle of the night, but then again, Graham hadn’t really wanted to hang around.
“Can we do anything to help with the service?” I asked.
“Only if you have pictures of Elizabeth you want to give them.”
I didn’t. It never occurred to me to take one of her. The old woman had seemed so vital. I wished now that I had thought to take a photo of her with Striker.
After Stephen left, I found it difficult to focus on anything for too long. Part of it might have been the persistent sugar rush from snacking on leftover donuts, but I felt like I was in a sort of timeless limbo. All I wanted to do was sleep, but I knew if I let myself go to bed too early, I would screw up my sleep schedule for days, so I kept myself in the waking world by keeping busy.
There were plenty of small tasks around Primrose House to keep my hands moving and my blood pumping: unpacking and putting away our luggage, sweeping the wraparound porch, changing the furnace filter, replacing a few burned-out bulbs along the staircase. Household maintenance usually fell to Graham, but he dove into rebuilding his inventory the moment Stephen pulled out of the parking lot.
“I need to push myself,” he told me as he lifted an enormous block of clay onto his workbench. “The gallery wants twenty original pieces, and I’ve got to plan for next year’s Afterlife Festival too.”
“Brrrllll.” Striker sat in her usual spot atop Graham’s filing cabinet. It was the perfect height for supervising his work and conveniently close to his stash of kitty treats.
“Can I help?” I asked.
“Just take care of yourself.” He kissed my forehead, then pulled on an apron and got to work under Striker’s watchful eye.
The light in the garage stayed on well into the evening, and when I finally decided I had been awake long enough to avoid the kind of faux jet lag that often followed all-nighters in college, I went to bed alone. Thanks to its position at the top of the house, my apartment collected all the excess heat from the units below and managed to stay warm with little additional effort on my part. All the same, I snuggled beneath the heavy quilt on my bed before closing my eyes.
For the second time that week, I opened them in the backyard of Primrose House.
I blinked a few times, unsure if I was awake or not. The world lacked the Technicolor sheen of my usual dreams, and unlike the perpetual summer of my imagination, the yard around me looked the same as it had when I had last gone outside to check on Graham: nearly bare tree limbs; flat, dormant grass; masses of unraked leaves scattered across the ground.
Had I been sleepwalking? I had never done it before, but it had been a long time since I’d been this sleep-deprived. I rubbed my eyes, which still fuzzed and blurred with the remnants of my slumber. I was debating whether to go into the garage and talk to Graham or go straight back up to bed when I realized not everything in the yard was the way I had left it that evening.
The leaves weren’t their usual array of autumn reds, golds, and browns. Like everything else coming into focus around me, they were in varying shades of gray.
I couldn’t see any color at all.
My feet made my decision for me, and I sprinted for the garage. I needed Graham to check my eyes, maybe even drive me to the emergency room in Moyard. Had I hit my head before going to sleep? Did I have a concussion?
Leaves scattered as I plowed across the lawn, and I drew to a sudden halt. My footsteps should have been crunching on the frozen grass. I should have heard the leaves crackling beneath my feet.
But there was no sound. I clapped my hands, snapped my fingers, and tried to speak.
Nothing.
Please, please, please let this be a dream. At least I could hear my inner monologue, even if my actual voice had been silenced.
Something touched my leg, and I jumped backward. This had all the qualities of a nightmare, which meant a dog-sized tarantula or a swarm of snakes could appear at any moment.
A black-and-gray cat with gray eyes blinked up at me from where I’d just been standing. Its color pattern was familiar; the grays swirled and blended into each other at random, and one of its hind feet was nearly white.
“Striker?” I tried to speak her name, but no sound left my mouth.
She lifted her chin. I couldn’t hear it, but I was fairly certain she had just trilled at me.
I scooped her up into my arms. Her heavy purr was inaudible but still rumbled against my chest comfortingly. I squeezed her, grateful beyond words that she was here to help me face whatever terrifying things my brain was about to conjure.
Striker’s head snapped toward the house. Her strangely colorless eyes held the same curious gleam she often had when she was looking up into the corners of the ceiling. I didn’t want to know what she was looking at, but I couldn’t help peeking over my shoulder anyway.
A woman stood in the kitchen doorway.
Mom?
No. It wasn’t my mother. This woman was tall and rail thin, and her black hair was much curlier than my mother’s. She looked like she might be a college student, but it was hard to guess her age in grayscale.
She walked across the lawn and stopped a few feet away from me. Her face was illuminated from the light spilling out of Graham’s garage window, and she looked both happy and relieved to see me. I got the feeling she knew me, but I had never seen her before in my life.
“Who are you?” I mouthed.
Her lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. My rudimentary lip-reading skills were only good for a few syllables at a time, and only if there was plenty of context to inform my guesses. She tried again. When my expression made it clear I didn’t understand her, frustration clouded her beautiful features. Then she reached out, lifted a section of my hair, and dropped it.
“Hey.” I stepped back, not sure what she was trying to do.
She held up both hands, palms out, like she was trying to soothe a feral cat. With two baby steps toward me, she did it again, this time grabbing a larger piece of my hair. The strands tickled as she dropped them back into place.
I shivered. The sensation was familiar. It had happened in the empty yurt in New Mexico. Only back then, I hadn’t been able to see the person doing it.
“Camila?” I said soundlessly. “Camila Aster?”
She nearly collapsed with relief. She clapped her hands silently and nodded.
“What are you doing here?”
Camila stood very still, and her face grew serious. She mouthed something to me, slowly and deliberately. I focused as hard as I could, trying to read her lips.
It was impossible. I couldn’t make out a single word, and the lack of any sound was unnerving. Half of my brain kept groping in the silence for any noise, and when it couldn’t find any, it distracted the other half of my brain by freaking out about it.
Camila’s expression grew more and more agitated. Striker’s silent purring intensified, rattling my sternum.
“I want to help you,” I mouthed. “What can I do?”
In answer, Camila shook her head. Her hair thrashed violently back and forth, and she balled her hands into tight fists at her sides. She opened her mouth and screamed.
I heard it.
The grayscale world around me blinked out into darkness. When I opened my eyes again, I lay flat on my back in my bed. Camila’s scream still rang in my ears—
No. I was screaming.
I snapped my mouth closed, and the faint sound of my teeth clicking together was literal music to my ears. I had never noticed how many ambient sounds were always in the background—the slight whoosh of the heated air from the vents, the little whirring of my mini fridge’s fan, and Striker’s purr from my pillow, where she was wrapped around my head.
As I moved to reach up a hand to stroke her fur, something shifted on my chest. The box I had taken from Camila’s luggage rested over my heart. My left hand gripped it so tightly that it took a moment of effort to uncurl my fingers.
I sat up slowly, examining the box. I didn’t remember bringing it to bed.
“Brrrllll,” Striker trilled from my pillow.
I held the box up for her inspection. “Do you know anything about this?”
She stood and rubbed her face along the corner of the box. One lip curled upward, exposing a fang, but she didn’t look menacing.
She looked affectionate.
After a moment, she switched to head-butting my free hand until I scratched her chin.
“I dreamed about you, sweet girl. I was feeling pretty freaked out, and then you showed up and made me feel better.”
She drew back, and her yellow eyes glinted. I shivered. I had a strange feeling she didn’t need me to tell her anything that had happened in that dream.
She already knew.