Page 89 of Woods of the Raven

“Yeah, I know you are, but I need you to drive me to the library.”

“Really?” she whined, just as something fell onto the table from the bottom of the bag.

“What is that?”

She made a face. “Oh, Xan, it’s time. You need a phone.”

I said what I always did. “There’s never been a phone at Corvus.”

“Which is great, and I’m not telling you to run fiber-optic cables out here, but a cell phone is a necessity. I need to be able to call you if there’s an emergency.”

“I—”

“What if, heaven forbid, I’m in an accident and die and you have to take care of my kids? People will need to be able to—ow!”

I’d smacked her arm because how dare she say something so awful.

“Fine, not dead,” she grumbled, slipping around the end of the table. “But what if Chief MacBain gets shot or something in the line of duty? Don’t you want to be the first to know?”

“Yes,” I rasped because I was feeling a bit vulnerable since Lorne left, and now she was bringing up horrors befalling both her and him.

“And what about Toby?” she pressed on. “What if he needs you and wants to call? And how in the world are they going to get you the information that you got your job back? People can’t keep driving over to see you to bring you news from town. This isn’t the Old West with the Pony Express and the stagecoaches.”

“As if either of those things was ever in Osprey.”

“Nothing exciting has ever been in Osprey but the cannibals.”

“That’s true,” I agreed, picking up the iPhone box. “Lorne has a solar charger for his. Did you happen to—”

She pulled out another box. “This is me you’re talking about. Have you ever known me not to be prepared?”

No, I had not.

It was a quick drive to the library—Osprey was only so big, after all—and when we got there, Amanda walked beside me, fiddling with my new phone, not paying a bit of attention to where she was going, trusting me to steer her through doors, up and down stairs, and around tables. She called her husband as I reached Nico Aoki’s desk. She checked books in and out on the weekends and every other Tuesday. I really liked her and her pixie-cut purple hair.

“Oh, thank God,” she said when she saw me. “I almost cried when Mr. Samuels said you were coming back. If I have to listen even one more time to Joanna talk about how little kids shouldn’t be allowed in the library, I’m gonna shank her.”

I smiled. “If you shank her, you’ll go to prison, and we both know you wouldn’t enjoy the daily structure of that. I mean, when would you have time to paint?”

“That’s a valid argument.”

“So, I have a phone now. You can call me, and you can tell Mr. Samuels to call me once I’m officially back.”

“You’re not back now?” Nico whined.

“I don’t think so, not quite yet.”

She whimpered a bit and then greeted Amanda, who smiled sweetly and gave her my number. I then explained I was going to the basement to look for some information on the cannibals.

“The ones that lived down near Parker’s Ferry?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised she knew that.

“You know, Dom wrote a song about them called ‘Around the Bend.’ That’s the only reason I know anything about them.”

“Oh, I like the title and the double meaning. Clever.”

Nico nodded. “He’s hanging out in Art History if you want to talk to him before you go searching the basement. He did a lot of research on the family before he wrote the song.”