Page 169 of Veil of Blood and Bone

Audra jerks her hand toward the windows and the blue hush of the compacting snow forming an igloo out of the car. "Then how about this? Or do you want me to call it fate instead?"

“This is a freak blizzard.” My excuses are too thin to hold weight for long.

“Running from our problems has never fixed anything,” she insists.

She would know.

Mom dumped us in this hole of a town and left us to rot. Without her, our option to run disappeared. She might not have loved this place, but it was hers. It was where she died.

And because of that, we adopted it, too.

Audra’s doctors are nearby. Nostalgia and questions and survival keep us here. Maybe we’ve grown to like our graves too much.

My fingers twitch in an opposite rhythm to the chattering of my sister’s teeth.

Ten years we’ve been deprived of the woman and her eccentricities, her warmth, and she’s still dictating how we move and act and talk. A full decade has passed since I found her in her bed, the drain of her veins soaked through the sheets, my vision narrowing to a pinprick on her body.

The following weeks weren’t real.

Grief counselors gave excuses for the creature she described, the one whose details I memorized until I saw her, too.

My mind, struggling to shield itself from the trauma of loss. And the guilt of arriving too late.

Then the days blurred into doctor appointments and meetings with the funeral director. Did we want our mother buried or cremated? What could we afford?

There were pills for me and for Audra, to help us forget, help us sleep, help us move on. So many pills. My nerves were shot.

Everything changed.

I hadn’t bolted then, had I? I’d stood up to keep her with me, officially old enough to act as her caretaker although I’d done the same things since she was born. When the diagnosis had come down from more official hands than mine.

No, I hadn’t fled. But maybe I should have.

She was a tiny frail young girl, even at twelve. She needed stability.

The temperature drops lower. We’d survived, but for what?

“If this is true, if this entire situation is real...” Audra trails off. “Then you can’t run, Hel. There’s nowhere to go. And we’re not better off on our own. Your men know how to handle this thing. They’ve lived through it enough times to understand it, much more than we do.”

“My men," I repeat with my gorge rising. “They’re insane.”

“Didn’t stop you from sleeping with them.”

"Stop bringing it up!"

The need to lash out is strong, violent, potent. I whip around with my teeth bared. Sleep with them. Like I’d had a choice. The memory had stoked those fires inside me, and I’d woken up to...

I’d wanted...

So badly.

Instead, I go for my bag. “Are your hands cold? I think I’ve got one of those warming packs in here. I have to find it. It will help more than those old mittens.”

Audra glares holes through my skin. “Ignore me all you want, but we know it’s the truth. They know what they’re doing. They’ve done it before. We have, too. Only they remember.”

I dive both hands into my purse up to the wrists but there’s no magic at the bottom. This isn’t Mary Poppin’s bag of mystical fucking wonders.

“Sure they have,” I agree evenly. “They’ve fought and tried and beat their heads against a rock wall, and I’ve died every single time, if you believe them. So have you.”