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I dropped my face into my hands. I needed structure and a plan…and maybe some pride.

I stood up carefully and shuffled toward the bathroom. My reflection in the mirror over the sink was…not kind. Purple shadowed my left temple, the bruise blossoming into something impressive and gross. My hair looked like it had been attacked by a raccoon with unresolved anger issues.

“California, huh?” I told the mirror. “You were supposed to be drinking iced lattes under palm trees by now, not rotting in a murder town for the next month.”

I splashed cold water on my face, brushed my teeth. I was debating the pros and cons of resetting my entire personality when someone knocked on my door.

Three bright little raps. Then a fourth for emphasis.

I closed my eyes. “Please be room service,” I whispered. “Please be coffee, or a portal to a better universe.”

“Sienna?” Hattie’s voice chirped. “You decent? I brought muffins!”

Of course. I walked over and cracked the door open, trying for awake and achieving vaguely conscious at best.

Hattie stood there in all her unholy afternoon glory, a sunshine-yellow cardigan thrown over a T-shirt that said, We Don’t Call 911, We Call Dot, balancing a tray of muffins, a teapot, and what looked disturbingly like a laminated spreadsheet.

“Good afternoon!” she sang, sweeping past me into the room. “How’s your head? How’s your neck? Still intact?”

“Debatable,” I said, closing the door behind her. “All of it.”

The tray landed on the small table by the window. There were blueberry muffins, a pot of tea with mismatched cups, and…oh. The laminated thing was indeed a schedule.

“I come bearing carbohydrates and municipal propaganda,” Hattie announced. “Please sit. The town has plans for you.”

“That’s a horrifying sentence.”

She ignored me, flapping the laminated sheet open like a map. “So! Today is Wednesday, which means—let me see—farmers’ market in the square, afternoon chess club at the library replacement, and—ooh, tonight is the Serial Killer Church Walk rehearsal.”

I blinked. “Those words don’t belong together.”

“Which part?” she asked.

“Yes.”

She waved a hand. “It’s a historical tour. And it’s very dignified. It has lots of candles.”

“So you’re telling me there’s a candlelit stroll where you point at pews and say, ‘three people were dismembered here’?”

Hattie winced. “Only one dismemberment, technically. The others were…partial events.”

My eyes widened.

“Anyway,” she said, undeterred, “this is the Blackwood Community Events Calendar. I highlighted some things that might be good for you. Pottery night. Trivia. Open mic.”

“I’m not staying long enough to memorize a calendar,” I said. “I just need my car fixed, my head to stop pounding, and a way to avoid ever being publicly humiliated in front of an entire bar again.”

“Impossible,” she said. “You live in a small town now. Humiliation is a group sport.”

“I don’t live here. This is…an extended temporary stay. Against my will.”

“If you say so.” She pushed a muffin into my hands. “Eat. You look like someone deflated you and then put you back together wrong.”

I obediently bit into the muffin. It was warm and sweet, with blueberries that actually tasted like real blueberries.

Hattie poured tea, added honey without asking, and slid the cup my way.

I blew on it, stared into the steam, and sighed. “Okay, so…I need a job.”