Demon and the Raven (Raven of the Woods #2)

One

I love summer. Not as much as fall, but it runs a close second.

Honestly, I love all the seasons, but summer is slower, gentler. Walking in dappled sunlight, listening to the warm wind through ancient trees, stepping into the coolness of the shadows, getting caught in a brief summer squall…all those things are truly magical. But what holds the most mystical, dreamy allure are the nights. It’s never truly dark.

On stormy evenings, the clouds appear slate gray, stamped on an indigo-blue sky, and when it’s clear, the stars are so bright, it makes sense that sea-tossed sailors could follow them home. When it’s still warm outside at midnight, I love to walk through the thicket, hunting for fireflies and fairies, seeing how quickly I can spot the difference. The forest calls to me, beckoning me to take another step, farther away, pulling at my hair, tugging on my heart. I could stay away all day and night and never notice the passing of time.

Before Lorne MacBain came into my life, sometimes I would fall asleep in the tall grass and spend the night outside with the moon watching over me. It’s like being in another age, a feral, primordial one, when the world was younger and everything from a single blade of grass to the wild wind was enchanted.

There will always be the lure of the deep woods, and that welcome, necessary communion that I need, but now Lorne’s pull is stronger than anything else, even when I’m asleep on my feet.

Now, on those nights when I’ve walked too far afield, chasing some restless feeling to follow my magic farther into the untamed darkness, drawn there, there’s always a sudden flutter in my chest that nudges me home. I stumble from the trees, across the small grass-lined stream, to the door of the greenhouse he added in the spring, and then into the sunroom, where the windows are all open because even at midnight, the breeze is always warm. Lorne, the man I love, takes my basket from me that’s always full of stones and clippings, making sure to put my grandmother’s embroidery scissors back in their place in the kitchen so they’ll be there the next time I need them.

“Thanks for coming home, Xan,” he murmurs.

“Always,” I whisper back.

He then steers me into the bedroom, strips me down, and puts me in bed before I can speak again and ask him questions about his day. Turning off the lights, he slides into bed beside me, wraps me in his strong arms, and tucks me against his big, hard body. I don’t stir until the morning.

The truth is, I’d rather sleep beside Lorne MacBain than anywhere else. My love for him is like a siren call, except he’s not trying to kill me. He wants me. He loves me.

Now, that’s not to say he doesn’t sometimes have homicidal leanings, especially when I do something he considers dangerous.

For instance…

I heard the horns as I flew through the intersection and realized, for possibly the hundredth time, that the traffic situation in the small town of Osprey, New York, where I lived, had changed drastically. Back in November of last year, we had some excitement over the discovery of a doomsday cult in our little corner of the world. The fact that every member of the cult had died over a hundred years ago didn’t stop the wave of interest, translating to tourism, that hit our town like a tsunami.

That was the cover story.

The real one, about a god trying to cross from his realm to ours, was far too fantastic to share with the public. So the press ran with what they knew, and our town was swamped with visitors. In theory, not a bad thing. Retail businesses were especially appreciative of the influx of dollars. The downside was the surge of cars on two-lane roads with stop signs at four-way crossings that people were not paying attention to. On Yelp it said: Great town, but no one knows how to drive! That was a wild exaggeration. People in my town could certainly drive, they simply weren’t used to being honked at, passed on hills, and cut off while making left turns.

The parking was a whole other horror. Whenever I locked my bike into the rack in front of the library, I thought again how fortunate I was not to have to parallel park. Not that I could even if I had to. Driving had never been a skill I’d acquired. I lived in a tiny town. In the winter I could walk, and all other times, like now, in high summer, mid-July, I could ride.

Lorne, who was the chief of police, along with being my fiancé, had been to many meetings about putting in more traffic lights. He vehemently opposed those initiatives. His contention was, what if everything died down and we were left with useless lights in the middle of town, slowing up tractors and parents taking their kids to school. Not to mention the cost of the added infrastructure to the taxpayer. It was a valid argument. Conversely, people were tired of nearly being mowed down as they crossed the streets on the weekends, on holidays, and certainly anytime it rained when visibility was poor. I saw both sides.

At the moment, though, that wasn’t going to help me. Because whereas I used to glide through intersections on Friday afternoons without nearly getting hit, just now I’d narrowly missed getting sideswiped by a Toyota Highlander, which was why, suddenly, there was a police utility vehicle beside me. I had called it an SUV in the past, but apparently that was wrong, and I’d been educated.

“Are you trying to kill yourself, Xander Corey!” Tanner Murphy, a recent addition to Osprey, yelled at me as he drove by in the Abundant Light Church van. He was the youth pastor there.

Side note: not everyone in the one-horse town I grew up in liked me. Some, like the aforementioned Tanner, saw me in league with dark supernatural forces. As if I were stupid enough to ever tie myself to something malevolent. Ridiculous. I was raised better than that.

There was also Diana Flint, the leader of the Osprey Conservation Society, who had tried, on many occasions, to have me fired from my job at the town library and banned from teaching classes, which I’d been doing more of lately, at our local youth center. Diana’s hatred had begun in second grade when her family moved here. Her mother thought my grandmother was crazy, which she wasn’t, and a pagan, which she was, and did not want her angel Diana associating with me. That stuck all through high school and beyond. When she took over the aforementioned group, which I thought meant wildlife or the wetlands but was actually historical landmarks and buildings, she needed to map my family’s land. Ours being the oldest homestead in Osprey, it was important to the Conservation Society to have that done. I declined, and she took it to the town council. But as Corvus was older than Osprey, she didn’t have a leg to stand on. That had cemented her animosity toward me. While normally I made sure to steer clear of her on general principle, today she was in one of the many cars that drove past me as I stood on the sidewalk.

“You’re going to kill someone, you idiot!” she shrieked at me.

I waved at her just to be a dick. Her, I wasn’t afraid of. But the man sitting in the vehicle to my left, with the rolled-down driver’s window, him I really didn’t want to piss off.

“Hi,” I greeted Lorne with a huge smile, thinking it was probably my imagination that his cobalt eyes looked even darker than usual. Or, quite possibly, he was mad. Or worse, I’d scared him. I truly never meant to frighten him, but it happened on occasion.

“No,” he replied, getting out of the car that was painted the most horrible shade of blue anyone could imagine. Some heinous cross between teal and bread mold. Why navy hadn’t been considered, I had no idea.

“I was in a hurry and?—”

The Mercedes Benz S-Class sedan that came to a screeching halt behind his utility vehicle stopped us both from saying another word, and I wasn’t surprised to see my best friend in the world, Amanda Sterling, throw open the door, leave the car there running, and rush over and smack me really hard in the bicep and then the stomach.

“Ow,” I yelled at her.

“What the hell are you doing?” she roared back. “You took ten years off my life with that stunt!”

Lorne grunted and tipped his head. “What she said.”

I looked from him with his arms crossed, biceps bulging, gaze flat, jaw clenched, to her with her bugged-out eyes, furrowed brows, and tightened fists, and I understood that what I’d seen as a maneuver worthy of a seasoned bike messenger in New York or San Francisco, the two of them had viewed as taunting death. As my grandfather had told me a million times, the truth was in the eye of the beholder, not the one zigzagging through traffic.

“I’m sorry,” I said sincerely to the man I loved desperately, who glowered at me. “I promise to be more careful from now on.”

He leaned in, giving me a quick kiss, and everyone driving by must have thought that I, Xander Corey, was the luckiest man alive. Because not only was Lorne MacBain, who was kissing me, utterly breathtaking, but he was clearly smitten. His smile when he leaned back, how warm his eyes were, had me floating on a cloud of happiness.

Of course, Amanda took that moment to pinch my side. Hard.

“The hell,” I yelled again.

“Where’s my sorry?”

I growled at her, then snapped, “I’m sorry.”

She glared at me.

“I am .” I whined that time.

“Fine,” she said quickly, grinning. “Now, what’s with the weird red metal basket on your bike?”

Lorne groaned and shook his head. “It’s not a weird basket; it’s a new basket.”

She stared at him.

“I put a new fitting on the front here, so now this new one snaps on and off, and it has a built-in handle so he can cart it easily.”

“That’s actually clever,” she admitted belligerently, which was Amanda for why didn’t I think of that .

Another car stopped behind Amanda’s then, and it was Victoria Day, one of Lorne’s two deputies. Immediately, from her slumped shoulders as she exited the car, and the way she bit her lip before she took a breath and started toward us, I knew something was wrong.

“Chief,” she greeted him, and grimaced.

He squinted at her. “What did I say you had to admit to when it all went to hell?”

Clearly, he already knew what the issue was.

Her sigh was long, and she muttered something under her breath.

“Sorry?” he goaded her, which was terrible. I would have said something, but first, I had no idea what they were talking about, and second, he was in work mode, which meant I needed to keep quiet in front of his deputy. If I made a peep, he’d murder me, and I didn’t want that. I had to work today.

“You were right, and I was wrong,” she said louder. “Things have escalated.”

“Imagine that.” He sounded really sarcastic.

“I didn’t think it would.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Apparently, ahead of this last rain,” she began, “Mrs. Burley threw clover seeds into Mr. Taylor’s newly tilled and leveled, ready for new sod, backyard, and you can picture what it looks like now.”

I certainly could.

“Go on.”

“In return, Mr. Taylor put his goats into Mrs. Burley’s backyard, and now her award-winning Peace Roses?—”

“The irony,” Amanda chimed in with a snort.

Lorne scowled at her.

“Sorry.”

Victoria cleared her throat. “Three rose bushes were decimated before she got out there.”

“And now?”

“And now Mrs. Burley says she’s keeping the goats, partly because she’s always liked them and partly to piss off Mr. Taylor.”

“Certainly,” Lorne reasoned.

“And then Mr. Santos?—”

“Who lives behind them,” Lorne added, crossing his arms.

“Who lives behind them,” Victoria repeated with a sharp exhale, “says that if he has to hear them both screaming at five in the morning, then he’s going to really give them something to yell about from now on.”

“Okay,” Lorne said with a long-beleaguered sigh.

“Sad to hear about the roses,” I commented. “They’re amazing. But those goats are more like his pets, so she really can’t be allowed to keep them.”

He ignored me. “Two months ago I said that the two of them together have to pay to fix the fence that was damaged last winter, even though it technically sits on Mrs. Burley’s land, because it functions to keep her vast jungle of a garden from spilling over into his yard and his goats and llamas from?—”

“Alpacas,” she corrected him.

“Alpacas,” he amended, “from wandering into her yard after he lets them out of the barn first thing in the morning.”

“I thought if I talked to them, they would get behind the communal-fence idea.”

“Despite my directive they get it done by the end of June.”

“Yes,” she reluctantly muttered.

“Where is Pete now?”

“Out there, trying to herd goats.”

“Uh-huh,” Lorne snapped. “Both you and Pete said you had this.”

“I know.”

“And now, what do we think will happen with the increasing animosity between Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Burley?”

“I’m not sure if?—”

“Even though they’ve lived next door to one another for how long?”

“Forty years,” she answered him.

“So forty years means nothing, and they’re choosing to go to war, right?”

“I don’t know,” Victoria contended. “They’ve never been this insane before. But it’s not just them, as you know. It seems like everyone in town has had a short fuse lately.”

“True,” he agreed. “I blame the hot, sticky summer.”

But it wasn’t any hotter than usual. The fact was, though, Lorne had been complaining for the past two weeks that his office was getting slammed by a mounting number of disturbance calls. People seemed to be on a hair trigger, which was simply odd for the residents of Osprey. It was normally a quaint, amiable little town, both picturesque and filled with charming locals.

“So where does that leave us with them?” Victoria asked him, sounding forlorn.

“I think I’m going to remind Mrs. Burley about the area on the left side of her property that she’s going to have to pay to get cleared, and then point out that Mr. Taylor’s goats could be helpful in that endeavor. And clover is actually really good for the soil, so I’m going to remind Mr. Taylor that all he had was dirt in his backyard two weeks ago.”

It seemed like a good plan to me. There could be benefits on both sides.

“Let’s go,” Lorne announced to his deputy.

“Yeah, but what if they don’t listen to you?” Victoria asked him.

“Then I’m confiscating all her remaining rose bushes and all the animals.”

I didn’t think he could legally do that, but this was not the moment to bring that up.

“What are you going to do with goats and alpacas?” she wanted to know.

“I see a petting zoo in our future. That way the tourists can bring their kids.”

“We do need a small zoo in this town,” Amanda stated. “Just local animals and ones for the kids. I do think the dog park you proposed is a marvelous idea.”

“Thanks,” Lorne replied, smiling at her, and then returned to glaring at his deputy.

I really tried not to smile.

His growl was not subtle. “Do you understand how ridiculous it is that I’m having a conversation, as the chief of police, about goats and alpacas despite being told by my two deputies that they could handle this situation?”

“I do,” Victoria granted, which was quite brave of her. From the look Lorne shot her, she understood immediately that the question had been rhetorical.

Lorne kissed my cheek before turning for his car. “We’re doing it my way now, Deputy,” he ordered. “Get in your vehicle.”

She bolted away, and Amanda and I watched them go.

“You know, I bet he didn’t have to worry about livestock in Boston.” She snickered.

“I would have to agree.”

“About now he’s thinking, Why did I even come to this ridiculous town ?” she said with a snort of laughter, like the thought was hysterical.

I did a slow pan to her.

“What?”

Narrowing my eyes slowly, I stared until she understood her faux pas.

“Oh yeah. Huh.”

It was my turn to smack her.

“The hell was that for,” she yelled at me.

“You can’t even kid about him not being here.”

In the beginning, Amanda didn’t like Lorne. But over the course of us falling in love, he grew on her, and now she was fairly smitten with him. She saw the full breadth of his warrior heart, and she appreciated how good and grounding he was for me. For his part, Lorne was not the kind of person who warmed up fast to people, so it took a while. The fact that he now counted on her as a friend meant a lot to her. And me. Amanda and her husband and kids were the closest thing I had to family, my own having crossed over ages ago, to Summerland, the place souls went between incarnations.

“Well, then maybe you should try and stay alive long enough so you can get married,” she snapped, returning my focus to her from my wandering thoughts.

I sighed. “Point taken.”

We were quiet a moment.

“Aren’t you late for something?” she mentioned casually. “Something at the library?”

“Sorry?”

“A place where you need to clock in, perhaps?”

I was supposed to be there at one, and it was currently five after. “Shit,” I groused, kissed her on the cheek, and was off.

“You would have been there already if you hadn’t nearly been killed!” she called after me, having to add some guilt to me already feeling bad. She was a mother, after all.

The good news was no one noticed I was late. Joanna Milton, the truly horrible woman who worked with me on the day shift at the library, had left precisely on time at one, with people at the counter, but there weren’t only the two of us during the day anymore. With more interest in all the historical happenings in Osprey from both locals and tourists alike, there needed to be more staff. of the new hires was Danesha Stanek, a new resident of Osprey with her wife, Joelle, who was the new city manager, and their two sons. She worked the middle shift, from ten in the morning to three in the afternoon, so she could drop off her six- and eight-year-old in the morning and pick them up after school. So far, it was a perfect fit.

“Sorry I’m late,” I said, lifting the pass-through and then lowering it back into place so I could slip around the counter to help her with the small line.

“You’re fine,” she told me through clenched teeth.

After we got everyone checked out, I turned to her. “Why’re you grouchy?”

Her stare should have incinerated me. I smiled back, knowing it wasn’t meant for me.

“Seriously,” she snarled. “I’m a pacifist, but that woman—ohmygod, Xander, that woman could turn me into an axe-toting serial killer!”

“That’s a terrible thing to say about Nico,” I scolded her. Our colleague, and my friend, worked part-time. “You only have to see her on Tuesdays anyway, and you don’t even work on the weekends.”

“Xander!” she nearly yelled. “I am so not talking about Nico.”

I knew she wasn’t. “Shhhh,” I baited her. “This is a library.”

She glared harder.

“I’m sorry, are you speaking of Joanna?” I asked innocently, fluttering my lashes.

“Do not make me laugh.”

“Never,” I said, chuckling as she smiled back. “Now deep breath in.”

“Ugh.”

“Oh, come on, it’s funny.”

“What is?”

“That we have a troll working in the library of all places.”

“What the hell, Xander?”

I shook my head. “Listen, you have to understand she doesn’t just hate you, or all the kids who come here. She hates everyone equally.”

“I—”

“Don’t you feel better knowing that?”

“Xander!” she snapped. “How does she work here?”

“You mean, like, why is she still alive?” I asked playfully. “Because I think the answer to that is obvious, don’t you? She survives on hatred, plain and simple. How have you not picked up on that yet?”

“That’s not?—”

“And also, she’s been here the longest.”

“That’s not a good enough answer.”

“No? Are you certain?”

“Stop being funny or I’ll deck you.”

“Threats of violence in the library?” I said, aghast.

“Tell me now.”

“Let’s see… Joanna’s the only one of us with an actual degree in library science.”

“Really?”

“Mine is in folklore, and I don’t have a master’s, just a BA. What’s yours in?”

“Archaeology, which, God, don’t get me started on why that seemed like a good idea at the time,” she huffed out. “But I don’t remember a degree being a requirement when I applied.”