counseled when this truth was first revealed to Rain. It’s never about you.
“I’m not a fan of the media in general,” said Greta, taking a seat. She tucked herself into the corner, folding her arms around her middle. “Nothing personal.”
On the mantel there was an owl, staring with stern yellow eyes. Greta had a similar gaze and held it on Rain.
“Okay if I record?” she asked.
Greta gave an uncertain nod and Rain didn’t ask twice. Chances are she’d forget as soon as the conversation got rolling—which she hoped it would. Sometimes you worked for every sentence you squeaked out of someone; sometimes you couldn’t get people to shut up.
“Well, I love your work,” said Rain, glad that she could be genuine. “You really capture something special. Each of your birds seems to have its own—energy, a personality that shines through. The light, the detail. Amazing.”
The woman seemed to relax a bit; a sincere compliment could work wonders.
“They do,” Greta said. “They’re all special, those that let me capture them.” She gazed at the blackbird that sat on the coffee table between them. He had his head cocked to one side, a berry held in his beak. He almost looked like he might hop off his perch and fly away. “I rescue these, in case you were wondering.”
Great pointed at the stuffed bird in his glass cage. “I find them at flea markets and antiques shops, sometimes garage sales. I give them a home here.”
“It doesn’t bother you, to have them like this?” Rain asked. Frankly, she found it unsettling. She never got the whole taxidermy thing. “Your photos have so much life.”
Greta smiled. “That’s the comment of a young person. Everything dies.”
The sun moved behind the clouds and the room grew dim, suddenly cold.
“The bird’s life is a hard one,” said Greta. “You’ve heard the phrase ‘free as a bird.’ But their life is a constant foraging for food, grueling migrations, evasion of predators, protecting their young. They’re so delicate, so fragile—victims of human carelessness, cruelty, destruction of the environment. Flight is their gift, as is their purity, their innocence—like all animals. But it comes with a price. Here, they’re free from struggle.”
Greta leaned forward, tapped on the crow’s glass. “They’re safe.”
Rain really wished Gillian was here; they’d be hooting later about the creepy bird lady. But alone, in the old woman’s thrall, Rain felt chilled.
“Your home is beautiful,” she said, eager to change the subject. “How long have you been here?”
“I grew up here. It was my parents’ house. I’ve renovated, added on over the years. I have a darkroom a ways back on the property—I still develop much of my own film the old-fashioned way even though the world has gone digital. But I’ve lived here all my life.”
“So you knew the Kreskey family.”
Greta shifted and looked out the window in the direction of the adjacent property. “As much as you can know people like that,” she said. “We kept our distance.”
“People like that?”
“My grandfather sold off some of this land when times were hard. And the Kreskey family—this would be Eugene’s grandparents—bought it for a song. This was before my time. My mother was an empath—do you believe in that type of thing? She felt energies, even as a young girl. She just knew things. She’d always sensed a malevolent energy, and we were always warned to stay away.”
Rain waited. Silence always encouraged more talk.
Greta went on. “Violence is a genetic condition. If someone doesn’t break the chain, it gets worse with every generation. The grandfather was an abuser—his son grew into an abuser. Eugene turned into a ghoul.”
“Did you listen to your mother? Did you stay away?”
“I did,” she said, nodding. “Even now, I stay away.”
“I saw you,” said Rain. It had been Greta, the woman she’d seen in the woods. She knew it right away.
“Our property connects to trails that lead behind the Kreskey house,” she said with a shrug. “Let’s just say I stay to my part and I don’t linger.”
That might explain why she was moving so fast, why she didn’t stop when Rain had called to her.
“I called to you that day.”
The older woman tapped her ear. “I’m a little deaf, I’m afraid. Which is convenient as I’m not one for chitchat.”
Somewhere in the house a clock ticked, then prettily struck the ten o’clock hour. Rain’s mind drifted to Lily…time for snack, and maybe a jog to the park.
“So, when Kreskey attacked us, and brought my friends Tess Barker and Hank Reams