took her up on the offer. I didn’t think I could stand up for much longer, so any hanky-panky with the barghest was going to have to wait.
Which meant that I began my long walk to work well rested and feeling good—almost entirely normal. Or as normal as I could feel, given the circumstances.
Because, once I entered our little village, I saw that things were definitely odd in Rockabill. Nothing a stranger would have picked up on, but I could feel it. It wasn’t all the people about—there was always a lot of foot traffic in Rockabill. Except when it was raining or snowing, people would drive into the town center, but then they’d park to do most of their errands on foot. This was partly due to how small our little village was, but it was also because it was an ideal way to socialize. Everyone would walk around, coffee in hand, chatting about who had done what to whom. In a place like Rockabill, there were no secrets and, except for the tourists, no strangers. Anyone who planted him-or herself here for longer than a single summer was fair game for the outrageously generous acts of kindness, the sometimes cruel gossip, and the ceaseless interest that was life in a very small community.
And for better or worse, I was a Rockabillian. So the tension that had sprung up while I was sleeping grated at me like nails on a chalkboard. Everyone was walking around like they expected something to jump out at them. Which I supposed was understandable if your friends, loved ones, and neighbors could start yelling weird threats randomly and for no obvious reason.
Or start writing on the walls, I thought, seeing evidence of badly painted-over graffiti on the outside walls of Tanner’s Bakery; our little supermarket, McKinley’s; the Trough, our diner; as well as some of the sidewalks and benches. Underneath the fresh paint, I could clearly see the words “Rises,” “Death,” and “Come” defacing the brick or shingle sides of our downtown buildings. I wasn’t opposed to things “rising” or “coming,” but having “death” sandwiched between the two words was a bit of a buzz kill.
It’s not just that everyone’s on edge, I observed, as I walked through our little town center. It’s like they don’t trust themselves.
It would be pretty weird, however, to discover yourself defacing public property when you’ve never so much as spat on the sidewalk. The whole point of why we were so up in each others’ business is that Rockabill wasn’t San Francisco or Seattle. Rockabill wasn’t known for attracting eccentrics, crazy geniuses, and the simply crazy. Yes, we had our fair share of oddities, but for the most part we were all pretty “normal” people. Every once and a while someone would do something like run off with a tourist, or invest in alpacas, or begin selling paintings of their own vagina on Etsy, but that was rare. Most of us were nice and bourgeois, so to have people in our community acting out like this (and with no memory of how or why) was really terrifying.
Which explains why everyone is walking on eggshells, I thought, watching as Marge Tanner—returning to her bakery after delivering pastries to Read and Weep for our bakery case—gave Gus Little—who bagged groceries at McKinley’s but was really a stone spirit—a nervous nod. The idea that someone might be nervous around Gus illustrated how badly Rockabill nerves were frayed.
I’d grown up thinking Gus was mentally a bit slow, when in reality he was sort of like a dryad, only instead of bound to a tree he was bound to a rock somewhere right outside town. Like their namesakes, stone spirits were often unflappable and a bit obtuse, meaning that Gus had never done anything to raise eyebrows in his life. Unless being someone who never raised eyebrows did, indeed, raise eyebrows.
Things are bad, I realized, grimly, as Marge gave me my own wary greeting, as if to assess whether I’d freak out on her, before stopping to chat. We exchanged some pleasantries about Belize and about the bakery, Giving Gus time to walk into McKinley’s. After I’d said good-bye to Mrs. Tanner, I walked past McKinley’s, glad Gus was inside so I didn’t have to force a conversation with him. Even my knowing his true nature and sharing his supernatural world with him didn’t make socializing with the stone spirit any easier.
I ducked into the bookstore and was immediately ambushed. “Oof,” was my