Snake-Eater E-Book

T. Kingfisher

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 416

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

In this witty fantasy horror from New York Times bestselling, Nebula and Hugo award-winning author T. Kingfisher, a young woman seeking a fresh start is confronted by ancient gods, malevolent supernatural forces, and eccentric neighbours in an isolated desert town. Perfect for fans of Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Chuck Tingle, and Rachel Harrison. When Selena travels to the remote desert town of Quartz Creek in search of her estranged Aunt Amelia, she is desperate and short of options. Fleeing an unhappy marriage, she has exactly twenty-seven dollars to her name, and her only friend in the world is her dog, Copper. On arrival, Selena learns Amelia is dead. But the inhabitants of Quartz Creek are only too happy to have a new resident. Out of money and ideas, Selena sees no harm staying in her aunt's lovely house for a few weeks, tending to her garden and enjoying the strange, desolate beauty of the desert. The people are odd, but friendly, and eager to help Selena settle into her new home. But Quartz Creek's inhabitants share their town with others, old gods and spirits whose claim to the land long predates their human neighbours. Selena finds herself pursued by disturbing apparitions, visitations that come in the night and seem to want something from her. Aunt Amelia owed a debt. Now her god has come to collect.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

About the Author

PRAISE FOR T. KINGFISHER

“Kingfisher provides all the chills, thrills, and laughs she’s known for in this dextrous dark fantasy . . . This time out, Kingfisher’s prose is as stark as the desert setting, but still preserves all the usual charming creativity of her worldbuilding . . . Kingfisher remains extremely good at what she does.” Publisher’s Weekly, STARRED Review

“Can horror even be this rollicking, this fun, while still delivering on the creepiness, the dread, the ick? In Kingfisher’s hands, it can.” STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES

“Eerie, enchanting, and suffused with tension . . . utterly absorbing.” ELLE

“Simultaneously bittersweet and beautiful, blending humor, heart, and no small amount of horror to create a tale that somehow feels both refreshingly new and like something that has always existed.” Paste

“Kingfisher never fails to dazzle.” PETER S. BEAGLE

“I opened, I devoured.” NAOMI NOVIK on Thornhedge

“Funny, frightening, and full of heart.” ALIX E. HARROW

“A sharp-edged delight.” KATHERINE ADDISON

“Exciting, deeply wise, sad, brutal, and compassionate all at once.” CATRIONA WARD

“Full of melancholy charm . . . such a pleasure to read.” The New York Times

Also by T. Kingfisherand available from Titan Books

The Twisted Ones

The Hollow Places

Nettle & Bone

A House With Good Bones

Thornhedge

A Sorceress Comes to Call

THE SWORN SOLDIER SERIES

What Moves the Dead

What Feasts at Night

What Stalks the Deep

THE CLOCKTAUR WAR DUOLOGY

Clockwork Boys

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Snake-Eater

Hardback edition ISBN: 9781835410042

Paperback edition ISBN: 9781835410066

Broken Binding edition ISBN: 9781835416921

E-book edition ISBN: 9781835410059

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: November 2025

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© T. Kingfisher 2025

T. Kingfisher asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

EU RP (for authorities only)eucomply OÜ, Pärnu mnt. 139b-14, 11317 Tallinn, [email protected], [phone]

Designed and typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro 11.25/15.5pt by Richard Mason.

This one’s for the whole Bubonicon crew.

1

Selena picked her new home for no better reason than the dog laid down on the porch.

The dog was a middle-aged black Lab, though her Labrador-ness had been diluted by a fence-jumping father of questionable ancestry. Whatever he had been, his genes had helped temper the breed’s boundless energy. She still worshipped chasing tennis balls as the highest form of canine endeavor but wanted a long nap afterward, and ideally a long nap beforehand as well.

Selena named her Copper, which Walter said was a stupid name because there was nothing copper colored about her. Selena felt guilty when he pointed that out, but Copper had already learned her name by that point, so she put a collar on the dog with bright copper tags. Walter rolled his eyes, but Selena was pleased with herself for having set things right again.

The dog, it must be said, never seemed to mind either way.

Selena had ridden out on the train, two and a half days to get there, and she’d been afraid the whole time that somebody’d tell her she couldn’t have a dog on board. She didn’t know what she’d do. Fortunately Copper had excellent travel manners and mostly lay under her seat and let out the long sighs of an old dog at peace with the world. The rocking of the train seemed to agree with her. She squatted obediently at every stop and was extremely pleased to share the sandwiches that Selena passed down to her.

At the second-to-last stop, the conductor bent down and scratched Copper behind the ears, and Selena was so relieved that she nearly cried.

When they reached the final stop, Copper stood up and stretched. Her muzzle had begun to go white, but her eyes were clear. She glanced around the train platform and then up at Selena, as if expecting orders.

QUARTZ CREEK was painted on the platform wall, in faded blue. The train platform was cinder block and adobe. It could have been ten years old or two hundred.

There were no gates or turnstiles, no ticket takers. Also no taxis. Selena knew that the area was a historic zone, which meant that you couldn’t put developments up all over the place and drones were banned, but she hadn’t expected a lack of taxis. Or maybe there just weren’t enough people around for taxis to make any money, which was a somewhat alarming thought.

“I guess we just go?” Selena asked empty air. She wrapped the leash around her right hand and gripped her suitcase handle in her left.

The station was nearly deserted. Two men in faded jeans unloaded several boxes from one of the cars into the back of a battered pickup truck. The conductor went over and had them sign a sheet of paper, then said something that made the others laugh.

Selena stole a glance to make sure that they weren’t laughing at her. They didn’t seem to be.

There was a drinking fountain against one wall. The water came out lukewarm and tasting of metal. She filled her water bottle and let Copper drink her fill from the little metal dish in her backpack.

There was hardly anything else to the station. Two small shelters with benches, the drinking fountain, and a list of timetables under glass. The stairs down from the platform ran directly to a rutted dirt road. Selena stared down the road in mild disbelief, then slowly lifted her eyes.

The town was visible a long way in the distance. There was a hill behind it, or maybe a mountain. Between town and station stood two or three miles of desert, full of scrubby little bushes and big gray-green saguaros, and dozens of plants that she didn’t know the names of. One long, serpentine thing might be ocotillo, but then again, it might not. Whatever it was, it had thorns. So did most of the other plants.

The dirt was bone white and the sky was hard blue. It was only midmorning, but heat was already making long squiggles in the air.

She’d expected the town to be closer, or for there to be taxis or buses or something. She hadn’t expected a hike from station to town. Aunt Amelia would probably have come out to meet her, except that Amelia didn’t know that she was coming. They corresponded by erratic postcards and neither had ever included a phone number.

Even if she’d known the number, she didn’t dare turn on her phone. The location tracker that had seemed like such a sensible precaution when Walter explained it would give her away, and she just wasn’t ready to deal with that yet. Which also meant that she couldn’t use a rideshare app, assuming there were any way out here.

Selena picked up her suitcase and let the dog lead the way.

Behind them, the train let out a long whistle and began to chug away.

The black dog kicked up little puffs of dust as she trotted along, occasionally reaching the end of the leash and pausing for her human to catch up. Selena studied the verge of the road. She had expected deserts to be full of sand, but the earth here looked more like talcum powder mixed with rocks. The shrubs along the road had gray bark and grew sideways, split, grew sideways again.

There was so much sky that it was hard to think. In the city, there were walls you could put your back against, doors to shut, places to hide. To hide out here, you’d have to crouch down and worm your way under one of the scrubby little bushes, and you’d probably get a faceful of spines for your trouble. Even the shadow of the Scottsdale arcology had faded away into the endless blue.

Selena wiped her forehead, where beads of sweat were already beginning to form. She was very tired. Unlike Copper, she hadn’t slept well on the train. Dragging her suitcase wasn’t helping. The wheels on the bottom were made for flat surfaces, not dusty roads with washboard ruts. The rattling went all the way up her arm and into her skull, setting her back teeth clattering against each other.

I shall invent an all-terrain suitcase and make a fortune. With giant wheels, and a handle that doesn’t try to twist out of your hand when you hit a rock.

She had dragged the suitcase perhaps a quarter of a mile when the battered pickup from the station rumbled up alongside them. It stopped by the side of the road.

“Need a ride in?” asked the driver. He was an older Latino man with a lean, angular face covered in narrow wrinkles. “It’s a short drive but a long walk.”

Selena’s first instinct was to refuse. You didn’t take rides from strange men—that was asking for Bad Things to happen. They could kidnap you and dump your body somewhere in the desert where you’d never be found.

Then she had to laugh at herself. There were no other people around and nowhere to hide. If they were planning on kidnapping her, it didn’t matter whether she climbed into the truck or not.

Besides, if I have to walk the whole way, my body may end up somewhere in the desert anyway.

“Thank you,” she said. Was that enough? Probably not. “I’d appreciate that a lot.” There, that should be good. Just enough, not too much.

“Hop in,” said the old man, jerking his thumb toward the back.

The other man was riding in the back alongside the crates from the train. He lowered the tailgate and Copper leapt up. “Hey girl,” he said to the dog, and she thumped her tail twice, then settled at Selena’s feet. “Ma’am,” he added, dipping his head to Selena, and helped her settle her suitcase.

It was too loud in the back of the truck to talk, for which Selena was grateful. She gave the man a quick smile and then looked away, at the desert. Copper was a reassuring weight against her shins.

She wondered if the men knew her aunt. She could ask. What little she could see of Quartz Creek looked too tiny for anyone to be a stranger. Aunt Amelia had always said it was a small town, but she hadn’t realized quite how small.

She practiced what to say to the driver in her head. Thank you for the ride. You were right, it would have been a long walk. That sounded pretty good. That was a normal thing somebody would say, right?

Thank you for the ride. You were right, it would have been a long walk.

She ran it through a couple of times, staring at the landscape bouncing over the side of the truck bed. The dust cloud that rose up behind them was four or five times the height of the truck and looked like a plume of ash.

Was the desert beautiful? It would be hard to tell. It was hard and dry, which Selena had expected, and intricate, which she hadn’t. She’d been picturing sand and stone and scouring winds. Not the little bushes fitted all together with strips of dust in between, not the stacked paddles of prickly pear. It looked like a complicated mosaic with white mortar, or one of those paintings made out of hundreds of dots. If she were far up in the hard-blue sky, would the desert resolve into a picture?

Thank you for the ride. You were right, it would have been a long walk.

Lord, I must be tired. She almost always had to repeat a script in her head, but not so many times, and not such a simple one. Most of her scripts had been memorized long ago. It was only lately, with the funeral and wrapping everything up—and now the train—that she’d had to make so many new ones, and maybe they were crowding out old ones, like how you thanked someone for giving you a ride.

The truck rattled and cracked down the dry road, the wheels fitted into the ruts like train tracks. A line of fat, gray bodies ran alongside for a moment. Selena blinked, surprised, at a flock of plump little birds with black topknots and stubby wings.

Are those quail? Real quail?

She supposed she knew that quail existed somewhere, but she’d never expected to see them. They were creatures out of children’s books, more like stuffed animals than real flesh and feather and bone. But here they were, plump and ridiculous and very much alive.

Selena realized that she was grinning foolishly. She darted a glance at the other passenger, and saw him smiling. He said something, but she couldn’t hear it over the roar of the engine. She shook her head.

He was middle-aged, probably the driver’s son. He wore a bandanna over his hair, and his skin was deeply tanned. There were thick silver rings on three of his fingers and black rings of grease under the nails.

When the truck slowed, entering Quartz Creek, and the wind died down, he leaned forward. “What brings you to town?” he asked.

Selena felt the little muscles along the back of her neck go wire tense. It’s a normal question. It’s perfectly normal. You know what to say. You practiced this.

She reached into her chest, and the words were there, just as she’d practiced them. “I’m looking for my aunt,” she said. “She lives out here. I’m just not sure what her address is.”

To her intense relief, he nodded, as if this wasn’t strange at all. “Go up to the post office,” he suggested. “It’s right across the street. If you’ve got people here, Miss Jenny will know where they’re at.”

“Thank you,” said Selena, although she had already planned to try the post office. “That’s a good idea.” Compliments were good, though not flattery. She thought she’d done it right. She had praised the idea, not him, and not extravagantly. She dropped her hand to Copper’s collar, and the dog thumped her tail.

The town wasn’t very large, a few dozen houses. They stood wide apart with ditches between them, and small roads arranged like the spokes of a wheel. The buildings were pale adobe with flat roofs, wide porches, and what looked like whole logs sticking out the sides. It was a very strange look, as if they’d built the rafters too long for the walls. One of the buildings was taller, an old Spanish Mission–style church, with double doors thrown wide.

Most of the houses had solar panels on the roof or the garage, the old, ugly kind—cheap and nearly indestructible. The sort that Selena associated with poverty one step up from corrugated-steel siding.

I’ve got twenty-seven dollars left to my name. I don’t get to talk to anybody about poverty, I guess.

Did one of the houses belong to her aunt? Was one of those scruffy, speckled chickens hers?

Somehow Selena had never thought of her aunt as poor. She has a house! People with houses aren’t poor.

At least . . . not in the city . . .

They passed an old garage, a temple to cars where mechanic-priests sat around in their overalls. There was a line of electric charging poles, but no stoplights. Chickens scattered along the road as the truck passed, and dogs lay panting in the shade. There were a couple of ragged pine trees, and some strange trees that Selena didn’t know—one that was all green, even the trunk, with fine slender needles, and one with slick red bark that peeled like a burn.

The truck stopped.

Her companion unhooked the tailgate and jumped out. He reached up a hand to her.

Do I take his hand / you’re not supposed to touch strangers / but he offered first and now it would be rude / no, it’s like a handshake, that’s okay, handshakes are okay—

She took it with, she hoped, no obvious hesitation. His fingers were dry and hard and had calluses like bits of gravel.

He helped her down from the truck and handed down her suitcase. “Thank you,” said Selena.

“No problem. Post office is right over there.”

Selena took a step toward it, then stopped. Don’t forget. She walked up to the cab of the truck and said, carefully, “Thank you for the ride. You were right, it would have been a long walk.”

“Anytime,” said the old man. He lifted a hand in half a wave, and Selena waved back.

She felt a bit giddy as she approached the post office. She’d done it right. She hadn’t practiced getting a ride, but she hadn’t said anything stupid. It was an unexpected victory.

The post office stood in the center of town. It was the same square adobe style as the rest of the buildings, but there was a metal sign over the door that said POST OFFICE. Two of the strange green trees grew out in front, their leaves buzzing with cicadas.

Selena tied Copper’s leash to one of the porch posts and said, “Stay.” Copper fell over on her side with a drawn-out groan, the world’s most put-upon dog.

Next to the door was a little wooden sign with letters burned into it that said BURNT BRANCH HOUSE.

Selena paused with her hand on the knob. Was that the name of the building? She’d seen named buildings in the city, but mostly they were named for historical figures. Burnt Branch House. Hmm.

She pulled the door open.

Inside it was all tile: red clay on the floor, bright blue for the counter. A line of painted sunflower tiles circled the wall. Even in the dim light, the room glowed with color. Selena had never seen a post office that was anything but industrial gray, and the sight made her want to grin in the same way seeing the quail had.

A stout woman sat behind the counter. She looked up and raised her eyebrows as Selena came in.

“Can I help you?”

Say it. Say it just like you practiced. It’ll be okay.

“I’m sorry to bother you . . .” Selena reached into her backpack and pulled out the old postcard. The ink had blurred in a couple of places, and the stamp was half gone, but the name on the return was clear. Amelia Walker.

There was no street address, just the name of the town, which Selena had thought was odd until she came to Quartz Creek and saw how small it was.

“I’m looking for my aunt,” she said and slid the postcard across the tiles.

The woman behind the counter picked it up, flipped it to the back. A line formed between her eyes, and she looked up.

Her broad face was sympathetic, and even before she spoke, Selena knew.

No. No. She hasn’t said anything, you’re wrong, she hasn’t said anything so it isn’t real—

“Oh, honey,” said the woman. “I’m sorry. She passed away—only about a year ago. We didn’t know how to find her next of kin, or we would’ve tried to get out a letter.”

Selena was aware that she was staring straight ahead. Heat was rising up her face, to her eyes, and when it hit, she was going to burst into tears.

No, no, she can’t be—I came all this way—I can’t afford to go anywhere else—I can’t even afford a ticket back—

And then the old anxiety came back, and she realized she’d been standing there for much too long and the woman was looking at her.

“Thank you,” she said in a high, strangled voice. She might have said more, but she knew that it sounded like she was going to cry, and you did not cry in public, that was something you definitely did not do. Her mother had always been very clear on that. “You might as well wet your pants on the street corner!” she’d said.

Selena turned away and practically ran out the door.

Copper was waiting there. Copper, who was big and solid and made of fur and bone and muscle. Copper, who loved her even though she didn’t deserve it. Selena crouched down and put her face in the black Lab’s shoulder.

A year ago. A year ago. The phrase beat in her head like a pulse. A year ago.

Oh god, only a year. If she’d found her courage just a little bit sooner, if she’d gone only nine years instead of ten, she would have come out and found her aunt alive.

Whether her aunt wanted to see her—whether her aunt had any fond memories of the city or had sent the postcards purely out of loneliness and duty—those were hurdles she could have faced.

Now she couldn’t.

Now she was in the desert hundreds of miles away from home, and there was nothing but strangers and heat and dead white dust.

Copper licked her face and wagged her tail, concerned that her human was making upset noises. That was okay. She could wipe dog slobber off her face and nobody would know she was wiping off tears.

The door creaked behind her.

“Oh, honey,” said the post office woman. “I’m sorry.” She sat down on the porch next to Selena, not touching, but close by. “Guess you were hoping for better news.”

Selena had no scripts at all now, and only nodded.

Stupid, stupid, should have thought what you’d do if she was dead or even had moved, didn’t think, didn’t plan . . .

What she knew, down in her heart of hearts, was that she couldn’t have planned. This had been her last thrash toward self-preservation. She might as well go lie down in the desert now and let the sun bleach her bones.

“I’m sorry,” she croaked. Copper licked her chin again, worried.

“Nothing to be sorry about,” said the post office woman. “We all ought to have somebody to cry when we pass on.”

Guilt joined the lump in Selena’s throat, because she hadn’t been crying for her aunt at all, but for herself. Callous and stupid.

The woman held out her hand to Copper, who sniffed it and gave it a vague, meditative lick. Selena rested her cheek on the dog’s warm, furry back and tried to think of nothing at all.

“What’s her name?” asked the woman.

“Copper,” said Selena. Her voice was still shaky, but that was a safe question and a safe answer.

“Good name.” She scratched Copper behind the ears and was rewarded with an enthusiastic tail wag. Copper did not believe in disguising her emotions. “Black Lab?”

“Mostly.” Selena wiped her face. “The rescue wasn’t sure what the rest was. Some kind of hound, maybe.”

“You’re a pretty girl, aren’t you?” the woman asked Copper. Copper gazed at her soulfully and attempted to convey that she had never been petted, not once, but would like to experience it.

The familiar conversation grounded Selena a bit. Everything was terrible, but she still had to do the next thing and the next thing after that. She couldn’t just sit on the porch crying all over her dog.

“Is there . . .” She swallowed. Twenty-seven dollars. “Is there a motel or a hostel near here?”

“Can’t say there is, no.”

Selena hadn’t expected there would be. Quartz Creek didn’t look big enough to have a Dollar General, let alone a motel.

I’ll have to get back on the train. Somehow.

She could call Walter, of course. Turn on her phone and call him. He’d wire her the money and she could get a ticket and go home.

If she did that, he’d explain to her that her nerves had just been disordered from grief over her mother’s death. Or maybe she could say that she went to tell Aunt Amelia in person, and then he’d chide her for not having thought it through, but allow that it was perfectly understandable under the circumstances. Losing her mother had been a blow, and it was bound to dredge up lots of things. Anyone would act a little irrationally under the circumstances.

He’d be right, of course. And—Selena knew herself—she’d be grateful to him for being so understanding. She would. And then later he would refer to the time that she had hared off to the middle of nowhere without enough money to get home, and she would flush hot with shame at the memory.

It would become one more of the stories about How Selena Had Done Something Foolish and Walter Saved Her. The story might lie in wait for years, but then it would rear its head and strike. She’d never know when to expect it. During an argument. Or during a party, maybe, when Walter needed to top a coworker’s story about something silly their spouse had done. Or maybe just in a moment when Selena wasn’t sufficiently grateful for all the things he did for her.

The story would never go away. Walter forgave immediately, but he never, ever forgot, and so neither could Selena.

The thought was so exhausting that she felt like crying again. She drank some water to stave it off, swallowing down the lump in her throat.

The woman from the post office studied the postcard again. “Tell you what. The house is still there, you know. Amelia’s house.”

Selena looked at her blankly, one hand hooked under the dog’s collar.

“Nobody’s claimed it,” said the woman. “She’s got no kin around here, and it’s not a big house. And you look about done in, if you don’t mind me saying so. No reason you can’t stay there for the night. Or however long you need.”

Selena had to think for a minute, to put the words together. She tried them out in her head a few times, then said, “Is that allowed?”

“Sure,” said the post office woman. “I said it was fine, didn’t I?” She grinned. “I’m the mayor, you know. Also the postmaster, fire marshal, and the chief of police. My name’s Jenny.”

She stuck out a hand and Selena shook it. Shaking hands was polite, and if she was careful, she wouldn’t start to overthink whether she’d been shaking too long or not long enough.

She didn’t want to babble or dominate the conversation, but surely she could ask one more question. “You’re sure no one will mind if I stay there?”

“Nobody around to mind,” said Jenny. “Lotta places standing empty these days. Can’t keep people in ’em. You know how it is.”

Selena didn’t have the least idea how it was and didn’t know where to start asking, so she simply nodded and hoped that Jenny wouldn’t have any follow-up questions.

“You’re next door to Grandma Billy, out past the old well, and then there’s nothing for a mile on. You’ll have to check the old solars, but they should be working well enough to make tea, and you ain’t gonna need heat for a couple of months yet.” She leaned back on her hands. “Give it a look over. If you’re inclined to stay, just come by the post office and let me know. I’ll make you out an address form.”

An address form? For what? Is she suggesting I move in? I can’t do that. Houses are expensive. People with houses are always complaining about it. You can’t buy a house with twenty-seven dollars. Even if they gave it to me, I couldn’t keep it. The roof will fall off and the walls will fall down and I’ll have no money and they’ll hate me for not taking care of it. And it’s stupid to think anyway, because nobody gives away houses.

“I can’t stay,” said Selena. She had no money and apparently no family either. She’d have to leave, go back, deal with what she found in the city. With Walter. Running away hadn’t solved anything.

“Up to you,” said Jenny. “Train won’t be back till tomorrow, though, so you might as well walk over and take a look.” She pointed down one of the roads. “’Bout half a mile that way. Grandma Billy’s the one with the blue door, and you’re the one just past it.”

“Thank you,” whispered Selena, her store of words exhausted.

Jenny, the mayor and the postmistress and the fire marshal and the chief of police, smiled at her and said, “It’s called Jackrabbit Hole House. You can’t miss it.”

2

In the end, she went because the alternative was to sit on the post office porch until the sun went down. She had no real hope for Jackrabbit Hole House. (And what kind of outlandish name was that, anyway?)

Truth was, she had only met her aunt a handful of times, mostly as a teenager. She remembered a thin woman with a seamed face, wearing clothes that were too big for her, as if she was afraid that someone might grab her and she’d have to wriggle away. But she had a sharp, cutting sense of humor that delighted the teenage Selena, and over the years, postcards had come from a dozen places. It was only the last few that had come from the same place, as if she had been caught at last.

The last postcard was nearly three years old now. It had ended with “I hope you can come out and visit me sometime.”

Selena had been putting all her faith in those ten words.

What am I going to do now?

There were no answers on the post office porch, and if she kept sitting there, Jenny was going to keep sitting with her. Someone who had so many jobs was undoubtedly busy, even in a town as small as Quartz Creek, and Selena had taken up enough of her time.

“Straight down that road,” said Jenny, pointing again. “If you don’t like what you see, come on back. There’s a potluck at the church Wednesdays and Saturdays, everybody welcome.”

Selena nodded. “Thank you,” she said. That was about all she could trust herself to say.

People are telling me where I can get free food. Oh god, how much farther can I fall? I had a job, I always had jobs, I’m thirty years old and I should be able to take care of myself . . .

Selena believed, with every fiber of her being, that a person’s worth was not defined by how hard they worked or how productive they managed to be. She also believed just as strongly that this did not apply to her.

There really ought to be some kind of card, Selena decided, something you could carry to prove that you weren’t a freeloader. It could say something like, “Hard Worker, Temporarily Fallen on Bad Times.” And on the reverse it would say, “Not in the Habit of Mooching.”

All it took was one run of bad luck and it didn’t matter how hard you’d worked your whole life, you were down in the gutter with the broken and the unlucky and the professionally helpless. And it hadn’t even been bad luck, in Selena’s case, just a sudden mad dash for freedom.

Maybe the Walter in her head was right and she’d done something foolish and needed someone to save her.

“Definitely a card,” she muttered as she walked down the bleached road, dragging the suitcase. Then she stopped, because if you talked to yourself, you looked crazy—and even though she was crazy, she was still kind of hoping that nobody else would notice.

Jackrabbit Hole House. What a name.

As Selena walked through the middle of town, she could see that it wasn’t the only named house. There were no numbers on any of the buildings, but they all had little plaques. Some of them were set too far back from the road to read, but most of them had big, bold letters, as if the house names were something people were proud of.

Pocket Gopher House. South Porch House. Tortoise on Its Shell House. House with Its Back to the Desert.

Some of them were self-explanatory—Under the Olive Tree House had a low wing tucked up under gnarled branches, and Three Saguaro House had three tall cactus growing in the front. Others didn’t make any sense at all—the House with Its Back to the Desert was actually backed against the mechanic’s, and It Fell Down House appeared to be in good repair.

No wonder Aunt Amelia’s postcard was simply from Quartz Creek.

Selena passed the church. The plaque beside the door was brass instead of wood. House of Our Lady of the Palo Verdes.

That makes more sense. That’s a church sort of name. You name churches. Houses get numbers, though, not names.

Apparently the people of Quartz Creek disagreed.

The house to the left of the church was Left-of-the-Church House, which made sense, but the house on the right was Bougainvillea House, so not even that was consistent. Selena sighed.

There were only two rings of houses on this side, although Selena could see a few straggling buildings off in either direction. Many of the houses had back gardens fenced with chicken wire, which did nothing to contain the roving chickens. A few were standing empty, with boards over the windows.

Can’t keep people in ’em. You know how it is.

She wished she did.

The road curved along the base of the hill that she had seen from the train platform. There were more trees than she had expected, although she couldn’t be sure if they were real trees or just more of the scrubby desert plants, grown unexpectedly tall in the shadow of the hillside. They rose up ten and twelve feet high, so that she and the dog walked together through a strange dry forest.

Brush, she thought. Scrub. I have been using the words all my life and this is what they really meant and I had no idea.

Copper meandered along the edge of the road, stopping occasionally to sniff. Selena watched her exploring all the little canine mysteries—why this twig was more interesting than those others, why this patch of ground needed to be peed on, why this rock was much more fascinating than all the other available rocks.

That last question was answered when the rock unfolded long legs and bounded away. Copper jumped back, startled, and the jackrabbit shot into the desert.

The dog gave half-hearted chase—her prey was running, and that’s what you were supposed to do—but she stopped at the end of the leash.

Selena laughed. It wasn’t much of a laugh, but it was there. She scrubbed at her cheeks with the heel of her hand. “Didn’t expect that, did you?”

Copper looked vaguely offended. Rocks should not run away.

“You’re a city dog, aren’t you, girl?” She scratched behind the ears, in the good spot, and Copper thumped against her leg. “Not used to jackrabbits.”

Not that I am either. Jackrabbit Hole House. Huh.

The humor didn’t last long once she was out of sight of the town. The desert rose up around her like an alien landscape. The brush was full of noises that she didn’t recognize: dry, skittery little noises. Something alive. More jackrabbits maybe, or lizards, or quail.

She hoped it was just quail.

A loud buzz broke out, mere inches away, and Selena jumped sideways, her mind suddenly full of rattlesnakes. Oh god oh god what do I do do I grab Copper do I run—

A moment later she recognized the rising buzz of a cicada. You’ve got those back home. You know what they are. She pressed the heel of her hand against her forehead. Copper, seeing that she had stopped, sat down and waited. After a minute Selena started walking again.

There are rattlesnakes, though. They exist out here. What am I supposed to do if I see one? I work at a deli, for Christ’s sake. I know deli things. I don’t know about rattlesnakes. While the customers could sometimes get very hostile, especially around the holidays, they weren’t actually venomous. And Selena was pretty sure that you couldn’t tell a rattlesnake, “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m afraid that we just can’t help you.”

Well, you probably can, but I doubt the rattlesnake will listen. Not that the customers always did either.

She wished she could turn on her phone and search for how to deal with rattlesnakes, although there probably wasn’t any signal out here anyway.

A house appeared on the left side of the road, around the curve of the hill. It looked old and there were cracks in the adobe. A low stone wall ran alongside the road, and trees crowded over it, dappling the dry earth with shadow.

There was a peacock on the wall.

Copper stopped and stared at it with deep mistrust. So did Selena.

It was definitely a peacock. There was nothing else it could be. He was bright blue and had a tail made for strutting and he was wildly out of place.

Peacocks don’t live in the desert. Peacocks are, like . . . jungle birds, right?

The misplaced peacock turned his head and said, “Ai-yowp! Ai-yowp!”

The door of the old adobe banged open, and a woman came out.

She was a little taller than Selena, wearing a faded cotton skirt and an open leather vest. Silver and turquoise bangles clattered on bony wrists.

“Goddamn bird!” The woman charged at the peacock, arms waving. “Git! Go back home! Swear to the Lord, I’m gonna go down there and tell Jack to put you in a stew!”

“Ai-yowp!” shrieked the peacock, pacing down the wall toward Selena.

Selena took a deep breath. “Excuse me . . .”

“Sweet Jesus!” She reeled back, hand to heart. “Sorry, didn’t see you there. I was yelling at the bird, not you.”

“No, it’s okay. I figured that.” Selena glanced at the adobe, saw it had a blue door. “Um. I’m looking for . . . uh . . . Jackrabbit Hole House?”

“Sure, it’s just a little bit up the way. Follow the road. You can almost see it, but there’s trees in the way.” The woman stuck out a hand. “I’m Grandma Billy.”

“Selena.” Selena shook. She had shaken a lot of hands today. “Grandma . . . ?” she asked tentatively.

“Grandma Billy,” said Grandma Billy firmly. “Billy was my second husband and I’m too old to change it now.”

Selena nodded.

The peacock, apparently annoyed that he wasn’t the center of attention, shrieked next to Selena’s ear. She jumped away, startled, and Copper let out a warning bark.

“Damn bird, you’re causing nothing but trouble. Go on! Git!” Grandma flapped her skirt at the bird. He stuck his beak in the air and stalked away down the road, back toward town.

“That’s Merv,” said Grandma. “Samuel’s oldest mail-ordered some chicks from the city, supposed to be some kind of new super-chicken. Half of ’em didn’t hatch and the other half were peacocks, but he’s never been able to admit he was had.” She glared down the road after the retreating peacock. “Stupid bird comes around and my rooster loses his damn mind. I tell him he can’t compete with a peacock, but he about kills himself trying.”

“Well, they’re very pretty,” said Selena, carefully. Was that a stupid thing to say? That was probably stupid. Obviously they’re pretty. Damn.

“Sure are,” said Grandma. “Up on the mesas, they call ’em ‘sun turkeys,’ or so I’m told. Pretty sort of name. Shame about the personality. Can I get you something to drink?”

Fortunately Selena had lots of scripts for this sort of thing. “That would be lovely,” she said, “if it’s not too much trouble.”

“No trouble,” said Grandma. “You must be about parched. This lady too.” She crouched down on her heels, skirt making a broad circle in the dust. Silver chimed as she held out a hand to Copper.

Copper, who knew that she was being approached correctly, perked her ears forward and gave Grandma’s hand an emphatic lick, then thumped her broad skull into the waiting fingers. Grandma petted the Lab’s ears gravely.

“She a chicken killer?”

Selena blinked. “I don’t think Copper’s ever met a chicken.”

“We’ll play it safe, then. Some good dogs out there that can’t be around chickens. Stay out here on the front porch, I’ll be right back.”

She swept through the blue door. Selena wasn’t sure if it was okay to sit down on the porch, even though there were rocking chairs with woven blankets thrown over them.

She leaned against one of the porch pillars instead. Copper, who had no such compunctions, flopped down on the boards.

There was a wooden plaque next to the door that said BLUE HORNED TOAD HOUSE, with a little drawing of a lizard under it, painted bright blue.

It was oddly quiet. The cicadas were buzzing, but you didn’t notice the sound until they stopped. It didn’t seem like noise as much as a manifestation of the heat, like the ripples coming off the road.

All she could hear was Copper panting and the sounds of Grandma banging around inside the house. A muffled ai-yowp! came from down the road and then the peacock was silent.

A bird skittered to the top of a nearby saguaro and looked around. It was brown and had a sharply downcurved beak. It looked annoyed about something.

Grandma shoved the door open with her shoulder and one foot hooked around the edge. She had two jars in one hand and a shallow clay dish of water in the other. Selena jumped to take the dish from her.

“There you go,” said Grandma. “That’s for Copper and this one’s for you.”

The jar was full of tea, something green tasting and faintly sweet. There was no ice. The glass sweated in the heat, and water rolled over Selena’s fingers as she drank.

“Thank you,” she said. She hadn’t realized how thirsty she’d been. Copper slurped thirstily from the pottery bowl.

“No worries,” said Grandma. “It’s the desert. You get dried out before you know it.”

An awkward silence fell, or perhaps Selena only thought it was awkward. She reached for a script that had served her well. “So what is it you do?”

Grandma snorted. “Do? Well, I get older, mostly. And dig around in the garden and keep chickens. And chase off peacocks.” She fixed Selena with a bright eye over the rim of her jar. “And what do you do?”

“I’m a night manager at a deli.”

The words came out and then stood there in the blazing desert light looking faintly ridiculous, as out of place as peacocks. Surely it was not possible that the world had both saguaros and all-night delis in it. No one would believe that.

“Was,” said Selena, in an effort to shepherd the lost words away. “Was a manager. I’m not now, I mean.” Her boss had said they’d hold the job for her if she needed it, but Selena didn’t put much faith in that.

“Uh-huh. So what do you want with Jackrabbit Hole House? You looking for Amelia?” The corners of Grandma’s mouth drew down slightly. “You one of her strays?”

Strays?

Selena took a large gulp of tea while she sorted through the words in her head. “Amelia’s my aunt,” she said carefully. “I know she passed away. The postmistress said to come look at it.”

“Oh, aunt.” Grandma’s frown smoothed away. “I gotcha. She always picked up strays, you see—stray people, stray cats, baby birds fallen out of the nest, the lot. Keeping people from taking advantage was a full-time job, sometimes. But if Miss Jenny sent you, that’s different. Your aunt was a friend of mine.”

“I’m sorry,” said Selena. No, that was wrong. Crap. “Not, I mean, sorry that she was your friend. Sorry she passed away. For your loss. Because she was your friend.” She could hear herself starting to panic and shoved the rim of the jar into her mouth to stop the flow of words.

“I got the gist,” said Grandma, looking faintly amused. “Didn’t know she had a niece. Would have tried to get a letter out if I did, but Amelia didn’t talk about her family much. Said she had a sister, but they didn’t talk. That’s all I knew.”

“My mom,” said Selena. Did she have to say anything more about her? Hopefully not. She didn’t think she had the energy. Her mother had been troublesome while she was alive, and it was depressing, if not surprising, to discover that she continued to be troublesome after her death.

Grandma took a sip of tea.

“I hadn’t seen Aunt Amelia in a long time. I didn’t know she was sick. I would have come if I’d known. The last thing she sent me was a postcard—” The panic was bubbling up again. Selena dug out the postcard and held it out. Her hand was shaking a little.

Grandma took it, flipped it over. After a moment, she smiled. “Sounds like her, all right. She always wrote just like she talked.” She handed the postcard back. “She wouldn’t have told you she was sick. She didn’t believe it herself. Said she was just tired, right up till she died.”

“I should have come sooner,” said Selena hopelessly. “A year sooner. I didn’t know. I should have. I’m sorry.”

Grandma’s face softened, or maybe the hardness had been in Selena’s imagination. “It’s all right. Things show up when they’re needed.”

Not me, thought Selena. I screwed that up too. I shouldn’t have come out this way. I should have stayed at the post office. What good is looking at a dead woman’s house going to do?

What good was anything going to do? She’d staked everything on this ridiculous gamble, and of course she’d lost—there was no way she wasn’t going to lose—and now she would have to go back to Walter and this whole thing would become the Story of the Time Selena Ran Away. Nothing she could say was going to hold up to the line between his eyebrows and the way he clucked his tongue when he was disappointed. There wasn’t a script alive that could cope with that.

“Jackrabbit Hole House should be fine,” said Grandma, interrupting her train of thought. “I made sure everything was cleaned out. Probably got mice in it, and I’d check under the stove for snakes, but the roof is good. Door’s unlocked.”

It had not occurred to Selena until that moment that she might actually go inside the house. Of course you have to, did you think you were going to sleep on the porch? She had finished her tea some time ago, but she gripped the jar until the words BALL MASON were imprinted on the pads of her fingers.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” said Grandma. “It ain’t haunted. Amelia probably hung around her garden till everything died back for summer, then she went on her way. Nothing there now.” She took a slug of tea. “Well, except the usual run of desert ghosts, I guess. But they’re no bother.”

Selena set the jar down and picked up Copper’s leash. She had no scripts at all for this situation. You smiled politely when people told you about ghosts and said things like, “That must have been very unsettling,” or even just, “My goodness!” None of that seemed to apply to the casual mention that the ghosts were gone or at least not bothersome.

“I’ll just go look at the house,” she said. “I . . . I suppose I’ll probably stay overnight. Thank you for the tea.”

“Hang on, then,” said Grandma. “I’ve still got the sheets for the bed and a couple of Amelia’s old things. No sense roughing it if you don’t have to.”

“Thank you,” said Selena, who wanted nothing more than to bolt back to town. But the postmistress would still be there, and she was bound to ask what Selena had thought and she had to have something to say.

A minute later, her arms were full of bedding, with a pillow balanced precariously on top. She held it all awkwardly with one hand and dragged her suitcase with the other, while Copper’s leash slid down her arm to her elbow, the way you were never ever supposed to hold leashes. But she couldn’t very well turn down the bedding.

“If you decide you’re staying, I’ll bring over some of Amelia’s old stuff. You’ll need silverware and fry pans and whatnot.”

“That’s very kind,” said Selena, because it was kind, even if it wasn’t going to happen.

Grandma Billy saw her to the edge of the road and leaned on the stone wall. “When you turn the water on, it’ll spit. Let it run for a few minutes. The pump’s nearly new, but it ain’t been on for a while.”

Everyone thinks I’m staying. I’m not staying. Why are they talking as if I am? “Thank you for the tea,” she said again.