Cleaner of Bones by Kassel Meg

Author:Kassel, Meg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Entangled, Teen, YA; Fiction; Romance; Death; Tense; Mystery; Paranormal; Curses; Harbinger of death; Nail Biting; Shape-shifters
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2018-10-01T16:00:00+00:00

Confession

No one blinks an eye when I walk through the back door into the kitchen without a stitch of clothes on. The cold does hurt in human form, and those brief moments on the back porch after I changed back to myself leave me with a shuddering chill.

Six-year-old Fiona stands at the open refrigerator. She wears a pink nightgown and still has all those little barrettes in her thick black hair from when I left earlier. She reaches up to pull out the gallon of milk, and I catch a glimpse of her harbinger mark—the three narrow scars we all bear somewhere—marring the dark brown skin of her shoulder. Mine are on the palm of my hand. I once saw a harbinger with the marks on his cheek.

Brooke, who is twenty-one and attending the local community college, sits on a kitchen chair, one bare foot braced up on the table. Her long blond hair sits on top of her head in a messy bun. She’s painting her toenails. They both look up and stare at me but not because of my nudity. We don’t keep our clothes when we change from crow to human, so all of us have seen each other naked more times than we can count. You become desensitized pretty quickly.

“Where did you leave your clothes?” she asks.

My hands shake as I take a glass from the cabinet. My emotions are a tumultuous mess, and I’m certain it’s showing. I don’t have Paxton’s poker face. I’ve never seen the man die with more than a grimace, and I’ve seen him endure some gruesome deaths.

“In the woods,” I reply. “I’ll get them tomorrow.”

She purses her lips. “Better get them tonight. Before someone finds your identification and phone.”

“Fine.” We’ve perfected the art of appearing typical. Abandoning an entire set of clothes in the woods plus phone and ID would appear strange, which could invite scrutiny. We don’t like scrutiny. I pour a glass of water and gulp it down. “I’ll do it. Later.”

Fiona raises one eyebrow but says nothing more.

“You found a dead burner,” Brooke speaks up, turning her attention back to her toes. “Was it a suicide? Drug overdose?”

“Drunk rolled his car off the highway,” I mumble. The burner she refers to is our irreverent term for all the people in the world who are not afflicted with a supernatural curse. Those whose lives are done when their light “burns” out. So, most everybody. Even though it was only one death, Brooke can smell it. She’s not terribly perceptive when it comes to emotions, but she knows when one of us has lingered near a corpse.

Fiona, on the other hand, is exceptionally perceptive when it comes to others’ emotions. I can feel her staring at me, glass of milk in hand, and I don’t meet her gaze.

Brooke sniffs. “I like cities better. You can find dying burners on a daily basis. Better than starving for months on end.”

“A few burners here and there won’t sustain us. You know that,” Fiona says.

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