Page 27 of The Rut in the Road

This led to another question.What happens if a body is totally decomposed?

All the way to goop or dust, you mean?

I hadn’t been thinking “goop,” specifically, but the idea was close enough. I nodded.

Archie shrugged.You might get a few bits, but it’s not gonna be worth the energy,he replied.Which is why you gotta seek out the dead and find out what you’re working with before you raise anything.He grinned at me.And that’s where we actually start.

I gave him a questioning look.

Count the dead spiders in the room, sport. With your eyes shut.

I stared at him.How?

The grin got wider, revealing a gap behind one of his eye teeth.That’s the tricky part.

I was wrappingup some paperwork—Beck’s, specifically—before heading into the back to do a full inventory. It was lateSeptember, and Beyond the Veil was already starting to book out parties and events for the Halloween season.

According to Sylvia, Halloween had always been a time for parties and celebrations of life by emphasizing the difference between the living and the dead—and, according to Mason, cultures all over the world took the opportunity of lengthening nights and chilling days to reflect on mortality and consider those they loved who had moved on to the afterlife.

But since the arrival of Arcanavirus, Sylvia said, people had taken the sudden public visibility of magic as license to go all out, finding what she called their ‘fictional inner witches and wizards without having a bloody clue what any of that actually means.’

I didn’t have any particular personal feelings about Halloween, but I knew that it was a major source of income for Beyond the Veil—what Ward said was our equivalent of the retail holiday shopping season. It also meant that most of us worked nearly every day in the month of October, one way or another. Ward and Beck, in particular, had nearly constant gigs, which meant that Mason and I were generally scrambling to help them load in, load out, stay stocked, and otherwise provide support and food.

And October was coming up fast. I knew what the schedule looked like—meetings and séances throughout the day about wills and other regular daily business, with the séance bookings for parties and family gatherings rapidly accumulating on most evenings in the second half of the month.

I’d already had to turn away several parties because they conflicted with bookings we’d already confirmed or with Ward’s annual tradition of working with the Latinos in Virginia Development Center fordía de muertos. He said that it was important to give back to the community, even if all you had to give was time. Especially if what you had to give was time.

I couldn’t do what he did. Not the way he did and certainly not as much as he did. But I could bring food, pack crates, and place orders. So that’s what I did.

I wondered if any of that would be different this year.

I wondered if I wanted it to be.

Frowning, I picked up a tablet and carried it back to the stock room, pulling up the inventory spreadsheet.

“Rayn, come here a minute?” Ward’s voice called as I passed his office.

I stopped, backtracked the few steps I’d gone past the door, and stepped into the doorway. “Yes?” I asked.

He glanced at the tablet in my hand. “Doing inventory?”

I nodded. “It’s time to stock up for Halloween,” I replied.

He frowned.

“Should I not?” I asked, confused.

“What?” he glanced up at me again. “Oh, no, sorry. I mean… yes. Yes, you should do inventory for Halloween. I just—” He broke off, then sighed, running a hand through his curls. “Have you been watching the news at all?” he asked.

I blinked, not following the thread of this conversation at all. “No?”

“Well, let’s just say that the hit-and-runs aren’t the only recent incidents involving Nids and Arcs in the city,” he said, his tone grim.

I waited for him to say more.

“Come in and sit, Rayn,” he said.

I walked in and sat across from him at his desk, then waited, my tablet dark in my lap.