Chapter 4: Brekke Makes Himself Known

The crow had been there since Monday.

Mara had noticed it the way she noticed most things — sideways, then straight on, then filed away under things that would need accounting for eventually. It was a large bird, the kind of large that made you revise your estimate twice, with feathers that caught the light wrong, going blue-black then something richer and older that didn't have a name in the standard visible spectrum. It sat on the outside sill of her bedroom window with the settled patience of something that had been sitting in various places for a very long time and had made its peace with the activity.

Monday: present when she woke, gone when she got back from the supermarket.